Election Reflections-- Blue Dogs, Schumer, Texas, Florida... You Want To Know What Went Wrong?

Anthony Brindisi (NY) and Joe Cunningham (SC) were elected to the House in the 2018 anti-red wave-- just when Blue Dog chairwoman Kyrsten Sinema graduated to the Senate. Sinema was the worst Democrat in Congress-- by far. She voted against anything and everything that smacked of progressivism. She voted with the GOP on progressive roll calls around 75% of the time. Now she's the worst Democrat in the Senate, although we'll soon see if Frackenlooper gives her a run for her money.

Back in the House, Brindisi and Cunningham spent the last two years see-sawing back and forth for the #1 and #2 worst Dems. Both are virulent Blue Dogs with ghastly voting records that could only be analyzed in one way: Republican. At the moment, Cunningham's record is slightly worse-- 76.54% against progressive initiatives, while Brindisi "only" voted against progressivism 75.31%. None the less, Pelosi and Bustos decided to waste $4 million trying to save Cunningham and $5.5 million trying to save Brindisi. Two of the GOP's best friends inside the Democratic caucus-- but especially Brindisi-- spent their time whining about how if anything progressive was brought to the floor for a vote it would doom their reelections.

Cunningham was defeated by Republican Nancy Mace (having out-spent her by $2 million) 216,042 (50.6%) to 210,627 (49.4%). It looked like Brindisi would be joining him in the losers' column-- and he still may-- but... yesterday Syracuse.com reported that Brindisi has surged back into contention, winning the absentee count 73-27% (25,998-7,787)... Brindisi has now cut Tenney’s lead to 10,294 votes, down from 28,422 votes on Election Day. There are at least 20,000 ballots remaining to be counted across the district. Brindisi will have to win at least 77% of those ballots to overtake Tenney." That's a steep hill to climb but it isn't impossible that Congress will be stuck with Brindisi and his whining for two more years.

Let's flip back to the Senate for a minute-- although the DCCC operates exactly like to DSCC-- and take a look at a post from July by Andrew Perez, with the benefit of hindsight-- Senate Democrats’ Machine Spent $15 Million To Destroy Progressive Primary Candidates. Short version: "The Democratic establishment has successfully blocked progressive Senate candidates in primaries, with the help of labor unions, Wall Street tycoons and corporate interests."

Now that the Schumer and the DSCC have managed to confound every pollster and lose the Senate again, it's worth looking at how they undermined every single progressive who tried to run-- spending $15 million in the process during the primaries. They hate progressives and fear them more than Republicans, who they have much more in common with.

While Schumer's DSCC hand-puppet, Catherine Cortez Masto (NV) promised last year that the DSCC would support progressive incumbent Ed Markey if he faced a primary challenger, they reneged entirely when he was challenged by a far less progressive Rep. Joe Kennedy III. Although a SuperPAC set up by Kennedy, the New Leadership PAC, spent $4,126,114 bolstering him, neither the DSCC nor Schumer's slimy Senate Majority PAC, spent a nickel helping Markey. Instead, they spent millions helping very right-wing Democrats like Frackenlooper to defeat progressive former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff. "In the final weeks of the race," wrote Perez, "SMP spent $1 million to boost Hickenlooper, after he spent his failed presidential campaign attacking key tenets of progressives’ legislative agenda, including Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. At the time of the cash infusion, Hickenlooper was losing ground in the polls and engulfed in scandals: He had just been fined by Colorado’s Independent Ethics Commission for violating state ethics law as governor, the local CBS station uncovered evidence of his gubernatorial office raking in cash from oil companies, and a video circulated showed Hickenlooper comparing his job as a politician to a slave on a slave ship, being whipped by a scheduler."

The Schumer-controled SMP spent $228,490,266, "pooling cash from both organized labor and business titans to promote corporate-aligned candidates over more progressive primary challengers. Working for Working Americans, a super PAC funded by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, has donated $5 million. The Laborers' International Union of North America’s super PAC has given $1.5 million. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers’s political action committee has chipped in $1.3 million. SMP has received also big donations from groups affiliated with labor unions like the Service Employees International Union ($1 million), the National Association of Letter Carriers ($750,000), and Communications Workers of America ($500,000). Overall, the top donor to SMP so far this cycle has been Democracy PAC-- a super PAC that’s bankrolled by billionaire George Soros and the Fund for Policy Reform, a nonprofit funded by Soros. Democracy PAC has contributed $8.5 million to SMP. Other donors from the financial industry include: Renaissance Technologies founder and billionaire Jim Simons and his wife Deborah ($5.5 million) and billionaire D. E. Shaw & Co. founder David Shaw ($1 million)."

Some major donors have financial stakes in current and future legislation.

For instance: SMP received a $1 million donation from billionaire Jonathan Gray, an executive at Blackstone, which owns the hospital staffing chain, TeamHealth. SMP also received $2 million from the Greater New York Hospital Association.

In late 2019, Schumer helped stall Senate legislation that would have kept patients from receiving “surprise medical bills,” the hefty charges that occur when they visit hospitals that are in their insurance network but are unknowingly treated by providers who are considered out-of-network.

SMP is affiliated with Majority Forward, a dark money group focused on attacking Republican Senate candidates. Majority Forward received $450,000 in 2018 from pharmacy giant CVS Health-- which also owns health insurer Aetna. The group also received $300,000 from the American Health Care Association (AHCA), a trade association that represents the nursing home industry.

The Democratic primary candidates backed by the DSCC have expressed reservations about Medicare for All, arguing they believe people should be allowed to keep their private health insurance if they want it. Many of the DSCC’s favored candidates do support creating a public health insurance option.

Meanwhile, the Real Estate Roundtable, a trade group for real estate investors, donated $50,000 to Majority Forward. Schumer and Senate Democrats recently helped Republicans unanimously pass pandemic relief legislation that included a special, little-noticed provision that amounted to $170 billion worth of new tax breaks for wealthy real estate investors.

In addition to the Colorado race, SMP has waded into at least three other Senate primaries this year.

In North Carolina, SMP funded Carolina Blue, a super PAC that spent $4.5 million to help veteran and former state senator Cal Cunningham win the primary in March. Cunningham handily defeated his chief opponent, state senator Erica Smith, who was running to his left...

In Iowa, SMP spent nearly $7 million to promote real estate developer Theresa Greenfield. She easily bested her two primary opponents, including progressive Kimberly Graham, who campaigned in support of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.

SMP has already spent more than $2 million in Maine, including nearly $500,000 to promote House Speaker Sara Gideon in the Democratic primary. Some of the group’s advertising against Republican Senator Susan Collins was also designed to boost Gideon.

The final polls and final predictions showed Sara Gideon, Theresa Greenfield and Cal Cunningham beating, respectively, Collins, Ernst and Tillis. Instead the 3 Republicans are returning to the Senate. Gideon's share of the vote was a pathetic 42.7%, Greenfield's was 45.2% and Tillis' was 47.0%. The DSCC and Schumer's PAC spent ungodly amounts, as did the Democratic candidates.

In North Carolina, Cunningham raised $46,795,495 to Tillis' $21,474,728. The DSCC spent $24,542,003 and Schumer's PAC spent $35,838,924.

In Maine, Gideon raised $68,577,474 to Collins' $26,511,555. The DSCC spent $4,667,250 and Schumer's PAC spent $27,909,459.

In Iowa, Greenfield raised $47,004,937 to Ernst's $23,536,707. The DSCC spent $27,899,050 and Schumer's PAC spent $41,225,046.

Both the DSCC and the DCCC have decided to blame progressives for their cataclysmic losses, even though every single incumbent who lost was a conservative and every single progressive-- including progressives in tough districts like Matt Cartwright, Dan Kildee, Andy Levin, Peter DeFazio and Jahana Hayes-- won.

Last week Ryan Grimm asked progressive challenger Mike Siegel this question: "Do you have to run as a kind of centrist or moderate in some of these districts, or can a progressive message win in a swing district in Texas?" Mike began by comparing his race to that of another re-match Texan, Sri Kulkarni (who had an open seat this time). Kulkarni is an avowed conservative, a corporate Democrat and careerist endorsed by both the Blue Dogs and New Dems. He raised $4,863,231 compared to Troy Nehls' (R) $1,532,299 and the DCCC and Pelosi's PAC spent $7.3 million bolstering him. He lost 209,735 (51.6%) to 181,318 (44.6%). Mike Siegel is a Squad-grade progressive who raised $2,332,415 compared to Michael McCaul's $3,515,771 (as of Oct. 14). The DCCC, which preferred a conservative Democrat run, spent $270 on Mike's race and Pelosi's PAC spent zero. Yes, you read that right-- $270. McCaul was reelected 215,896 (52.5%) to 186,350 (46.3%). Had the DCCC spent part of the $7.3 million they wasted on Sri, would Mike have won? We'll never know, will we?

