"What's tomorrow's lede in your blog?"
Asked of me by Democratic State Senator Jeff Golden"The big story is that Democrats are super-energized. These candidates will have a hard time, but Democrats are going to have a good year."My response
Four Democratic candidates for U.S. Congress spoke to about 400 voters in a Sunday afternoon joint appearance at a Medford school auditorium.
Conventional thinking would be that these candidates face a near-hopeless challenge. Oregon's Second Congressional District concentrates the state's most-Republican areas into one of Oregon's six districts, one that includes Medford. The Republican incumbent, Cliff Bentz, won election by a 64-33 margin in 2024. He won 68-32 in 2022.
The audience seemed undaunted and enthusiastic. The candidates did as well. Each one sounded confident and forthright, with a single story: Bentz is a Trump toady, and Bentz's Trump-pleasing votes hurt Second District citizens.
From left to right in this photo:
Patty Snow, 62, an Ashland businesswoman, who called herself "a purple Democrat." She said she wanted to focus on four things: health, the environment, the economy, and our rights as Americans.
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| Snow |
Rebecca Mueller, 45, from Medford, who introduced herself as "a rural pediatrician, an advocate, and a mother." She said she wanted to give the unaffiliated voters a reason to vote Democratic.
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| Mueller |
Dawn Rasmussen, 58, from Wasco County, who began by saying Oregonians were being crushed by rising costs, but that she was not "a partisan warrior" because affordability is an Oregon issue, not a Democratic one.
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| Rasmussen |
Mary Doyle, 57, a Bend-area educator, who said she wanted to "get corruption out of politics," which requires a new tax policy that forces billionaires to pay higher taxes, a constitutional amendment to end corporate financing of campaigns, and ridding Congress of career politicians.
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| Doyle |
They are good candidates, but I have impressions to share:
--- I thought they all sounded alike. All condemn Trump. All say they want to reach out to a wider net beyond Democrats. All have essentially the same set of policy ideas that Democrats in very blue polities favor. On every issue dear to the Democratic faithful, including issues that make the Democratic brand unpopular in red areas like the Second District, they sound to me like a politician hoping to win votes in Portland, Berkeley, or Boston. They sound like Bernie Sanders-AOC Democrats, with maybe a tiny hint of the moderation of a Pete Buttigieg. They are all MSNOW-compliant.
--- I thought the four candidates were too darned gracious. They congratulate and support one another. This approach means, however, that distinctions between them are essentially invisible. One does not need to be nasty to do some comparing and contrasting. The result is that a person attending the event -- as I did -- wondering which of the four stood above the others and could give Bentz some real general election competition, came away without a chosen candidate. A corollary of that graciousness is that they never made a hard compare-and-contrast case against Bentz, tying Bentz to the least popular things Trump does.
These candidates have an opportunity in the 2026 election to turn this district from safe-Republican into a competitive one. MAGA is net-popular in this district, but on issues like the right to carry guns without being killed by federal police, on Greenland, on Epstein, on tariffs, on inflation, on damage to wheat exports, on the rough treatment by immigration enforcement agents, there is an opportunity for Democrats. If it were a competitive seat, even an incumbent Republican would feel some pressure to be an independent voice of restraint against the least popular Trump policies.
There may be room for a red-district Democrat to surprise voters with a shift in the policies that reshape the Democratic brand. In a democracy there is no shame in supporting things that are popular, even if it changes the orthodoxy of a party brand. I had hoped to hear it.
But I need to be realistic about popularity: A majority of Democratic primary voters may not want to hear it in a Democratic primary, and it was a Democratic primary crowd.
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3 comments:
They are similar. The issues that may have nuances are overshadowed by the need to call out and oppose autocracy and corruption. I would have enjoyed a bit more of that, and Bentz's complicity with it should be front and center.
It would be nice if you guys could at least scare your congressman for being a Trump puppet, canceling healthcare for his constituents, along with all the other votes.
At dinner with friends last night, the subject of health came up when one member, on the ACA exchange, saw her health insurance premium increase to $1,200/mo. and thinking about cancelling, as she is Medicare-eligible later in the year. Another person, a veteran, spoke up, saying his two abdominal surgeries were billed at $86,000, of which he owed 20% as the operation was performed out-of-network. He is appealing the charges to the VA.
Another discussion focused on electing a new Washington County Chair; the concern was that none of the candidates had opposed ICE operations in their county this year. The county's makeup resembles Silicon Valley, with a mix of High-Tech and Vineyard workers.
An off-year election is generating attention at the local level as if it were a Presidential election. Character and track record are their concerns. In short, don't tell me what you think I want to hear. Tell me with some credibility what you will do.
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