Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emanuel are in charge of taking back the Senate and House, respectively. Adam Nagourney, in the New York Times, gives them a fairly glowing review. Now, I am of two minds about Schumer and Emanuel. On the one hand, they have a job to do, recruiting candidates that can win and raising money for their campaigns. On that score, they have outperformed their Republican counterparts by a country mile. On the other hand, they haven’t exactly put ideology or party principles at the top of their list when they set out to find their candidates. What I find most galling is the way they have tried to shut down primary challengers and dictate to their candidates. As an example, take the following boast from Chuck Schumer:
“In the past, if you were a big shot in the Democratic caucus, you got a couple of million bucks,” he said. “No more.”
He went on, as he sought to assure his audience that their checks would not be squandered, to recount the strict conditions he set with senators and candidates alike.
“We’ll give you money, but you have to hire a campaign manager, a finance director and a communications director who we approve,” Mr. Schumer said. “They have to toe the line.”
Emanuel is even worse. You want to talk about micromanaging? Look at how he treats poor Lois Murphy…
Mr. Emanuel calls 40 Democratic candidates every weekend, demanding to know what they have done for him lately.
“He calls me on my cellphone just to see where I’m going,” said Lois Murphy, a lawyer from the Philadelphia suburbs who is challenging Representative Jim Gerlach.
Mr. Emanuel is paternal and approving when his candidates meet his standards for raising money or zinging an opponent. He is withering when they do not. Mr. Emanuel is legendary in Washington for ceasing communications with those who have displeased him (which presumably is preferable to the time he sent a dead fish to a Democratic pollster whose work he found lacking).
“I said to every challenger, between now and March 31, besides having X dollars cash on hands, they have to have three proactive policy things that they have announced,” Mr. Emanuel said. “I want to see clips. Otherwise you’re not part of my red-to-blue program, O.K.?”
Again, I am two minds about this. Emanuel is taking his job seriously and he is working hard. But, he is also dictating who gets hired, and using his ability to withhold money as a weapon to make candidates toe the line.
And that might be okay, except for stuff like this:
“When the far-left wing of the Democratic Party runs the party, we lose,” Mr. Schumer said at one fund-raiser.
Now, I can’t recall a time when the far-left of the Democratic Party ran the party. So, I take it that Schumer means that the Democrats lose because they are too left-wing for the electorate. And that belief is clearly reflected in Schumer’s decision to recruit Bob Casey, Jr. for the run against Rick Santorum.
So, while I must confess that Schumer and Emanuel have performed well overall, especially when compared to their Republican counterparts, I don’t think we can fix what ails the party and the country without taking on their candidates in future primaries, and we can’t do that unless we can compete financially. In 2006, we are going to have to go with the team we have, but by 2008 we need candidates that pledge not to take Schumer and Emanuel’s money, nor hire their campaign managers, finance managers, or communications directors.
We need a party within a party. It’s not that Emanuel and Schumer aren’t doing a good job, they are. But, they are doing it for pure power, not for the people. If we are going to have a two-party system that isn’t bought and paid for by corporate interests and lobbyists, we’ve got to break the paradigm. And shutting down primaries is not acceptable. We can’t let them get away with that strategy in ’08.
screw both of these Dempublicans. They DO NOT have our best interests at heart. They are part and parcel of the problem. It’s NOT enough to win, but to have something to fight for. We’re being left with two parties that represent primarily the needs of the corporate class: a far-right party and a center-right party. This is a recipe for disaster for this country.
Increasingly, I wish progressives would split the party.
yes and no. In many respects our interests coincide, and many others, they do not. But, I am calling for progressives to split the party by refusing Schumer and Emanuel’s tutelage, and bucking their efforts to eliminate the primary, and therefore the people, as the deciders of whom the candidates will be.
Your “Party Within a Party” piece from the other day got mentioned (approvingly) in the comments on Swords Crossed this afternoon, although unfortunately they didn’t provide a link to it.
