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Rep. Jerry Nadler with Howie Klein
The Democratic Party made modest gains Tuesday, in the U.S. House:
[H]istory shows us that it’s hard for the incumbent president’s party to pick up a huge amount of seats when he’s up for reelection.
But Republicans under Ronald Reagan (16 seats) and Richard Nixon (12 seats) both gained more than Democrats under Obama. And perhaps most importantly, Democrats went into the 2012 election with their smallest minority in 60 years and had lots of ground to gain, given all the tea party-backed freshman Republicans who won in 2010.
Some argue the chances of larger gains ended in the 2010 state-level elections that brought the GOP in control of enough legislatures that they drove the post-census redistricting process out of reach for Democrats in hundreds of state legislative, and scores of national legislative districts.
Inveterate Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee critic, Howie Klein, watched the performance of DCCC-backed candidates this year, dating back to his coverage of the Democratic Party primaries from early spring through the summer. His early post-electon assessment of DCCC Chairman, Rep. Steve Israel, is as withering as were his critiques through the year. Here is Klein, damning Israel for using DCCC-related money to take out ads against a progressive Democrat in West Virginia:
So Israel, who “officially” left the right-wing Blue Dog caucus and New Dem Coalition when he decided to go for a Democratic Party leadership role, set about trying to make sure to leave a clear path for Oliverio in 2014. The problem was just some activist grandmother with a grassroots following, Sue Thorn. Needless to say, Israel directed the DCCC and its allies and affiliates to ignore her and he told big Democratic donors to not give her any money. But he didn’t stop there. Even though the Democrats hold a heavy registration advantage in WV-01 and even though Thorn outpolled McKinley in the primary this year (49,203 to 36,107), Israel connived with the Blue Dog PAC, Center Forward, to run TV spots against Sue Thorn. Yeah… read that again. He the chairman of the DCCC, who Nancy Pelosi admiringly describes as reptilian, watched with glee as his close allies at the Blue Dog Research Forum (now called Center Forward) took out TV spots not just for reactionary, anti-Choice Democrats like Joe Donnelly, Mike McIntyre, Jim Matheson, Ben Chandler and John Barrow, but also for reactionary, anti-Choice Republican David McKinley. Ever hear of anything like that before? Is that why Pelosi called him “reptilian?” No, she thinks he’s fabulous.
Or she did. I wonder what she thinks about the breathtaking incompetence so clearly demonstrated across the board last night. All his horrid Blue Dog recruits lost. And, tragically, he was the cause of so many progressives who had ZERO DCCC support losing as well. In WV-01 Sue was beaten out by McKinley– one of the few things that went the way Israel planned it– around 60 to 40%.
If Howie Klein isn’t the only articulate critic of Rep. Israel, he is the most persistent:
We’ll get more into this is the coming days but every single Blue Dog Israel recruited– and wasted so much money on (money that could have gone to help progressives win)– has either lost or is losing tonight, as did Blue Dog incumbents Ben Chandler (KY) and Larry Kissell (NC). It’s like a redux of the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse of 2010. When will the corrupt Inside-the-Beltway Democratic Establishment learn that actual Democratic voters don’t want Blue Dogs and that Republicans have their own reactionaries so they don’t need them? These were the Blue Dogs Israel was trying to get over:
• Dave Crooks (IN)- LOST!
• Pete Gallego (TX)- undecided but losing narrowly
• Pam Gulleson (ND)- LOST!
• Nick Lampson (TX)- LOST!
• Gary McDowell (MI)- undecided but losing narrowly
• Brendan Mullen (IN)- LOST!
• Sal Pace (CO)- LOST!
• Hayden Rogers (NC)- LOST!
• Rob Wallace (OK)- LOST!
• Charlie Wilson (OH)- LOST!When will Israel tender his resignation? With Obama, Senate Democrats and House progressives all doing so well, Steve Israel (and his allies Joe Crowley and Steny Hoyer) were the skunks at tonight’s party.
Will the Obama administration wake up and push for the DCCC to become friendly to progressive candidates? As Klein notes above, “When will the corrupt Inside-the-Beltway Democratic Establishment learn that actual Democratic voters don’t want Blue Dogs and that Republicans have their own reactionaries so they don’t need them?”
