I spent a good part of yesterday fighting. Not against Republicans. No, Rove is smiling big today. He's got an old fashioned liberal to pillory in the Ohio Senate race now. No, I was fighting the revisionistic claims being made on most of the big blogs about Paul Hackett.

The cattle call has gone out to:

a) rewrite the history of Hackett entering the race. The claim is that poor Sherrod Brown waited around while that amateur Hackett took forever to make up his mind. This is the reality:

Cleveland Plain Dealer

When Brown, a seven-term congressman and former Ohio secretary of state, entered the race last week, his timing was a mess. It came three days after the entry of another Democrat, Paul Hackett, a Cincinnati attorney who had been courted for weeks by party leaders in Washington after Brown and other big-name Democrats announced that they wouldn't challenge DeWine.

b) Hackett could never beat Brown in the primary. Virtually everyone agrees Hackett beats DeWine. Some, who are honest, claim that Hackett might have had a better chance of beating DeWine. But to argue that the candidate couldn't beat an inferior candidate in the primary is the reason he should quit? Huh? Not all opposing Hackett claim this, but many do.

If the party abandons you. If party leaders call your donors telling them you can't win and to not give money to you. If organizers are told they'll go to hell for working for you. If as a candidate, you have to fight the Democratic party as well as your opponent, the odds are strikingly against you. I would then suspect that it would be an uphill fight in the primary. It's purely a self-fulfilling prophecy and is a nonsense argument. Yes, other's have been mavericks and done that. Paul Hackett entered the race when no one else would. He's not a professional politician looking for a gig. He wanted to serve the Democratic party in a fight against Republicans because of a belief. When that quest becomes counterproductive, citizen politicians go home.

c) Hackett should unretire, be a good Democrat and run against Schmidt for the House. Swell, let's ask Hackett, who we admire for his integrity and honesty, to break two promises. One, that he wouldn't pull a "Brown" on the other Democratic house candidates running against Schmidt, and two that he would retire if the Senate gig didn't work out.

The netroots have been screaming for years to get rid of the consultants,to get rid of the political calculations, to seek out tough new politicians who can articulate liberal principles with integrity. We then find one and then many in the netroots (Kos, I'm talkin' to you!) trash him because he won't play by "the rules" of the party.

Paul Hackett is being accused of "taking his toys and going home". That shows how shallow people are in terms of understanding the situation and politics. Paul, quite simply, is being who he is. I hope he goes forward well, taking good care of his family and leaving the nonsense that is the Democratic party behind him.