Moe Lane

Having a moment of semi-honesty.  Apparently, we don’t elect ‘leaders’ – mind the sudden chill, there – to create jobs:

(H/T: Hot Air) I say ‘semi-honesty’ because it’s somewhat more accurate to say that empirical evidence over the last three years suggests that nobody should realistically expect that electing Democrats will create jobs.  But that is a somewhat complex concept, with several hard words in it – and Wasserman Schultz was picked for DNC chair more for her ability to snarl on cue than for her level of cognitive development.  I mean, I’m sure that she has some – but nobody’s exactly calling Debbie in to double-check the math on that neutrino thing, if you know what I mean…

…and, oddly, it’s not bigger news:

As political rancor reached a crescendo over the debt limit crisis heading into the August Congressional recess, would-be Democratic donors seem to have been left with a bad taste in their mouths. Figures released Tuesday night show the Democratic National Committee making its poorest fundraising showing in months.

The $5.4 million raised by the main fundraising arm of the Democratic Party in August was overwhelmed by the more than $8 million raised by the Republican National Committee. The DNC’s haul was far lower than the $12 million it raised in June and the $7 million it raised in July.

Probably because, thanks to the Supreme Court’s landmark – and very belated – free speech reform decision (Citizens United v. FEC), worries about the parties having enough money to properly promote candidates have been fairly drastically muted.  Which means that while this news is of course welcome, it’s does not really have the connotations of being part of a life-or-death struggle that it would have in 2008…

Moe Lane

(Via Hot Air) The Politico is just now starting to realize just how big a boon DNC chair Debbie Downer (aka Debbie Wasserman Schultz) is… for the Republican Party:

She’s accused Republicans of wanting to reinstate segregation and of waging a “war on women.” She has asserted, somewhat nonsensically, that the GOP wants to make illegal immigration — by definition against the law — “a crime.” She’s also been mocked for driving a foreign car after pounding Republicans for not supporting the American auto industry.

[snip]

No one seems ready to declare her the Democratic version of Michael Steele, the gaffe-prone former Republican National Committee chairman whose rhetorical and administrative missteps led numerous party leaders to publicly insist he had to go.

(more…)

The Democratic party picked Labor Day weekend for their nominating convention in Charlotte, North Right-to-work Carolina?

Apparently.

Wow.  That’s the funniest damned thing that I’ve seen all day.

(pause)

Oh, well, it’s not like Big Labor doesn’t deserve the contempt shown to it by the Democrats.  I can’t respect people who won’t respect themselves, sorry.

Moe Lane

Well, that didn’t take long.  I mean, when I wrote this post indicating that Tim Kaine’s retention as DNC chair meant that the Democratic leadership had decided to concentrate solely on the President’s re-election*, I did not expect that I would receive some sort of confirmation of this within minutes.  But, thanks to Doug Heye, I see this report that the DNC is laying off… selected… Organizing for America staffers.  Which ones?  Well, Roll Call didn’t give specifics, but it’s fairly clear that the firings reflect the final abandonment of Howard Dean’s Fifty-State Strategy: they’re removing field staffers, which means that the leadership is writing off entire states.  Smart move for a Presidential campaign that’s starting kinda-sorta on the rocks; dumb move for a political party that wants to avoid regional status.

Organizing for America has, of course, always been a tool for the President.  It was clear even before the 2010 election that it was permitted to persist after the 2008 election in order to further the President’s chances in the 2012 election, and not to further the interests of the national Democratic party  – a charge angrily denied by the same press hack who is now gamely trying to explain away the layoffs – and it should be noted that the Roll Call article is noting that this was only the ‘first wave’ of layoffs.  Which means: expect more people getting fired, and expect non-Presidential Democratic resources be reserved for Democratic candidates running for office in states that Obama did win in 2008 but might lose in 2010.  Everybody else in the Democratic party is simply going to have to make do with less.

For the sake of the Lightworker.

(more…)

If you were wondering whether or not the Democrats learned anything – anything at all – from their recent shellacking, stop wondering: they have not. 

They are keeping Tim Kaine on as DNC chairman.

Because he did ever-so-well in the last election cycle… although I’d like to correct Jim Geraghty’s count slightly on Tim Kaine’s Litany of Failure: Jim was only looking at the 2010 results.  If you add in everything since the 2008 election cycle then you can add 2 governorships lost to the GOP and one Senate seat (the special election House results were pretty much a wash).  This despite the DNC out-raising the RNC in 2010 by almost 40 million dollars, mind you; which makes it even more embarrassing, if such a thing is really possible.