Yes, Armando is intrigued with the idea and I am sure he will be helpful if we are going to push this. It won’t happen if we rely on Jerome and Markos because their strategy is to attack the consultancies, not to run alternate anti-DCCC and DSCC candidates.
Having one group attack the consultancies while a different group runs interference against the DCCC and DSCC isn’t necessarily bad. There are so many things wrong with the Democratic party these days that attacking the problems on all fronts can’t hurt. And one group can’t focus on everything.
Agreed, but we will find ourselves in a fight, as you can easily see by looking at the orange thread.
that won’t work. We must be willing to withhold our votes, or leave the party. The party is VERY broken and beholden to the corrupts.
I agree.
I believe the place for activism and organizing on this is at the local party level. These guys on top, they don’t care about the hoi polloi. They don’t care if you get 50 or 100 or 10,000 people at a rally. But if county committees were to decide to stop toeing the line that would cost them something important.
The rot in the Democratic Party reaches pretty far down. There’s a fantasy (propounded by Todd Gitlin among others) that progressives have only themselves to blame for their weakness within the Democratic Party. In this view, at least at the local level, the party is simply an empty shell. If progressives show up, they can easily start running the show.
Unfortunately, that’s just not the case, at least not in localities I’ve lived (in, among other places, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, and, since 1998, Oklahoma).
We’re right now in the middle of a contested primary race to replace my term-limited Democratic State Senator. There are three candidates. The first one into the race seems to be running entirely on personality. He refuses to take positions on anything, and instead sells himself largely on the basis of his squeeky clean family and his Ivy League education. He is, by all accounts, rather conservative. The second person in the race is, apparently, the most progressive. But he’s essentially a (young) party hack, who had worked in the Clinton administration and currently works for a Democratic former governor of Oklahoma whose career was clouded by corruption scandals. The third candidate — who in my estimation is likely to win — is the darling of the local real estate developers, who are in many ways the controlling force in the local Democratic Party. In addition to being arguably the most conservative candidate in the race, he’s a very nasty piece of work. When he was working his way up the local political ladder, he used to run errands for the real estate interests threatening local politicians who opposed them. When, some years ago, a friend of mine who teaches at OU got elected to Norman City Council on a progressive platform (our local elections are nonpartisan), this third candidate (who had been a student of the councilmember and was at the time working for the biggest developer in town) stopped by his office hours, asked if he had tenure, and suggested there might be professional consequences if he insisted on doing what he had promised the voters he’d do.
The point is that not only is our local Democratic Party a mess, it’s a mess due not to mere indifference, but rather to the presence of powerful local interests who quite like the control they have. These folks are, in addition, protected by a cadre of progressive political activists who, largely out of fear of the truly frightening wingnuts in the Oklahoma GOP, work tirelessly for the local Democratic Party whatever it ends up standing for.
I am always heartened by progressives who understand that they don’t currently have a seat at the table in the Democratic Party, and that they need to work — and work hard — to gain a measure of power within it. However, I am also skeptical of their ability to succeed (which is one of the reasons why I’m a Green).
That being said, my attitude is let a hundred flowers bloom. I’d love to be proven wrong by having y’all succeed in taking back the Democratic Party.
Maybe so, but I ain’t rotten, and most of my party friends aren’t!
I know you weren’t trying to indict us personally and I do take your point, however, most of the people I run with are Democrats because they believe in certain ideals. As for what they do, etc. often they just follow the lead of the people above them, and on and on up the chain – I think the trick is to point out different ways they can be true to their ideals and sort of derail the… chain of co-option.
I’ll let you know if it works, heh!
I do a lot of local political work, and most of my allies are committed Democrats. There are millions of wonderful grassroots Dems in this country. I just don’t think they have nearly the say in your party as many of them would like to think they do.
I should add that I spent years as a very committed Democrat in the 1980s and early 1990s, including a year working on a presidential campaign, so I’ve worked that side of the street a bit.
