60 IN '06:

The 'Kweisi Problem' (Lee Hockstader, June 11, 2006, Washington Post)

Kweisi] Mfume has declared war on his own party. The Democrats' sin, in his view, is to have turned their backs on his candidacy -- and on the aspirations of black Democrats.

"The party has to practice what it preaches," he says. "We preach inclusion, but when the test comes, [Democrats should] at least fake it."

His indignation at the party leadership's almost blanket support for his primary rival, Rep. Ben Cardin, may play well with his natural base: black voters, who make up almost 40 percent of Democratic primary voters in Maryland. But party chieftains are increasingly anxious that if he wins the primary he will lose the general election to Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, a laid-back black Republican who was personally wooed by President Bush and embraced by the state GOP. In their view, Steele -- unthreatening, sociable, a former altar boy -- would play better with moderate white swing voters who might be unnerved by Mfume's youthful history, which includes pistols, switchblades and 13 arrests while he was still a teenager.

That leaves some Democrats feeling damned if they do and damned if they don't -- that is, risking the erosion of a core constituency if Mfume doesn't win the primary, and, if he does, risking the loss of a Senate seat in one of the nation's more dependably Democratic states.

Mr. Mfume should have run as a Republican.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 10, 2006 4:28 PM