[...]Shannon P. O'Brien, the party's failed gubernatorial candidate in 2003, just took a job as a consumer reporter for a local television news show. State party leaders, who did everything they could to bolster her insider candidacy over other challengers, are trying to make it even tougher for future outsider candidates to earn a spot on the primary ballot. They are pushing to tighten the party's convention rules, requiring candidates to win the support of 15 percent of the delegates on the first ballot at the convention.

It is political insanity. Instead of looking back at what went wrong in the last campaign season and correcting it, they seem determined to repeat the mistakes - and make matters worse for the next round. This is because they are blaming O'Brien for the loss last November to Republican Mitt Romney - and not seeing their own role in the election debacle.

The thinking goes like this: The Democratic Party gave O'Brien everything possible, from Senator Ted Kennedy to Boston Mayor Tom Menino. It embraced her as the centrist candidate who could defy liberal labeling - in other words, stand for as little as possible. In the heat of campaign battle, neither the theory nor the candidate held up. O'Brien lost. Now it is one strike and she is out. And the state party begins its search for another candidate it can surround, smother, and ultimately help destroy - after it first destroys challengers the party deems unworthy.

The party's push for O'Brien began when party leaders believed she would be running against another female candidate, Acting Governor Jane Swift. When Swift was elbowed out of the way by Romney, the Democratic Party stuck with O'Brien. They figured female voters would support her and enough men would, too, if they saw familiar faces behind her. Arrogant and egotistical as ever, party leaders believed they were propping O'Brien up. Instead they were weighing her down.[...]

[...]Locally or nationally, voters are always listening for a different voice, the one that doesn't say what everyone else is saying, the one that says it before the polls tell them to say it. Whenever a party tries to stamp out such voices, it is harming its chance for victory rather than helping it. Voters feel the weight of a tired old political network draped around the shoulders of a party-anointed candidate. They listen to the equivocating, poll-driven voice of the anointed candidate and they yawn no matter how long and impressive the resume. The voters can tell when a candidate is reading off cue cards that say: Look bold. Take on George W. Bush now even if you were afraid to do it a month ago.[...]