To take back the House in 2014, the Democrats need to do the opposite of what Obama functionaries like Rahm Emanuel did to progressive activists and candidates between 2008 and 2012. By the beginning of December we will see if the White House will move leftward in the upcoming term. If they do move left, and want to regain the U.S. House, pushing for a full purge of the DCCC might be a helluva a place to start.
Photo by Jerry Nadler under a Creative Commons license on Flickr
46 Comments
“… we will see if the White House will move leftward in the upcoming term.”
Not gonna happen. Obama needs a republican house so he can continue his bi-partisan capitulation and say”They made me do it“.
The Blue Dogs keep saying that they can’t run Real Democrats in certain seats because they’d go down in flames. Trouble is, the Blue Dogs also go down in flames.
I’ve never seen a Blue Dog who I would consider a good Democrat!
Agreed, thought it was a humorous aside.
They can’t run progressive Democrats in certain districts because the Blue Dogs have allowed the party organization to atrophy, depending on their own personal machine.
Agreed there should be a change. WI 8th Congressional race,(D) Jamie Wall lost to (R,T-party 2010) Reid Ribble after Wall made the D3C, “12 most likely to succeed,” list early on in the campaign cycle, with demonstrated actual fundraising requirements met. D3C pulled Wall’s national funding over a month ago. Just quit and told him he no longer had a chance.
Welcoming this third chance today to indicate Rahm, lame-headedness (quote from me at earlier FDL diary).
“Yes, the recall was an electoral disappointment, but don’t forget how much help we got when Rahm made the fateful visit to Milwaukee to give Barrett the nod to stick his tardy (after securing re-election as mayor) ass into the recall primary and create just enough more factionalization to kill the process. National D’s couldn’t abide having an actual people’s movement succeed. That might have inspired similar action in different states. That’s my analysis and I’m sticking to it.” ;0)
Thanks ET.
Thanks.
Here in Alaska the Republicans scored gains in both houses of the state legislature, mostly through beneficial redistricting. A longstanding state senate coalition that has kept the governor and house from drastically reducing oil company taxation and charges was the main target of outside money this cycle. The coalition is endangered by the results, but perhaps not fatally. Republicans will have more chairs in the coalition is the most likely outcome.
Rep. Don Young got almost 70% of the vote. He’s approaching 40 years in the House.
Glenn Greenwald seems to weigh in on the 2nd term as a heavy skeptic, and mentions the 2014 house race. This is step 6 of Greenwald’s description of how Obama will immediately go after liberal values. The president will “target their most cherished government policies within a matter of weeks, even days.”
And the record goes skip, scraaaaaaatch, skip, scraaaaaaatch, skip, scraaaaaaatch, skip……
Keystone XL will be approved.
You are 100% right!!
Is Scott MacAdams ever going to run again?
The most recent DCCC heads have been Rahm Emanuel, Chris Van Hollen and Steve Israel, none of whom are exactly progressive. The House Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot and need to stop electing Conservadems to the DCCC chair or forever remain irrelevant.
I for one would be for him. Suspect he found life more important than the circus.
Probably. He helped a lot of candidates through this cycle and stayed fairly close to home in Sitka.
You say DCCC, I think Chris Cegalis!
If I had to take a stab, I’d opine that the DCCC’s mission was to keep Liberals out of the House! And a damn fine job they’ve done of it, too! They’ve have established a long running record of success in that arena, as well.
We all know what was accomplished in the case of Chris Cegalis, a lady who built a grass roots organization and almost unseated Henry Hyde (R IL-06) in 2004 by her own devices. Rahm brought in Tammy Duckworth, the decorated amputee veteran, who won the Dem Primary but failed to win the General Election, resulting in Rep. Peter Roskam.
Congrats, ET…! Front-paged…! Well done…! ;-)
I got into the DCCC back in 2006, when very progressive Diane Benson secured the Alaska Dem nomination, and came close to taking him down (42%) on less than $250K. Neither the DCCC or the state Dems helped her meaningfully. I spoke with Chris van Hollen in late 2007 about Benson, who was running in the next primary race. Already the Dem machine was fielding candidates to marginalize her. I tried to convince van Hollen that the DCCC needed to move left soon.
Is it going to be a McAdams-Sullivan thing for guffner.