In answer to Grim's question, Mike pointed out that being conservative didn't help Kulkarni and even though he campaigned loudly on Medicare for All, the Green New Deal and racial justice, Mike outperformed him by every possible metric.

[W]hat I would have liked to have tested is if we had an entire progressive ticket. You know, it could be that the most consequential decisions about my campaign were made March 3, Super Tuesday, when we decided that Bernie Sanders wasn’t gonna be the presidential nominee and, in Texas, we decided that Christina Tzintzún Ramirez wasn’t going to be our Senate nominee.

So with my analysis that I’m doing now with our team and many others in Texas is what would it take to really get out more poor voters? I mean, I’m talking about poor people. Like, when you canvass in rural Texas, in a town like Eagle Lake, or Brenham, in the summer, you meet people who are in these rundown, double-wide kind of houses, basically falling apart at the seams-- people who have to survive three months of 100-degree weather with no air conditioning at all, people who have very marginal employment. What’s it going to take to get those folks to care about an election? You know, whether you’re talking about black folks and Latinx voters in a city, or poor rural voters-- black, Latino, and white-- what’s it gonna take for them to really care about an election?

And to me, Bernie Sanders would have helped us make that populous case. You know, Texas has this tradition of populism; it goes back 100 years or more. But like, if we were really talking about farm policy, if we were really talking about water policy, if we were talking about rural jobs programs, things that really affect their lives. I mean, as a congressional candidate, I was talking about these things, but it’s hard to really break through.

Same thing with Christina. You know, statewide in Texas, we’re not going to flip Texas if we don’t win the RGV, the Rio Grande Valley. And, you know, if you haven’t been to Texas, you might not realize there are communities along the border called colonias, where they don’t even have running water and municipal sewage in some of these developments. I mean, these are like, you know, sometimes undocumented residents, sometimes U.S. citizens who are living in abject poverty. What’s it gonna take to get those folks to care? And it’s not some slick TV ads, it’s not a poll-tested message. Even for me, I got some DCCC support, and some of my messaging was about prescription drug prices and protecting pre-existing conditions. But I feel like that’s too nuanced for these folks. I mean, it has to be more direct.

You know, this, this might be a little off-topic, but one of the things I’m thinking about is, think about the movements in Venezuela under Hugo Chávez or Bolivia under Evo Morales. Evo Morales is supported by the poorest indigenous farmers from the high plains of Bolivia. Those people are engaged in the electoral process. In this country, poor people are not engaged in the electoral process.

And so, for me, on a gerrymandered map, I don’t know if I could have gotten more than 210,000 votes, like McCaul got, unless we were really doing organizing with poor people. And I think that’s a longer-term investment. That’s where it’s this question, these people who gave me $2800, when I called them and spoke to them for a minute, would they give me $1,000 if I was gonna say: We’re going to invest in a five-year project to do deep organizing these communities? Is the donor class willing to invest in changing the fundamental conditions in areas like mine that would really enable progressive change in the long term?

...[O]ne of the things I’ve been preaching on the campaign trail, you know, and I got to do some events with Bernie and he absolutely loved it-- you know, this is our New Deal moment, American history: crumbling U.S. infrastructure, massive wealth inequality, unemployment-- major crises we need to confront. In the 30s it was fascism rising in Western Europe; now, it’s climate change.

And how did we enact a New Deal in this country? You know, a 15-year program, the Works Progress Administration, massively investing in infrastructure, putting people to work in all sorts of jobs. It was FDR, when he ran for president the first time, talking about the New Deal every chance he gets: We’re gonna give you a New Deal. Whatever the question was-- economic policy, jobs, health care, you name it, we’re gonna give you a New Deal.

Imagine we had a candidate for president who for 10-12 months is talking nonstop about fundamental economic change. That’s what it takes. And that’s where the Democratic establishment, which to some extent supported me, although not as strongly as they could have, they’re not talking about that, because we’re too invested in conservative donors who don’t want us to say that.

And so we’re caught in between. You know, half the Democratic Party is still taking the corporate PAC money, moderating the message, saying: OK, we’re only going to talk about this extremely narrow issue, you know, protecting pre-existing conditions or negotiating prescription drug prices downwards, whereas like people don’t have AC and it’s 100 degrees every day, they don’t have gas in the car, they’re making $10 an hour and getting 20 hours a week. I mean, they are struggling to survive. They’re completely cynical about democracy as something that’s even real in the world. And we’re not speaking clearly to them about why it matters to vote.

Today, the Washington Post reported that "The parts of America that have seen strong job, population and economic growth in the past four years voted for Joe Biden, economic researchers found. In contrast, President Trump garnered his highest vote shares in counties that had some of the most sluggish job, population and economic growth during his term. Trump fared well among voters who said the economy was their top concern, and he even won votes in places that didn’t fare particularly well under his presidency. This is perhaps a continuation of the 2016 election, when Trump won a huge share of places that had struggled under President Barack Obama. Democrats tended to view the 2020 election more as a referendum on Trump, especially his response to the pandemic." It's worth hitting that Intercept link above and reading Ryan's whole interview with Siegel. But now I want to leave you with a quirky but apocryphal story by Richard Cooke in yesterday's Daily Beast: I Covered Congressional Races in Florida in 2018, and Boy Do I Know Why Trump Won the State in 2020. "One party’s aides were courteous and organized," he wrote. "The other’s could barely tell me when the candidate was speaking next. Wanna take a guess?" He covered FL-26 and FL-27 in 2018, when Debbie Mucarsel-Powell and Donna Shalala both flipped those very blue (but Republican-held) districts blue. This year, both flipped back to red.

Situated in and near Miami, these districts make up some of the most volatile and interesting political territory in the United States. FL-27 had voted heavily for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but the House seat had been held by a socially liberal Republican, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, for 30 years. Ros-Lehtinen was retiring, and on paper the district seemed a natural Dem pick-up. The districts also overlapped with Miami-Dade, the most populous county in Florida, whose turnout would be critical in deciding a narrow gubernatorial race.

Instead of requesting interviews, I decided to see the candidates like an undecided voter would, joining the audience for stump speeches and campaign events. This seemed standard, almost old-fashioned reporting. It never occurred to me that it would be hard, let alone so hard that I’d need to extend my stay in Miami. By leaving time, I felt not like an undecided voter, but like a private detective. Finding a schedule of Republican campaign events took 15 minutes. With Democrats, this process took five days.

...Perhaps this information was at one of the other offices. Volunteers tried to be helpful. One suggested a website might have the information, and when pressed, offered unsarcastically that I “try Google.” Another showed me an event dated two weeks prior. Finally, with fanfare, someone produced a number for another campaign office. They could put me in touch with the right person. I stepped outside and dialed. I had called the switchboard for the City of Miami Gardens, Florida.

Irritation was turning into intrigue, and while the next few days were mileage and frustration-heavy, they were in some ways a reporter’s dream. The factional fighting between Miami-Dade Democrats, Florida Democrats, Senate campaign offices and the national party was flagrant. One of the few times I saw the operation energized was when I mentioned the Miami-Dade Democrats to a staffer for and she rolled her eyes. I heard more than one volunteer try to remember the names on the ballot and fail. I was left unsupervised in campaign offices, in prime eavesdropping real estate, though this was just a bonus: campaigners were ready to vent their frustrations, and I opened my confessional.

By comparison, the Republicans I encountered were courteous, organized, and dedicated. I heard a speech by the GOP challenger for FL-27, Maria Salazar, and afterwards her apparatchiks handed me business cards. At voting locations drowned in GOP paraphernalia, campaign staff showed me detailed spreadsheets, tallying how early turn-out numbers tracked with their booth-by-booth strategy. They asked if I needed anything. The competition dynamic was starting to remind me of 1980s comedy movie: a ruthless, well-heeled team up against a band of plucky misfits.

My grail quest became no easier. At one field location, I arrived just before the advertised opening time and waited by myself for hours before leaving empty-handed. Finding the number for one press secretary took phone calls to 22 different people, most of whom didn’t know who he was. Several times I was told that a particular volunteer was important and “knew everything.” Tracked down at a polling booth, he turned out to be a young backpacker, freshly arrived from Spain, who knew as little as anyone else. Later, I realized the source of this special status: he was one of the few people on the ground who could speak Spanish. Donna Shalala herself (i.e. the candidate) could not.

