Last Saturday, a short Tweet betrayed much when the Harvard College Democrats celebrated a full day of door-knocking on behalf of the Maggie Hassan and Annie Kuster campaigns in New Hampshire.
Not to confound the reader, Harvard is still indeed a Massachusetts institution.
Other reporting has already revealed the infrequency of Senator Hassan’s personal appearances in New Hampshire; — she seems to have hosted an average of only one campaign event each week, while her Republican challenger, Don Bolduc, has often hosted upward of three town hall events per day.
This comports with the general tenor of the entire Hassan campaign. As Maggie enlists prototypical Massachusetts liberals to evangelize her faint message across the favorable doorsteps of her choicest towns, Bolduc is eagerly addressing large crowds of local voters in those same places where they casually meet.
Where Bolduc is raising local voices, Maggie and Annie are recruiting alien ones.
On October 16th, Doug Jones, the former Democrat Senator from Alabama, seems to have also arrived in New Hampshire for Hassan’s cause. He offered a droll smile on Twitter, perched above his “first ever clam chowder,” and declared his support for the Hassan campaign with a confidence typically reserved to boardwalk psychics and other performative loons.
Of course, Hassan’s extensive outside financial support has always been rather notorious. Although she decried the influence of so-called “dark money” during her first debate against Bolduc, Maggie famously received $11M in special interest donations towards her 2012 gubernatorial campaign. What’s more, her fundraising total since 2017 has topped $37.8M.
Hassan is not alone among Democrats as it concerns the solicitation of irrelevant national figures for these seemingly impotent political endorsements. On the same date as Jones’ October appearance, candidates Annie Kuster, Becky Whitley, and Charlene Lovett summoned the Pennsylvania Democrat Madeleine Dean to their electoral aid.
Dean is not a blushing violet. Indeed, this same pushy Pennsylvanian even went so far as to tell New Hampshire Democrats that they “have a bright star in [their] party;” although to whom she could possibly have been referring remains unclear, and to which political process this liberal “star” might be relevant is surely a mystery.
While conservative candidates spend their days flanked by prospective constituents, Hassan and Kuster are ever attended by a train of paid flunkies and lackluster spokesmen from out-of-state.
If Democrats can’t raise their neighbors with even a fraction of the enthusiasm that Bolduc commands, what hope have they in the midterm election?
