Argus attends Ahlers US Senate presser yesterday. If a bad campaign arises in the woods, do Democrats pretend to notice?

Pat Powers

The Argus was in attendance at former legislator Dan Ahlers’ US Senate announcement yesterday. And there were immediate signs that this is not going to be a terribly authentic campaign:

The point about Ahlers cribbing Jason Ravnsborg’s logo was before the event had even started. According to the article, it didn’t sound as if it got much better.

In reaction to Ahlers’ announcement on Monday, South Dakota Republican Chair Dan Lederman said Ahlers checks the Democrats’ boxes of “being ambiguous” on abortion and Second Amendment stances and will bring the state further to the left by promoting a “socialist agenda.”

“I’m not sure if Ahlers needs another doomed political campaign as much as he needs some career counseling,” Lederman said.

and…

Ahlers said the Affordable Care Act isn’t perfect, but politicians aren’t interested in finding a solution that will improve the health care system.

and…

Lederman, the state Republican chair, pointed out that Democrats now have three congressional candidates who lost in their state legislative races last year: Ahlers, and U.S. House candidates Brian Wirth of Dell Rapids and Whitney Raver of Custer.

“Collectively, Democrats are bringing a lot of experience to the race on what not to do, but they never learn, and keep repeating their liberal talking points,” Lederman said in a statement.

Read the entire story here.

While the GOP Chairman was all over the Ahlers’ announcement, raining on his parade, because that’s what functional political parties do, what were Democrats saying about the man who will be at the top of their state ticket?

Nothing.

Seriously. Nothing from Democrats via Twitter. Their facebook feed has a post from several days ago about the announcement taking place in the coming week, but silence from Ahlers’ party about the actual announcement.

And just forget about the Dem’s regular website, it hasn’t been updated since September 10th.  It’s as if ….  well, it’s as if Democrats fired the Communications Director, and closed their offices!

Even the Socialist Democrats who make up the liberal section of the SD Blogosphere gave the announcement a hard pass. (Probably because they know that this dog isn’t going to hunt.)

I suspect that Dan Ahlers is going to find that it’s going to be a long and miserable campaign. Especially when his own party takes a pass on recognizing that he’s launching his run for US Senate.

19 thoughts on “Argus attends Ahlers US Senate presser yesterday. If a bad campaign arises in the woods, do Democrats pretend to notice?”

  3. Maybe it’s time for a third party candidate such as a Libertarian or an Independent to step up to the plate and run. The 2 party duopoly has been a disaster. We need a Ross Perot.

    1. interesting Ross Perot comment. You may recall that Ross Perot voters elected Bill Clinton, and that also gave us Hillary Clinton. I wonder if they own up to their deeds, and are proud of what they did?? just curious – its math, not even much to debate about what they did.

      1. If more people voted their conscience instead of their party we wouldn’t have the 2 party disaster that we have in Washington DC. 100% the blame goes to both parties. They created the $23 trillion dollar debt, endless wars, War on Drugs, Giving away billions to foreign countries, outrageous costs of pharma and healthcare, Fed Ed. Need I go on. They all deserve a Nascar shirt. Maybe this crisis in Washington will wake people up. Yes, I am proud to say I voted Perot.

        1. the two-party system is a direct result of human conscience. people weigh the cost of negotiation and compromise, to stand on common ground in a like-minded force, joined together to get SOME things they want, and defeat ALL things they don’t want. in theory your world is a lovely place, but in practice there are only ever three vote choices: 1. i want option ‘a’ to stop option ‘b’, 2. i want option ‘b’ to stop option ‘a’ OR 3. neither option appeals to me based on 100 percent of my wants, so i will burn my vote and make sure i get 100 percent of what i don’t want. the holier-than-thou fun of saying “we lost because nobody votes their conscience” is empty and untrue. my conscience won’t let me waste a vote that could stop something i dislike the most.

      2. And Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress worked together to pass many bills such as a balanced budget, tax cuts and honoring the Contract for America.

        1. clinton fought the republicans tooth and nail, and KEPT them from pulling tax rates way down or changing federal entitlements to state programs funded by block grants, two failed parts of the ‘contract.’ the high tax rates generate surpluses of course. i don’t know how to shift blame away from silly voters who turned the house to democrat in 2007 because they heard the dem ads and media reports about pork bills and swamps from pelosi, and decided the gop’s firm grip on keeping the cost of war efforts under control just wasn’t important. the paper trail of the collapse of 2008 runs right through the clinton administration’s forcing banks to make a vast amount of bad loans which had to be bundled and hidden, and pelosi draining the swamp of water, and filling that swamp with glue, scuttling bush efforts to correct the problems. the paper trail then runs through voters electing barack obama for a great two years of one-party rule of both white house and congress. the budget process came to a complete halt, not restored until trump’s term, but that eight years forced constant revision of the debt ceiling when good budgeting and a new ‘contract’ could have taken things the other way. i really CAN blame one party and the evidence supports that, so i can no longer let the weak-minded clintonesque equivocation “both parties are guilty” stand unchallenged.

          2. the main sin of republicans is failing to fight harder or smarter to defend and promote their causes, a sin not shared by this president, say what you will. to borrow what lincoln said of grant, “he fights,” and he won’t cave in to a system bent on breaking him to pieces.

          3. Hey, I didn’t vote for Clinton. Both are to blame. Trump is trying to drain the swamp in which both sides destroyed.

  4. The thing about the logo is that the shape of the state doesn’t change, so maybe that is a little bit of a false dig. However, if he doesn’t unambiguously support the life of the unborn and supports taking away the right to bear arms, he doesn’t have much of a chance, thank goodness.

    Tell you what, all the Democrats, a/k/a Socialists, move to California, Washington State, and the far East Coast, and we Conservatives can have the rest of the country, and we’ll see which parts of the country prosper and which parts turn into Venezuela-like crap-holes.

    1. How do you get everyone in Ag or who supports Ag to leave? They are all supporting socialism. How about the tariffs? Ethanol? Coal? All of those are perfect examples of the govt picking winners and losers at our expense. Socialism.

  5. If more people voted their conscience instead of their party we wouldn’t have the 2 party disaster that we have in Washington DC. 100% the blame goes to both parties. They created the $23 trillion dollar debt, endless wars, War on Drugs, Giving away billions to foreign countries, outrageous costs of pharma and healthcare, Fed Ed. Need I go on. They all deserve a Nascar shirt. Maybe this crisis in Washington will wake people up. Yes, I am proud to say I voted Perot.

  6. Mrs. Volesky, usually insaner than most, is lucid in this blogging. grudznick, too, voted Perot but mostly because I liked the cut of his jib and his breakfasting habits

  8. According to the Argus, he’s for “access” to health care, but that sounds more like Tom Price, than Tom Daschle.

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