It’s like quite a few people here forgot that Obama actively hates the base of the Party during GOTV weekend. Did you read the interviews with the campaign staff? When they weren’t demonstrating selective memory by touting a “flawless” campaign–anyone remember their messaging changing completely a handful of times during the first half of the race? I do–they would immediately pivot into talking about into calling the base dumb or stupid.
Or, hell, remember the only time he ever lost his cool at a press conference was when he was talking about the liberal base of his own party in the aftermath of “caving” on the Bush tax cut extension? The guy actively hates the Party, especially the liberals in it. He will never purge likeminded people to help the group they all hate out.
I think Sullivan regards Senator as a higher office. Besides, Parnell can run again. Even though he served almost half of Palin’s term, he has only run once.
*yawn*
first time LNfdl. thanks.
Noooooooo half term don’t count! Excrement.
Steve Israel is Obama’s creature so there will be no change. They’d rather lose to the Republicans than to the Progressives who might offend their paymasters. Obama’s a Blue Dog so get used to it.
You’re right. I’m sort of going through a process of looking for signs of how that plays out next. My diary headline ends in a question mark.
As usual, ET, you are exactly correct. The commenters, for the most part, can see what is happening and it is not a leadership looking for progressive people or ideas to help move the country in a good direction. The 1% don’t want progressive, so o will see that nothing happens in that direction.
Someone show me how hard Obama worked for other Democrats in this just-past election. He’s just not that into Democrats, in my opinion. He’s in; we’re out. Get over it.
Great read, congrats on FrontPage Placement!
Great comments, also, as usual.
Looks like Obama will move on deficit reduction ‘reforms’ immediately, from all the chatter from the usual suspects. Not even waiting for The New Year. Lame Duck, will be his giveaway window. N then, we’ll have to watch his inauguration.
This is gonna hit hard on some liberal Obamabots that have so far, rejected the notion that Obama is a corporate fascist tool paid to do their bidding, not a liberal loving proggy.
Ah well, life is full of having yer mellow harshed these days.
On KPFK, Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post said the only reason Republicans didn’t lose the House was all the gerrymandering they did in states where they control the governorship and the legislature.
How naive I was.
Reading this, that the Obama team is anti-liberal, gives me the same feeling as when Johnson, the Peace candidate in ’64, heaved us lock stock and barrel into Viet Nam. We have been lie to. Betrayed. Back stabbed.
Obama didn’t ‘cave’ on anything. That was him to begin with.
Somebody tell me I misunderstood!
How I see it.
Faux Democrats do not help the 99%, any more than do Republicans.
If neither the Democrats nor the Republicans use U.S.; tax dollars to do right by the 99%, the 99% will start voting for the Party that pledged not to raise taxes.
It’s a vicious cycle. The DCCC has now been headed by Conservadems for so long that the House Democrats are mostly Conservadems.
So is the Democratic Party, for that matter.
Plus, the House has gotten rid of as many liberals as it could.
We can pretend that this problem or that is due to this individual Democrat or that one. Steve Israel. Obama. Hoyer. Emanuel. Whomever.
They are only individual trees. Focus on them and you miss the forest.
The forest is that the Democratic Leadership Council, aka the conservadem wing of the Democratic Party, completed its takeover of the entire Democratic Party during the administration of Bill Clinton.
Since then, the Democratic Party has done its best to eliminate liberals, whether by ethics committee investigations to get rid of incumbest, or by having a conservative DCCC and DSCC, or by less obvious means. And incumbent liberal who knew what was good for them “converted” to New Democrats. (Think Kerry, Schumer, etc.)
If you are fighting for a more liberal Democratic Party, you now have to contend with the entire Democratic Party, not only Obama or Rahm or Israel.
Sorry, dude.
No one but a liar can tell you that you misunderstood. And this morning is my morning to lie online. That would be the morning of April 1.
Not just Rahm – heavy hitters Rahm, Durbin, and Obama all came to the district to throw their weight behind Duckworth. I’m glad people still remember.
