The two parties are not mirror images of each other. The Democrats can’t raise money for the DNC but individual candidates and the DSCC and DCCC are performing very well. Meanwhile, the president is raising a ton of money for the RNC, but the NRSC and NRCC are struggling mightily, and many of their most vulnerable incumbents are being outraised by the their Democratic challengers.
The Democrats’ problems are a hangover from the primaries and the contested race for a new DNC chief. There is plenty of blame to spread around for this, including from the Russians who fanned the flames of disunity with their release of hacked emails around the time of the Democratic National Convention. Of course, their active measure against the American left wouldn’t be as effective if their weren’t real embarrassing revelations involved. The best propaganda has an element of truth to it, and that was true all throughout the Cold War. Still, Democrats should be self-aware enough to be wary of doing the Russians’ work for them by perpetuating bad blood from 2016.
The Republicans’ problem is a predictable one. Trump is in only in it for himself, so he raises a lot of money for the organ responsible for helping him get reelected but actively suppresses his base’s interest in donating to the congressional fundraising arms.
In general, the Dems get the better end of this because the midterm elections will turn much more on what the congressional organizations do than on what the RNC and DNC do, so the Republicans should be very upset.
“House Republicans are growing increasingly alarmed that some of their most vulnerable members aren’t doing the necessary legwork to protect themselves from an emerging Democratic tidal wave. In some of the biggest media markets, where blockbuster fundraising is a prerequisite for political survival—most notably in New York City, Los Angeles, and Houston—Republican lawmakers aren’t raising enough money to run aggressive campaigns against up-and-coming Democrats.”
“Of the 53 House Republicans facing competitive races, according to Cook Political Report ratings, a whopping 21 have been outraised by at least one Democratic opponent in the just-completed fundraising quarter. That’s a stunningly high number this early in the cycle, one that illustrates just how favorable the political environment is for House Democrats.”
Trump is definitely making a major contribution to the problem here, which is why I contested Steve M.’s analysis last week.
Not something I’m used to thinking when I read one of your posts, but: What is your point?
In general, the Dems get the better end of this because the midterm elections will turn much more on what the congressional organizations do than on what the RNC and DNC do, so the Republicans should be very upset.
Except we know the Democratic congressional organizations never learn, and can be counted on to screw things up pretty often. Just look at your own congressional district, Boo. BTW, this doesn’t excite me at all:
http://www.pottsmerc.com/general-news/20170411/2-dems-plan-to-challenge-costello-in-6th-congressiona
l-district
Are both still in the race?
From the article:
I thought this was supposed to be a good thing. No entrenched, establishment Dems.
And one of them is a woman.
Is the problem that they’re not both women?
Or that neither of them is a person of color?
Did you read the whole article? Did you see the quotes attributed to both candidates? Ugh!! You know what’s hilarious? That Costello, the Republican who represents PA-06, actually increased his winning percentage in 2016 over 2014. All this in a district HRC actually won, even if barely. Do you know how hard that is? It’s well known that Democratic turnout sucks in mid-terms. I know you have a hard time being serious, but I don’t give a shit who runs. What their gender or race is. I want someone who can run a good campaign. Who knows that stupid, lame platitudes isn’t going to beat an empty suit like Ryan Costello. Because Costello is an empty suit, like Marco Rubio.
I did read the whole article…twice (it’s pretty short), and I could not find a problem with either one. First is a woman who spent years working for non profits benefiting the poor, educated at Stanford and MIT who wants to concentrate on STEM issues. The second a man in construction management who deals with unions and says supportive things about the working class. Of course I would not expect an in depth profile in such a short article and would look further at both, but both would be welcome in my district (Issa).
I have no idea how anyone would expect to recapture congress if such candidates are disqualified from purple districts.
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Neither of the candidates clearly are radical enough to carry a district where Clinton barely won.
We can only conclude that Clinton’s thin margin of victory is due to leftists staying home, and not, say, the district having a lot of Republicans and center-right leaning independents.
Yes,
But Clinton was clearly a very poor candidate because Cruz and Rubio did better than Trump in general election polling taken in 2015.
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Assumes the point of the exercise to to recapture Congress, and not to capture the party.
Assumes the point of the excercise is to recapture congress, and not to bring purity to the party.
Fixed that for you.
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Thank you for commenting on something you know nothing about. The DCCC has been trying to run centrist mush here for 12 years, since Rahm headed the DCCC. They have zero wins to show for it. STEM issues aren’t really a problem for this district, as it’s one of the wealthier districts in PA. Even so, I bet college costs in general would have more salience. And that’s just one example. Maybe you should watch the commercials they run here. They don’t inspire anyone to go to the polls. You remember what the definition of insanity is, right?
