I'm kind of irritated by this, but mostly I don't get it. Marty Chavez seems to be trying to ward off a Udall entry into the New Mexico Senate primary by calling him a liberal:
"This will not be a sweet primary. It just won't," Chavez said during a telephone interview. "The contrast in records between me and the Congressman won't situate him well for the general election."
Yes, it is certainly irritating to hear a Democrat criticize another Democrat by calling him or her a liberal. As Swing State Project notes, that sort of Republican talking point isn't helpful to Democrats, to put it mildly.
But mostly, I just don't get it. Most voters in Democratic primaries are self-identified liberals and / or progressives, and surely that will be as true in New Mexico as it is almost all places in America that aren't in the south. So how, exactly, does attacking someone for being liberal help someone in a primary campaign? You might as well run for Governor of Massachusetts by attacking someone for being a Massachusetts liberal. Attacking Udall for being liberal will come off as an attack on liberals in New Mexico in general. Insulting voters you need to win doesn't make any sense to me.
It seems to me that electoral success of DLC-nexus types in primaries is dependent on self-identified liberals internalizing the argument that liberals and progressives are unelectable. You can't win too many Democratic primaries without liberals, and so attacks on liberals can only work in primaries if liberals themselves believe the attacks being sent their way. That certainly isn't going to work in New Mexico, where polls show Udall outperforming Chavez by 38 points against Steven Pearce, and 22 points against Heather Wilson. It also won't help when Chavez recently claimed that he is pretty much the same as Udall on the issues, stating "if you look issue by issue I doubt you'll find much difference ... You will find that we will vote together almost all the time."
One of the greatest dangers to the DLC-nexus and conservative wings of the Democratic Party is when liberals and progressives start believing they can actually win. It makes me think that the post-election narrative last year was mainly about conservatives becoming worried that such a belief might actually start to sink in. The last thing liberals and progressives need to hear is that Democrats are winning despite running on virtually the same exact platform as Walter Mondale, or that we have been undergoing a twelve-year shift in national demographics that significantly favors Democrats and progressives. After all, once the Democratic electoral problem is solved, the DLC loses all-purpose entirely. There is no need to keep telling a party that keeps winning elections how to win elections, and there is no need to frame every policy proposal you make in terms of electability when the electorate has a built-in slant in your direction. In other words, there is no role for a concern troll wing of the party when the party is winning.
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