What Happens When The Chair Of The DCCC Opposes Everything Woke Voters Are Looking For?

The Democratic old guard prepares to make it's last stand against working families before being swept away

After netting 41 seats in November, there are now 235 Democrats in the House. According to the voting records tabulated by ProgressivePunch, Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL) is the 213th "most progressive." In other words, there are just 22 Democrats voting more conservatively than Bustos, 13 of whom are freshmen (who may or may not end up to the right of her). Bustos' represents a gerrymandered district in northwestern and central Illinois drawn specifically to reelect a Democratic. Obama beat McCain 60.0% to 38.5% there and then 4 years later beat Romney 57.6% to 40.6%. And then along came Hillary, who was viewed as a corporatist very much notcommitted to the interests of traditional working families and-- boom!-- Trump manages a narrow win: 47.4% to 46.7%. The healthy D+7 PVI tumbled to D+3. Last year, though, Bustos was reelected in the way the district was drawn-- 142,659 (62.1%) to 87,090 (37.9%). She won all 14 counties-- and the four big ones where most of the voters live (Rock Island, Peoria Winnebago and Whiteside) with huge margins.

After 2016, Bustos succeeded in resenting herself as some kind of a genius who knew the secret of being reelected in a Trump district. She rode that right into the DCCC chairmanship where she is in position to use her power to keep turning the House Democratic caucus further right. Note: of the 59 freshman members-- which includes members who took over deep blue districts as well as members who flipped red or purple seats-- 10 joined the Blue Dogs and 40 joined the New Dems (almost all of the Blue Dogs also being new Dems). I'm wandering off topic here, but this is the full list of the Democratic freshmen:

• Ann Kirkpatrick (New Dem-AZ)
• Greg Stanton (New Dem-AZ)
• Josh Harder (New Dem-CA)
• TJ Cox (CA)
• Katie Hill (New Dem-CA)
• Gil Cisneros (New Dem-CA)
• Katie Porter (CA)
• Harley Rouda (New Dem-CA)
• Mike Levin (CA)
• Joe Neguse (CO)
• Jason Crow (New Dem-CO)
• Jahana Hayes (CT)
• Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (New Dem-FL)
• Donna Shalala (FL)
• Lucy McBath (New Dem-GA)
• Ed Case (Blue Dog/New Dem-HI)
• Chuy Garcia (IL)
• Sean Casten (New Dem-IL)
• Lauren Underwood (IL)
• Abby Finkenauer (IA)
• Cindy Axne (New Dem-IA)
• Sharice Davids (New Dem-KS)
• Jared Golden (ME)
• David Trone (New Dem-MD)
• Lori Trahan (New Dem-MA)
• Ayanna Pressley (MA)
• Elissa Slotkin (New Dem-MI)
• Andy Levin (MI)
• Haley Stevens (New Dem-MI)
• Rashida Tlaib (MI)
• Angie Craig (New Dem-MN)
• Dean Phillips (New Dem-MN)
• Ilhan Omar (MN)
• Susie Lee (New Dem-NV)
• Steven Horsford (New Dem-NV)
• Chris Pappas (New Dem-NH)
• Jeff Van Drew (Blue Dog-NJ)
• Andy Kim (NJ)
• Tom Malinowski (New Dem-NJ)
• Mikie Sherrill (Blue Dog/New Dem-NJ)
• Deb Haaland (NM)
• Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog/New Dem-NM)
• Max Rose (Blue Dog/New Dem-NY)
• AOC (NY)
• Antonio Delgado (NY)
• Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog/New Dem-NY)
• Kendra Horn (Blue Dog/New Dem-OK)
• Madeleine Dean (New Dem-PA)
• Chrissy Houlahan (New Dem-PA)
• Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog/New Dem-SC)
• Lizzie Fletcher (New Dem-TX)
• Veronica Escobar (New Dem-TX)
• Sylvia Garcia (TX)
• Colin Allred (New Dem-TX)
• Ben McAdams (Blue Dog/New Dem-UT)
• Elaine Luria (New Dem-VA)
• Abigail Spanberger (Blue Dog/New Dem-VA)
• Jennifer Wexton (New Dem-VA)
• Kim Schrier (New Dem-WA)

If-- as looks likely-- Americans elect a progressive president to replace Trump next year, in order for him or her to enact the platform voters want, there will have to be far more progressives in Congress than there are now. Bustos doesn't seem at all keen on that. She immediately named 3 conservative New Dems as co-chairs of the DCCC Recruitment Committee (Pete Aguilar, Don McEachin and Val Demings). After pressure from normal Democrats she is scheduled to hold her nose and appoint a (business-friendly) progressive to join the committee next week, Jared Huffman. The ActBlue thermometer on the right leads to a Blue America page with candidates who are running on progressive agendas-- not Blue Dog or New Dem agendas. Please consider contributing what you can to their campaigns.

