I have been, and continue to be, an undecided voter on the Markell/Carney decision. It may at times seem that I am an unabashed Carney supporter, but that is only due to the contrast with others in the blogosphere. I have a number of friends in both campaigns. I have been trying hard to give counter arguments to the Markell supporters, but alas, I am not particularly good at the debunking thing.
Delawonk, a Carney supporter, is new on the scene here. He has in the past been associated with Carney’s campaign, but I do not know his involvement now. He has provided the first inkling of a countervailing force to the Jack-backers.
Jason, Mike Matthews, Dominique and many others are convinced that Jack is their man. Often going to the point of bashing Carney as a stooge and incompetent. Carney people often point to Markell as being of the Greenville crowd. Perhaps both sides are being unfair.
I have spoken to someone with a close relationship to Carney about the dynamic that they are in danger of being swept up in. It is the Clinton/Obama dynamic. One side promotes their experience in getting things done, the other as the agent of change. I have literally been warning them of the danger of this for months. Carney has worked hard to curry favor with some “progressives” in the state, but has had little to show for it. He has ended up being the Hillary Clinton of this race.
The one thing that he had going for him is that he could parlay his connections and savvy into getting BWW and Delmarva to agree to terms. This is an excellent example of progressive goals being met with hard-nosed back room politics. And guess what? The deal wouldn’t have gotten done without it.
Then a week later, Carney blew that political capital on the awful eminent domain issue. I plan on doing some stories on E.D. in the next few weeks (hint, I’ve got a new mechanic in Wilmington), but the right stand seems to be in support of property rights. The fact that he was standing next to Tom Gordon’s right hand man when we talked about it didn’t help things either.
I am saddened by the tone that this election has taken. It is pitting the progressive Dems against the traditional base. I suppose that is how it was always going to be, but we have to watch where we go with it. Bashing the unions and the city of Wilmington (Carney’s Strongholds) isn’t going to get us anywhere but hurt. These are constituencies that we need to work with and work toward common goals. John Kowalko, God bless him, is a perfect example. He is a perfect bridge from unions to progressives.
If I took anything out of the Obama/Clinton bruhaha, it is that we don’t need to burn those bridges. If we had respectfully disagreed with each others’ stands, we might be looking at Obama (or Hillary) up by 15% across the board. So take a deep breath, relax. Either way, we are going to get a better Governor than what we have had for 8 years. And that Governor will be a Democrat.