Following a hot tip about a possible press contact, I turned up at another campaign office with a different strategy: I would refuse to leave. After the traditional greeting-- bewilderment, being offered a chair within earshot of indiscrete conversations-- there was a short conclave. I could speak with Ben. Ben and I sat facing each other, in the middle of an open-plan office. By this time I had become a kind of connoisseur of incompetence, and I sensed that Ben was good at something, but he had not dealt with a reporter before. “Can I ask what your role with the campaign is?” Ben was a policy adviser. He had no idea if his candidate had any events that day, and no idea why he was speaking with me.

When the comms person did come in (this was treated as a special occasion), our conversation had an informality that was almost charming. I explained my difficulty with the Democratic campaigns, and the contrast with Republicans. “They’re a lot more organized than us!” she said, and I had to laugh. They sure were! Here at last was some kind of schedule, but as we stepped through it, something was missing. Through exhaustive internet searches, I had found a digital ticketing website offering a Q&A event featuring Donna Shalala. Why wasn’t it on the schedule? “Ohhh, that’s cancelled.” Perhaps, she said, they could line up an interview instead? I explained that I had been trying to see the election from the perspective of a voter, not a reporter, and how information was freely available from Republicans and almost non-existent from Democrats. Catching my drift, she started to flush.

The call came through later, when I was in a Haitian-owned coin laundry. A DNC flack in Washington, D.C. had heard I was making trouble, planning some kind of “Dems in disarray” story, and as I scribbled notes on top of an industrial dryer, I picked up the story that had been relayed to him, as much from his tone as his words. A foreign correspondent had arrived in Miami expecting VIP treatment, then got miffed when the red carpet wasn’t rolled out. Smearing the ground game would be revenge for a bruised ego. “Money at a national level has gone into these seats,” he assured me.

Walking him through what I’d seen-- and hadn’t seen-- only made him angry. “We’re going to win both of those seats,” he said, berating my ignorance. It was a strange reaction. By then I probably had as clear a snapshot of the election in Miami as anyone. Wasn’t that information useful? Potentially important, even? Instead, someone hundreds of miles away was blithely junking this eye-witness evidence in favor of obnoxious confidence. “You’ll see,” he insisted, “when we win FL-26 and FL-27 on election night, I’ll message you.” And they did, and he did.

In my reply, I pointed out that Andrew Gillum, the Democratic favorite to become Florida’s governor, had lost by a narrow margin, and that poor turnout in Miami-Dade was the culprit. And perhaps you can imagine my lack of surprise two years later, when FL-26 and FL-27 both fell to GOP challengers, one of them Maria Salazar. On the presidential ballot, Clinton’s 30-point lead in Miami-Dade shrunk to a 7-point margin for Biden.

In a piece titled What the Hell Happened to Democrats in Miami-Dade?, Rolling Stone observed ruefully that “Miami-Dade is considered safe—until election night, when suddenly it’s not,” and quoted Maria Elena Lopez, first vice-chair of the Miami-Dade Democrats.

Lopez lamented how the Democratic National Convention did not talk to, fund, or advise the local parties. “We don’t get any feedback from the DNC,” she said. “They don’t come to us and say, ‘Hey, what is the messaging that would work in your community? Where are we weak?’ [The party] doesn’t do that, at all. We are on our own.”

“Unfortunately, this is not the first time that we’ve seen this,” she said. It was not the first time I had seen it either.

Debbie Mucarsel-Powll raised $6,178,239 compared to Carlos Gimenez's $1,946,504. The DCCC and Pelosi's PAC spent about $6 million trying to save her. She lost the blue D+6 seat 177,223 (51.7%) to 165,407. Donna Shalala (the one who speaks no Spanish in a 71.7% Latino district) raised around the same $3,000,000 that her opponent, Maria Salazar (from 2018) spent. Shalala was so out of touch with her own constituents that she didn't even request help from the DCCC. In fact, she gave them money! She lost 176,114 (51.3%) to 166,705 (48.6%).

Are Big 2022 Losses For House Dems Already Baked Into The Cake?

 

We've been predicting for all this year that the Republicans would win seats in 2022. But... that was based on several assumptions, which turned out to me overly optimistic about the course of the 2020 cycle and the ability of Democrats to prosper even with a completely inept and incapable DCCC with the worst chairperson in living memory. The assumptions were:

• that an anti-Trump tsunami would give the Democrats many new seats in traditionally Republican districts;
• that this year the Democrats would hold the reddest seats they had won in 2018;
• that going forward, the Democrats would have control of both Houses of Congress and the White House;
• that going forward the Democrats would accomplish nothing-- or at least nothing big-- that would help working families.

The first 3 assumptions were all wrong. If there was an anti-red wave, it was weak and didn't impact down-ballot races... at least not in favor of Democrats. In the House, the Democrats picked up 3 seats and lost around a dozen (votes are still being counted in several). The Democrats failed to win the Senate and it isn't likely the two January 5th runoffs in Georgia are going to go their way. If they did, that would get them to a 50-50 tie, which could be broken by Vice President Kamala. BUT... getting to that 50-50 vote is dependent on a shitload of garbage senators cooperating... like Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Joe Manchin (WV), Tom Carper (DE), Jacky Rosen (NV), Mark Warner (VA), all of whom vote against progressive proposals, and soon to be joined by Mark Kelly (AZ) and Frackenlooper (CO) who will certainly be as bad, if not worse.

Back to the House, minority leader McCarthy came out yesterday and said that he guarantees that Republicans will win the majority in the 2022 midterms: "We have never been stronger in the sense of what the future holds for us-- we have never been in a stronger position. We won this by adding more people to the party. And we won this in an atmosphere where we were the one group that everyone guaranteed we would lose. And we’re the ones who won." Yeah... and the seats they won:

• Collin Peterson (MN-07)- R+12
• Joe Cunningham (SC-01)- R+10
• Kendra Horn (OK-05)- R+10
• Xochitl Torres Small (NM-02)- R+6
• Harley Rouda (CA-48)- R+4
• Max Rose (NY-11)- R+3
• Anthony Brindisi (NY-22)- R+6
• Ben McAdams (UT-04)- R+13

That's what you call some low-hanging fruit. And then there were the two overwhelmingly Hispanic districts in Miami-Dade, where only the Democratic Party would be stupid enough to not run Hispanic candidates. They were begging for losses and they got them, from prominent Republican Latinos.

Washington Post reporter Paulina Firozi, wrote that the 2020 suburban thing didn't work out for the DCCC the way they predicted it would. "Democrats," she reported, "have spent years wooing suburban voters, seeking to build a durable House majority on a foundation of affluent, well-educated voters repelled by President Trump and a hard-right GOP. But last week, that foundation developed serious cracks. Republicans not only reversed Democratic midterm gains in rural districts that had voted strongly for Trump in 2016, but clawed back at least one seat in Southern California while leading in other suburban districts that are yet to be called. Even more alarming for Democrats, predictions of broad gains in the suburbs of Texas, Indiana, Missouri and other states simply failed to materialize-- casting doubt on the party’s long-term House strategy of offsetting the party’s dwindling appeal among less-educated White voters with greater support among the more educated."

That's what I always mean when I talk about these losers-- the Kendra Horns, Harley Roudas, Anthony Brindisis, etc, ruining the Democratic brand. In most places a Democratic coalition of unionists, women, people of color, young people... turned out for Biden-- most to get rid of Trump, rather than to elect Biden per se. Democratic messaging isn't offering them anything much-- Pelosi's PayGo?-- beyond Trump must go. Whether or not McCarthy will be able to deliver on his "guarantee" for 2022 will depend on how seriously the Democrats take the identity crisis they're living through now. If they are determined to remain a Republican-lite party... well, we all know how that always turns out.

The Democrats should try to pass a progressive agenda that would clearly help working families. If that gets blocked by the Senate again, they-- including Biden-- can and should blame the gridlock on obstructionist Republicans who don't want people-- voters-- to get a fair shake. If the Democrats do that, rather than take the Republican-lite road-- they can defy historical projections and win seats in 2022. When FDR won a landslide in 1932, House Democrats won a net of 97 Republican seats. They did stuff for people for the next two years and were rewarded in the midterms, watching 14 more Republican seats flip blue. In 1944, FDR was reelected to her 4th term and he brought 20 new Democratic House members in on his coattails. The 1946 midterms was another reward for Democrats who did stuff for people: 55 more seats! The midterms after Bill Clinton's reelection saw the Democrats win 5 seats, which led to Newt Gingrich's resignation.

