Will The Absurd Cheri Bustos Legend Win Her the DCCC Chair?

Republicans aren't the only ones who gerrymander states to create safe partisan majorities for themselves. The Democratic Party-controlled Illinois legislature did the same thing. And one of the congressional seats they carved out in a pretty red area is the 17th district abutting eastern Iowa and southern Wisconsin. The legislators carefully-- and awkwardly-- included Rockford and Peoria to give a Democrat the margin of victory they need. That Democrat is conservative Rahm Emanuel protégée, Cheri Bustos. Bustos' legend paints her as a legend who beats back the Republican hordes in this deep red Trumpist district. Her p.r. avoids mentioning that the district has a D+3 PVI. And, yes, Trump very narrowly beat the feeble status quo Democratic candidate in 2016-- 47.4% to 46.7%, but, as context about this "deep red district," Obama beat McCain 60-38% and Obama beat Romney 58-41%. So... gimme a break about Cheri the Dragon-Slayer.

This cycle Bustos herself beat some hapless Republican conspiracy theory nut-job, Bill Fawell 61.8% to 38.2%. She raised $3,642,480 and he raised $27,167. The GOP spent exactly ZERO on him and she won every county in the district.

For a district this blue, she has a really bad "F" rating from ProgressivePunch (51.44), the worst of any Democrat in Illinois (yes, worse than Brad Schneider and even Dan Lipinski) and hers is the 10th worst voting record for any Democrat in Congress! A few months ago, when she decided to make a play for a leadership role, she quietly "left" the Blue Dogs. She's still in the Wall Street-financed New Dem Caucus.

This cycle she served as co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, whose big accomplishment was the slogan "Better Life, Better Wages, Better Pizza," which she feels qualifies her to be DCCC chair, a catastrophe in the making.

Yesterday, reporting for the L.A. Times, Jennifer Haberkorn wrote a clueless publicist-generated puff piece on Bustos, Midwest Democrat with a knack for winning over Trump voters seeks higher role in party leadership. What a joke! In the very first paragraph the hackish Haberkorn refers to her as "an up-and-coming Democratic leader," written for her by Bustos' comms director. The piece made my skin crawl and reminded me why I cancelled by subscription to the L.A> Times when it gave up using real reporters and hired stenographers like Haberkorn.

"He worried," she wrote, "that Democrats want to curtail his gun rights, which she deflected by telling him about her own state-issued gun-permit card and about her husband, a police officer. They bonded over their shared support for unions. By the time the last slice (of DPCC better pizza) was gone, Anthis had agreed to support the local candidate Bustos was there to help, vowing to put a Brendan Kelly pin on his red Make America Great Again hat." Brendan Kelly, Haberkorn neglects to mention, is a putrid Blue Dog like Bustos. Down the page she mentions that he lost an Illinois district that a normal Democrat would have won.

Instead Haberkorn turned in the Bustos propaganda, namely that she that she can parlay her "skill of winning over Trump voters into the upper ranks of House Democratic leadership. While many of her rival leadership aspirants are pitching to the left wing of the party, Bustos is trying to carve a niche closer to the middle-- both politically and geographically." Let me unpack that a little, since there is ZERO chance it is something a dimwit like Haberkorn could ever understand. There are no Bustos rivals pitching left. They are all pitching towards the mushy center of the Democratic mainstream. Bustos' idea of "center" is the center of the whole Congress, which is the Republican territory she feels most comfortable in-- and the extreme right of Democratic territory... just like her voting record.

Bustos says her ability to serve as a sort of Rosetta Stone to better understand Midwestern voters will be vital in helping Democrats keep and expand those wins.

“I know how to do well in really, really tough districts,” she said. “We’re going to have more than 30 Democrats in the House coming from Trump districts, so we just have to figure out how to button these up and hang on to them and grow our margin in 2020.”

Trump districts that were Obama districts that a status quo corporate Democrat like Bustos managed to lose in 2016.

And then the pre-packaged pitch that Bustos tells anyone who will listen to her: she "is the only one of about 18 leadership candidates who doesn’t represent a district along one of the coasts. She is one of only two contenders representing a district won by Trump. And she’s probably the only member of Democratic leadership whose go-to road food while campaigning is an indulgent, heart-clogging ButterBurger from Midwestern fast-food chain Culver’s. Her pitch to Democrats of all stripes is that the party’s majority is fragile. If its political pendulum swings too far to the left in next two years or Democrats are seen as coastal elites, they risk losing in those moderate districts, especially when Trump himself is on the ballot, she said. 'We don’t hang on to that majority by having a Democratic message that is viewed as extreme in rural America or in the heartland,' she said." She's talking about districts that were overwhelming won by Bernie with his populist message that goes right up against her own corrupt corporate approach. Here's some more of the canned messaging from Bustos' comms department that novice reporters are fed:

In an autopsy of Democrats’ losses in the 2016 election, she implored fellow party members to focus on voters’ “economic anxieties” by talking about infrastructure, education and small business, and staying away from social issues.

Bustos represents the resurgence of the kind of Democratic moderate who largely got wiped out of the House in the last several election cycles as Republicans built a majority.

She supports abortion rights but doesn’t lead with the contentious social issue. Her stump speech is big on reducing healthcare and prescription drug costs but doesn’t lean into government-run Medicare-for-all. She had an A- rating from the National Rifle Assn. two years ago, but it dropped to F after she endorsed a series of gun control measures.

Moderate Democrats like Bustos will likely be pivotal to the party’s success in 2020. The Democratic presidential candidate will have to appeal to their voters to have any shot of denying Trump a second term. And in the House, 21 Democrats newly elected in Trump districts will have to figure out how to sustain the Democratic enthusiasm they rallied this year while not angering their Republican or independent voters too much. There are only nine Democrats who won reelection in Trump districts this year.

In the race to become head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Bustos is up against another Democrat who won in a Trump district, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, as well as two Democrats from Washington state, Reps. Dennis Heck and Suzan DelBene. All of them, like Bustos, have worked with the campaign group in prior years.

Pelosi, who is facing her own leadership race, has not put her thumb on the scale in the DCCC contest. But Bustos said Pelosi “has personally said to me and many others” that she wants to see a woman in the job. A Pelosi spokesman declined to comment on a private conversation.

Bustos has a record to tout: She’s helped lead coalitions to recruit candidates, especially women and people in the Midwest. She’s raised or given away $3 million to more than 100 candidates. And she won by the largest margin of any Democrat in a Trump district (although Trump won her district by less than one percentage point).

The campaign arm post is not often seen as ideological. But DCCC leaders have sometimes run into political buzzsaws, such as when abortion rights groups-- including NARAL Pro-Choice America-- criticized them for not requiring all DCCC-backed candidates to support abortion rights.

Bustos declined to weigh in on how she would handle prospective candidates who oppose abortion rights, saying she would deal with the issue if and when it came up.

Do you want someone even worse than Emanuel, Israel and Lujan to run the DCCC further into the ground? Bustos is the one. And, Pelosi, by the way has put her finger on the scale, quietly backing DelBene, not Bustos, the worst of 4 bad candidates. Well... tied for last place with Sean Patrick Maloney.