The House Democrats' Delusional Autopsy Extravaganza Starts Now

Now it's the Beltway Democrats' turn for an autopsy. Early indications are that they are in such a state of denial that the whole exercise will probably prove as pointless as the one the GOP did after they had their asses kicked by the electorate in 2012. Take a peek at 3 minutes of my early morning twitter notifications yesterday:

But Pelosi refuses to go beyond, "we did bad because our people didn't come out and vote." Why, Nancy, why? We already know they didn't vote-- worst turn-out since World War II, Dems-- and we know you know it. But do you know why they didn't come out to vote? Is that too painful to contemplate? This is the report from a DNC press release that CBS ran:

Democrats are planning an extensive review of what went wrong in the 2014 and 2010 elections.

The goal is to find ways to translate success in presidential campaigns into future midterm contests.

Democrats will form a committee in the coming weeks to conduct a "top-to-bottom assessment" of the party's performance in recent elections.

The head of the Democratic National Committee-- Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida-- says the review will examine the party's tactics, message, get-out-the-vote operations and digital efforts in nonpresidential elections.

Democrats suffered heavy losses in last week's elections, ceding Senate control to the Republicans and surrendering more seats in the already GOP-majority House.

Republicans picked up governor's offices in Democratic-leaning states such as Massachusetts, Maryland and Illinois and strengthened their grip on several state legislatures.

Wasserman Schultz, like Steve Israel and Michael Bennet (not to mention Pelosi, Hoyer and Reid) were the architects of the policies that led to the catastrophe. They're going to form a committee to assess it? What a joke! Below is the day-before-election day self-justification memo Steve Israel sent out. It defines delusion and denialism, starting with the title: "House Democrats Succeed on Every Measure In Our Control, Keep All Incumbents Positioned To Win." Before we get into the memo itself, these are the House incumbents who lost a few hours later, along with their districts' PVIs.

But first, let me go out on a limb and guess that fewer of these Democrats would have lost if they had run populist ads like the one below that helped Al Franken coast to a 1,052,794 to 849,932 victory in Minnesota over Republican Mike McFadden. No Steve Israel mystery meat here:

• Ron Barber (Blue Dog-AZ)- R+3
• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)- even
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)- D+7
• John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA)- R+9
• Brad Schneider (New Dem-IL)- D+8
• Bill Enyart (IL)- even
• Bruce Braley's seat (IA)- D+5
• Mike Michaud's seat (ME)- D+2
• Steven Horsford (NV)- D+4
• Carol Shea-Porter (NH)- R+1
• Tim Bishop (NY)- R+2
• Bill Owen's seat (NY)- even
• Dan Maffei (New Dem-NY)- D+5
• Mike McIntyre's seat (NC)- R+12
• Pete Gallego (Blue Dog-TX)- R+3
• Jim Matheson' seat (UT)- R+16
• Nick Rahall (Blue Dog-WV)- R+14

Oh, 17 seats... that was the number the Democrats needed to win to take back control of the House. Maybe Israel didn't get the memo. And, as promised...  here's his memo:

Entering Election Day, House Democrats have succeeded on every measure within our control and have kept every Democratic incumbent in a competitive position to win. Thanks to the DCCC’s record-breaking fundraising, first-ever voter registration effort and largest-ever investment on the airwaves, there is not a single Democrat in the country who is down for the count in a challenging year, and the DCCC is even pushing into Republican turf in a handful of districts.

In a tough political climate, the DCCC’s achievement stands out-- especially with the historical trend that the President’s party loses an average of 29 seats in the second midterm.

Take a look at the numbers for yourself.

Fundraising:  We have outraised the NRCC by $41.1 million ($172 million to $130.9 million), despite being in the minority. The DCCC has built record support from individual and grassroots supporters and dominated the NRCC on candidate fundraising.

·         DCCC had the best fundraising cycle ever-- raising more than $172 million to date. ·         Raised nearly $12 million directly for candidates this cycle to compete with SuperPACs’ spending by using lowest unit rates for television.

·         1.5 million grassroots low-dollar donors made 4.2 million contributions.

·         Reached $110 million in grassroots contributions.

·         Average grassroots gift was $25.80, with 95 percent of donations $50 or less.

·         The DCCC tripled the NRCC’s low dollar contributions, according to the FEC. The DCCC raised $69 million from contributors who’ve given less than $200, compared to the NRCC’s $23 million.

·         This cycle, Leader Pelosi completed 750 fundraising and campaign events in 115 cities, which have raised a record $101.3 million for Democrats, including $65.2 million for the DCCC directly.

 Airwaves: The DCCC ran its largest ad buy in committee history, with a tight focus that kept incumbents competitive against an onslaught of outside money. The DCCC IE quadrupled its digital advertising program to create a “second screen” for voters to see our messaging.

·         The DCCC’s Independent Expenditure invested a record-breaking $67.25 million in 39 districts.

·         In the 22 districts where the DCCC and NRCC both were on the air, the DCCC’s early reservations meant that the committee paid approximately 15 percent less for the same air time.

·         The IE produced about 147 TV ads and 20 radio spots.

·         The DCCC quadrupled our digital advertising, driving 28 million impressions that echoed our television message to as many as 88,000 voters per district.

Field: To get ahead of the midterm voter dropoff problem, the DCCC launched our first-ever voter registration program, successfully registering 80,000 new voters in our key districts. The DCCC doubled the size of our field program from previous cycles and put staff on the ground six months earlier than ever before.

·         We have nearly 900 field staff members in 41 districts.

·         Overall our field staff and volunteers have knocked over 6 million doors and called more than 32 million voters, for a total of 38.6 million voter contact attempts.

·         In our key battlegrounds:

·         California: 5 million phone calls made and over 660,000 doors knocked.
·         Illinois: 2.6 million phone calls made and over 579,000 doors knocked.
·         New York: 3.3 million phone calls made and over 625,000 doors knocked.
·         Over the course of GOTV weekend, our field staff and volunteers knocked on over 820,000 doors and made over 1 million calls.

This was Steve Israel's documentary evidence that he should be given a seat at the House Democrats' leadership table. And since they were all complicit in his abject failure on Tuesday, they really have to go along with his delusional thinking. So... good luck with that autopsy thing, jackasses.