The DCCC Has Another Terrible Idea-- Copying The 2006 Midterms, A Recipe For Catastrophe

When Politico needed a writer do do a story on the false narrative of how successful Rahm Emanuel was in 2006 and how it's the model for 2018, ultimate DC establishment shill Edward-Issac Dovere, the most superficial reporter in Washington, was the obvious choice. Mr. Superficial: "An unpopular president, the scent of corruption in Washington, a riled-up liberal base-- to House Democrats, 2018 is already looking like 2006 on overdrive. Now Democrats see the same ugly storm forming for Republicans that delivered them the majority 11 years ago, and they’re digging out the blueprint. The party is vastly expanding the number of districts it plans to contest, recruiting veterans and business owners to compete in conservative terrain as it did back then. Three senior House Democrats are soon heading to Chicago to seek advice from Rahm Emanuel, the party’s 2006 master strategist."

Before we look at the statistics of what actually happened, one apocryphal story. First a little from CNN: Rahm knew Foley was molesting underage pages a full year before he finally blew the whistle on the very day it would be too late for the Republicans to be able to replace Foley on the ballot. Blue America was working with a progressive union candidate at the time, Dave Lutrin, in the very red district. Suddenly, long before anyone had any inkling that Foley was about to be exposed, Rahm and Hoyer started pressuring Lutrin to drop out of the race. That was confusing; why would they care about this district? But they had recruited a wealthy Republican, Tim Mahoney, talked him into switching his registration to "D" and promised to clear the field so he wouldn't have a primary. Long story short: Lutrin dropped out, Rahm leaked the Foley story, Mahoney won, Mahoney joined the Blue Dogs and spent his miserable one term in Congress voting with the Republicans and chasing women, Mahoney got caught up in a sex scandal, Mahoney was defeated in 2008. Dovere forgot to mention that one-- or any of the stories that challenge the establishment narrative he is helping his beloved crooked conservaDems to push.

One more thing before the statistics: primary season, 2006. Rahm was on the warpath against progressive and grassroots candidates coast to coast. And when the progressive candidates defeated his pathetic corporate and Wall Street shills, he abandoned their districts to the Republicans with a vengeance. But from Carol Shea-Porter (NH) and John Hall (NY) in the northeast to Jerry McNerney in California's Central Valley, the candidates Rahm worked so hard to sabotage, beat his candidates and then went on to beat Republican incumbents without his help. That's not part of Dovere's narrative either.

There were 30 seats that flipped from Republican to Democrat that year:

• Arizona Blue Dog Harry Mitchell replaced GOP arch-villain JD Hayworth. Mitchell was defeated in 2010
• Arizona Blue Dog Gabby Gifford won an open Tucson seat and was shot, replaced by Blue Dog Ron Barber, who was defeated in 2014 after one Republican-lite term
• Grassroots Dem Jerry McNerney defeated powerful GOP chairman and is still serving his California district in Congress
• Colorado New Dem won an open seat in Denver's suburbs and is still serving
• Connecticut New Dem Joe Courtney defeated GOP incumbent Rob Simmons and is still serving
• Connecticut New Dem Chris Murphy defeated GOP incumbent Nancy Johnson and was later elected to the Senate
• Florida New Dem Ron Klein beat GOP incumbent Clay Shaw and lost his seat in 2010
• Florida "ex"-Republican won Foley's open seat and was immediately defeated in 2008
• Indiana Blue Dog Joe Donnelly defeated GOP incumbent Chris Chocola and would have been defeated in 2012 but tried a hail Mary pass, running for the US Senate against a far right lunatic who lost
• Indiana Blue Dog Brad Ellsworth defeated GOP incumbent John Hostettler and was defeated in 2010
• Indiana Blue Dog Baron Hill defeated GOP incumbent Mike Sodrel and was defeated in 2010
• Iowa populist Bruce Braley won an open seat and was defeated for the US Senate in 2014
• Iowa populist Dave Loebsack defeated GOP incumbent Jim Leach and is still serving
• Kansas conservaDem (rejected by the Blue Dogs when she tried to join) Nancy Boyda beat far right incumbent Jim Ryun and was defeated in 2008
• Kentucky progressive Democrat John Yarmuth-- not a Rahm candidate-- defeated GOP incumbent Anne Northup and is still serving
• Minnesota Democrat Tim Walz defeated GOP incumbent Gil Gutknecht and is still serving
• Despite DCCC sabotage, New Hampshire grassroots progressive Carol Shea-Porter defeated GOP incumbent Jeb Bradley and was re-elected last year despite Trump winning her district
• New Hampshire New Dem Anne Kuster defeated GOP incumbent Charlie Bass and is still serving
• New York grassroots progressive John Hall defeated GOP incumbent Sue Kelly and was beaten in 2010
• New York Blue Dog Kirsten Gillibrand beat GOP incumbent John Sweeney and was appointed dot the Senate to replace Hillary Clinton in 2009
• NY Blue Dog Mike Arcuri won an open seat and was beaten in 2010
• Anti-immigrant North Carolina Blue Dog Heath Shuler beat scandal-ridden (like Trump, heavily involved with shady Russian banks) GOP incumbent Charlie Taylor and avoided defeat in 2012 by retiring
• Ohio Blue Dog Zack Space defeated scandal-plagued GOP incumbent Bob Ney. Hey went to prison and Space was defeated in 2010
• Pennsylvania Blue Dog Jason Altmire defeated GOP incumbent Melissa Hart and was defeated for reelection in 2012
• Non-Rahm candidate Joe Sestak defeated GOP incumbent Curt Weldon and left the seat in 2010 to run for the Senate
• Pennsylvania New Dem Patrick Murphy defeated GOP incumbent Mike Fitzpatrick and was defeated for reelection in 2010
•Pennsylvania Blue Dog Chris Carney defeated GOP incumbent Don Sherwood and was defeated for reelection in 2010
• Texas Blue Dog Nick Lampson won the open Tom DeLay seat and was defeated for reelection in 2008
• Ciro Rodriguez defeated GOP incumbent Henry Bonilla in a run-off but was defeated in 2010
• Wisconsin Democrat Steve Kagan won the Green Bay/Appleton open seat and was defeated in 2010.

