Hollywood Democrat Supporting Bob Schaffer Because of DSCC Anti-Ukraine Bias

Five days ago we highlighted why a new attack ad from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) against Republican U.S. Senate candidate was pure folly: it ended up contrasting Schaffer's integrity and fiscal conservatism with his Democratic opponent Mark Udall, a tax-and-spend liberal career politician.

Now its folly is exposed for another reason. A Hollywood Democrat who blogs at Cyber Cossack is angry with the DSCC for using the ad to exploit anti-Ukrainian prejudice in a low political attack:

The video ridicules Bob Schaffer, a former Congressman who is now running for Senate from Colorado on the Republican ticket. Mr. Schaffer is part Ukrainian and has been very supportive of Ukraine’s struggle against communism and for democracy and a free market economy – both supposedly laudable goals on both sides of the aisle in the United States Senate.

This commercial is blatantly both anti-Ukrainian and anti-American in its racist bias. To rub in the point, the commercial “just happens” to accompany the video image with Mexican mariachi music, thus extending the insult to an even larger important American minority community.

I find it appalling that in 2008, in the United States of America, such cheap racism would be posted by a major political party’s official senatorial campaign committee. There are myriad nations that have received hundreds, if not thousands of times as much aid from the United States as does Ukraine. Why has the DSCC not campaigned against support for any other nation? Why has the DSCC singled out Ukraine for ridicule?

Either the Democratic Party is in fact anti-Ukrainian racist or it believes that Ukrainian-Americans are so inept and impotent that they can be abused at will without consequence.

I don't necessarily accept all the writer's assumptions (the national Democratic party does not generally favor free market economic principles) or his conclusions (I think the DSCC is likely more motivated by narrow political ambition and blind to the consequence of its rhetoric than it is anti-Ukrainian or racist).

But his anger and frustration does an excellent job in further highlighting the folly and the unintended consequences of Mark Udall's supporters in trying to bring down their political opponent. This is the Cyber Cossack's best idea:

I call on the Democratic candidate Mark Udall to personally refute this racist characterization of Ukraine, immediately withdraw this commercial and to replace it with an apology to all Americans and Ukrainian-Americans together with a strong statement of support for Ukraine’s struggle for democracy and a free market economy.

Contact candidate Mark Udall at 1100 Bannock Street, Denver CO 80208, tel. 303-820-2008, fax 303-893-4078, e-mail via his web site http://www.markudall.com/page/s/contact

If it seems like good advice to you, too, feel free to take it.

Finally, the Cyber Cossack's endorsement:

Mr. Schaffer deserves only our admiration – and, Yes – THE THANKS OF ALL AMERICANS – for his hard work in defense of democracy.

His words, not mine. But I can give them a hearty "Amen."