Replacing Cheri Bustos At The DCCC With Someone Just Like Her-- The Current Plan-- Will Accomplish Nothing At All Except For Even Worse Losses In 2022

 

House Democrats, under the guidance of Cheri Bustos-- who has already fallen on her sword-- and Pelosi-- who insists she is an indispensable historical figure and never will-- have spent close to half a billion dollars to lose. The cycle started well for the House Dems. The North Carolina Supreme Court redrew district lines and handed the Democrats two seats previously held by Republicans. Cheri Bustos was eager to claim them as part of her brilliant ability to flip red seats blue. But on election night, that wasn't the narrative that unfolded. Three North Carolina challengers failed to dislodged other targeted Republicans. And it was far worse for the DCCC around the country. As of this moment, 6 conservative Democratic incumbents have seen their seats flip from blue to red, despite millions of dollars wasted on them by the DCCC and Pelosi's House Majority PAC (the figures below):

• Harley Rouda (New Dem-CA)- $9,542,690
• Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (New Dem-FL)- $6,221,973
• Donna Shalala (FL)- zero (maybe if she had just joined the New Dems or Blue Dogs...)
• Abby Finkenauer (secret New Dem-IA)- $3,520,621
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- $4,939,977
• Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog-NM)- $6,258,912
• Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK)- $5,290,990
• Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog-SC)- $3,935,049

It's almost like the DCCC gave a dollar to each candidate for every time they voted with the Republicans against progressive measures! But this doesn't describe the extent of the carnage. New York has 7 uncalled races, 5 for Democratic incumbents, 2 of whom are as good as dead: Blue Dogs Anthony Brindisi and Max Rose. Of California's 3 uncalled races, 2 are for Democratic incumbents and though TJ Cox and Gil Cisneros may both win, one or both is just as likely to lose. The uncalled race in Illinois is from Lauren Underwood's seat and it looks like she'll be ok. The uncalled race is Iowa is for the seat Democrat Dave Loebsack gave up and with 89% of the vote counted, the Republican, Mariannette Miller-Meeks has 196,860 votes and Democrat Rita Hart has 196,812, a 48 vote spread! The DCCC spent north of $6.5 million trying to hold this seat and Hart outraised Miller-Meeks $3,631,135 to $1,518,295. And that leaves Utah, where 99% of the votes are counted, leaving Blue Dog Ben McAdams losing to retired football player Burgess Owens, 172,678 (47.5%) to 171,039 (47.0%). The DCCC spent $5,975,685 trying to save McAdams, who mostly votes against anything that even hints of progressivism.

In any case, the Democrats gained 3 seats-- an open seat in the Atlanta suburbs + the two seats the judges gave them in North Carolina-- and lost between 8 and 14 (or more). So a net loss between 5 and 11-- or worse, but not better. Yet somehow, Politico's "Huddle" writer, Melanie Zanona. thought the best explanation of that would be to write "with Dems likely to have a thinner caucus next year." A sloppy thought like that pisses me off. Why "likely?" Is that some kind of Beltway-moron-Speak?

Zanona asserted that "Tensions inside the Democratic party are boiling over and spilling out into public view. The latest shots came from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who responded to a report that fellow New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries asked other top Dems on a private leadership call: 'Do we want to govern or do we want to be internet celebrities?'"

It might be helpful at this point to mention that Hakeem in an establishment liberal and Pelosi's choice as Next Speaker (her former choice, Joe Crowley, having been banished from Congress when that same AOC beat him in 2018). Jeffries has two Twitter accounts, one under @Hakeem_Jeffries, which has 17,800 followers and one under @RepJeffries with 298,000 followers. Not bad! Almost 316,000 followers if you combine them. AOC, on the other hand, has 10.2 million people following her on Twitter. Maybe there's a reason for the disparity that Jeffries should think about rather than trying-- ineffectively-- to ridicule.

She responded to Jeffries by noting that it is "Pretty astounding that some Dems don’t believe it’s possible to govern, be politically popular, and command formidable bully pulpits at the same time, but it actually explains a lot about how we got here. We don’t have to choose between these things! We can do better and win!"

Yes, indeed. But Zanona wrote that that made he ask herself-- and share with Politico readers "At what point, if ever, do progressives form a Freedom Caucus of the left? The conservative group wielded immense power (and created quite a few headaches for leadership) when the GOP held the majority, by sticking together as a voting bloc and bending the party to their will. And progressives have shown interest in flexing their muscles next year. The Congressional Progressive Caucus recently adopted some major reforms intended to centralize its growing power in Washington. Among the changes: new rules on attendance and voting, as well as eliminating the second co-chair position... [I]t actually wouldn’t take much for progressives to be powerful. And the four-member 'squad' is set to expand its ranks next year with the additions of Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman and Ritchie Torres." I think she left off Mondaire Jones but, no matter, she included Ritchie Torres, no doubt he has more in common with AOC than with Jeffries, which is not remotely the case.

Zanona wrote that "squad members have shown varying degrees of willingness to play hard ball. And they might not want to be seen as obstructionist when Dems finally have the White House. As former Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows once told your Huddle host, they would have to be willing to completely 'burn the ships down' in order to be successful. And so far, most progressives do not appear to be at that point. (In fact, some have directly said they don't want to be the Democratic version of the Freedom Caucus.) But that could change, depending on how leadership navigates the party’s civil war, who Joe Biden taps to serve in his Cabinet and administration, and which policies party leaders decide to pursue."

Party leaders... yes, most of them in their seventies and eighties and long past their expiration dates but refusing to face the reality of retirement. John Harris noted that conservative Democrats, establishment liberals and progressives all agree on one thing: the party leadership is "arrogant, bereft of creativity, generationally obsolete." AOC added that they are "blinded [by] anti-activist sentiment," while right-of-center Democrat Conor Lamb told the NY Times that he and his crowd "don’t always feel that the leadership takes our input as seriously as we would like."

2020 showed the limits of mobilization politics. There is a near-term problem, and a long-term one.

In the moment, the things that a candidate or party do to mobilize their side, even or especially when successful, typically also motivate the other side. It was Trump, on his way to winning the second-most votes in American history, who helped Biden win the first-most. The Democratic turnout for the presidency didn’t translate to gains in the House and Senate; turns out there are still some ticket-splitters out there.

In a larger sense, even if a mobilization strategy wins an election it is a persuasion strategy that will win an argument. If AOC helps fundamentally change the U.S. response to climate change, or systemic racial inequities, these would be outsized historic achievements. She is right that you can’t do this with the strategy of caution and accommodation that some moderates-- but not all-- gravitate toward. But you also can’t do it without a constant calibration of appeals that are both challenging and reassuring. You can’t do it without reframing and updating outmoded terms of debate. You can’t do it without engaging consistently-- in both political and substantive terms-- people whose views overlap only in part with your own.

In some ways, this tension between the politics of mobilization versus persuasion is more central to the Democrats’ future than the increasingly stale debate over whether moderates are too tepid to drive meaningful change or progressives are too radical to win.

It is folly for progressives to avoid the obvious: The reason they are far from achieving their policy aims goes beyond the notion that moderate Democrats are clods who can’t play the game. There are many places in the country where progressives need better arguments to reach people who don’t currently support their goals.

The post-election memo by four progressive groups-- New Deal Strategies, Justice Democrats, Sunrise Movement and Data for Progress-- came closer to the mark than Ocasio-Cortez’s interview. It called for a new set of policy and rhetorical appeals that seek to merge the Black Lives Matter message with an economic message that would also appeal to less--prosperous and less-educated whites who have been attracted to Trump. There is not abundant evidence that this can be successful, but it is at least more attuned to the genuine challenge than scolding fellow Democrats for not being with it on Facebook.

Ocasio-Cortez has earned the right to lecture moderate Democrats like Conor Lamb on how to connect with a rising generation of impatient progressives. Lamb has earned the right to lecture Ocasio-Cortez on how to take a seat that used to be held by Republicans and put it in the Democratic column. But a more promising strategy likely would put listening before lecturing.

Harris, an establishment type through and through dismisses AOC as being "on a political planet where she is amply rewarded for her uncommon skill at framing issues in bold terms, for her stylish spontaneity, for her comfort with political combat, for her instinct to open her sails rather than trim them." He is certainly right about the need for more persuasion, but he suggests progressives need to be more like the Republican-lite members of their own caucus. Why? Because he doesn't understand what giving in to conservatives mean to working families. And never will.

