The Very Definition of the Modern Establishment

I am talking, of course, about OSU Political Science Department Chair Bill Lunch.

From the recent Portland Tribune article on Steve Novick, who has entered the Democratic Primary in the hopes of challenging Gordon Smith:

“He’s taken a series of positions over a long period of time that – take your pick – are either highly advanced or on the left edge of the Democratic Party,” says Bill Lunch, a political science professor at Oregon State University. “In the city of Portland, those positions aren’t bad ones to have. But if you have to run statewide … in Medford and Burns as well as in Portland … by the time you get to rural Oregon, he’s not a terribly attractive candidate to a lot of voters.”

Oregon and national Democrats realized they needed to find a more establishment candidate, and they’ve found that in Merkley, Lunch says. “Unless the Democratic establishment is enormously inept, it’s very, very likely that Merkley will be the (Democratic) nominee,” he says.

Sometimes I wonder if there is a person underneath the jovial, bearded, walking political science establishment named Bill Lunch. I've never really seen him express an opinion that's out of the mainstream, especially in public. Even in the class I took from him he treated politics like a he-said, she-said game, always careful to never place himself in danger of holding anything but a moderate opinion.

Lunch's second quote is pretty despicable, if you ask me. It suggests that Merkley has a right to win based on his Establishment credentials. I don't know much about Merkley or Novick, but that's just not cool.

h/t Blue Oregon.