Pledge Update

Slacktivist takes The Pledge and adds an interesting spin on it I hadn't considered. Gray Davis won re-election in part because he got the Republicans in California to waste time fighting with each other instead of uniting in their fight against him. The question is not whether Bush(Rove) will try to do the same thing this year with the Democrats but whether the Democrats will bite the apple that Bush(Rove) will offer. There will be two challenges here:

• The campaigns that are struggling and the supporters of those campaigns will have to resist the temptation to run with dirt supplied to them (above board or through plants) by Bush(Rove) operatives.
• The campaigns of the front-runners and the supporters of those campaigns will have to resist the temptation to get into a tit-for-tat mode in response to any in the first group who cannot resist the temptation.

The Pledge can help out here because it reminds us to keep the ultimate goal in mind and to not let our partisan desires to see our guy win get in the way of achieving that goal.

Thanks again to the Slacktivist for taking the Pledge and for making this important point.