Flashback to Robb v. Wilder

Dan Conley has a great piece just published on Salon where he compares the current Obama-Clinton situation to the Chuck Robb-Douglas Wilder Senate stand-off of 1994. Conley was Gov. Wilder’s press secretary during that campaign and has also worked for Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, now one of Obama’s biggest supporters. The similarities between 2008 and 1994 are really remarkable.

It was hard to accept — like Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign, we’d finally found our message, but we were out of time and money. Wilder had dug deep into his own pocket — again, like Hillary — to fund the race, but we still couldn’t afford to put ads on the air. We’d all worked weeks without pay. We had no realistic path to victory, but we believed down deep that our candidate would make the best senator.

WIlder, who was running to Robb’s left as an Independent, didn’t quit the race until the fall, and the Democratic Party in Virginia looked hopelessly fractured…

After his endorsement, Wilder hit the campaign trail for Chuck Robb, cut radio advertisements, and did everything else possible to get out his supporters to vote for the incumbent senator. He repaired the damage not in five months, but five weeks. In 1994 — one of the worst years for Democrats in the 20th century — the supposedly divided and hopeless Virginia Democratic Party pulled off the most surprising win of the year.

h/t Political Wire