Is The DCCC Blacklist Backfiring?

The Republican wing of the Democratic Party

A reminder: As soon as Blue Dog/New Dem Cheri Bustos grabbed the DCCC chair for herself, she instituted an aggressive new policy aimed at progressives challenging Blue Dogs and New Dems (like herself). She officially declared that any campaign consultants, vendors, polling firms, strategists or operatives who worked for a campaign running against an incumbent would be blacklisted by the DCCC. (It's worth noting that several dozen current members of Congress, including some who demanded the action from Bustos-- like Henry Cuellar-- were originally elected by challenging incumbents.)

Bustos immediately went on the offensive against Marie Newman's campaign in a Chicagoland district occupied by anti-Choice, anti-gay, anti-healthcare, anti-immigrant Blue Dog Dan Lipinski, one of the worst Democrats in Congress. Marie nearly beat him in 2018 when close to a million in very right wing sewer money-- including from the Murdoch family-- flooded into the district in a smear campaign orchestrated by Mark Penn and his wife Nancy Jacobson of No Labels. Perfect Cheri Bustos allies!

This cycle presidential candidates Bernie (who also endorsed her in 2018), Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and Jay Inslee have endorsed Marie-- as have Ro Khanna and AOC. Last week Marie told Elle readers that when AOC won her seat in 2018, "I sent her a Twitter message saying, 'You know, machines can be broken.' She said, 'Thank you, I hope so.' And that’s truly what I believe, that the Chicago machine can be broken and rebuilt. The most important thing in life is to learn from the past. I’m not afraid of hard work. It’s in my DNA.

Guess which side the Cheri Bustos' DCCC is on!

Last week, Natalie Shure, reporting for In These Times asked "why would voters in such a diehard Democratic district choose a candidate like Lipinski to begin with? The answer is simple: they didn’t. In 1975, William Lipinski, Dan’s father, was appointed Committeeman for the Democratic Party of his ward, a position he retained even after being elected to Congress in 1982. After serving 11 terms, the elder Lipinski won his primary in 2004 before abruptly announcing his retirement, leaving the appointment of a successor up to himself, in his capacity as the Democratic Committeeman. Dan was handed the seat by his father, which led him to move back to Illinois from Tennessee. It was a classic machine coronation, or as Newman put it, 'as slimy as it comes.'"

Newman-- like all the Democratic candidates the DCCC is working against-- supports the Green New Deal and Medicare-for-All, both of which Bustos and the DCCC work overtime to de-rail, counseling their approved candidates against both in no uncertain terms. Please consider contributing to the progressives running for those policies by clicking on the 2020 congressional thermometer on the right.

I checked in with some of the other candidates who are vigorously backing Medicare-for-All and the Green New Deal and who have been under attack by the DCCC. Mark Gamba, the progressive mayor of Milwaukie, is running for an Oregon congressional seat held by reactionary Blue Dog Kurt Schrader, a friend of Bustos'. Mark told me he had been gearing up his campaign for about 4 months when the DCCC struck. "I had good conversations with consultants, fundraising and compliance firms... Nothing had been inked but I felt comfortable setting a date for my announcement. Within days of the DCCC edict, every single one of those dried up. That edict did exactly what the DCCC hoped for; it cost my campaign months to pull together a team of people who were unconcerned about what the DCCC thinks. The astonishing thing in my case is that Schrader is not popular with the Democrats; he voted against Pelosi, voted against the $15 minimum wage and takes Koch money.

It boils down to this: he’s a cash cow. It’s all about the money. He’s willing to take money from literally anyone, he said so himself when challenged at a local town hall about some of his donors. The problems we face in America have been caused by the Republicans and the Democrats like Kurt Schrader:  We are the only industrialized nation on earth that does not have universal health care. We spend more on our military industrial complex than the next 10 largest militaries in the world combined-- six of which are our allies. We have more of our citizens incarcerated than any other country on earth. Our infrastructure is crumbling, our schools are underfunded, more and more people are homeless every day and we have not done a damn thing about the greatest existential crisis that humankind has ever faced-- Climate change. By their decision, the DCCC has aided and abetted Congress people who are so interested in the corporate cash, they will never be part of the solution.

We are going to win anyway; we have over a 1,000 people signed up to volunteer and small (non-corporate) donations are coming in from all over the country. Democracy is still alive and well in spite of the best efforts of the DCCC."

Jessica Cisneros, the progressive attorney running in South Texas for a seat held by Trump's-Dem Henry Cuellar said the DCCC, for all their bluster, was only been a minor inconvenience. She told me that when she was "in the process of hiring consultants, we kept running into people who would tell us 'hey, we are rooting for you, but we signed the DCCC pledge so we can't work with you.' That meant we had fewer options to choose from, but in the end it didn't prevent us from building out an incredibly talented team."

