Name all the things that went right in the Andy Dillon for
Governor campaign.
Ah, err, hum, gee, well, gosh, there must be something?
Yeah, his hair looked nice.
But everything else was, well let's be kind here, pretty ugly.
That's not kind, you're right, but the truth does hurt.
"We made a lot of little mistakes," conceded the Speaker of the
Mess, err, House.
Yep.
(1) He mishandled the abortion issue.
(2) The independent vote, masterfully targeted by Dillon went to the
Nerd instead.
(3) He pulled a Mike Dukakis i.e. when attacked, instead of fighting
back, he clammed up.
(4) He never convinced the traditional democratic base that he was a
traditional democrat. Problem was, he wasn't and said so.
(5) He said he had the fire in th gut to run, but maybe he was the only
one saw the flames.
(6) His money raising skills were overrated.
(7) He assembled a cracker-jack team but that can only carry you so far.
(8) And finally his message of taking on the powers within his own
party when it was the right thing to do was a strong general election
notion but in a party where the powers to be are the powers to be, he
got whacked by the powers to be.
One is tempted to over play the abortion issue as the main culprit
in this Dillon loss. That may be too simple, but it had an impact.
The campaign made a head-fake to mute it by parading pro-choice
Senator Gilda Jacobs around the state to reassure everyone that Andy
might be pro-life but not to worry.
Gilda who?
What he should have done was go on camera, look into the lens and
say what he said on his web sight: "I will not turn the clock back."
He could have said, he had stood up to Right to Life on the stem cell
issue and could have forcibly made the case that pro-choice women need
not be afraid.
Instead, the campaign waited too long to respond and when it did,
nobody seem to hear it. Chalk one up for the Bernero side which played
the issue perfectly. Dillon? Not so much.
So what's next?
He does not end up on the ticket as the running mate with Rick
Snyder nor Bernero for that matter. How about State Treasurer Andy
Dillon? That could happen regardless of who wins. As for learning from
these avoidable miscues? He's probably done with elective politics.