Why Did The DCCC Fail So Spectacularly On Tuesday? Let's Ask 3 Really Smart Philosophic Types: AOC, Eric Zuesse And Anand Giridharadas

 

Today's most-talked about NY Times piece, at least in my universe, is Astead Herndon's post-election interview with AOC. Short version-- AOC: "People really want the Democratic Party to fight for them." If only Pelosi and Hoyer would tattoo that on their foreheads so they saw it whenever they checked the mirror! Their DCCC chair this cycle, Cheri Bustos, a protégée of centrist bankster Rahm Emanuel, aside from losing probably a dozen House seats while Biden won the election, nearly lost her own seat-- a D+3 district that was gerrymandered by the Democrat Party-controlled Illinois legislature to elect Democrats. With votes still being counted, the race was finally called for Bustos after a few harrowing days and it looks like she squeaked by with a 51.9-48.1% win over Esther Joy King, who enjoyed no significant help from the Republican Party (while Pelosi's SuperPAC used a late IE costing $1,044,002 to smear her). As of October 14 Bustos had spent $4,573,839 to King's $1,634,304. Bustos, in line with the DCCC, offered her constituents nothing at all to vote for her. Like her fellow New Dems and Blue Dogs, she opposes every popular systemic progressive initiative to ease the burdens conservatives have put on their lives. Yesterday, Politico noted that she is being considered for a Cabinet position.

Herndon began by affirming that AOC had been "a good soldier" for the party and Biden in the battle against the fascist threat. After Biden was declared the winner on Saturday, though, she "made clear the divisions within the party that animated the primary still exist. And she dismissed recent criticisms from some Democratic House members who have blamed the party’s left for costing them important seats." [Note: except that you may consider every seat "an important seat," not a single lost seat is even remotely important and the House Democratic caucus is MUCH better off without every one of the losers.] AOC put it differently, telling Herndon that some of the members who lost had made themselves "sitting ducks." Herndon's first question was to ask her for her macro takeaway. It certainly isn't what the pundits and high-priced consultants are saying to explain the abject failure of the DCCC last week. AOC:

Well, I think the central one is that we aren’t in a free fall to hell anymore. But whether we’re going to pick ourselves up or not is the lingering question. We paused this precipitous descent. And the question is if and how we will build ourselves back up.

We know that race is a problem, and avoiding it is not going to solve any electoral issues. We have to actively disarm the potent influence of racism at the polls.

But we also learned that progressive policies do not hurt candidates. Every single candidate that co-sponsored Medicare for All in a swing district kept their seat. We also know that co-sponsoring the Green New Deal was not a sinker. Mike Levin was an original co-sponsor of the legislation, and he kept his seat.

Mike Levin and Harley Rouda were both elected in 2018 to represent adjoining districts. In Orange County, everything north of Laguna Niguel, Mission Viejo and Rancho Santa Margarita in part of Rouda's district and everything south of Dana Point, San Juan Capistrano and Madera Ranch is part of Levin's district. Before their victories, both districts were occupied by odious Republicans, Dana Rohrabacher and Darrell Issa. Levin is a moderate Democrat; Rouda, a former Republican, is a conservative Democrat. Levin's victory was quickly called-- 192,105 (53.4%) to 167,423 (46.6%). With 99% of the vote counted Rouda is losing to Republican Michelle Steel-- 196,208 (50.9%) to 189,235 (49.1%). Since being elected, Levin has been on the right side of crucial progressive roll calls 79.01% of the time. Rouda, on the other hand, is a New Dem and rates an "F" from ProgressivePunch; he's voted with progressives just 64.20% of the time. Progressives in his district know him as a DINO and he campaigned as a Republican-lite candidate.

Herndon pressed AOC on this tendency among conservative Democrats to shy away from issues that are important to Democratic voters: "Democrats lost seats in an election where they were expected to gain them. Is that what you are ascribing to racism and white supremacy at the polls?"

I think it’s going to be really important how the party deals with this internally, and whether the party is going to be honest about doing a real post-mortem and actually digging into why they lost. Because before we even had any data yet in a lot of these races, there was already finger-pointing that this was progressives’ fault and that this was the fault of the Movement for Black Lives.

I’ve already started looking into the actual functioning of these campaigns. And the thing is, I’ve been unseating Democrats for two years. I have been defeating D.C.C.C.-run campaigns for two years. That’s how I got to Congress. That’s how we elected Ayanna Pressley. That’s how Jamaal Bowman won. That’s how Cori Bush won. And so we know about extreme vulnerabilities in how Democrats run campaigns.

Some of this is criminal. It’s malpractice. Conor Lamb spent $2,000 on Facebook the week before the election. I don’t think anybody who is not on the internet in a real way in the Year of our Lord 2020 and loses an election can blame anyone else when you’re not even really on the internet.

And I’ve looked through a lot of these campaigns that lost, and the fact of the matter is if you’re not spending $200,000 on Facebook with fund-raising, persuasion, volunteer recruitment, get-out-the-vote the week before the election, you are not firing on all cylinders. And not a single one of these campaigns were firing on all cylinders.

...These folks are pointing toward Republican messaging that they feel killed them, right? But why were you so vulnerable to that attack?

If you’re not door-knocking, if you’re not on the internet, if your main points of reliance are TV and mail, then you’re not running a campaign on all cylinders. I just don’t see how anyone could be making ideological claims when they didn’t run a full-fledged campaign.

Our party isn’t even online, not in a real way that exhibits competence. And so, yeah, they were vulnerable to these messages, because they weren’t even on the mediums where these messages were most potent. Sure, you can point to the message, but they were also sitting ducks. They were sitting ducks.

There’s a reason Barack Obama built an entire national campaign apparatus outside of the Democratic National Committee. And there’s a reason that when he didn’t activate or continue that, we lost House majorities. Because the party-- in and of itself-- does not have the core competencies, and no amount of money is going to fix that.

If I lost my election, and I went out and I said: “This is moderates’ fault. This is because you didn’t let us have a floor vote on Medicare for all.” And they opened the hood on my campaign, and they found that I only spent $5,000 on TV ads the week before the election? They would laugh. And that’s what they look like right now trying to blame the Movement for Black Lives for their loss.

...If you are the D.C.C.C., and you’re hemorrhaging incumbent candidates to progressive insurgents, you would think that you may want to use some of those firms. But instead, we banned them. So the D.C.C.C. banned every single firm that is the best in the country at digital organizing.

The leadership and elements of the party-- frankly, people in some of the most important decision-making positions in the party [Note: Pelosi, Perez, Hoyer...]-- are becoming so blinded to this anti-activist sentiment that they are blinding themselves to the very assets that they offer.

I’ve been begging the party to let me help them for two years. That’s also the damn thing of it. I’ve been trying to help. Before the election, I offered to help every single swing district Democrat with their operation. And every single one of them, but five, refused my help. And all five of the vulnerable or swing district people that I helped secured victory or are on a path to secure victory. And every single one that rejected my help is losing. And now they’re blaming us for their loss.

So I need my colleagues to understand that we are not the enemy. And that their base is not the enemy. That the Movement for Black Lives is not the enemy, that Medicare for all is not the enemy. This isn’t even just about winning an argument. It’s that if they keep going after the wrong thing, I mean, they’re just setting up their own obsolescence.

Herndon then asked her what her expectations are as to how open the Biden administration will be to the left? And what is the strategy in terms of moving it?

She responded that she don’t know how open they’ll be but noted that the Democratic establishment gets all lovey-dovey with the grassroots leading up to an election "and then those communities are promptly abandoned right after an election. I think the transition period is going to indicate whether the administration is taking a more open and collaborative approach, or whether they’re taking a kind of icing-out approach. Because Obama’s transition set a trajectory for 2010 and some of our House losses. It was a lot of those transition decisions-- and who was put in positions of leadership [Note: Rahm Emanuel, who Biden is already talking about giving a role to, as well as others from the bottom of the Democratic Party battle: Cheri Bustos, Heidi Heitkamp, Michele Flournoy, Antony Blinken, Tom Perez, Meg Whitman, Terry McCauliffe, Pete Buttigieg]-- that really informed, unsurprisingly, the strategy of governance.

He followed up with the obvious question that all long-time Biden watchers are worried about: "What if the administration is hostile? If they take the John Kasich view of who Joe Biden should be? What do you do?

Well, I’d be bummed, because we’re going to lose. And that’s just what it is. These transition appointments, they send a signal. They tell a story of who the administration credits with this victory. And so it’s going be really hard after immigrant youth activists helped potentially deliver Arizona and Nevada. It’s going to be really hard after Detroit and Rashida Tlaib ran up the numbers in her district.

It’s really hard for us to turn out nonvoters when they feel like nothing changes for them. When they feel like people don’t see them, or even acknowledge their turnout.

If the party believes after 94 percent of Detroit went to Biden, after Black organizers just doubled and tripled turnout down in Georgia, after so many people organized Philadelphia, the signal from the Democratic Party is the John Kasichs won us this election? I mean, I can’t even describe how dangerous that is.

