The reason it is unacceptable that the Democratic party has acted this way about Jealous is that it is simple political expediency. These people are strangulatig themselves because they’re afraid of looking bad. It all goes back to O’Malley being unpopular and Democrats being unwilling to take any pride in their achievements as such. This is not a principled stand in the name of policy. It isn’t as if we nominated someone truly ridiculous.
Jealous is by no means outside of the Democratic mainstream. He’s a tad further left than Rushern Baker or, say, Parris Glendening, but to pretend he’s some screaming left-winger — or even a doctrinaire Berniecrat — is lazy and vindictive. There is nothing about Ben Jealous or his campaign that would reasonably inspire more moderate Democrats to be so skeptical of him as they are, outside of tribalist factionalization and the refusal to fight Hogan on his out-and-out lies because of concerns about being unpopular. That is the real crime here. Spinelessness.
He is a pragmatic, harm reduction minded Democrat with some political sympathies to the Bernie wing. The Bernie people are souring on him because he isn’t an ideologue, the moderates don’t like him because the Democratic party wrote off this election by July when their guy didn’t win the primary, and the entire rest of the state has just bought into this moderate hero myth.
There is a profoundly racial character to Hogan’s campaign, as well. Jealous isn’t a “real Marylander” because he’s in Baltimore (and as we all know, western Maryland is the only smart population here because they voted for Hogan and he cut a toll!), he’s never had a “real job” (outside of running one of the most important civil rights organizations in American history), and here’s a photo of him wearing... gasp!... a hoodie! How uppity... is this who you want to pay your taxes to, Maryland?
I’d sooner have Ehrlich back than Hogan.
Just gonna quote this for truth