“…Home! Home! Pickup and home! Any beacon you can hear. Six minutes! All hands, save yourselves, pick up your mates. Home on any beacon! Sauve qui -“
No, wait, that’s a quote from Starship Troopers. This is what Israel actually did:
The Democrat charged with trying to win back the House majority is telling his candidates that it’s OK to skip the party’s national convention.
…OK, OK, pretty much the same thing.
Moe Lane
Well, it’s for sure that the DNC isn’t going to help.
The DCCC confirmed to Roll Call today that the committee has shifted its Badger State operation, in place to aid Democratic Congressional candidates in the fall elections, to boost the party’s effort to recall Gov. Scott Walker (R) and replace him with Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. Today, the DCCC today sent an email fundraising appeal asking its supporters to help underwrite its participation in the recall campaign.
The worst news for the Democrats? In a demented way, it even makes sense. The DCCC is struggling to regain ground in Wisconsin’s current 5/3 GOP/Democratic split: the two Republican freshmen (Sean Duffy and Reid Ribble) are the only ones really vulnerable this go-round, and even then only in relative terms. If the latest batch of Wisconsin recall elections end as mind-bogglingly disastrously for the Democrats as it’s currently looking, then the DCCC will not only find themselves not even close to winning back either seat; they might even be stuck worrying about Ron Kind’s again*. So they’ve got a stake in the recalls. Continue reading #rsrh Obama’s need – or greed – forces DCCC to throw away money in Wisconsin recall election.
I say “threatened” because if the NY state legislature doesn’t come to a deal by Wednesday, this is the map that is very likely going to be the one to get used:
…and there’s going to be several Members of Congress who will be very unhappy if that happens. Including Steve Israel of the DCCC. Continue reading The THREATENED NY Congressional District map.
I apologize for having to use the term, but unfortunately it is a public record utterance by a then-Congressman.
This particular hypocrisy on the part of the Democratic party is almost… pure in its brazenness, really. It goes like so: the Democrats have put together a program called ‘Majority Makers’ where Democrats with good fundraising ability who are expected to win their elections are being tapped to spread some of that raised money around to candidates who aren’t doing so well. This in itself is hardly unusual, and not actually pernicious. No sense wasting money, right? – and it’s also expected that the money being passed along would be going to a candidate that shared the original candidate’s values.
The problem is that one of the keystones of the ‘Majority Makers’ program is Alan Grayson, running in FL-09; and his value system includes crude sexual-themed attacks against women who dare to have a different opinion than him on economics.
“…this lobbyist, this K Street Whore, is trying to teach me about economics.” Continue reading DCCC using Alan “K Street Whore” Grayson to fund other candidates?
Yeah… I think that somehow DCCC chair Steve Israel didn’t think this one all the way through when he came out in support for the Occupy Wall Street ‘movement.’
Steve Israel Stands With Them.
Note that I am utterly unsympathetic to the argument that the OWS movement is merely not being utterly hostile to any random anti-Semites stopping by. Personally, I take the position that if your organizational criteria requires you to not show the door to anyone who starts ranting about how the International Zionist conspiracy runs the banking system, then you’re doing it wrong. It’s nice to see one of the two major political parties agree with me; it astounds me that it’s not both.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
Don’t get me wrong: it’s early days yet. But this line from a Politico article detailing the solidifying trainwreck which is the Democrats’ attempt to take back the House:
The DCCC is working 24/7 recruiting excellent candidates and helping them and our members build top-notch campaigns.
…has pretty much no backup evidence for it. At all. The so-called “Drive to 25” initiative that the Democrats were supposed to be pushing heavily has sort of… dissipated. Not to be mean-spirited about this, but if the DCCC has any people running for all those open/Republican held seats, then the committee has done an excellent job at hiding its light under a bushel. An examination of the site reveals, well, no recruits at all.
Again, it’s early days yet. And obviously the NRCC shouldn’t get complaisant. Still, this was a fairly uncritical acceptance of Democratic agitprop on Politico’s part: tsk, tsk.
