Paul Hackett was just on Stephanie Miller.

[Botany]

He is exactly the type of person we need. Funny, smart, and plain spoken.
Points:

* He would not go back into the Dist. 2 congressional primary race because he gave his word
that to the other candidates in the race. He considers his word as his bond.

* He called out Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid for urging him to run but then going behind his
back to hamstring his candidacy.

* He admitted to making mistakes.

* He called for a "ground up" change to revitalize the dem party because he considers fighting the
radical agenda of bush and company very important.

* Said he was done with running in electoral politics. The sleaze sickened him.

As an Ohio voter I am mad as hell @ what happened to him by the "good old boy network"
that every election has the dems showing up like a limp dick on a wedding night.

P.S. I got to meet Mr. Hackett a few weeks ago and his speaking style was a breath of fresh air. No
non answer answers. He also struck me as "a stand up man" too. Just the sort of person we need.

[derby378]

1. A lot of us Dems across America were pulling for Hackett...

Hopefully, Sherrod Brown can deliver the goods. But right now he's trailing DeWine in the Rassmussen polls.

[Botany]

2. DeWine will thump Brown in the General

I will vote for brown but I am sickened by what happened to Hackett.
I also want to know what the truth is about the "whispering campaign"
against Hackett.

[Adelante]

8. I would like the truth, too

This is what we know from published reports regarding Swiftboating:

August: Schumer and Reid ask Hackett to run.

Summer: Rumors appear in blogosphere, according to Rothenberger of the Ohio Democratic Party

October: Hackett announces. Hears about Swiftingboating right away

October: Brown announces.

October: Clermont County Democratic chairman David Lane hears from Brown campaign aide Dan Lucas that there are rumors about Hackett; Lane tells Hackett

October: Schumer pulls support for Hackett and starts pressuring him to get out.

"Fall": Hackett calls Schumer for help ending whisper campaign; Schumer says he'll put a stop to it

Late-November: Reid calls Hackett and asks him about photos. Hackett goes to DC and shows photos. Reid's staff finds nothing to it.

"months ago": Sherrod Brown and wife hear rumors about Hackett; says he quashed them from use in his campaign

Early-January: Rumors continue; heard by chair of the Clermont County Democratic Party

February: Hackett getting calls pressuring him to drop out

February: Hackett asked by DCCC to run again in OH-02

February 13th: Hackett drops out

While Hackett has made himself clear that he believes Brown was behind the rumors, Brown has also made himself clear that he was not. We can each believe who we want to believe, as long as evidence is available to back it up. It seems that a Brown campaign aide repeated rumors to a Hackett supporter who was a county OPD official in early October, but the rumors started in the summer, and we don't know who started them. If the rumors were out in the summer, when Hackett was running against a Republican, as a separate ODP official says, and before Brown was in the Senate race, it could be the whisper campaign was started by Rovians. We have no evidence thus far that it was a Rove operation, although that is my suspicion and I would like the truth of it, if it is true.

Aside from this part, proving the source of the whisper campaign, I say Brown is now the only candidate against the Repugs. Hackett has said he would campaign for Brown and I hope he is asked to do so. We have only so many months to pull together. I hope we can begin to see the situation with some urgency as a fight against Republicans and not each other.

[Cocoa]

3. I hope she invites Sherrod Brown on the program

they could discuss progressive approaches to health care and education.

[FreedomAngel82]

10. I'm not holding my breath

She's a huge Hackett supporter and even campaigned for him. Of course it took him DAYS before he called her back while he can happily go on Schultz and Matthews and diss Brown and other democrats and the democratic party but he snuffs out a big supporter of his like Miller which is very rude and disgusting and he obviously doesn't know anything about politics. Lots of people around here on DU are attacking Brown when THERE IS NO PROOF Brown's campaign did anything but Hackett is acting like it's for sure. :mad: What bullshit!

[Botany]

14. What are you talking about?

Hackett went out of his way to be nice to Steph when he was on her show.
He flirted w/ her and played up to her "crush on him" act.
Made sure that her people had his # and contact info.

