Via Dave Weigel, I see that National Review's Stephen Spruiell is arguing that Delaware Democratic Senate nominee Chris Coons is "the epitome of a party apparatchik." His evidence? Coons is running for the Senate -- as a Democrat!
In a wave election year where voter sentiment is running strongly against the Democratic party, Coons is the epitome of a party apparatchik. When all signs were pointing toward Mike Castle’s being the Republican nominee, Coons was recruited by Democratic elders to run against him, and he gladly accepted the mission, despite its apparent futility. Castle, a fixture of Delaware politics and winner of eleven straight statewide elections, was expected to win the seat walking away. Ted Kaufman, the longtime Biden aide who took over Biden’s seat, had already announced that he wouldn’t run. Most political observers assumed that Kaufman was keeping the seat warm for Biden’s son, Beau, an Iraq War veteran currently serving as Delaware’s attorney general. Beau was widely expected to run in 2010, but last January, following the Scott Brown stunner in Massachusetts, Biden fils announced that maybe this just wasn’t his year. The party needed someone else to get beaten by Castle, so — loyal party man that he is — Coons stepped up to take the fall.
I really can't argue with the logic here.