PDHblog
This is a place for members of Progressive Democrats of Hawai‘i to express their thoughts
and exasperations about political happenings. The opinions and views are not necessarily
those of PDH's steering committee or membership as a whole.

I just finished watching channel 6, Ed Case’s concession speech, and the comments afterwards. One comment was that Case’s decision to challenge Akaka was “good” for the Democratic Party. Was it?

Imagine if he hadn’t switched. He’d run again for CD2. Akaka would run again for the Senate. Abercrombie would run again for CD1. And they’d all probably win, with little fuss.
(Yawn)

But now look. Akaka wins, but he needed a whole lot of help, not just from the Old Boy Network, but also from a lot of others, including Progressive Democrats of Hawaii, and Democracy for America. CD2 became a free-for-all, with a lot of good Democrats popping out of the woodwork, getting lots of publicity, energizing the party, and stirring things up. No heavy favorite emerged, and we’ll have to wait another hour or more until the “third printout” to figure out who won. So this is all good, right?

Well, maybe. But now let’s look at the winners of the primary:

Akaka. Abercrombie. Iwase. and, if her lead holds up, Mazie Hirono, former candidate for Lt. Gov.

These are not exactly fresh faces. I was really hoping for a better showing for Aila, and Hooser. The Old Boy/Girl network won. So isn’t that bad?
But perhaps it is potentially a net gain after all for progressives, since the CD2 winner is likely to be more progressive than Case is, especially if Mazie wins, so our congressional delegation will likely be even more progressive than it was.
So that’s good, isn’t it? . . .

What will Case do next? Run against Inouye? Or Lingle?

Bob Schacht