Moe Lane
Ach, forgive me: in DCCC chair Steve Israel’s mind former Democratic Congressmen who are now the aforementioned dirty, dirty lobbyists are really just poor souls who have to eat and pay the bills. They’re also the only hint of a glimpse of a hope that the man has at putting up something like a competitive roster of candidates in 2012, too.
See, here’s the underlying structural problem for the Democrats: they didn’t just lose a lot of their major-league players in 2010 – i.e., Congressmen. That happens, and that can be sometimes a blessing in disguise, because it will at least give openings for promising newcomers and/or minor league players. Give an example from our side: when NY-26 went vacant the state GOP tapped Assemblywoman Jane Corwin for the replacement. By all accounts, she’s at least two steps up from Chris Lee – three if you include the Craiglist thing – so we end up with a net improvement in our Congressional delegation. So there’s opportunities to be found, in other words. Continue reading DCCC desperate to recruit dirty, dirty lobbyists.
Back in the day, it was pretty strongly alleged that the Democratic party unceremoniously threatened Rep. Steve Israel in order to keep him from running against appointed Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in her primary this year. Strenuously denied at the time, of course – remember, this was before the Sestak and Romanoff scandals erupted – but plausible, very plausible. Both the threats (loss of donor money, active campaigning by the President, deliberate organizing of the African-American vote against Israel), and the promises (the gratitude of the Democratic party for not going up against a weak candidate, and maybe even a promotion to the inner circle). And after all of that, oddly enough: Steve Israel didn’t run for Senate.
And now look here: “Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday named Representative Steve Israel of New York to lead the House Democratic campaign committee into the next election, putting him in charge of the party’s effort to regain the majority it lost in November.” Which certainly qualifies as “inner circle” – and which keeps him from even thinking about a Senate bid until 2016. Guess the Democrats learned their lesson from the Blanche Lincoln debacle: lock up the primary challengers early, and all that. A little too smart for my liking: I prefer the Democrats to have the kind of thinking that causes them to keep the same House leadership team that threw away sixty-two seats and counting. Continue reading Rep. Steve Israel gets his payoff.
I like and respect Charlie Cook and his Political Report, but the title of this article (“No Losers Here“) is blatantly incorrect. It’s an article about the two Congressional and two Senatorial national committees… and, in fact, two of them were losers this cycle. Hint: they were the ones with Ds in their acronyms.
To summarize:
And that’s pretty much all I have to say on the subject. Except that this story should hopefully tell you everything that you need to know about who won, and who lost.
Moe Lane
*Which means close to half of the Democrats’ vaunted Red-to-Blue program was actually Blue-to-Red-and-Let’s-Try-to-Make-it-Blue-Again.
And one Republican – but that’s unsurprising of the DCCC.
The six House Democrats in question would be “Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Gene Taylor of Mississippi, Pete DeFazio of Oregon, Mike McIntyre of North Carolina and Jim Marshall and John Barrow of Georgia:” those are the six House Democrats who have gotten endorsements from a group called ALIPAC (Americans for Legal Immigration PAC), which is fairly obviously a group that heavily favors a stronger line on immigration policy. Why this exercise in bipartisanship is relevant – and so entertaining – is because ALIPAC had also endorsed AZ-08’s Jesse Kelly, which led DCCC spokesman Andy Stone to refer to a combat veteran as follows:
“Another [National Republican Congressional Committee] Young Gun candidate, another Nazi tie[*] — it should come as no surprise,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Andy Stone said in a statement Monday. He said the group was “on the racist fringe” and that it was “backed by anti-Semites and white supremacists.”
And – just to make it clear – at least one of those delegates (Mike McIntyre) was bragging about his ALIPAC endorsement. Which I believe means that Andy Stone, DCCC spokesman, has just called at least one of his own employers a Nazi, anti-Semite, white supremacist.
(pause)
Oops?
Moe Lane (crosspost) Continue reading DCCC calls racist… six House Democrats.