Your response would pretty much fit that definition.
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I’ll bite. What will make white, prosperous, middle-of-the-road-on-a-good-day voters riddled with status anxiety bite?
A call to expropriate the expropriators?
You can’t ask the kulaks to liquidate the kulaks.
A compelling facade of authenticity.
“Facade of authenticity”? Hrm.
But compelling!
Like your quiz!
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Bernie Sanders, brah. Always the right answer, no matter the district.
“Still, Democrats should be self-aware enough to be wary of doing the Russians’ work for them by perpetuating bad blood from 2016.”
In which establishment Democrats attempt to paint opposition to the Democrats establishment as doing the work of Russia.
Jesus.
Statement doesn’t work unless you become more specific and therein lies the problem. Not everyone will agree to the specifics.
The statement is obvious on its face.
You should read this.
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Never anything but insults from you.
Your link is ironic.
BTW do you ever actually knock on doors? Make phone calls?
No,
But I also don’t store STOLEN emails on my hard drive and use them for my personal gain, for the benefit of Putin. Does the ABA know?
I do notice that you don’t ask the same question in the diaries on the right…when in discussion with your fellow travelers.
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In other words you actually don’t do anything
Yep!
One of the things I didn’t do was help Putin. You can’t say the same.
You seem to think making calls and ringing door bells (things My household considers incredibly rude) is some short of weapon you can use against people who disagree with you. It’s not too dissimilar from Kelly thinking that those that have served in the military are somehow ‘better’ than those that have not served.
It’s authoritarian in nature.
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Those doors I knocked on where for Hilary. The calls I made: for Hillary.
The times I have worked to ensure people can vote: for the Democratic Party. The efforts to fight voter suppression: for Democrats.
So I can say I fought Putin,
You enabled him. Because you did nothing. You didn’t try to get others to vote. You didn’t work to help build the local Democratic Party.
You sat on your judgmental ass. You touched no one.
People like you enabled Putin. People who when confronted with Trump did nothing.
You keep telling yourself that.
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I want to say something about making calls and knocking on doors. I hate to receive any of them, so much so that I will not even answer the phone anymore unless I know who is calling or the left message is of some import. But a cold call is a waste of time. Same applies to the dumb asses who knock on my door. I sometimes just close the door on them.
Rude? Probably, but I know the speech for all of them. And I have a son who does this shit – calls and knocks on doors – and he is giving it up for the same reason.
But I do send money to candidates I choose, more than my wife is comfortable with,, and I do write to them. On that score, the dems either get their shit together or I will sit and watch.
So spare me the speech about calls and walking the neighborhood. O I did once volunteer to take people to the polls. It was not needed. As a political party, we need to address the very real economic and social issues raised from the last election.
What he should really read is this:
Social Fascism
Self righteous dipshits ostensibly of the left myopically doing their utmost to promote the narcissism of small differences, urged on and assisted by a foreign power (Russia, what a fucking coincidence) and thus ensuring the rise of the fascist right.
Did you make any calls or do anything?
No – your just a do nothing dipshit
Clearly that’s worth dignifying with a response.
That’s a great link. (I score high on the lack of self-awareness, so I figure it’s true.) It makes me want to write a little quiz.
Who is more constantly defensive?
A: the Sanders/Ellison wing of the party?
B: the Clinton/DWS wing of the party?
Who is more likely to micromanage, and find fault in minor things?
A: the people obsessed about Clinton’s ties to Wall Street?
B: the people obsessed about Sanders’s lack of fealty to the Democratic Party?
Who is more likely to make excuses?
A: the idiots who think Clinton did everything right in the general election?
B: the idiots who think Sanders would’ve won the primary if not for those meddling kids?
4. Who is more of a bully?
A: the people who have no sense of what they do that makes people say they are bullies, and who can’t understand why anyone thinks they are toxic control freaks?
B: the people who have no sense of what they do that makes people say they are bullies, and who can’t understand why anyone thinks they are toxic control freaks?
Whose behavior is the primary driving force creating the conflict?
A: the people with lots of power?
B: the people with less power?
I understand why the people in the DNC are doing what they’re doing now. Power protects itself etc.
What I don’t understand are the people here who are defending their behavior. Do the Dems want to win at all? You have millions of people who believe that the entire system — electoral, economic, political, judicial — is rigged. Everywhere they look the system is “rigged”, which is what most separated Clinton and Sanders voters (according to polling; that and age, obviously). Many of those millions voted for Sanders and believed the primary was “rigged”. So the question is do you want to organize these people into doing some something useful or make them feel hopeless and apathetic? Oh I know, let’s kick Ellison’s allies out, many of whom feel cheated already, and keep doing what we were doing before.