The DCCC boycott of reform candidates has led to a new data base of progressive vendors willing to work on primaries despite the DCCC’s ban. They tend to be younger, more progressive and there are more women and people of color-- groups that have had a tough time breaking into the DCCC old boys network of tired hacks anyway.

Waleed Shahid, Communications Director at Justice Democrats: "They kind of shot themselves in the foot. You had new, compelling candidates getting more people involved who want primary challenges like AOC and Ayanna, and then they come out with a policy that’s basically like 'No more AOCs or Ayannas.' It really galvanized progressives.”

Do you see the DCCC trying to make a case for Lipinski or their other corrupt conservative incumbents to the public? Nope, only among wealthy conservative donors and slimy lobbyists, Bustos' base. She even had to cancel her own public fundraiser with Lipinski because she was getting so much pushback from the Democratic base who are unhappy about his Republican policy positions. "Young Democrats of America at over 70 colleges even called for a boycott in donations over the “blacklist” policy.

CANCELED!

Dr. Michael Owens is on the other side of the country, in a suburban district southwest of Atlanta where the incumbent, Blue Dog David Scott literally raises money for Republican candidates! "When we launched our campaign," Michael told me, "we were getting a lot of interest from several of the big Democratic consulting firms and top consultants across the country that wanted to be part of this very critical race for Georgia's 13th District. Georgia is a critical battleground state and progressives are leading the way. As I'm a proven progressive party and grassroots leader, my campaign was generating lots of interests. But once the DCCC made it clear that they were going to aggressively enforce the policy, the calls from those consultants ceased and a few we were in discussions with stopped returning our calls. The DCCC's stated goal is to 'support Democratic House candidates every step of the way to fortify and expand our new Democratic Majority.' I'm a Democratic House candidate and I don't feel supported by this policy and I don't understand how it will help us win a larger majority in the House. In fact, it will do quite the opposite. I'm fully supportive of the DCCC effort in flipping seats. However, this policy isn't necessary, especially in solid blue districts. The DCCC should promote democracy and not stifle it. As it relates to Democratic primary elections like mine, the voters of the district should to decide who their next congressperson is, not the DCCC."

Brianna Wu isn't running for a seat held by a Blue Dog. Her conservative congressman in a Boston area district is a New Dem, just as bad. "When you think about corporate Democrats fighting progress, " she said, "Stephen Lynch is the first person that should come to mind. Lynch voted against Obamacare and for the Iraq war. Lynch thinks we have 100 years to address climate change. Amazingly, Lynch has introduced bills that remove LGBT from hate crime protections. If Alabama can elect a Democrat to the Senate, Massachusetts can elect a real Democrats to the House."

Several of these conservative incumbents have been so frightened by their own constituents that they've signed on as co-sponsors to legislation they have never backed. It's almost comical to watch.

Shaniyat Chowdhury is also up against a New Dem-- this one named Congress' most corrupt member-- Gregory Meeks, in southeast Queens. Shan is no fan of the DCCC. "The DCCC’s only priority is to protect Democratic incumbents who are able to funnel millions in dark money into the party. It’s quid pro quo at the most corrupt level in our political system. While I identify as a Democrat, I think our values need to reflect a working class agenda. The Democratic establishment has no problem protecting incumbents who are corrupt, hidden Republicans. For example, my primary opponent Gregory Meeks, is one of the most corrupt members of Congress. He rakes in millions of dollars from the finance industry and has no trouble voting with Republicans to deregulate the big banks that prey on working families. On top of that, he uses campaign money to showboat his luxurious lifestyle. Just last week, my team and I were canvassing on the busy streets off Jamaica Ave. Meeks happened to stand right behind us and we handed him our literature before he walked back to his fancy Lexus, which he claims on his campaign expenses. As we continued to canvass, we found out he was on his way to a high-dollar fundraiser that many of his corporate and real estate executive donors were attending. This is the type of machine we need out of our politics. It’s the machine that we need to beat so we can represent the working class."

CA-16 is a Central Valley district where the incumbent is an out-of-touch conservative Blue Dog, Jim Costa. Kim Williams is the alternative progressive reformer. "Last weekend we all participated in the state pre-endorsement process. The California Democratic Party requires at least 50% of the vote plus one to go on to the convention, and if the incumbent earns 80% of the vote, its an automatic endorsement. To participate, candidates must court votes from 80 delegates in the district. And for CA-16, those delegates included the incumbent, another establishment candidate, some of their campaign staff, their close friends and their family members. The list was so pre-cooked, I almost did not even bother to apply. But I’m glad I did because in spite of the tiny and close knit network that shaped this pivotal election, I was able to garner four votes and block anyone from moving forward. The state party will not issue an endorsement, and no candidate will be able to claim the backing of an entire state party based on a few dozen votes from friends. It was a small but important victory that will open the door to a more rigorous public debate and an opportunity to garner party backing based on an actual majority of votes."