Recall that 2006 DCCC chair, Rahm Emanuel, got credit for the Democratic take-over of the House that year while most of his picks lost:
As John V. Walsh wrote in the Nov. 11/12 issue of CounterPunch (), Emanuel “chose 22 key races, open or Republican seats, where [Democrats] might win.” Only nine of his candidates did win, however, prompting Walsh to note that since the Democrats needed only 15 seats to win control of the House, but picked up 30, Emanuel’s “efforts were completely unnecessary. Had the campaign rested on Rahm’s choices,” Walsh further pointed out, the Democrats still would be in the minority.
2006 was also the election where the then senator Barack Obama refused to endorse the Democratic senate candidate, Ned Lamont, over Joe Lieberman (running as an independent).
Not only Senator Obama. Obama, Schumer and Clinton, maybe others, went to Connecticut to help Lieberman destroy Lamont in the primary. Then every prominent national Democrat stayed the hell out of Connecticut during the general election, leaving a wounded Lamont to twist in the wind.
Something similar happened in Massachusetts during the special election for Kennedy’s seat. Bill Clinton came in during the primary to help the weakest candidate win over three other Democratic candidates, any of whom could have won, if the Party had backed them.
At the time, people said it was because the Clintons owed Coakley for her support of Hillary. No national Democrat supported any of the other Democratic candidates.
Coakley won the primary and it was crickets from the Democrats after that. After her numbers plummeted, Vicki Kennedy came in a couple of times. Supposedly, she did not like Coakley, but could not bear to see her husband’s seat go to a Republican.
Not only were the Democratic politicians missing (even Kerry), but so was DNC money, Democratic strategists, etc. Coakley got nothing at all.
Coakley’s numbers plummeted further as the election Tuesday approached. Almost every day, including Friday, the WH press corps asked if Obama was going to campaign for Coakley. Every day, including Friday, the WH replied that he had no plans to do that.
Sunday night, on next to no notice to anyone, Obama flew in to attend a
Coakley rally. By that time, she was about 25 points down and there was one day between the rally and Tuesday morning. He may as well have waved a magic wand over the voting booths, for all the good that last minute trip did at that point.
Yeah, she was a lousy candidate, but she was the only one they seemed to want to run against Brown.
Just after the election, someone at DKos related that her mother, who lives in western Mass and works in the Democratic trenches during elections, was puzzled that no one was calling her to work the election. So Mom called a party regular and asked: No, she was told, there are no plans to work this election. Nothing, no effort, at all, in any way. Coakley was deep sixed. OTOH, Coakley was a lackluster campaigner and apparently surrendered her campaign apparatus to incompetents and hacks, you’ll pardon the repetition. Given the outcome of the primary leading into Coakley’s run, I’m not convinced the people who ran against her could have defeated Brown.
Thanks for the many enlightened comments on this. We won’t have long to wait for the 2013-2017 Obama to begin playing his hand.
Sorry, RodL2, once the rose-colored glasses fall off, they stay off. But that’s a good thing in the long run (and it WILL be a LONG run), if uncomfortable.
I do my bit by every time some democratic party organization requests my money and sends a postpaid envelope, I copy some excellent article from here or somewhere and say HELL NO – not while President Obama wants to agree to cut social security or while he assassinates Americans sans due process or while he won’t prosecute Jon Corzine and other bankesters or whatever the latest great article is about — I take every opportunity to send them the message that if they don’t support me I won’t support them. If everyone does it . . .
(I do contribute, but only to individual candidates that I approve of.)
I put this on Facebook last night and by this morning it had disappeared. Flagged! So I’ll try again.
Weird that it was flagged, eh?
Obama is only a Democrat because in Chicago machine politics if you are black and want to get ahead you better be a Democrat. He has not one Democratic idea in his head, except, maybe, people pick on blacks because of their race and he as a black must speak up when this happens if it also is true that speaking up will get him some political brownie points.
Obama did nothing to help Democrats this election cycle, did you fail to notice?
And, since Clinton, Dems are not actually Dems. They don’t follow or try to implement any parts of their platform, their big shtick is helping billionaires scr$## Social Security for no reason at all … they suck. Obama does not WANT to “take back the House”. Where would his excuses go?
Edward Teller @ 44:
It may have been a ‘friend’ who does not brook any criticism of Obama. I’ll find out who and remove that person. Or quit Facebook.
The more I look into the anti-liberal bias of this administration the more I am inclined to simply label Obama as a “Blue-dog Democrat”.