At any rate, best of luck changing things! Don’t let me skepticism about your prospects in any way suggest that I don’t wholeheartedly want you to succeed!
I don’t disagree wiht you, bt we’re doing it to a degree here in my TN county. I’m sure it’s way harder in counties with a larger population (we’re about 100,000).
The key is to get your people elected somewhere – and I mean start small. The elected members of the party have far more say, so even if it’s Clerk of Courts, find a race that no Dem wants and take it on full swing with your Progressive base. Once you get someone in, you can see it’s far less of a quixotic endeavor.
This is a recipe for disaster for this country.
Being as practical and objective as I can stand to be at this point in time, I must say bring on the disaster for may well supply the only atmosphere from whch the American blinded electorate may wake up from their misguide trust in conservatives, rugged but unattainable individualism, and capitalistic greed.
Also in orange.
What’s wrong with challenging them in 06. Many of their hand picked candidates have an opposition. We should start now, not 08. If they are successful now, they get brownie points for the next one.
We may not be strong enough or organized enough to mount a serious challenge in 06. I’ve been on the inside on two congressional campaigns this year and there are three distinct issues that need be to be overcome in order for us to be viable and effective.
1.) The first is the insecurity and uncertainty of some candidates and their closets advisers. This leads to an overly cautious approach and to the second major issue:
2.) Over reliance on party insiders and D.C. professionals. Rather than relying on a volunteer base with strong profesional skills in business, design, communication, marketing, and strategy that came together in the Clark, Dean, or Kucinich campaigns in 2004, the candidates oftentimes fall back on failed democratic party leaders and consultants. I get the sense that they feel they won’t be taken seriously untill they’re accepted into the “club” by professional consultants and party leaders.
3.) The continued war on progressive candidates as detailed here and many other places. I was shocked by the number of phone calls that were never returned on the first campaign I was closely involved with. and on the second campaign the inner machinations that appear to be in place to create a vulnerable and weakened progressive candidate in the primary.
I think we need to build our political skills and connections with an eye towards the future. We should also look at community organizing outside of the party process as a way of building a base of voters not beholden to current party leaders and processes that can eventually be involved as part of a reform the democratic party or as part of an unaligned insurgency in the 2012/2016 – 2020 time frame.
Chuck the Fuck knows about toeing the line. Just ask him if the invasion of Iraq was a mistake.
WARNING: This is not well-reasoned or articulate comment.
I hate, detest and loathe Rahm freaking Emanuel.
Okay, I feel a little better now.
I’d be more willing to accord some legitimacy to Schumer’s/Emanuel’s calculus if they displayed ay hint at all that they understood the potential for serious failure as a result of their “left-bashing”, equivocation-based approach to electoral victory.
If I heard either one of them say something like;
If we fail to win a sufficient number of new seats in congress in ’06, and if we likewise fail to capture the WhiteHouse in ’08, we will acknowledge our strategy of repudiating the left is wrong and we will retire from the field of party strategy.
I won’t hold my breath for any such statement however.
This has put us in a very difficult position in Colorado. For governor we have an anti-choice candidate, and Schumer et al are looking at races like these to see if they can run more of them in the future. So if we suck it up and vote for the dem, then we not only end up with an anti-woman governor, but a whole slew of such folks in the future.
Bastard.
(So Schumer and Emanuel are bad boys today..BFD).
Y A W Fucking N.
Yeah, the DNC didn’t send their memo today because it’s a Sunday to tell Dems what they should think S-O-R-R-Y.
Click for your self on my diary from Friday on how poor Wyden fended for himself on the floor of the Senate until A DEM FUCKED HIM OVER (that would be Reid, you remember the diary you avoided, find it!).
And yet where were Boo Tribbers backing up the diary? Geez, it’s getting really old after 5 years. Do you really need trains to Auschwitz instead of thousands at Gitmo to wake your asses up?