Do you live in Ohio?

Do you think the entire Columbus Dispatch article was made up about the
whispering campaign against Hackett?

Is Hackett lying when he says he called Brown and asked him if he was going to run and
Brown said no.

Are my eyes tricking me when I read in black & white that Hackett entered the race 1st
and Brown entered after hackett?

Is Hackett lying when he said Reid & Schumer asked him to run for senate?

Brown will get crushed in the general election .... end of story.

And what happened to Hackett stinks!

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. He flirted with Stephanie,

and I thought it was cute-especially when he mentioned his wife. He's a real person, not a politician.

[Donna Zen]

5. The Democratic Machine

will be there to pound the last coffin nail. Hackett's speaking up and out to power is far more important to us as a wake-up call, then any downside that I can see. Yes, I hope Dems rally around Brown now, but what Hackett has exposed needed the sunlight. For the machine it is all about $$$$ and whose turn it is on the ladder. Winning is secondary. And so we get what get, fucked, because so many who are supposedly calling for change, really would rather shoot the messanger.

[Larkspur]

6. Sirota: Ohio's Largest Paper Tells the Real Story About Hackett

http://www.davidsirota.com/2006/02/ohios-largest-paper-tells-real-story.html

With the Paul Hackett story all over the blogs this week, I wanted to point out this story from the http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/114025579369310.xml&coll=2">Cleveland Plain Dealer. It is a full post-mortem on Hackett's failed candidacy for U.S. Senate, and the piece confirms what I've written about this over the last few days. The story makes clear what should be obvious: Hackett was not "forced out" - he was outworked and outorganized by a better, harder working, more progressive candidate, Sherrod Brown. Hackett thought he should be able to walk to the nomination and not have to do the grueling, unglamorous work that it takes to be a candidate in a major statewide race - and when he found out that it wasn't going to be a cakewalk for him, he bailed.

Here are some key excerpts:

"Former Hackett aides say the biggest problem facing his campaign at the end was insufficient money. Hackett cited the problem himself in an interview with The Plain Dealer earlier this week. Despite his initial rant on party leaders, he said, the overriding reason for his exit was a realization that he couldn't raise the $3 million he thought he needed to win the primary...One of biggest obstacles to banking that money, they said, was that Hackett hated fund raising. While most candidates share that feeling, people familiar with Hackett's campaign say he was especially resistant to efforts by aides to get him to use one of the most efficient but unpleasant fund raising techniques: sitting at the phone for hours, calling friends, relatives, and strangers to ask for money. Tension over the problem led in January to the departure of his finance director...Hackett, who prized his independent streak and proudly called it a family trait - he voted twice for Ross Perot for president and championed gun rights as well as gay rights - also chafed at having his schedule set by aides. On the weekend before he bowed out, aides say, he stunned his staff by refusing at the last minute to attend certain events - including appearances at several black churches - that had apparently been put on his schedule over his objections."

In other words, this had nothing to do with Hackett being "forced out" and everything to do with him not wanting to work.

SNIP

[Botany]

7. So Hackett is lying about Schumer?

I doubt it. Schumer has confirmed that he made some calls.

[FreedomAngel82]

13. And that means he did anything?

"Making calls" could be anything and you don't know what it is.

[FreedomAngel82]

11. You should make a seperate post about this

:)

[FreedomAngel82]

12. He surely isn't acting like it!

He's acting like a sore loser going around and talking about how Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer ruined his campaign when he says here the real reason was money. He should apologize to Reid, Schumer and Brown. But watch him not!

[LittleClarkie]

25. While I'm increasingly annoyed at Hackett and those who painted

this as a DLC conspiracy, Sirota annoys me too. I get the impression of someone throwing gasoline on the fire. He was the one who talked about an anonymous staffer releasing info from Hackett's campaign about Brown. I hate reports from anonymous staffers. I don't trust them. I need to repost an article from Sirota from earlier where it seemed he'd taken a few facts and sort of crocheted them into a theory, making some pretty great leaps along the way.

