Stage 4: Democratic Primary Regression

In her blog Mean Rachel, Austin Democrat blogger Rachel Ferris recently posted “Why I’m Not Picking Sides in Doggett Versus Castro” which gives her opinion on the progress (or regress) of the upcoming Democratic primary election.  According to her perspective, though it is healthy for democrats to support and challenge various candidates within their party, the current democratic race is more of a “bloodbath” between candidates Lloyd Doggett and Juaquin Castro. Not only are each of their campaigns lashing out at each other, but Democratic residents are arguing over pointless issues regarding the two candidates such as which has congressional seniority and which is more progressive rather than focusing on what’s important. Resulting, she claims that due to this unnecessarily brutal primary, the Republicans will eventually win out by watching their opponents weaken themselves through infighting leading to the GOP taking the upper hand in the 2012 election. She urges Democrats to unite and rise above the primary battle and focus on the true issue they should be concerned with: winning in 2012. She even hints that the most convenient thing to help the Democrats would be for Castro to just step aside and let Doggett run unopposed to prepare better for the general election.

I agree with Ferris’s argument. Though I know little of the details and issues concerning the Democratic primary, it seems very pointless for such infighting to progress when this should be a time of reconstruction and retaliation against the overpowering Republicans, both of which require a sense of unity. If what they truly want is a Democrat as Governor, the residents should let the campaigns do their own thing and give support to the winning candidate in order to strengthen their image and unity as a party. This post was undoubtedly written for Texas Democrats as the target audience given the nature of the argument and as a left leaning blog. The argument is very logical in my mind as given by my previous reasoning, and she offers evidence to strengthen her argument by citing examples of the more unimportant debates that democrats have chosen instead to concern themselves with. Finally, Ferris’s credibility seems quite strong given that her blog also contains links to her editorials on the Huffington Post and to articles that she has written for the Texas Observer and related news websites.