Why primaries matter

From MyDD:

One of the most significant primary challenges we had last cycle was Donna Edwards against Al Wynn, for a whole host of reasons. I just got done reading Death by a Thousand Cuts, which is ostensibly about the elimination of the estate tax in modern America. Really, though, like many of the great modern political books, Death by a Thousand Cuts is about how the ideological right builds its coalitions and how the left simply does not fight back. The key strategy, whether on NAFTA, health care, the estate tax, the Bankruptcy Bill or net neutrality, is to solidify right-wing business interests - Chamber of Commerce, NFIB, NAM, ATR, Business Roundtable, etc - and then use their network of think tanks, policy organizations, PACs, and grasstops to wedge parts of the Democratic coalition. Legislative victories for the powerful follow. We've seen this again and again; it's why many of us are in politics, on the blogs. We ask ourselves the question, 'Ack, why did the Democrats vote for XYZ?!?!' Well, one reason is because of people like Al Wynn.