Who is defending them ‘here’?
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I don’t know. I guess some of us think the first step toward fixing a broken system is highlighting the cracks, while others are terrified that if we prod the weak points the whole thing falls apart?
The problem is that the “purge” narrative is BS. Some of Ellison’s picks got the boot. Others got selected. 5 members of the OMG ALL IMPORTANT rules committee are Ellison backers. It’s a tempest in a teapot.
Give me a break, man. This entire episode and everything leading up to it is the sole reason why Perez was picked. I personally don’t think it’s that big of a deal because there are more important things than delegate rules, especially when we don’t know who is running and therefore who the changes (or lack there of benefit). I’d think you’d understand that yelling “facts!” doesn’t win you jack shit in politics by now. I already expressed why the handling of this was problematic — many people think it’s rigged — and they do it in hamfisted ways designed to stick the most thumbs in the most eyes…for no reason other than they can. Stop defending shit behavior.
There’s nothing hamfisted here. It’s the usual suspects trying to gin up outrage over nothing. Ellison is the co-chair. If he thinks he’s being jerked around he could say so. Instead what he said, via a spokesman, was:
“[Ellison] suggested names for D.N.C. at-large membership and committees. Some were selected and some were not.”
Just because you have pure intentions does not mean you can’t be used to further other parties interests.
How many doors did you know on in 2016?
I get it, your pissed that you got duped by Putin, and you want it to all go away.
knocking on doors is not a cure all for that. Learning your lesson is.
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It is interesting that those who do nothing are so quick to judge that do.
Your giving 0’s now that your being called on your bullshit?
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Hey asshole – accuse me a being a dupe for Putin after I wprked fpr Clinton and I will give them to you all day.
Since we are having such a friendly back and forth, and you are a lawyer and ex prosecutor, I have a legal question for you.
Let’s say you pull into a shopping center parking lot and find a parking spot. Across the access lane you see a guy sitting on his pick up truck tail gate reading a book. He seems REALLY interested in that book, and that makes you very curious. Soon he puts his book in the bed of his truck and closes the gate and goes into a store to shop. Your curiosity overwhelms you, and you go check out the book. To your surprise, it’s something you are REALLY interested in. For the sake of discussion, let’s say it’s Senator Sanders diary, years 2015-2016. So you take it back to your car, take pictures of the pages, and put the book back exactly like you found it.
Did you commit a crime? Is what you did ethical?
Now let’s change up a little. Let’s say the guy goes in the store, and some stranger comes along and takes the book out of the truck, takes it into Staples, and makes copies. Then he comes out, hands you a copy and walks away. You, shocked, take the copy home, upload it to your hard drive, and use it to write articles for your local newspaper.
Did you commit a crime? Is what you did ethical? If you spend the next week feeding the homeless, would that make it ethical?
One more question….when you were a prosecutor did you ever prosecute anyone for receiving stolen property?
Asking for a friend.
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The Democrats have three problems. Exactly these three — which are not ranked in order of importance or priority, as I cannot claim to have fully thought through their interdependencies:
Possible to include something about the right to vote in number 2?
This is all a load of hooey. Dem often get more total votes than the GOP. Structural issues and gerrymandering help hide that, but it is true. That is not a branding problem.
Your second point is a lame and lousy message. It is good policy, but it’s not gonna get people to the voting booth. Except perhaps in Watergate-type years. Which we might yet get.
Not that it seems to matter to anyone but Salon thinks the Rs only need to win 10 of the 61 contested seats to win the House and the Cook report is pretty clear they are at the moment also picking the Rs. So it is still a year off, but the dems will need to get their act together or wait until 2020 and who knows what shit will happen before then.
So after reading a short story about the dysfunction among the dems, I have a question. Should the dems stick to an economic platform of single payer, free college, etc. or continue with a more pragmatic platform and reach out to traditional groups?
The short story I read thinks the dems are all wound up with identity politics and will lose on account of it. Bannon even predicts it.
But here is the thing, minorities are a little less than half the dem base. Pew has an interesting analysis of the voting base that I’ve referenced before. We will need to attract some of the WWC or we could see a repeat.
At this point in the cycle, why does anybody care how much the DNC or RNC is raising? The respective congressional and Senate campaign committees are where all the action is right now. And that’s where the Dems are doing better than the other guys. I’ll take it. Let Trump hoard money for his re-election campaign at the expense of their congressional candidates.
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