Billy Hollis over at Q&O:
I’m referring to Tom Daschle. You’ll recall that he got knocked out in 2004 despite being the Democrats’ leader in the Senate at the time.
His co-senator, elected in 2002, was Tim Johnson, who suffered a serious stroke a while back. Johnson’s seat is up for grabs in 2008.
Now, look, I don’t have anything against Johnson, even though there were some shennanigans [1]in his very close election. (I don’t think he was the one who ordered the shennanigans.) It’s a terrible thing that he has to contend with a stroke, and I wish him a full and speedy recovery.
But he’s not currently able to fulfull his office, and likely won’t be for months. Maybe never. So I don’t even think he needs to be hanging onto his Senate seat as it is, though with the Democrats needing every last seat to maintain control, I guess I understand why that’s happening.
Now Daschle comes along and starts complaining about how mean and nasty the Republicans are because they intend to win that seat in 2008 [2]:
Clearly, what we have here, is someone who recognizes that the Democrats are not going to be able to win that contest. And so, he throws any weapon he has had the problem.
It raises the logical question, however, would he have considered himself even more untouchable and then he obviously did in his race with Thune, had he become disabled in some fashion? Or, perhaps even more to the point, is the question would he be reacting this way, if a republican had become disabled during their term of office? Somehow, I tend to doubt that his generosity and fairness of mind extends quite so far.