It didn’t take long.
Just one month of fundraising numbers!
For anonymous Democrats to be wondering out loud (to their friends in the media) whether Tim Kaine’s arrangement to be a part-time DNC Chair this year will damage the party’s electoral chances.
In February, the RNC outraised the DNC $5.1 million to $3.3 Million.
One brave anonymous source told The Politico “it’s a 25-hour a day job to maximize all the needs of the Democratic party in an election cycle– message, money, organizing, staffing– and it’s hard to be incredibly successful if you don’t put in the full-time.”
Another operative used the cover of anonymity to fret that “if we have elected a chairman whose hands may be tied before his back, then that’s a problem.”
In one respect, it’s hard to take the story very seriously.
As soon as President Obama is able to devote any time at all to assisting the Democrats’ fundraising efforts, the GOP margin will be wiped out immediately.
Yet the fundraising numbers are a classic example of The Hook, a much practiced journalistic tactic.
A hook occurs whenever a story or fact comes to life that enables media outlets to report as news the gossip they have been hearing in their daily conversations with political insiders.
In this instance, The Politico used the fundraising numbers as a hook on which it could hang the gossip it’s been hearing about whether Kaine was really the absolute best choice for DNC Chair.
Why else would a respected news organization grant anonymity to a fund-raiser and an operative?
I suspect that the worries that insiders are expressing about Kaine’s fund-raising and his part-time status are actually ways of getting at a slightly different concern.
If you have watched Tim Kaine’s performance on the talk shows for the past two months, it’s clear that he is an articulate and effective spokesperson for Obama administration policies.
He sounds, it might be said, like the Chair of the Domestic Policy Council.
He’s very smart. He understands how to frame and explain policy choices clearly and effectively. And he obviously relishes policy debate.
Kaine has presided over a remarkable string of electoral successes in Virginia. He has done so without damaging his reputation among most Virginians as a decent, honorable and compassionate person.
As President Obama once observed, “Tim Kaine got into politics for all the right reasons.”
I think that this may be exactly what worries the anonymous insiders.
They want their DNC Chair to like some of the “wrong reasons.”
Someone who gets a kick out of going for the jugular now and then. Someone who gets up in the morning scheming about how to impart further damage on the Republican Party politically.
Someone who wants America to believe that every Republican in the country is a cousin of Rush Limbaugh.
I doubt that Tim Kaine will ever be their type of guy.
And this is what has the Democratic practitioners of hard-edged, smashmouth politics concerned.
Perhaps, the “anonymous democrats”, spineless creatures they are for not willing to put their name on their mouth, should worry about the damage to the Commonwealth by a part-time governor. By the way, has anyone asked why Kaine gets his full salary from the taxpayers of Virginia, yet only works for the Commonwealth part-time?