Another Formerly Red District, CA-25, Flips To A Democratic Registration Advantage. DCCC Blows It Again

The 1st idiot to run the DCCC, James Rood Doolittle, and the current incompetent, Steve Israel

Patty Murray did a legendary job running the DSCC in the 2012 election cycle. She steered the Democrats to victory in races Beltway pundits rated as impossible: North Dakota, Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, Virginia, New Mexico and Montana, while helping Elizabeth Warren defeat popular incumbent Scott Brown and making sure Republicans made no gains in tough reelection campaigns for Democrats in Ohio, West Virginia, Michigan and Florida. She was a superstar. The Obama campaign also ran a spectacular effort. The President carried a majority of states, 332 electoral votes (to Romney's 206) and over five million more votes than Romney. Obama won tough battleground states like Virginia, Ohio, New Hampshire, Florida, Iowa, Nevada and Colorado. The only battleground state they lost was… North Carolina which went to Romney 2,270,395 (50.39) to 2,178,391 (48.35%). Romney was unable to expand out of the deep red, shrinking Republican universe.

With all that good news nationally and statewide, the Democrats had the perfect opportunity to win back the House. But because Nancy Pelosi has appointed an incompetent and shockingly corrupt conservative to head the DCCC, Blue Dog Steve Israel, the DCCC was a tragic bust, from recruitment to execution. More GOP incumbents-- Ben Quayle (AZ), Cliff Stearns (FL), Sandy Adams (FL), Don Manzullo (IL), Mean Jean Schmidt (OH) and John Sullivan (OK)-- lost because of Tea Party primaries than because of anything Israel managed to do. And in none of those cases was the DCCC prepared to take advantage of GOP disunity. 4 of Israel's Blue Dog allies-- Ben Chandler (KY), Larry Kissell (NC), Mark Crtiz (PA) and Kathy Hochul (NY) on whose behalf Israel wasted millions of dollars-- were defeated. And the handful of wretched Blue Dogs and New Dems who Israel did manage to get into office have been a horrible disappointment, many-- like Patrick Murphy (FL), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Pete Gallego (TX), Brad Schneider (IL), Scott Peters (CA), Ann Kuster (NH), Cheri Bustos (IL), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) and Joe Garcia (FL)-- consistently voting with the GOP on core, crucial issues.

But for all Israel's missteps and fumbling, just his loss of a newly created D+5 district in California's Inland Empire (CA-31)-- the bluest district now held by any Republican anywhere-- should have sent a signal to Nancy Pelosi she made made a distress error in appointing Israel, an error that needed to be corrected instead of compounded by a reappointment.

In 2012, Israel backed an unsavory and corrupt bank lobbyist and local Republican Party/Chamber of Commerce shill, Pete Aguilar. He was so disliked by Democrats that he didn't even make it out of California's jungle primary. This year, the incumbent wing nut, Gary Miller, is retiring and Aguilar will probably win, although he is still unpopular and the DCCC has had to spend money on bolstering him, $602,100 between them and their ironically-named House Majority PAC, $111,192 going into a desperate ad this week-- in a district that should be a total gimme.

So Pelosi didn't dump Israel and he'll soon probably be trumpeting Aguilar, who has already joined the Wall Street-owned New Dems from Republican wing of the Democratic Party, as a big victory. And just north of the Inland Empire, Israel screwed up again in a similar district, CA-25. This was the Lee Rogers race that Israel refused to get involved with. And the result was just as bad as the 2012 result in CA-31-- two Republicans in the general. Rogers begged the DCCC for GOTV help for the primary. They refused-- 100% refused. So Rogers came in third (on a hinky ballot where his name was on a different page than the other candidates) and CA-25, where Buck McKeon was too scared to face Rogers again and announced his retirement, will be succeeded either by right-wing freak Tony Strickland or by even righter-wing freak Steve Knight. What makes this all the more tragic is that this is a newly-blue district. Yep, Democrats now outnumber Republicans-- for the first time-- in voter registration.

Regardless of which Republican wins the seat in November, he’ll have a tough reelection to look forward to in 2016.

The Secretary of State’s 60-Day Voter Registration report, which was released on Tuesday, shows Democrats have flipped the district’s voter registration. Democrats now hold a slight edge in voter registration of roughly half a percent, or 1,975 raw voters.

That’s a substantial shift from last December, when Republicans held a 3.6 percent advantage in voter registration.

In 2012 Israel sabotaged Rogers' election and, like so many good Democrats who have run into Israel, he won't be running for Congress again. This isn't how you build a party or a majority. Nancy Pelosi's worst political mistake ever was appointing Steve Israel to chair the DCCC. No… that was her second worst mistake. Her worst mistake was reappointing him after his catastrophic first cycle. He's the worst DCCC chair since James Rood Doolittle in 1868, who switched back and forth between the Democrats and Republicans and is best remembered for opposing the 15th Amendment, which granted citizenship to the freed ex-slaves after the Civil War. There was no one as bad as him running the DCCC until Pelosi dug up Israel.