At the Strategic Culture Foundation blog on Friday, investigative historian Eric Zuesse wrote a somewhat more in depth look at the struggle between progressivism and traditional liberalism, pointing to a partially flawed recent piece by Philip Giraldi, . Zuesse pointed out that Giraldi "criticized-- and very correctly so-- the U.S. Democratic Party’s mischaracterization of America’s main problem as its (supposedly) being a conflict between ethnic groups (religious, cultural, racial, or otherwise), and Giraldi unfortunately merely assumed (falsely) that the Democratic Party’s doing this (alleging that inter-ethnic conflicts are America’s top problem) reflects the Party’s being 'progressive,' instead of its being 'liberal'; but, actually, there are big differences between those two ideologies, and that Party-- just like America’s other major Party, the Republican Party-- is controlled by its billionaires, and there simply aren’t any progressive billionaires; there are only liberal and conservative billionaires. America has a liberal Party, the Democratic Party, and a conservative Party, the Republican Party, and both of those Parties are controlled by their respective billionaire donors; and there are no progressive billionaires... Giraldi was actually attacking progressivism by confusing it with liberalism."

Though the Democratic (liberal) billionaires blacklisted Bernie-- and only Bernie, "had the most-passionate supporters, and vastly more donors, than did any other candidate in the contest; and, the polls throughout the Democratic primaries showed that he was virtually always either #2 or (occasionally) #1 in the preferences of all of the polled likely Democratic primary voters. But, Sanders got no billionaire’s money. He got as far as he did, only on his mass-base. He was running as the lone progressive in the field. And, unlike any of the others, he focused on the class-conflict issue, instead of on the ethnic-conflict issue-- he focused against the money-power, instead of against “racism” (which was his #2 issue). All of the other candidates placed the ethnic-conflict issue (in the form of anti-Black racism) as being America’s most important problem."

Sanders was the only candidate who blamed America’s billionaires (the people who control both of its Parties) for being the cause of America’s problems and the beneficiaries from those problems. He was the only progressive candidate in the entire contest. Sanders’s competitors were blaming the public (as if the majority of it were anti-Black bigots)-- not the aristocracy (not the super-rich-- the few people who actually control America). So: all of Sanders’s competitors had billionaires already funding them; and, still more billionaires were waiting in the wings to do so for whomever the Party’s nominee might turn out to be-- except if it would be Sanders (who would get nothing from any of them). (And, even if Sanders had won the Democratic nomination, what chance would he have had to win against Trump if even the Democratic Party’s billionaires were donating instead to the Trump campaign?)

Back in 2016, the two most-heavily-funded-by-billionaires candidates were Hillary Clinton (#1) and Donald Trump (#2). And they became the nominees. In today’s America, the billionaires always get their man (or their woman). It’s always a contest between a Republican-billionaires-backed nominee, versus a Democratic-billionaires-backed nominee.

What Giraldi blames on “progressivism” is instead actually “liberalism” (which accepts being ruled by its billionaires) but there are more ways than only this that Giraldi misunderstands the difference between these two ideologies.

...Giraldi writes as a conservative who uses the falsehoods that are intrinsic to liberalism as cudgels with which to attack progressivism. He doesn’t understand ideology-- especially progressivism. Clearly, it’s not within his purview; and, therefore, his intended attack against progressivism misses its mark, and doesn’t even squarely hit its intended target, which is actually liberalism.

Throughout history, the aristocracies have been of two types: outright conservatives, versus the “noblesse oblige” type of aristocrats, which are called “liberals.” The main actual difference between the two is that, whereas the self-proclaimed conservatives boldly endorse their own supremacism, liberals instead slur it over with nice and kindly-sounding verbiage. Whereas conservatives are unashamed of their having all rights and feeling no obligations to the public (even trying to minimize their taxes), liberals are ashamed of it, but continue their haughty attitudes nonetheless, and refuse to recognize that such extreme inequality of wealth is a curse upon the entire society. Progressives condemn both types of aristocrat: the outright conservatives, and the hypocritical conservatives (liberals). Progressives recognize that the more extreme the inequality of wealth is in a society, the less likely that society is to be an authentic democracy, and they are 100% proponents of democracy. Liberals talk about ‘equality’, but don’t much care about it, actually. That’s why aristocrats can support liberalism, but can’t support progressivism. Progressives recognize that the super-wealthy are the biggest enemies of democracy-- that they are intrinsically enemies of the public. Progressives aren’t bought-off even by ‘philanthropists.’

Scientific studies (such as this) have documented that the more wealth a person has, the more conservative that person generally becomes. Furthermore, the richer a person is, the more callous and lacking in compassion that person tends to be. Moreover, the richer and more educated a person is, the likelier that person is to believe that economic success results from a person’s having a higher amount of virtue (and thus failure marks a person’s lacking virtue). And, studies have also shown that the wealthiest 1% tend to be extreme conservatives, and tend to be intensely involved in politics. Consequently, to the exact contrary of Giraldi’s article, the higher levels of politics tend to be filled with excessive concerns about how to serve the desires of the rich, and grossly deficient concerns about even the advisability of serving the needs of the poor. Such attitudes naturally favor the aristocracy, at the expense of the public. Confusing liberalism with progressivism advances the conservative, pro-aristocracy, agenda, at the expense of truth, and at the expense of the public, and even at the expense of democracy itself.

Furthermore: throughout the millennia, aristocracies have been applying the divide-and-conquer principle to set segments of the public against each other so that blame by the public for society’s problems won’t be targeted against themselves (the aristocrats), who actually control and benefit from the corruption that extracts so much from the public and causes those problems. Thus: Black against White, gay against straight, female against male, Muslim against Christian, and immigrant against native, etc. This divide-and-conquer strategy is peddled by both conservative and liberal aristocrats, and has been for thousands of years. Giraldi’s focusing on that as being instead generated by progressives, is not only false-- it is profoundly false. It is a fundamental miscomprehension.

So, the popular confusion between progressivism and liberalism is beneficial to the aristocracy, but harmful to the public.

Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, is not confused and his Friday OpEd for the NY Times, Biden Can’t Be FDR He Could Still Be LBJ. On one level that scares people who lived through the "Hey, hey, LBJ, How many boys have you killed today" era. Giridharadas wrote that "if this election is to have lasting meaning, we cannot see a Biden campaign victory as license to cast away politics as a presence in our daily lives. We cannot succumb to the liberal temptation parodied by the comedian Kylie Brakeman to 'vote for Biden so we can all get back to brunch.' However effective it might have been at closing this race, this restorationist fantasy would be a terrible governing philosophy. Because the pre-Trump world-- in which voting rights were being gutted and 40 percent of Americans couldn’t afford a $400 emergency bill -- is no kind of place to go back to. Mr. Biden himself seemed to concede this point by tempering his restoration message with the slogan 'Build Back Better.'"

Giridharadas spoke with Schumer the day before the election-- when he still was tying to decide on whether to have diamonds or rubies in his Majority Leader crown-- and he wrote that Schumer, like Biden, "is an institutionalist and a moderate." He asked him about this idea of restoration versus transformation. "Almost as soon as he heard me say the word 'normalcy,' he began, for lack of a better term, to filibuster: 'No, no, I don’t buy that. My view,' he told me, 'is if we don’t do bold change, we could end up with someone worse than Donald Trump in four years' What passed for change in the past two decades (including during the Obama years) had not, he acknowledged, been 'big enough or bold enough.' When I asked if Democrats bore some responsibility for that, he deflected: 'There’s plenty of blame to go around.'"

Even if, improbably, the Senate is on Mr. Biden’s side in 2021, he and his advisers will have to pull off a grueling balancing act: pushing federal policy to reflect popular will so that people’s lives can measurably improve, while making fundamental changes to the workings of American democracy and managing to heal rather than inflame the cultural resentments, racial hatred and party polarization that still imperil the Republic (and that the Republican Party thrives on).

...If Democrats win the two presumed Georgia runoffs, Senate Democrats will represent roughly 41 million more people than the Republican half of the chamber. If Mr. Biden is to meet this moment, he can’t let his cautious temperament and deep hankering for civic comity stop him from making the policy changes families need.

...For tens of millions, the economic traumas of the pandemic have come on top of decades of stagnation and precariousness. Since 1989, the wealth of the bottom 50 percent of Americans has fallen by $900 billion. Before Covid-19, 44 percent of American workers were being paid median annual wages of $18,000. And the evictions now surging are coming in the wake of a housing market that has long been unaffordable. Even if high unemployment were reversed, it would hardly repair our increasingly classist and Uber-ized labor market.

And if Democrats do win the Senate? Senator Schumer told me he envisions a first 100 days filled with a raft of measures on the virus and economic relief, mixed in with policies that address inequality, climate change, student debt, immigration and more. A Biden administration’s early days “ought to look like F.D.R.’s,” he said. “We need big, bold change. America demands it, and we’re going to fight for it.”