In other words, the vast majority of Rahm's much-touted-- to this day, at least by a numbskull like Devore-- recruits were so terrible that when their constituents realized they had been tricked into electing Republican-lite candidates, they didn't show up at the polls for them and they were defeated. And that's exactly what the DCCC is literally planning on doing in 2018-- electing bunch of rich self-funders, "ex"-Republicans, Blue Dogs, New Dems, identity politics garbage candidates... most of whom will lose in the 2022 midterms. They never learn-- not the corrupt, dumb establishment hack politicians and certainly not their imbecile stenographers at the political trade press.

Yesterday the DCCC announced that they had added 20 new "target" districts, most of which they will never actually fight in-- but it looks good for donors. These are the 20 new ones:

• AZ-06- David Schweikert
• CA-22- Devin Nunes
• CA-50- Duncan Hunter
• FL-06- Ron DeSantis
• FL-16- Vern Buchanan
• GA-07- Rob Woodall
• IL-12- Mike Bost
• IN-02- Jackie Walorski
• MI-01- Jack Bergman
• MI-06- Fred Upton
• MO-02- Ann Wagner
• NC-02- George Holding
• NM-02- Steve Pearce
• NY-21- Elise Stefanik
• NY-23- Tom Reed
• OH-10- Mike Turner
• OH-14- Dave Joyce
• VA-05- Tom Garrett
• VA-07- Dave Brat
• WV-03- open

I just asked a top DC consultant what he thinks of the list and he laughed and predicted they won't win a single one of these seats. "I wonder if they plan to campaign on transgender youth in Snowshoe and Beckley in that West Virginia district," he said unkindly.

This is their whole list of original districts they announced on January 30, which includes many districts they will never contest:

·         AL-02- Martha Roby
·         AR-02- French Hill
·         AZ-02- Martha McSally
·         CA-10- Jeff Denham
·         CA-21- David Valadao
·         CA-25- Steve Knight
·         CA-39- Ed Royce
·         CA-45- Mimi Walters
·         CA-48- Dana Rohrabacher
·         CA-49- Darrell Issa
·         CO-03- Scott Tipton
·         CO-06- Mike Coffman
·         FL-18- Brian Mast
·         FL-25- Mario Diaz-Balart
·         FL-26- Carlos Curbelo
·         FL-27- open
·         GA-06- open
·         IA-01- Rod Blum
·         IA-03- David Young
·         IL-06- Peter Roskam
·         IL-13- Rodney Davis
·         IL-14- Randy Hultgren
·         KS-02- open
·         KS-03- Kevin Yoder
·         KY-06- Andy Barr
·         ME-02- Bruce Poliquin
·         MI-07- Tim Walberg
·         MI-08- Mike Bishop
·         MI-11- Dave Trott
·         MN-02- Jason Lewis
·         MN-03- Erik Paulsen
·         NC-08- Richard Hudson
·         NC-09- Robert Pittenger
·         NC-13- Ted Budd
·         NE-02- Don Bacon
·         NJ-02- Frank LoBiondo
·         NJ-03- Tom MacArthur
·         NJ-07- Leonard Lance
·         NJ-11- Rodney Frelinghuysen
·         NY-01- Lee Zeldin
·         NY-11- Dan Donovan
·         NY-19- John Faso
·         NY-22- Claudia Tenney
·         NY-24- John Katko
·         NY-27- Chris Collins
·         OH-01- Steve Chabot
·         OH-07- Bob Gibbs
·         PA-06- Ryan Costello
·         PA-07- Pat Meehan
·         PA-08- Brian Fitzpatrick
·         PA-16- Lloyd Smucker
·         TX-07- John Culberson
·         TX-23- Will Hurd
·         TX-32- Pete Sessions
·         VA-02- Scott Taylor
·         VA-10- Barbara Comstock
·         WA-03- Jaime Herrera Beutler
·         WA-08- David Reichert
·         WV-02- Alex Mooney

Please notice... no Wisconsin seats; no Paul Ryan, no Glenn Gothman, no Sean Duffy... Blue America will have to take care of some of that for them. Get to know Randy Bryce, the iron worker and union activist putting together a campaign to take down Speaker Ryan, no matter what the DCCC decides to do to protect Ryan's purple swing-district seat again.

And if you want to help real progressives win, please check out the candidates at the ActBlue thermometer on the right, some in districts the DCCC is targeting and some in districts the DCCC is ignoring, none, though, who are the kinds of corporate shills the DCCC prefers to back.