This week during an interview with The Hill, Bustos, who hasn't bothered to learn "how you pay for it," went out of her way to-- in their words-- "pour cold water" on Medicare-For-All and the Green New Deal, exactly the kinds of progressive ideas she abhors and always opposes. No one would ever expect someone like Bustos to support either, but the worry, of course, is how harshly she will blackball progressive House candidates who do. She may not have paid attention to how these proposals would work, but look at great she is at parroting Republican Party talking points to disparage them:

“The ‘Green New Deal’ is an idea. ‘Medicare for all’ is an idea. But there are many others that are out there,” Rep. Cheri Bustos (IL), the chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), said in an interview with The Hill.

“What do we have-- 130 million-something Americans who get their health insurance through their work? The transition from what we have now to Medicare for all, it’s just hard to conceive how that would work. You have so many jobs attached to the health care industry.”

“I think the $33 trillion price tag for Medicare for all is a little scary,” she said.

...“The vast majority of Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives want to see us fix the Affordable Care Act and make it functional,” she said, “so we can protect people with pre-existing conditions and so people have affordable health care.”

...[S]ome liberal groups are watching her warily.

“As the leading Democratic presidential contenders increasingly unite around Medicare for all and the Green New Deal, I don’t understand why the chair of the DCCC is trying to divide Democrats by putting forward talking points from Republicans and insurance corporations,” said Waleed Shahid, a spokesman with the progressive grass-roots group Justice Democrats.

As head of the DCCC, Bustos is charged with protecting the Democrats’ newly won majority during a high-stakes presidential campaign, where President Trump will devour much of the media attention and Democrats have dozens of vulnerable incumbents in conservative-leaning districts-- a tough map that she readily acknowledges.

Bustos talks pure Beltway bullshit when she does her interviews: "I want the best candidates we can possibly get [as opposed to what? the worst?]... And I want people who are good [instead of bad?], honest [instead of dishonest?] people who understand [rather than morons?] the regions where they’re coming from [rather than Togoland?],” she said. “But I can tell you that I’ve never asked that question when I’m in a recruitment meeting. Yet the candidates mentioned who she is recruiting are both right-of-center candidates who lost in 2018. A protégée of Rahm Emanuel's, it would never cross her mind to try a progressive recruit instead and offer people what they really want instead of a decision based on who is the lesser-of-two evils, in other words, a Republican-lite candidate. (Remember, on the day it was released, 106 Democrats co-sponsored the new and improved Medicare-For-All Act-- even if not any of Bustos' recruitment committee members were among them.)

Needless to say, she's no fan of the freshman members who are inspiring virtually all the energy and activism in the party. She quickly and blithely smeared Ilhan Omar, comparing her to neo-Nazi Steve King.

Another challenge facing Bustos revolves around the Republicans’ strategy of branding all Democrats-- even the moderates-- as leftist extremists by linking them to liberal figures like Ocasio-Cortez and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). That effort has been thrust into the spotlight this month, following remarks by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), one of two Muslim women to arrive in Congress this year, which many deemed anti-Semitic.

Bustos downplayed the controversy as “one person making one statement,” and quickly pointed out that Democratic leaders expect to vote Thursday on a resolution condemning anti-Semitism.

“We hold our own accountable, and there is a big difference between what we do and what the other side of the aisle does,” she said. “It took them 13 years to say anything about [Rep.] Steve King [R-IA]. And she’s been in office for what-- two months? We hold our own accountable.”

Bustos also pushed back against the small but high-profile effort by the Justice Democrats-- a group aligned with Ocasio-Cortez-- to primary incumbent lawmakers who don’t meet the group’s progressive purity test. Labelling the DCCC “an incumbent-friendly organization,” Bustos extended an olive branch to Ocasio-Cortez, sitting down recently to breakfast with the rising Democratic star, though she declined to say what the two discussed.

“We live in a democracy where anybody’s allowed to ... run against anybody,” Bustos said. “I would prefer that, as far as Democrats go, that we just work together; and we make sure that our colleagues can come back, and that we do what we can to pick up additional seats.”

The DCCC has just had 4 catastrophic leaders in a row-- Rahm Emanuel, Chris Van Hollen, Steve Israel and Ben Ray Lujan. People are already betting Bustos will out do them all.