Much, however, could still get in the way. First, Mr. Biden’s own instinct toward caution-- which can easily end up enabling paralysis at a time when Democrats’ window for proving the promise of an active government could be closing. Any measure of success is likely to be determined by how seriously a Biden administration takes the inevitable calls for fiscal conservatism and austerity (despite historically low interest rates).

...And there are early warning signs: Ted Kaufman, who is leading the Biden transition team, recently told The Wall Street Journal that because of Trump-era deficit spending, “when we get in, the pantry is going to be bare.”

A Biden administration could also perceive itself as owing a political debt to the most influential and visible center-right elements of his sweeping, unwieldy alliance of supporters. Young leftists of color from cities in major swing states are arguably more responsible for his win than Republican defectors like former Senator Jeff Flake and the former Republican operatives turned media darlings of the Lincoln Project. But who will have more of a voice in Washington?

On various matters of policy, Mr. Biden could find himself in an awkward fox trot with wealthy donors in liberal power centers like Silicon Valley and Wall Street-- the kind of people who may love hanging “Black Lives Matter” signs in their yards more than they love Biden proposals like a Section 8 expansion that would allow more working-class Black families to live in their midst.

...The growing sense, among both the party’s technocrats and its populists, is that their midterm fate lies in whether voters give Democrats credit for improving their lives-- not on the processes used or norms violated to do so.

“A public health and economic crisis is not the time for incremental steps, small ideas or meekness,” Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, a leading Democrat in the House Progressive Caucus, told me. “Joe Biden can deliver on this from Day 1 with executive orders and administrative actions that cancel student debt, lower drug prices, strengthen workers’ rights and cut emissions.” The American Prospect recently published “277 Policies for Which Biden Need Not Ask Permission,” based on the results of the Biden-Sanders unity task force.

Mr. Biden has an opportunity to seize on policies that, thanks to the heterodoxy of Trumpism, now have surprising resonance in both parties-- but not for the traditional reasons of being milquetoast or appealing to corporatist moderates. A wealth tax polls surprisingly well among Republican voters. Using the Department of Justice to crack down on monopolies and threats from China has some bipartisan support. As does actual infrastructure investment and, to a limited extent, raising the minimum wage.

Mr. Biden also does not need Mr. McConnell’s permission to build a down-ballot pipeline. One of the failures of the Obama years was the attrition of the Democratic Party beneath the president: By 2017, its Senate seats had dwindled to 48 from 59, and it lost 62 House seats, 12 governorships and a whopping 948 seats in state legislatures.

Amanda Litman, the executive director of Run for Something, a progressive group that grooms candidates for office at all levels, proposes this corrective: “Bring back the 50-state strategy. Invest in all state parties to build grass-roots infrastructure,” she told me. “Set the direction and tone: No office is too small, no community too unimportant. Then raise money for all of it.”

To the extent that, for the next two years, divided government severely limits the sort of public action that progressives dreamed about in their 2020 primaries, Mr. Biden could use his office to create task forces that normalize and build a public consensus for more significant small-d democratic changes to American politics achievable only down the road.

...In the end, a basic choice may stalk Mr. Biden: What matters more, the radiation of personal decency or the pursuit of structural fairness?

There are some reasons to hope that he could be a bolder president than anticipated. He is that rare candidate who tacked toward the party base rather than the center in the general election. In certain areas, such as climate change and student debt, he has shown a willingness to have his initial policy view revised by others. He is less motivated by ideology than by the path of least resistance. Whether that path aligns with donors, the Beltway consensus or organized popular movements, he takes it.

The example of Lyndon Johnson-- a longtime senator and a vice president less charismatic than the president he served and succeeded who, nevertheless, became more consequential-- provides a possible historical analogue. Mr. Biden could turn out to be an improbably deft salesman for progressive priorities, using his disarming, folksy, median-voter-friendly patois, that “C’mon, man” Americana vibe, to make major changes seem like common sense.

“Joe Biden’s magic is that everything he does becomes the new reasonable,” Andrew Yang, once Mr. Biden’s rival for the Democratic nomination, told me. “He has shown the ability to move the mainstream of the Democratic Party on issues before. As president, whatever he does, he will bring the whole center with him.”

DCCC And DSCC Forced Their Candidates To Sit On The Phone Raising Millions Of Dollars All Day-- And They Lost Anyway

 

I'm always complaining that the DCCC and DSCC are predisposed to oppose progressives. They recruit conservative Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party and when a progressive manages to win a primary, the two committees rarely offer them any support. But there's another context besides ideology at work here. Both the DSCC and the DCCC insist on candidates who will spend most of their energy on fund-raising-- dialing for dollars-- rather than on persuading voters by doing actual campaigning. This has been catastrophic for the Democratic Party. It winds up selecting really shitty candidates who don't know how to help voters understand issues and understand the inherent dishonestly of Republican attacks. And... the money doesn't make nearly as much difference as that ability to persuade does.

All but 3 of the House incumbents who lost (or are in races still too close to call) out-raised their Republican opponents:

• CA-21

Rep. T.J. Cox (New Dem)- 48.2%-- $4,798,088
David Valadao (R)- 51.8%-- $3,721,619

• CA-39

Rep. Gil Cisneros (New Dem)- 49.5%-- $3,779,013 (self-funded $9,252,762 in 2018 and didn't want to spend his own money again-- only gave his campaign $370,887 this time)
Young Kim (R)- 50.5%-- $5,319,367

• CA-48

Rep. Harley Rouda (New Dem)- 49.2%-- $5,426,654 (although the DCCC spent $10 million to try to save his ass)
Michelle Steel (R)- 50.8%-- $5,627,779

• FL-26

Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (New Dem)- 48.3%-- $6,178,239
Carlos Gimenez (R)- 51.7%-- $1,946,504

• FL-27

Rep. Donna Shalala (D)- 48.6%-- $3,405,420
Maria Salazar (R)- 51.3%-- $3,126,831

• IA-01

Rep. Abby Finkenauer (D)- 48.7%-- $5,308,465
Ashley Hinson (R)- 51.3%-- $4,601,403

• MN-07

Rep. Collin Peterson (Blue Dog)- 40.1%-- $2,284,742
Michelle Fischbach (R)-53.3%-- $2,205,150

• NM-02

Rep Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog)- 46.1%-- $7,509,987
Yvette Herrell (R)- 53.9%-- $2,498,130

• NY-11

Rep Max Rose (Blue Dog)- 43.1%-- $8,350,467
Nicole Malliotakis (R)- 57.9%-- $3,052,007

• NY-22

Rep. Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog)- 43.4%-- $5,359,636
Claudia Tenney (R)- 54.5%-- $2,053,931

• OK-05

Rep. Kendra Horn (Blue Dog)- 47.9%-- $5,465,349
Stephanie Bice (R)- 52.1%-- $3,089,972

• SC-01

Rep. Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog)- 49.4%-- $6,278,942
Nancy Mace (R)- 50.6%-- $4,891,696

• UT-04

Rep. Ben McAdams (Blue Dog)- 47.8%-- $5,137,258
Burgess Owens (R)- 47.2%-- $4,021,248

• VA-07

Rep. Abigail Spanberger (Blue Dog)- 50.6%-- $7,806,646
Nick Freitas (R)- 49.4%-- $3,182,940

Maybe if Max Rose didn't spend so much time on the phone begging rich people for money-- and instead talked to his constituents about programs the Democrats want to implement that would make their lives better, he would still be a congressman after January. Oh, but he can't talk about this things... he opposes them all.

And it was the same thing in the Senate, only worse. Schumer and the DSCC hammer it home several times a week that candidates must be on the phone raising hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's dehumanizing-- part of why none of their candidates seem human. Schumer-selected Democrats lost almost everywhere... but raised bucketfuls of money. In most cases they raised double, triple or quadruple when their Republican opponents raised:

• South Carolina

Jamie Harrison (D)- 44.2%-- $107,568,737
Senator Lindsey Graham (R)- 54.5%-- $72,690,495

• Iowa

Theresa Greenfield (D)- 45.2%-- $47,004,93
Senator Joni Ernst (R)- 51.8%-- $23,536,707

• Maine

Sara Gideon (D)- 42.8%-- $68,577,474
Senator Susan Collins (R)- 50.5%-- $26,511,555

• Montana

Steve Bullock (D)- 44.8%-- $42,773,128
Senator Steve Daines (R)- 55.2%-- $27,017,875

• Kentucky

Amy McGrath (D)- 38.1%-- $88,098,919
Senator Moscow Mitch (R)- 57.9%-- $55,500,67

• Kansas

Barbara Bollier (D/R)- 41.5%-- $24,265,420
Roger Marshall (R)- 53.6%-- $5,926,110

• Texas

MJ Hegar (D)- 43.8%-- $24,024,713
John Cornyn (R)- 53.6%-- $30,754,633

• Alabama

Senator Doug Jones (D)- 39.7%-- $26,377,442
Tommy Tuberville (R)- 60.1%-- $7,415,639

• North Carolina

Cal Cunningham (D)- 47.0%-- $46,795,495
Senator Thom Tillis (R)- 48.7%-- $21,474,728

• Arizona

Mark Kelly- 51.3%-- $88,856,406
Senator Martha McSally- 48.7%-- $55,772,809

• Colorado

John Hickenlooper (D)- 53.4%-- $39,303,249
Senator Cory Gardner (R)- 44.4%-- $26,063,229

All that financial firepower didn't do it for the Senate candidates. And now the Democrats are going to run the exact same kind of race (2 of them) in Georgia... money, money, money and not much messaging for working families. I guess it took 5 minutes for Schumer to forget that "money did not prove decisive for Democrats in hotly contested Senate races, despite a combined Democratic fundraising advantage over $200 million. Democratic candidates raised a whopping $626 million in 14 highly competitive races, vastly overshadowing Republican collections of $386 million in the same contests."