Forget the answers. I don’t need them. People with consciences don’t need them. Party Faxes were invented after what the rest of us needed to make up our trained minds.
A “party within a party”? We’ve had that for ages and yet the timid still trend water. Fuck you while Rome burns. Where do you really think YOUR Salvation lies? They (and you know who they are) count on you beind timid and cowardly and the heads of the so-called liberal blogs need to be nailed on this—-NOW.
Are you calling me out, Wilfred?
yeah, Booman. That’s what i’m doing. NOT!
Guess what Booman? Really, Guess what?
We’re not all dudes looking to duke it out with our Frat Bro’s because you have for some sad reason have become ‘powerless’ (to use the kinder word) or feel inadequate. Lucky you that you run a blog and in 2006 and not 1978 where women would slap you silly on stuff that we thought people learned over 25 years ago. We seem to be in retrograde, but sad for the planet but how fortunate for you that your blog no longer consists of the 2006 versions of the great Gloria Steinem, Bettey Friedan and Germaine Greer. How lucky you don’t have to hold your own with the likes of them. But if I can even invoke the pale ghost of Harry Hay, Larry Kramer and Tony Kushner I’d feel honored.
The fact that you use a term that is pretty damned arcane to me means that you are just as out of touch with 2006 society as W is (and the rest of the Dem/Rep. hetero proletariat). I’m ‘callin’ you out’? HA! Go to a fucking NASCAR race where people talk like they are ESPN illiterate. And by the way when has a liberal posted a diary here talking about why the #1 fastest rising sport is a complete gas guzzling nightmare?
Not all of us are just white straight men on either side of the fence looking for street cred. Far from it, my cajones hang just great thanks.
That Booman is where you seem supremely out of touch. Like I need to tune in late on a Sunday night to have my just great and fabulous masculinity questioned. I’m in no way afraid of you.
Isn’t what your pathetic phrase ‘are you calling me out’ about? I can disagree with you, Rove, Rummy, Condi, Dick and George (with equal fervor, i’m no longer a Dem anymore mind you) without having to hear this kind of tired-ass rhetoric. When you do that you are just another boring hetero. Do you get that? Would you call Alohaleezy on that? or Shirlstars or Damnit Janet like this? You are responding to my gender? Of course and that says much more about you and your own insecurities.
Where I come from we don’t “Run with the Bulls”, we suck cock, much more direct and quite wonderful and threatening to Fundies and faux-Democrats and the (for some reason) hetero insecure/impaired.
I come from a place in world society where we believe that 2 men should be lauded for pleasuring each other when the rest of society sends us to jail. Instead, the rest of society pays MILLIONS to men who DISABLE each other in a boxing ring or War Game instead of putting said ‘ring’ on each others finger.
We have nothing to prove to the hetero insecure, no need to be uber-macho. I am from a different planet, the planet GAY. So ban me for it! 10 % of the population is gay, are 10% of your readership ‘out’ here? In a pig’s eye! No, not even close and like Buscho it comes from the top down. Swallow that.
I know it would give you a big notch in your belt with Armando and Markos to ban a gay guy who just wants to tell his truth. Put me in the “Women’s Studies’ group, I’d happily reside in solidarity with them.
God, save us from this kind of boring machismo.
what on earth are you talking about?
I sure would like to know what he’s talking about. I am totally confused. What does being gay have to do with this topic? What am I missing here?
Wilfred, I am happy you are happy sucking cock. As for Rahm, I had the “pleasure” of dealing with him on a congressional campaign back in the 20th century when he was an employee of the DCCC. He was arrogant, smart and ruthless. Maybe we need a Democratic Rove like him to “win” in this corrupt and compromised system we have here in the American Empire.
And if the Democratic Party would rather play along than work for real reform, the Democratic Party needs to be made to get out of the way.
Top down as always. Toe the line or get the fuck out of the fucking line to the top.
Have either of them ever embraced a bottom up grassroots candidate?