Good Ol' Democratic Consultants...

Via Kos and Atrios, I see this quote from Paul Begala, describing in one sentence everything that's wrong with Democratic Consultants and why they should be ignored at all times (and why Howard Dean was a good choice as DNC chair, for that matter):

"What he has spent it on, apparently, is just hiring a bunch of staff people to wander around Utah and Mississippi and pick their nose."
-- Dem strategist Paul Begala on DNC Chair Howard Dean's spending, CNN, 5/11

He seriously just doesn't get it. Now, I'm not in the "Howard Dean can do nothing wrong" portion of the Democrat population (I doubt too many are), but is Begala really trying to insult the 50-State Strategy? Is he really all for putting all money into a select few swing states/races, making it to where you have to win 100% of those races to win back the House/Senate/Presidency? How'd that work in 2004? 2002? John Kerry gave up on Missouri shockingly early in 2004, and he ended up only losing 53-46...actually better than what the polls where showing. I'm not saying he'd have won Missouri if he hadn't stopped campaigning there, but did it make a lot of sense to spend all his time in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Iowa, only to lose 3 of 4?

Republican numbers are so low right now that it makes absolutely no sense to not be trying to win all 435 seats. Obviously they won't win all 435, but there are Republicans ripe for the picking in almost every state (case in point: Wyoming). Not only does automatically giving up on half the districts make for a smaller margin for error, it makes it that much harder to campaign there next time. As Kos pointed out in the post above, Trent Lott's going to retire in 2012, and he and Haley Barbour haven't exactly represented their party well in the last 2-3 years...we're supposed to just cede the state to them, then start from scratch when they leave and expect to see any positive results at all? That's absurd.

Complain all you want about Howard Dean needing to shut his yap sometimes, or not doing a great job executing his strategy...you may be right. But Begala can see his influence waning with each minute that goes by, and he's quickly turned into just another Joe Klein...a quote-unquote liberal who sees his mic time getting cut shorter and shorter and has grown exceedingly bitter about it.

UPDATE: 10:30am

Interesting Times puts it better (and more succintly) than I:

Disagreeing with the 50 state strategy is one thing. But this isn't just a disagreement. This is an insult to the thousands of activists that have joined the party in recent years.

Begala and company attached themselves to the biggest shark around. Now they are suffering from the delusion that they are sharks themselves.