The DCCC Has Nothing Postive To Offer Voters-- Just A Lesser Of Two Evils Vision

The DCCC-- as it is wont to do-- is putting all its eggs in one basket. Their operating premise is that Trump and Ryan will cause the congressional Republicans to be so loathed that voters will go to the polls in 2018 with only one thing in mind-- replace Republicans with Democrats. It could happen. If it does, even the worthless, garbage candidates being recruited by the DCCC will be swept into office (for a term or two before the GOP reclaims those seats). The idea of recruiting good candidates is so far from how the DCCC perceives the world that it's almost never even considered worth discussing. So, for example, when a prominent Latina politician who has already won elections in FL-27, went to the DCCC for support for a campaign in the soon-to-be-open Ileana Ros-Lehtinen seat, she was told that Denny Heck's recruitment committee already had it's eyes on corrupt conservative "ex"-Republican Patrick Murphy for the seat in the 72.7% Latino district nowhere near his old district (where Murphy is afraid to run again). Murphy got into Congress because he wasn't as horrible as murderous torturer Allen West. Florida voters, though, overwhelmingly judged him to be even worse than Marco Rubio when he ran for Senate last year. He under-performed Hillary's own losing campaign in the state-- 4,504,975 (47.8%) to his 4,122,088 (44.3%). Democrats have to have something to offer-- more than just "the other guy is worse than I am" or "Trump is the boogey-man."

And, aside from refusing to recruit candidates based on excellence (instead of ability to self-fund and participate in routine corruption and corporate ass-licking), the DCCC tsunami premise frees them from working on any kind of inspiring messaging that will make voters want to vote for Democrats. Offering voters something positive is a problem because the Democratic congressional delegation is now so filled with reactionaries and corporate whores who do not embrace progressive values or goals that any inspiring message would be divisive and self-defeating. Pelosi has even been making excuses for welcoming candidates who are anti-Choice into the fold. That's inspiring-- and utterly ineffective since anti-Choice voters already have a party of their own.

So what do the Democrats have to offer? The same old, same old-- "we may stink to high heaven but we're not as bad as the Republicans. Look how bad the Republicans are-- LOOK!"



And instead... what is the DCCC proposing? A promise to enact John Conyer's H.R. 676-- the Medicare for All Act? There are now 108 members of the House who have signed on as co-sponsors, a heavy majority of House Democrats. The vast majority of grassroots Democrat support Medicare-for-All, as do most independents. Even a plurality of Republicans like the idea! But not the House Democratic Leadership. Oh, no! God forbid they would offer something to the voters that the voters want and that would motivate them. To them it's all about their own careers, not about a policy agenda. And when politicians put their careers ahead of policy, they're no good to anyone anymore. The DCCC plans to stick to its message that Trump's horribleness trumps everything else.

And the Blue Dogs and New Dems-- the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- overwhelmingly oppose single payer and Medicare-for-All. So the DCCC-- utterly controlled by that wing-- will never push anything like it, no matter how powerful the issue is with voters. Among the Democrats in the House who have refused to sign on to Conyers' bill is corrupt Wall Street hack and New Dem head honcho Joe Crowley, slated to be party leader someday soon. Others refusing to sign on include almost all the House Democrats currently aspiring to higher office: Adam Schiff (CA), Tim Walz (MN), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), John Delaney (MD), Michelle Lujan Grisham (NM), Beto O'Rourke (TX), Seth Moulton (MA), Donald Norcross (NJ) and, as always, Wasserman Schultz (FL).

Sunday, Robert Reich wrote of the moral travesty of TrumpCare and how single-payer is the antidote. "Shame on every one of the 217 Republicans who last Thursday voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and substitute basically nothing," he wrote. "Trumpcare isn’t a replacement of the Affordable Care Act. It’s a transfer from the sick and poor to the rich and healthy."

House Republicans say they have protected people with pre-existing health problems. Baloney. Sick people could be charged premiums so high as to make insurance unaffordable.

America has the only healthcare system in the world designed to avoid sick people. Private for-profit health insurers do whatever they can to insure groups of healthy people because that’s where the profits are. They also make every effort to avoid sick people, because that’s where the costs are.

The Affordable Care Act puts healthy and sick people into the same insurance pool. But under the Republican bill that passed the House, healthy people will no longer be subsidizing sick people.  Healthy people will be in their own insurance pool. Sick people will be grouped with other sick people in their own high-risk pool-- which will result in such high premiums, co-payments, and deductibles that many if not most won’t be able to afford.

Republicans say their bill creates a pool of money that will pay insurance companies to cover the higher costs of insuring sick people. Wrong. Insurers will take the money and still charge sick people much higher premiums. Or avoid sick people altogether.

The only better alternative to the Affordable Care Act is a single-payer system, such as Medicare for all, which would put all Americans into the same giant insurance pool. Not only would this be fairer, but it would also be far more efficient, because money wouldn’t be spent marketing and advertising to attract healthy people and avoid sick people.

One excellent candidate the DCCC seems to have no interest in helping is Steve Russell's opponent in Oklahoma City, Tom Guild. Tom's campaign is too based on a compelling progressive agenda to attract the DCCC, even though this is just the kind of district that could flip in a strong anti-Trump wave election. Where the DCCC insists its candidates steer clear of controversial issues and stick with their pre-tested talking points, Tom feels certain that their approach has continued to fail in Oklahoma-- where there are no elected Democrats in federal or statewide office-- and he's approaching the voters of OK-05 with a solid agenda that appeals to working families. This morning Tom reminded us that "Bernie won the Oklahoma presidential primary in Oklahoma by a landslide last year. Everyone with a title, and all Oklahoma elected officials (and former elected officials) who are Democrats wouldn’t give Bernie the time of day. I was one of the three best known persons, all progressive leaders, who publicly endorsed Bernie before his shocking upset in the presidential primary over the resistance of every Oklahoma Democrat with God’s unlisted phone number. It is clear that Oklahoma voters are hungry for a real alternative to the same old, same old offered up by the Republican Party in Oklahoma and also candidates recruited by the Democratic Party establishment in Oklahoma. Those Republican-lite Democrats who have been nominated in recent years have been sacrificial lambs to the Republicans, as the GOP has tightened its grip on Oklahoma. My platform promoting Medicare-for-All, programs to take the burden of debt off of college students backs, increasing Social Security benefits, taking on Wall Street, big corporations and billionaires, and progressive populism have enormous appeal in Oklahoma. I came within .1 (one-tenth) of a percent in 2016 of beating the last Republican-lite congressional candidate the establishment ran in this district. With your help we’ll get over the hump in 2018 and add .1% + 1 vote in the primary and become Steve Russell’s worst nightmare as we dissect his voting record and call him out for his outrageous statements in the general election."

Tom's exactly the kind of candidate the DCCC should be giving a hand. They won't. If you'd like to help, please tape the ActBlue thermometer just above and consider chipping in what you can to a completely grassroots campaign in a part of the country the DC Democrats have utterly abandoned.