Abandoned By The DCCC 2020

 

With a tiny handful of exceptions-- basically Kara Eastman in Omaha, Joyce Elliott in Little Rock and Dana Balter in Syracuse (who is running in a D+3 district)-- Cheri Bustos and her DCCC have once again decided to spend all the big money primarily on corporate-friendly conservative candidates backed by the Blue Dogs and New Dems. To say movement candidates don't get a fair shake from Bustos, would be the understatement of the cycle.

Sri Kulkarni is a good example. He's running in TX-22, Tom DeLay's old district in the suburbs south and southwest of Houston, primarily Fort Bend County with a chunk of Brazoria and a sliver od Harris. With a PVI of R+10, Trump beat Hillary there 52.1% to 44.2%. Kulkarni lost to Republican Pete Olson in 2018-- 152,750 (51.4%) to 138,153 (46.5%), a good showing but not as good as Beto O'Rourke had. Olson is retiring now and it makes sense for the DCCC to chase the district. Kulkarni, though is an extremely flawed candidate on many levels. We'll just mention one: he's been endorsed by the Blue Dogs and New Dems. The Blue Dogs have been known to reject conservatives who they don't view as conservative enough. They see Kulkarni as right up their alley.

Kulkarni has outraised Republican Troy Nehls $4,863,231 to $1,532,299. But the big spending is the district is coming from the DCCC and Pelosi's House Majority PAC and from Kevin McCarthy's Congressional Leadership Fund. As of last week, the DCCC and Pelosi had spent $5,749,664 slamming Nehls and bolstering Kulkarni. Meanwhile McCarthy had put $5,692,407 into slamming Kulkarni and bolstering Nehls. Those are signals that the committees are serious about backing candidates. Corporate conservatives like Christy Smith (CA), Carolyn Bourdeaux (GA) and Amy Kennedy (NJ)-- all endorsed by the New Dems-- have also been benefiting from mega-DCCC independent expenditures. Progressives? Nope; with a couple of exception-- just peanuts that send a very different signal.

We've just re-activated Blue America's Abandoned by the DCCC ActBlue page, which you will find by clicking on the thermometer on the right. These are progressive candidates who won their primaries and each is on the verge of flipping a red seat blue-- without any real help-- or in most cases, without any help-- from the DCCC, which endlessly whines that progressives are "too liberal" for the districts they're running in.

I spoke with a movement candidate who looked over the list of the DCCC favorites. He said, "I think we can persuade some of them to vote progressive at least some of the time." OK, better than nothing, but what about candidates you don't have to persuade, leaders like Jamaal Bowman, Mondaire Jones, Beth Doglio and Cori Bush who have already proven that they don't need any persuading?

I'm thinking this is going to be the last Blue America ask before the election. So please read what history of ideas professor-- and Riverside County progressive candidate-- Liam O'Mara told me about what's behind the DCCC abandonment of progressive candidates.

"The idea that I am 'too progressive for the district' is rubbish... We currently have the best early return rate of any Democrat in recent memory, and that follows a primary cycle that saw more votes to the Dems than any previous primary in ages. Right now FiveThirtyEight gives my campaign a better chance of flipping the district than they've seen yet, and a higher chance of flipping the seat than quite a few candidates in the long list of candidates the DCCC is spending on. Progressive-populist leaders used to dominate in the most socially conservative corners of the country, because more people vote their wallets and their hopes than anything else. To say that we are out of touch with the needs and wishes of the electorate is to surrender preëmptively to Republican control and Republican arguments... when what we ought to be doing is standing out there and winning over hearts and minds. The Democratic party needs to stop focussing on safely blue seats and start trying to win people over... and we can't do that with tepid, half-baked conservatism."

The Florida Democratic Party never looked seriously at the north-central Florida district centered on Gainesville, but this year, after Ted Yoho announced his retirement, 27 year old Adam Christensen has made a real race out of it. If he win, the DCCC will be in shock-- especially because he's the kind of independent-minded progressive that the establishment fears. "The DCCC hasn’t spent a penny on this race," Christensen told me. "They wrote it off a long time ago and refused to even look our way. Even without their help we have managed to raise more money than anyone who has ever run here, all from small dollar donations, and have brought an 'unwinnable' within the margin of error. If we had $100,000 more this race would be over. It is the best Return-On-Investment of any race in the  country and would winning it would flip Ted Yoho’s R+9 district. So if anyone wants to make a good investment Florida CD-3 is about as good as you can find."