I get the impression of someone who's a Brown fan, and therefore has an underlying agenda in this whole FUBAR. One more person with a bias I do NOT need if I'm going to make heads or tails out of what happened.

[FreedomAngel82]

9. He sure took his little time getting back to her!!

I was listening to her talk about him in the third hour from Monday's show and she has been trying to get a hold of him since the whole thing started getting news on the internet and progressive radio about a week or so ago and he's just now calling her back? She fundraised for him and he used to call her back really quick on interviews. I heard her talking about him appearing on "Hardball" and a few things got me. This episode was from Monday.

1) She was talking about how he goes on these other shows and he at this point in time has yet to come on her show. She has campaigned for him while Schultz and Matthews have not. I found that really rude.

2) On "Hardball" he proclaimed that Reid and Schumer got rid of him because of him speaking out against Iraq. PURE BULLSHIT! Brown VOTED AGAINST IWR and has been against Iraq. He was also planning on smearing Brown for voting against the "Patriot Act" as being weak on security and for voting against intelligence back in the 90's. These are pure Rovian tricks!

He's still going around claiming Brown's campaign was doing tricks to him WHEN HE HASN'T GIVEN US ANY PROOF! WHERE IS THE PROOF?! And if he's dropping out of politics because of this than he's a whiny ass baby and not a fighting democrat liked he claimed. Just because he can call Bush name's doesn't mean shit. If you're mad you should be mad at him for HIM dropping out. As someone else mentioned in another thread a guy up north who's last name is Brown got the same thing happening to him as Hackett and HE stayed and now HE'S a head of the polls. Hackett is no fighter.

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. I will put it to you this way

the Dem party is trying hard to go back to the pre 1968 way of doing business, and that is a sure way to oblivion.

What they did to Hackett was common back them. You DID NOT run whiteout the good graces of the party and if you did, lord help you.

Wake up people for the party needs a hell of a wake up call.

Me I am fed up... and will support individual candidates, but not the machine.

[AtomicKitten]

16. The more Hackett yaks about this, the less respect I have for him.

And I worked for him.

[Botany]

17. Did you hear the interview?

He conducted himself w/ class.

[AtomicKitten]

23. yes, and my feelings are as stated.

You are entitled to your opinion as I am to mine

I haven't berated yours, please show me the same respect.

[Lady President]

18. He strikes me as a whiner

He used to strike me as a stand up man, but not anymore. Is there any media venue he hasn't used to give his sob story? He didn't have enough money. Period. If he wanted to stay in the race, he would have. If he really cared about the Party, he would stop the giving the same "poor me" lines and use his media time to talk about what a great job Sherrod Brown will do. At least Ohioans will have the opportunity to vote for the real progressive candidate.

[MrBenchley]

19. Same here...

The most graceless exit since Nixon in 1962...."You won't have Paul Hackett to kick around any more."

[Botany]

20. did you hear the interview?

I live in Ohio and I am "friends" w/ Steph.

He did not whine.

[LittleClarkie]

21. I still am intrigued by the thought that this was a Republican set up

I'd like to know who told him or how he found out that Reid and Schumer were "going behind his back". If they were behind his back, then how did he become aware of it? And who in his staff released their research into Brown?

[iconoclastNYC]

22. I'm mad that he's discouraging people to run!!!!

He has to suck it up for the sake of the party.

[Edgewater_Joe]

24. SSSSSSSSSSSUCK-Kerrrr!

Nice to see that Hackett continues to backstab other Democrats and give Karl Rove the best news he could get in any state.

Hackett was going to lose a race he never should've entered -- then he plays the martyr instead of playing actual politics and doing something FOR THE COUNTRY by beating Jean Schmitt, which he can do and which other Democrats might not be able to do.

He had the chance to make a change, but instead he continues to make HIMSELF the issue. And every issue he claims he cares about gets further and further from becoming achieved.

The more he opens his mouth, the more I am convinced I wouldn't buy a used car from the phony.

We rip Bush supporters as having a cult-like affinity for the man; you Hackett-ites are displaying some of the exact same tendencies.

Wake up.