You Can’t Fight Cancer With Hope, Javier… Clint Smith is the Chemotherapy We Need.

We have covered Javier Ramos’ valiant and idealistic campaign in Congressional District 5 before (here, and here, and here, and here). I admire Javier’s optimism and hope for his campaign’s chances to cut out the political cancer that is the traitor and insurrectionist Andy Biggs in his deep red district… but I don’t share it.

Ramos is so idealistic that he will not even accept individual donations to his campaign. He wants to believe that the normal rules of politics won’t apply and that since probably no amount of spending by a Democrat can beat Andy Biggs, he can win with no spending. Cute rhetoric: lousy strategy.

Javier believes that he will get all of the 30% or so of the Democrats that make up the district to vote for him, along with half of the Independents, and with the conservative vote split between Independent candidate Clint Smith and incumbent traitor Andy Biggs, Ramos can come out on top. That would probably require him to match or out-perform Joan Greene’s second consecutive strong Democratic campaign against Biggs (while spending $250K, mind you) that garnered 41% of the vote last cycle. And Ramos believes he can do that on a self-funded few thousand dollars?

Let me tell you why that’s never going to happen. Independents in Arizona – as Javier himself realizes based on my conversation with him – are not really all that independent: they are, by and large, Democrats and Republicans who are disaffected by the party system. In CD5, they are WAY more disaffected Republicans among those Independents than Democrats. If they break heavily for a candidate other than Biggs, it will be for Smith, not Ramos.

In my opinion, if Javier Ramos sincerely wants to take down Andy Biggs he should withdraw from the General Election and publicly endorse and campaign for Clint Smith among Democrats of the district.

Is that a wholly strategic and painful compromise? You bet it is. As is the choice to pour poison into your veins in the hope that the chemotherapy will kill the cancer before it kills you. That’s how you cure cancer: with painful compromises and a strategic and painful alliance with poisons, deadly radiation, and very sharp knives.

Lucky for us, cutting out this grotesque growth of Trumpist political cancer only requires us to align our interest in the body politic surviving this disease with conservative forces that also oppose fascism, lies, and political violence. In CD 5, that means aligning ourselves with the LDS.

What is proposed here is not an unprecedented alliance, either. We have tread this ground successfully before. The Democratic Party quietly allied with LDS to defeat Russell Pearce by clearing the recall election field for a head-to-head contest with Jerry Lewis. Recall that one of the slimy tactics Russell tried was to recruit a pseudo-Democratic opponent (with signs sloganeering ‘Si, Se Puede’) to pull Democratic votes from Lewis.

Well, Biggs doesn’t have to bother recruiting a fake Democratic candidate to pull decisive votes away from his real challenger: he has a willing genuine one in Javier Ramos.

I don’t agree with Smith and his supporters on much, but I do agree we have a shared interest in preserving core American values against Trumpism – democracy, free and fair elections, and the rule of law. We must not allow Andy Biggs continue to infect our state and nation with his lies, disinformation, and extremist rhetoric. He’s a cancer. And you can’t wish cancer away.

Clint Smith can run a credible challenge within Biggs’ base (they are both LDS). He can persuade Independents, Democrats, and Republicans sick of the direction of their party to vote for him. Ramos simply cannot.

I’m Clint Smith and I’m Running for Congress from Clint Smith on Vimeo.

I’m not alone in my analysis of the CD5 race, by any means. Anyone with any experience in campaigning will tell you the same – privately. They will tell the truth so long as they don’t have to publicly support a real conservative Republican against a decent, idealistic, and genuine Democrat who actually shares their values. It’s a tough and painful choice to make in public.

For a bite of that realistic assessment of the race, listen to pollster Mike O’Niell’s Think Tank with Chuck Caughlin and Tom Ryan (starting at 25 minutes in).

Are people going to criticize me for suggesting that our best hope is Smith, not Ramos? I expect so. I don’t care. We need chemo, not hope.