It’s going to take a lot more than this
Rottenchester catches David Nachbar waxing naive about how to stabilize Iraq:
We need to deploy the Corps of Engineers, in place of the Marine Corps, to help rebuild basic human needs: power, water, hospitals, schools, police and housing to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people and to show American credibility.
No one else has ever thought that rebuilding Iraqi infrastructure might help, right? The reason the Iraqis don’t have power or water much of the time isn’t that lines are being blown up and it’s too dangerous to fix them, right? This is only slightly less inane:
We need to act now with specific plans and intent and establish a definitive agreement with the Iraqi government of things that need to be done to move forward.
What specific plans and intent should we act with?
Rotten speculates (I think he’s right) that Nachbar’s campaign is being run by former DCCC staffers — the same people who thought the race was unwinnable in 2006. Rotten says:
I’m sure former DCCC staffers think it’s winnable now, as long as there’s a pot of gold in it for them. David Nachbar’s wallet will help them see the error of their ways.
This sounds harsh, but more and more, it looks to me like Nachbar is getting ripped off by a bunch of consultants who want to make a book off a campaign that has no chance of succeeding. We’ve resisted saying this — this has been Rotten’s point of view from the beginning, more or less — but it’s becoming painfully obvious that it’s true.
When he spoke to the Brighton Dems, Mr. Nachbar specifically named names of DCCC related consultants that he had hired. As might be expected, that revelation did not have the desired effect of impressing the crowd…instead generating several comments recalling the failure of the DCCC to provide financial support to Eric Massa in ‘06. It was one of several “tin ear” moments during his presentation, that helped lead to the overwhelming vote to endorse Eric.