If fighting wins votes why did Alan Grayson lose?

I thought he had a ton of money.

Spot on, rucky.

This is, I think, a bigger problem than people give it credit for.

Couldn't have been that bad or the D would have prevented his win.

I actually unsubscribed from his email newsletter after that.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Webster said, in fact, the exact OPPOSITE of what the ad implied he said.

I don't like Dan Webster at all, but that ad was just sleazy. Alan Grayson's better than that.

Webster is a Christian Dominionist, and taken as a whole, he suggests women sublimate themselves to their husbands. The particular quote in question was a case of Webster dancing around that position and saying, disingenuously, that women don't "have" to do that (assuming they want to defy God).

Grayson's ad edited this down to just "she should submit to me".

See http://www.factcheck.org/2010/09/rep-grayson-lowers-the-bar/

As factcheck.org points out:

The full context of the remarks make clear that Webster is not telling wives to submit to their husbands. Just the opposite.

Grayson certainly has his good points but his cynical and dishonest ads during his campaign made me lose all respect for him.

their wives' submission. I don't condone distorting his actual words, but Webster was being cute in characterizing a wife's submission as something that was up their husbands to pray for. Wifely submission was still what he was preaching




http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/9/29/906298/-FL-08:-Yes,-Taliban-Dan-Webster-believes-wives-should-submit

So, Webster didn't tell wives to submit, but he did tell their husbands to pray for their submission. I'd agree his words still should not have been muddied in the ad, but this is not Shirly Sherrod being misrepresented as a racist when she was saying the opposite.

Whether you respect Grayson after the admittedly ill-advised ad is up to you, but he did not misrepresent Webster's views at all. The man is a radically conservative Christian who absolutely does preach a woman's subservience to her husband.

Don't dishonestly splice and dice his words to make it look like he is saying the *opposite* of what he is really saying.

Grayson screwed up very badly with this ad and was punished for it. The voters were not as stupid as the campaign seemed to think.

TeaPubliKlans get away with similar and worse but Democrats don't have that kind of latitude.

Not saying the spirit of the ad was false because "Taliban Dan" probably does suck much ass but the speech was taken out of context and some of Alan's truth teller shine probably came off.

Grayson seemed to be in fair shape and pushed a lil beyond with the ad.

didn't fight hard enough for him. (They find the progressives to be embarrassing.)

:rofl:

The trick is, judging when "fighting" vs. "compromising" will yield accomplishments, and if I had a magic formula for that I'd be running the world right now.

The only way to stay in office is to keep your head down, move with the herd, and spout meaningless drivel about "social issues". I will never forget, for example, Biden's behavior at the Thomas confirmation hearings, and the consequences of it, and I will never vote for him if there is any viable alternative because of it, and I would wager that what most people remember about their Congresspersons is what they did wrong.

And there are plenty of people saying we "spent" our majority on health care reform.

The only way to stay in office is to keep your head down, move with the herd, and spout meaningless drivel about "social issues".

Well, I think it depends on the office. If you're a freshman Congressman like Grayson, then yeah, in general, but I literally think there was no way on heaven or earth Grayson or any other Democrat was going to keep that seat in this election, and too few post-mortems of that election seem to recognize that fact. Gene Taylor and Ike Skelton lost, for Christ's sake; how was Grayson going to hold on?

If you're a Congressional leader, you're generally from a pretty safe district or state (which is even more odd when you consider how many states split their Senate delegations -- VA is a splitter, but Webb's seat is reasonably safe; ditto WV), and you make it even safer by getting a lot of pork sent back home.

Grayson offered a model of being a progressive who "fought" (which apparently means appearing angry on C-SPAN) in the hopes that his electorate would respect that even if they disagreed with him and send him back. He just was doing it in the absolute worst year to test that hypothesis.

What irritated me about Grayson was his frankly ludicrous Medicare For All bill: no mention whatsoever of funding. Doctrinaire reductionism is not what we need right now.

What it does mean is you have some sort of principles, and in my view, if you are unprincipled, you belong in the private sector. Being in the government is not just another job opportunity like working at WalMart.

EVERYTHING else are just excuses.

A lot of seniors voted in the midterms and many were duped by the Medicare cut lies so that could also be a factor.

David Vitter "won". He's a loser. Alan Grayson lost. He's a winner.

Period. Too many analyses from both sides ignore that fact. If Gene Taylor couldn't hold MS-4, and Ike Skelton couldn't hold MO-4, nobody was going to hold FL-8.