(more…)

“You delivered him to us in 1992. We thought that you might want him back: as you can see, we made a few improvements.”

Come on, guys, it’s a joke. Where’s your sense of humor, Democrats? What’s that? You put it up as collateral to fund your last-minute ad buys? Ah.

(via @lash3)

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: No, it’d be kind of silly and childish if the GOP had returned a donkey that had been sneeringly given to them in 2006. Returning one that had been sneeringly given to them in 1992? That’s awesome.

Via Jim Geraghty, meet Brad Woodhouse, who came to a discussion of the Alaskan Senate race with precisely zero clue of who his own party’s Senate nominee is.

As some may remember, I am not exactly happy with Woodhouse – I dislike it when party flacks try to irresponsibly fundraise, and by ‘irresponsibly fundraise’ I mean ‘deliberately use inflammatory language to raise money without worrying that it might encourage violent stalkers of the other side’s politicians‘ – but this relieves me, in its way. It raises the hopeful possibility that when Woodhouse was inciting violence on the DNC’s behalf earlier in the year he wasn’t cognitively capable of understanding what he was doing.

Seriously?

Not a single Democratic lawmaker appears in the ad, and there is no mention of President Obama, who won’t be on any ballots this year. A teacher and a masked factory worker make brief cameos in the ad, but the only recognizable individual in the spot is President Bush, who says, “You can’t get fooled again.”

Shoot, when a representative of the working class doesn’t even want to show his face on your campaign ad, that’s a ‘problem.’ And by problem I mean ‘opportunity for hysterical laughter.’

Moe Lane

PS: Betcha it took them at least 100K to make that ad (no, it shouldn’t have, but it probably did). They should make a ton more.

PPS: Do you think that Jeb Bush flashed the Loser Sign on his forehead? Probably not, but he should have.

Yes, the title is meant to be subtly mocking.

This article in the New York Times on the awkward disconnect between the President of the United States and the political party that he’s presumably in charge of is actually… not  too bad, really.  This, for example, is pretty clear-headed:

In 2006 and 2008, Democrats did something that had not been done in American politics since the Great Depression, which is to string together two consecutive “wave” elections — roughly defined as a gain of at least 20 seats in the House of Representatives. They gained a total of 55 House seats and 12 seats in the Senate; the tide came in twice and with unusual strength. That means that some significant number of the Democrats elected in the last two cycles, to put it bluntly, really don’t have much business holding their seats in the first place. Either their districts normally trend Republican — 49 Democratic House members were elected from districts that voted for John McCain — or they themselves probably wouldn’t have cleared the threshold for a successful candidacy in a more conventional election year.

…where it breaks down is in considering some of the implications.  Well, that’s why we’re here. (more…)

Anonymously, of course.  The next Democratic staffer who has the guts to attack a conservative woman to her face will be the first.

The DNC, the political wing of a president who launched his campaign decrying slash-and-burn campaign tactics, is highlighting new stories about a sex scandal rocking a GOP primary.

[snip]

“We don’t see a thing wrong pointing out when a politician of the other party lies to voters which the story in question shows here,” the spokesman said.

So, how do you know she’s lying, again, Mr. Anonymous Hero? Or was this just covering up for the fact that your staffers can’t tell an internal email list from a external one?

Moe Lane

PS: Your sabotage of the President’s own soaring rhetoric on the need to transcend petty politics is duly noted.

Crossposted to RedState.

No, really: check out the job description.

Email campaigners are responsible for planning, writing, and executing grassroots campaigns to advance the President’s agenda for change.

Back in December when Ben Smith reported on this the first time, the DNC’s response was “Your in-box isn’t going to fill itself.” Which is a very unintentionally revealing statement, given that it essentially concedes that the DNC assumes that there’s no such thing as a spontaneous popular movement. After all, if they don’t exist on the Left – and if they existed, the DNC wouldn’t be advertising for people to create them – then they don’t exist anywhere. This probably explains their more nonsensical statements about Tea Parties: the idea of a legitimate populist, grassroots-driven movement is as alien to them as a reactionless drive would be to a modern physicist. (more…)