He’s calling in big guns to held fend off an energetic challenger:
U.S. Rep. Barney Frank – suddenly the target of an energized GOP and a hard-charging young opponent – has called in Bill Clinton for a Bubba Bailout in an apparent sign that one of the Bay State’s safest congressional seats may not be immune from voters’ throw-the-bums-out rage.
Both Democratic and Republican observers acknowledge Frank might need big guns in this dreaded turnover year, but the 30-year veteran congressman insisted it’s just politics as usual…
Will Frank win? More than likely – given his cash on hand, universal name recognition and the make-up of his district, the chances of even the best possible Republican who runs the best campaign would only be about 1 in 10. But that is a far cry from the normal – which is usually Frank being effectively un-opposed (he had a GOP challenger in 2008 – the first in a while – and that challenger got 24% of the vote). This is a race which should be an absolute, sure-thing for Frank. In 2010, it simply isn’t.
The plain fact of the matter is that any Democrat who draws a challenger who is in any way active and aggressive is a vulnerable Democrat, at least to a certain degree. The only absolutely safe Democrats are those running un-opposed (and if there are any that is a glaring failure of the GOP…we should run in all 435 House districts, every election). Had Democrats not ignored the TEA Party and actually thought about it, then there would be a lot of Democrats challenging long-term GOP officeholders on an “outsider vs insider” campaign. This would not have worked as well against the GOP, but it would have probably resulted in some incumbent GOPers being defeated. Democrats preferred to hold to the belief that there had been a liberal re-alignment in 2008 – now they are going to pay the price for that miscalculation.
If you’d like to help shock the political world, then go here and support Frank’s opponent, Sean Bielat.
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