Chuck Schumer thanks online community for role in election

A very nice note from Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chair Chuck Schumer (D-NY), posted on DailyKos, thanking the online community for its help during the election.

In the comments, Schumer also weighs in on the Lieberman/Lamont race. Schumer notes, correctly, that there was no point in giving Lamont money because he's rich, could self-finance his campaign, and therefore didn't need outside donations - compare that to other races in which the Democrat could not pay their own way. With a limited pool of money, who should get it, assuming both have an equal shot at winning - the rich guy, or the candidate who doesn't have cash?

Secondly, Schumer also notes - though rather subtly - that the DSCC was focused on helping Democrats win Republican seats, and this was not a Republican seat. What Schumer really means, if I may, is that his goal, our goal, was, rightly, to win back the Senate. Since Lieberman and Lamont both said they would caucus with the Democrats, no matter which one won, it would not affect the Democrats' efforts to win back the Senate, no matter how distasteful of a Democrat Lieberman may be.

Compare that to Virginia, in which Democrat Jim Webb was running against Republican George Allen, or Rhode Island, where Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse was running against Republican Lincoln Chafee, or Ohio, where Democrat Sherrod Brown was running against Republican Mike Dewine. If we had lost any of the latter 3 races, we would no longer control the Senate. If we lost the Lamont/Lieberman race, and we did (so to speak), we would continue to control the Senate, and we do.

That's a cold, calculated, callous analysis. But it's also true. Winning back the Senate (and the House) were our number one priorities - they were all that mattered, they were the metric of success. If we didn't win back the Senate and/or the House, we'd have 2 more years of anti-gay constitutional amendments, laws enabling torture and domestic spying, further limits on habeas corpus and every other constitutional and human right, no oversight whatsoever of the Bush administration's failure in Iraq, no oversight of Bush's rush to war with Iran, no effort to address the calamitous effects of global warming, further degradation of the wall between church and state, a further lurch to the right in the Supreme Court and courts across the land, and more.

Thwarting that agenda trumps any other concern.

The only goal that mattered was winning back the House and Senate. And we did. No candidate in any race is more important than that goal.