Progressives Can Win Back Congress-- But Not Through The DCCC

You may have noticed we keep complaining about Nancy Pelosi's selection and retention of Steve Israel as Chairman of the DCCC. The Democrats will never win back the House will Israel as chair. In fact, because of his agreement with the NRCC to not target certain vulnerable incumbents and his loyalty to members of his old Center Aisle Caucus, it is mathematically impossible for the Democrats to ever win back a majority while he's in power. And we're not the only ones who think so. I have spoken to dozens of Members of Congress, candidates and party operatives with horror stories about Israel's personal corruption, venality and incompetence.

The post yesterday on his latest Republican recruit, Mike Parrish, in southeast Pennsylvania, brought forth comments from several former DCCC staffers with inside information on how Israel operates. Some of it was too shocking to publish without rigorous substantiation. But one high level operative wrote up some comments that I figured I could share with DWT readers. I don't want to get this guy in trouble though… so don't send them to Steve Israel or any of his henchmen.

We Have To Get Back In The Majority
by Another Anonymous Operative

I've worked on Congressional campaigns with the DCCC when Rahm Emanuel was its chair in 2006-- when the Democrats picked up 30 seats. And again in 2008, when Chris Van Hollen was its chair and the Dems picked up another 21 seats.

The DCCC that I saw in 2006 and 2008 had a smart strategy of finding the right Democratic candidates that matched their district, and doing everything necessary to get these candidates to run and then give them the resources they needed to win.

Now, several cycles removed from Emanuel and Van Hollen, it seems that the DCCC and its leadership have completely lost their way. They no longer know how to recruit or back the right candidates. It feels like they are using a bastardized version of the '06 and '08 strategies, but like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy, it's almost impossible to tell what the original actually was.

Now, the strategy seems to find the Democrat who's the closest to being a Republican, and fully back them without doing do diligence or the hard work on the ground to find out who is the best candidate to win.

The clearest example of this is PA-6. An otherwise amazing opportunity (the district is R+2 and its Republican member Jim Gerlach, is retiring) is about to be squandered.  The DCCC backed candidate, Michael Parrish was a registered Republican up until a few months ago who supported Romney, McCain, and Pennsylvania's terrible Governor, Tom Corbett. He's not even a "conservative Democrat," he's a Republican.

So what does this mean? It means that the DCCC will spend millions of dollars to lose this seat (it's in the Philadelphia media market, so it will be expensive). The Democratic base in the district will feel disenfranchised, and there will be no infrastructure remaining to take on the likely Republican winner next cycle.

We need to figure out a way to go back to the good old days, because this cycle of backing Republicans who run as Democrats and will never win is unsustainable, and we HAVE to get back in the majority.

Remember when the Democratic Party used to run candidates against Independent Bernie Sanders? They've stopped doing that now but Bernie's congressional races featured three-way contests between himself and then candidates from the 2 corrupt Beltway parties, the Republicans and the Democrats. There are several races shaping up like that for this cycle and at least two of them will be winnable for independent-minded progressives free of the stink of the DCCC-- independents who are more Democratic than the Democrats. One is in CA-33, where Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Malibu, Calabasas, South Bay voters have an opportunity to elect the most independent-minded progressive since Bernie Sanders was in the House (Marianne Williamson, running for the now-open Henry Waxman seat) and a Green candidate about to declare a campaign against unfaithful conservative Democrat, Kyrsten Sinema in AZ-09 (Tempe, Scottsdale, Mesa, Chandler). Expect to hear more on these two races-- a lot more.