Like that doomed hero from the Greek myth, "Russ Feingold is not from the real world". That is the title of a 2007 Salon article by Edward McClelland, which was inspired by a quote from then Senator Hillary Clinton. Here's a snippet:
Feingold does not live in the real world. He lives in Middleton, Wis., the Madison suburb that was just named the best place to live in America by Money magazine. And he represents a state whose residents seem to appreciate it when their senators don’t spend gross sums of money to win their votes. William Proxmire, who was famous for exposing foolish government spending with his “Golden Fleece Awards,” ran his last two campaigns for less than $200 apiece — much of it spent on postage for returning unwanted contributions.
Unfortunately, the links I tried clicking in that article lead to nowhere (well, on my phone at least), but it's still well worth the time to read.
It's a fantastic piece about Russ Feingold, the McCain-Feingold Act, and Wisconsin's Progressive history. The Wisconsin that McClelland wrote about and the world in which he wrote it (like those links) don't exist anymore. In 2010 Citizen's United vs. The FEC laid waste to that world and the re-election bid of Senator Russ Feingold... exposing his Achilles Heel.
Feingold's fatal flaw is one of the innumerable virtues for which we all love him... His unwavering integrity. He is the long time champion of campaign finance reform. It is his signature issue. His refusal to let "soft money" sully his reputation and campaign was his undoing against Ron Johnson in 2010. Here he is just one month out from that fateful election in a Politics Daily article:
But this time around (even though political donations to the DSCC are now regulated by the McCain-Feingold act), Feingold is equally adamant that the party committee should let him fight his own battles against Johnson. (The DSCC, which is running advertising in six states, has not been on the air in Wisconsin).
"It's because these are almost always inherently attack ads based on cookie-cutter notions of how you should talk to the people of Wisconsin," Feingold responded after I pressed him for a reason for his stubborn resistance to a DSCC ad campaign. "I don't want that kind of help," Feingold said moments later. "I consider it to be outside help of a kind that is uncontrolled and tends to believe in a philosophy of slash-and-burn politics. That's frankly not who I am. I don't want to win that way."
Feingold hints at this reason for that loss within his explanation for
not challenging Walker in the 2012 Recall...
"I wouldn't have won either," he said.... "That election, unfortunately, was about one thing. It wasn't even about money," Feingold said. "(Voters) didn't think a recall was appropriate. (People) weren't against collective bargaining, it's just the recall mechanism was the problem."
The former Senator has continued his crusade for campaign finance reform against soft money and Citizen's United since leaving office. Here he is talking with Sam Seder in 2012:
In 2013 Russ continued the battle in an interview with Moyers & Company:
Michael Winship: So much happened that seemed to be culminating with McCain-Feingold. What happened?
Russ Feingold: Well, it’s really very simple. It’s not like everything wasn’t going in the right direction. We had closed the soft money loophole, the 527s had been reined in by the Federal Elections Commission after the 2004 election. People were turning in Howard Dean’s campaign, my Senate campaign, the president’s campaign, to small dollar internet contributions without transactional conversations. All of it was moving in the right direction, with the hope that we would start moving toward serious talk about public financing more at the national level. Then the Supreme Court, on a five to four vote, decided to destroy the whole edifice of campaign finance reform in what I consider to be a lawless, almost absurd decision that was not required in any way by the facts of the case. That’s what opened the spigot, and that’s why we are where we are today.
But there is a faint glimmer of hope provided by
Jon Tester in his statements regarding Feingold's possible comeback:
“The conversation (with Feingold) was ‘It's a new day now.’ In 2010, Citizens United started about two-thirds of the way through on that race, I believe it was in June on a November election. It's a different world now. And he knows that, he's smart. He's a Rhodes Scholar, for chrissakes. And he knows what he's getting into,” Tester said. “Russ is a good guy and if Russ chooses to (run) he'd be a formidable candidate. I think he learned from the last election. You learn a lot more from defeat than you learn from victory and he'll utilize that if he gets into this race.”
The only way for
Russ Feingold to get his Senate seat back
AND KEEP IT is to compromise his principles and turn his back on
the legislation that bears his name... The question is, is he willing to do that and do we really want him to? I'm not sure on either count.