Jon Tester
Back in 1974 Montana’s Max Baucus walked 631 miles from Gardiner in the southwest part of the state to Yaak in the northwest.
He won his seat in Congress because of that, and likely got his Senate seat four years later in large part because of people’s memories of it.
Today, however, Democrats frown on that approach.
Nothing says that more than the way the National Democrats and their Democratic Senate Coordinating Committee (DSCC) are treating Joe Sestak.
Who is Joe Sestak, you ask?
He’s a former Navy 3-star Admiral, U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania, and current candidate for one of Pennsylvania’s Senate seats.
He was a candidate in 2010 and lost and it’s likely the DSCC thinks he’ll lose again.
The man that heads up the DSCC is Montana’s Jon Tester.
He won his seat in Congress because of that, and likely got his Senate seat four years later in large part because of people’s memories of it.
Today, however, Democrats frown on that approach.
Nothing says that more than the way the National Democrats and their Democratic Senate Coordinating Committee (DSCC) are treating Joe Sestak.
Who is Joe Sestak, you ask?
He’s a former Navy 3-star Admiral, U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania, and current candidate for one of Pennsylvania’s Senate seats.
He was a candidate in 2010 and lost and it’s likely the DSCC thinks he’ll lose again.
The man that heads up the DSCC is Montana’s Jon Tester.
Joe Sestak
There’s a very good report on Politico today called Joe Sestak’s last stand against the Democratic Party.
The subtitle is “Washington Democrats are spending big to defeat one of their own in a must-win Pennsylvania Senate race.”
Why would D.C. insiders be trying to defeat one of their own?
“On paper, Sestak is about everything a Democrat could want in a Senate candidate,” Politico tells us: “a charismatic, decorated veteran.”
Alas, “the independent streak that attracts voters is precisely what worries national Democrats so much about Sestak.”
To people like Tester at the DSCC, Sestak “could blow a winnable Senate race because of his tendency to reject the slightest hint of marching orders from party bosses.”
What do those marching orders look like?
“According to several people familiar with the events, the DSCC — chaired by Sen. Jon Tester of Montana and steered by Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York — began moving away from Sestak early in 2015 after he resisted hiring a party-approved campaign manager. Democrats tried to recruit a half-dozen candidates to run for the seat, eventually settling on McGinty, a longtime political operative and former chief of staff to Gov. Tom Wolf with a background in the clean energy sector.
The intervention on her behalf is the kind of activity from Washington that makes a tea party activist’s head explode: The DSCC is now running $425,000 worth of ads in Pennsylvania on McGinty’s behalf, money that could be used in the general election. It plans to spend an additional $1.1 million next week.”
So Sestak doesn’t like the fact that he can’t pick his own campaign staff, huh?
Good job.
Here’s a smart guy. In Montana we’ve seen the abysmal job that Eric Heyers and Jason Pitt have done for Bullock.
Both are on loan from the Montana Democratic Party via the National Democratic Party. Both are terribly incompetent, unless you count sending out Twitter messages all day as a good use of a campaign’s time.
Sestak didn’t want that approach and because he said so, National Democrats like Jon Tester tarred and feathered him.
“He’s trudged hundreds of miles across this massive state in a walking tour that the national party basically saw as a waste of time,” Politico tells us of Sestak’s 422-mile walk across Pennsylvania.
You’d think Tester would know better, considering he’s from Montana and should remember Max’s 631-mile walk in ’74.
Yet Tester was a driver in “an effort to squeeze him [Sestak] out that started more than a year ago.”
I went ahead and sent a message to Senator Tester and his communications director asking that they comment about Sestak.
I got no response.
When Tester was asked by reporters about Sestak he said, “I’m really just focused on the positive.”
A big reason for that is because it looks like Sestak will win. Just what Tester and his ilk need – egg on their face and another member of the team that doesn’t trust the heads of that team.
I don’t blame Sestak for that outlook.
Here in Montana the Democratic Party ignores my emails and doesn’t return my phone calls.
They call me anti-semitic and label me a Republican.
All because I point out we’re not doing enough to help the working man, the hard-pressed, and the downright failing in this country.
Democrats mainly want to focus on helping Wall Street and those that like to put money off-shore.
That's when they're not helping themselves.
Yeah, off-shoring...kind of odd that we’ve heard virtually nothing about the Panama Papers, and absolutely nothing about the resignation of Iceland’s prime minster because of them.
It’s because the corporate media is scared. Some of their biggest servants are the Democrats and the Republicans.
“As Sestak speaks, he sometimes betrays why Democrats are so wary about his candidacy: He’s passionate but occasionally loses his train of thought. He is decidedly not “on message.” He makes constant references to his book, his job teaching ethical leadership at universities — and cites his own quotes as if everyone remembers them.”
Sestak is giving working Americans the message they want. National Democrats like Jon Tester are not.
Remember that in 2018, Montana, remember it well.
