CT Blue

Well, maybe “lie” is too strong a word. Maybe “mislead” would be better. The type of misleading that, were it anything but political fundraising, would be considered fraud.

The immediate cause of my (rekindled) ire: an email I received today from the DCCC fundraising off of Bernie Sanders “passionate speech about income inequality in front of thousands of fired up progressives in Maine.” “It was” the DCCC avows, “AMAZING”.

It probably was.

Except the last thing the folks who run the DCCC want to see in Congress is more Congresspeople like Bernie Sanders. They call me constantly, and I always tell them the same thing: I won’t give my money to a Democratic organization that seeks out the most conservative candidates it can find. You can read one indictment here, the money quote being:

The real tragedy is that the DCCC and the DSCC– for all their mealy-mouthed protestations of “neutrality” in primaries– continue recruiting fiscally conservative candidates, in the image of Blue Dog Steve Israel and New Dem Joe Crowley (both crooked Wall Street-backed politicians being high up in House Democratic Party leadership). The DCCC gets into trouble by recruiting these awful conservative candidates– some actual opportunistic Republicans– and either lose outright or win and then lose the seat soon after when Democratic voters realize they’ve been sold a bill of goods. Yesterday, reporting for Roll Call, Emily Cahn, wrote that the DCCC, still smarting from the disasters of their past recruitment “strategy,” is reassessing– or at least cultivating an image of reassessing the failed recruitment agenda.

And here’s what we get:

Horrible New Dem-type candidates pushed by Steve Israel who led the Democrats into jaw-dropping defeats– some in heavily blue districts– included Jennifer Garrison (OH), Sean Eldridge (NY), Domenic Recchia (NY), Ann Callis (IL), Jerry Cannon (MI), Erin Billbray (NV), Andrew Romanoff (CO), Kevin Strouse (PA), Marjorie Margolies (PA), John Lewis (MT), Pam Byrnes (MI), James Lee Witt (AR), Emily Cain (ME), Bobby McKenzie (MI), Aaron Woolf (NY), Martha Robertson (NY), Suzanne Patrick (VA), Manan Trivedi (PA) and Nick Casey (WV).

Fiscally conservative Democratic incumbents who followed lame DCCC messaging and were defeated– primarily by Democratic voters’ decision to boycott the elections– included Blue Dogs and New Dems like Ron Barber (AZ), Nick Rahall (WV), Pete Gallego (TX), Dan Maffei (NY), John Barrow (GA), Joe Garcia (FL), and Brad Schneider (IL). Several other putrid conservaDem incumbents managed to hold onto their seats by the skin of their teeth, like Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA), Scott Peters (New Dem-CA), Ami Bera (New Dem-CA), and Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY).

We don’t win by being Republican-lite, and what good would it do us if we did. The linked article notes that the DCCC is trying to change the image of what it is doing, but the substance remains. The DSCC is, of course, no better. Right now they are pushing an ex-Republican, whose stripes are mostly unchanged, over Alan Grayson for the Senate in Florida. The sad fact is that winning is secondary; winning with Wall Street friendly types is the objective, and if that means losing a few seats you could have won with good candidates, well, that’s the price you have to pay.