“We just got completely slaughtered on Election Day. There truly was a red surge,” said a Democratic operative who worked closely with the Harrison campaign. “Turnout was just incredible, which isn’t necessarily a good thing for us, in red states.”

Democrats who had hoped to easily oust the 53-47 Republican Senate majority have instead won a net gain of only one seat so far. They could reach a majority, if they win two Georgia Senate seat runoffs on Jan. 5. Such a result would give them a 50-50 split, if Democrat Joe Biden is declared president and Kamala Harris vice president, allowing her to cast a tie-breaking vote.

Senate Democrats are already calling on supporters to send campaign contributions to Georgia candidate Raphael Warnock. Warnock, far more progressive than any of Schumer's candidates, is one of the only Democrats who was out-raised by his Republican opponent-- although in that case, his opponent, Kelly Loeffler, is both a well-documented crook and a billionaire. She out-raised him by $7 million, although "out-raised" might be the wrong word, since she contributed $23,345,292 out of her personal piggy-bank, so far.

The Moment The Democrats Picked Cheri Bustos As DCCC Chair, As I've Been Saying For Two Years, They Baked Terrible Losses Into The Cake

 

DCCC Chair Cheri Bustos, Born To Lose by Nancy Ohanian

House Democrats are freaking out over more losses as the ballots get counted. According to a Politico piece, House Dems brace for more losses by Ally Mutnick and Sarah Ferris. Already officially gone are Abby Finkenauer (IA), Joe Cunningham (SC), Kendra Horn (OK), Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (FL), Donna Shalala (FL), Collin Peterson (MN) and Xochitl Torres Small (NM) and close to losing Anthony Brindisi (NY), Max Rose (NY), Susan Wild (PA), Harley Rouda (CA), Ben McAdams (UT), Abigail Spanberger (VA), Gil Cisneros (CA), Lauren Underwood (IL)... What do all these candidates have in common? Well, first off, except for Donna Shalala (in a "safe" D+5 district) they all have "F" scores from ProgressivePunch. Shalala has a "D." All of them, with the encouragement-- urging-- of the DCCC decided to stake their career on the false notion that the way to win is by taking the Republican-lite route. That's why they all either lost or are hanging by a thread.

The Democratic Party-- as long a sit holds the majority-- is better off without them. They are almost all Blue Dogs and New Dems from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. They shit all over the Democratic brand and confuse voters and alienate working families while spouting Republican talking points and allowing Fox and other right-wing media outlets to set the debate in terms designed to always result in Republican advantage.

It's worth listening to this shrt talk from Alan Grayson who recorded it while he was the congressman from Orlando, the first Democrat to have represented Orlando in decades.





According to Mutnick and Ferris, "The most likely scenario for Democrats is a net loss of between seven to 11 seats, according to interviews with campaign officials and strategists from both parties. That toll has prompted some tense discussions within the Democratic caucus about its message, tactics and leadership, with an internal race intensifying to succeed Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Cheri Bustos (D-IL). And the fallout means the House is indeed in play in 2022, and the battle will be fought on a whole new set of district lines, most of which will be drawn by Republicans who maintained control of key statehouses."

Pelosi, delusional, said-- after spending over $100,000,000 to win Republican seats-- "We lost some battles. But we won the war. We have the gave." She claimed Democrats in Trump districts faced "almost insurmountable" obstacles, but neglected to mention that outspoken progressive Matt Cunningham-- also in a Trump district-- won his seat while advocating for the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, unlike all the Bustos-Pelosi losers. Maybe voters in his northeast Pennsylvania district actually understand that he represents them, not the elites they hate. He's the whip of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and his ProgressivePunch score is "A." Trump won his district by 10 points in 2016-- 53.3% to 43.7%. Right next door, where New Dem Susan Wild is hanging on for dear life, Hillary won the district by a tad over a point, but Wild is barely a Democrat another's no reason for anyone to vote for her.

They'll both likely win reelection-- as will conservative Democrat Conor Lamb on the other side of the state-- but Pelosi should make an attempt to understand why working class voters hate her and hate where she and other Democratic leaders have taken what they once thought of as their party.

Right now there is just one challenger still standing in a California race against a Republican incumbent: Liam O'Mara-- and he ran in an R+11 district where Trump beat Hillary by 12 points-- who took on Corrupt Ken Calvert with exactly NOT ONE PENNY from the DCCC. Yet he's offering more of a challenge to Calvert than most of the Democrats who Bustos decided to spend millions of dollars on did in their own races. So far-- with thousands of absentee ballots, mostly from Democrats, to be counted, he has 44.5% of the vote. The DCCC and Pelosi's SuperPAC spent millions on Pelosi's costliest 2020 gamble, Blue Dog Sri Kulkarni in Texas, who she and Bustos spent over $7 million on-- and just wound up with 43.0% of the vote. Had they spent a million of that on Kulkarni, O'Mara would have wiped the floor with Calvert. But the DCCC hates progressives and would rather have Republicans in those seats than progressives.

Republicans were ecstatic this week. In a press call held Wednesday afternoon, National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Tom Emmer (MN) mocked Democrats for their upbeat predictions and poor messaging.

“Cheri Bustos laughed in my face when I made the argument that the Democrats’ socialist agenda was going to cost them seats, during a panel that we both attended in September of 2019 in Austin, Texas-- by the way where they didn’t flip a single seat,” Emmer said. [They did-- a single seat.]

The latest DCCC memo was sent to members hours after Bustos and other top Democrats held an emotional three-hour caucus call on Thursday, where some lawmakers traded blame as they processed the string of losses-- even as Democrats are increasingly likely to capture the presidency.

On the call, Bustos declared that the campaign arm would do a post-mortem in the coming weeks. No Democrats on the call directly criticized Bustos or any other Democrat about the losses, though several in the caucus have begun privately lining up to succeed her as chair. Bustos has not said whether she will run for the position again.

Rep. Tony Cárdenas of California [one of the most sleaziest and most corrupt members of Congress and a child rapist] has told members he is interested in running, and Reps. Linda Sánchez of California, Marc Veasey of Texas and Sean Maloney of New York [a Wall Street pawn who makes his campaign calls out of the office of a hedge fund] are also in the mix, according to multiple Democratic sources.

The DCCC is facing a litany of criticism, from its spending decisions to its Latino outreach to its polling. While health care again remained a central theme in down-ballot campaigns, Democratic candidates and outside groups were yoking their GOP opponents to Trump in dozens of TV ads in districts from Texas to Illinois that the president will likely end up carrying.

Swing district Democrats-- many stung by tighter-than-expected margins in their own races-- say they’ve been privately sounding the alarm about the party’s anti-Trump messaging, which they say hurt in areas like upstate New York, Staten Island and Miami.

Shalala, who holds a South Florida seat Trump lost by 20 points in 2016, said her polls didn’t pick up how harmful the GOP’s “socialism” attacks could be. But those tags-- along with accusations that Democrats would defund the police amid widespread protests over racial injustice and police brutality-- “caught on.”

“It’s not just Biden, it's the whole Democratic establishment that has to work these districts consistently,” Shalala said. “We had not been working them over a generation. It just takes a lot of work. Could we have done more? Absolutely.”

Progressive Democrats have disputed any finger-pointing from the caucus’s centrist flank about the party’s 2020 message.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a member of the progressive Squad, argued that moderates did, in fact, steer much of the legislative agenda for the last two years-- the reality of a House Democratic majority with tight margins, which are only likely to shrink in the 117th Congress.

“They were very much centered and prioritized... No one was really sounding many alarms to me about how they felt about their race,” Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview.