Alan Grayson and the Democrats' Ideology Problem

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL)

Today Rep. Alan Grayson gave the DSCC its biggest heartburn of the season, entering the primary for Florida's coveted Senate seat, which is being vacated by Marco Rubio in order to make a play at the White House.  Grayson is, and I mean this in every way I can muster, the Democrats' Michele Bachmann.  He is persistently making outlandish statements, watching his personal and professional life go through a thousand tabloid-style stories and only surviving politically as a result of a safe congressional district and a House leadership team that doesn't want to ruffle him too badly for fear of angering progressives.  Grayson's entry into the Senate race thankfully means that he'll be done in public office and will no longer be a headache for the Democrats (like Bachmann in Minnesota, he'd be DOA in a general election), but the question here is why is Grayson so fully-supported and also will he end up badly damaging the Democrats?

Like many Democrats, I do occasionally get frustrated when my party abandons a principle or a law in order to appease Republicans (and as the Tea Party has proven for the past five years, the left isn't the only side that gets frustrated about such compromises).  I am a Democrat who has voted primarily for the party for gay rights and the environment-imagine what my life was like circa 2004!  And yet I am always a pragmatist about things who is fully aware that a partial win is always better than a full loss, and I realize that Florida is a very moderate state.  This is also a state where there will almost certainly be a Republican who has won statewide office running on the national ticket (it's hard to fathom either Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio not being in one of the White House slots).  And finally this is a seat that the Democrats need to win, not only for 2016 but also for 2018.  The reality is that it's not the time to take risks with a candidate who is too liberal.  Those sorts of risks make sense in races like Massachusetts in 2012 (when we went with liberal firebrand Elizabeth Warren, who has lived up to progressives' dreams in the Senate), Minnesota in 2008 (where the national mood was sour enough on the GOP to try and push a liberal pundit like Al Franken into the Senate, though Franken's hardly been as loud as I initially expected him to be when he entered the body), or even Wisconsin in 2016 (when Sen. Russ Feingold, another storied progressive, will likely make it into the Senate based largely on Sen. Ron Johnson's poor approval ratings, even though the Democrats would probably have a better shot with a moderate like Rep. Ron Kind).  The Florida Senate race in 2016 is not a seat that we have a lot of room for error, and it's not the time to take chances with someone who can be easily labeled a firebrand.  Democrats already have a very strong candidate in two-term Rep. Patrick Murphy, a moderate Democrat with proven fundraising skills who, without Grayson in the race, could have cruised to the nomination while the crowded GOP field ate each other alive.

You want examples of why this is too risky of a situation?  Just look at 2010, when the Republicans continually shot themselves in the foot in races that they could have won.  The momentum was decidedly at their backs, and they had candidates like Jane Norton, Mike Castle, and Sue Lowden who could have won them seats, but instead they decided to get greedy and vote for hard-right candidates far out of the line of the mainstreams of those states.  Colorado, Delaware, and Nevada were hardly happy with Democrats at the time, and wanted an alternative, but these aren't extreme states, and given the choice they won't vote for an extreme candidate, so instead they chose largely unknown or wildly unpopular Democrats to take the elections instead, depriving the Republicans of much needed victories and the majority.

Christine O'Donnell-A cautionary tale for Democrats?

It's also worth noting here that Alan Grayson is not Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.  This isn't someone who has been a pillar of the left for years who is saying, "enough is enough" and throwing his hat in the ring.  Alan Grayson is more in-line with Christine O'Donnell.  Grayson's attack ads in the past have bordered on the criminal, comparing his opponents to the Taliban and running egregiously edited ads against his opponent (it says something when I am voluntarily defending Dan Webster, who is toward the top of my "Republicans I Dislike" list in Congress, but the 2010 race was ridiculous).  Grayson's behavior in other aspects makes him seem, quite frankly, like a jackass.  He called a senior female aide at the Federal Reserve a whore and has made similar comments about his ex-wife.  His approach with reporters has been equally egregious, and his nasty and personal comments about Republicans aren't going to win him any independent or swing voter support, which is pivotal in the Sunshine State.

Listen, like I said above I get that Grayson has some appeal and is certainly better for Democrats than Marco Rubio is, but you have to be realistic here.  Patrick Murphy may not be a perfect candidate, but he's hardly a DINO; we're not talking about a Zell Miller situation here where the candidate is so far right there really isn't a difference or a Joe Lieberman situation where the opponent endorsed the Republican nominee for president.  This is a man who has supported the Affordable Care Act, gay rights, and women's rights.  Even on environmental issues, which he has received some flack for in the past (he supports the Keystone Pipeline) his score from the League of Conservation of Voters is 71%.  That's not Grayson's 91%, but it's a helluva lot better than the 0% achieved by Rubio or his likely Republican successors Ron DeSantis and Jeff Miller.  Ideological purity is not an excuse for sacrificing pragmatism.  Patrick Murphy would be 100% better for the Democrats than Rubio or one of his potential Republican successors, and has been evidenced by the Tea Party (who have sacrificed a half-dozen Senate seats in the past three cycles out of the need to force a "perfect" Republican through) it doesn't help you in the short or the long run with your image or your seat count.  My strong advice to Democrats would be to simply ignore Grayson, who is only looking out for himself and his own interests here, and not the party's or the issues he cares about (otherwise he would have stuck to the House where he could do some good).  If Democrats do that they will likely get the seat, and they will get someone in the House who can achieve Grayson's voting record without his incendiary behavior, certainly a win-win from their perspective.  But if they fall into the trap of constantly needing perfect Democrats, they're going to to be in for a LONG period in the minority and future generations of liberals will lambaste them for their hubris.