I am hearing rumblings that Joe Donnelly wants to be your Senator again. I plead with the Indiana Democratic Party not to do this again.
Yeah, I know that Joe once won a statewide race against a truly off-kilter Republican who wrote his own ending weeks before the General Election, but Joe Donnelly won't beat Todd Young or Mike Braun or whoever he runs against next for whatever statewide office he wants. He doesn't have a shot. He connected himself with Donald Trump in 2018. That's not what a Democrat does.
In my view, the 2022 election cycle for U.S. Senate is an uphill battle. Running the same strategy Democrats have run in almost every U.S. Senate in my adult life is not going to work in 2022 or 2024. You won't beat Republican Todd Young by being slightly less Republican. You won't beat Republican Mike Braun by calling out his Trumpiness...when you touted your own Trumpiness in 2018.
To me, the wiser strategy is to give us a candidate who brings something more to the table. More Democrat. Yeah, let's run and support someone who espouses Democratic Party values which consistently poll in the positive. I'm not talking about those fake wedge issues that Republicans try to throw over our necks like albatrosses. I'm talking about those bread and butter issues that carried Democrats in Georgia across the finish line in that Senate race.
If Georgia can have two Democrats in the Senate...if Arizona can have one Democrat and one who ran as a Democrat in the Senate, Indiana can. Don't tell me we have to keep running Evan Bayh clones or Joe Donnelly each time. There was a time when Diet Republican worked as a strategy here. My mom voted for Evan Bayh. She wouldn't vote for Democrats much, but she could vote for Bayh because he was just a little left of Richard Lugar.
To win in 2022 or 2024, it's going to take every darn Democrat in the state to get out plus a lot of those Republicans who voted for Joe Biden because they were tired of Donald Trump and who believe things like the environment are important. That healthcare needs to be fixed. That guns should be legal but controlled more. That immigration is essential to our country's future. That democracy is worth saving. That Joe Biden won the 2020 election...and much more.
Laying down with the Republicans to try to pull over votes rather than making a case that our ideas are better is, in my view, a losing strategy. Even if the strategy of making your case loses, you win in the end because you were advancing our party's goals. Every small step makes that difference.
That's just my opinion. Joe Donnelly's better than Todd Young or Mike Braun, but I just fear getting in this never ending cycle of a strategy that doesn't work and won't work again.