Why "the left" has to work so hard to get the party's attention.

madfloridian

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Sat Sep-05-09 12:56 AM
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Why "the left" has to work so hard to get the party's attention.

And we do have to work hard. There has been a tendency for Democrats for years to get their big money donors so as not to have to vote for things that will make it hard to win.

But there are many of the leaders of the party who think there really is no Democratic base, who think we just have to win no matter how....and things will magically get better.

From The American Prospect 2007:

A new book examines Rahm Emanuel's hardball strategy in the midterm elections, and wonders if it's the right direction for Dems.

From the book by Neftali Bendavid called The Thumpin'.

Certainly Emanuel holds no such romantic notions that there even exists such a base of voters loyal to core Democratic values. He is adamant that "we have no base!," a view that clearly guided his strategy for selecting candidates. As Bendavid writes, "he would not support the most loyal Democrats, or those whose populism was purist. His only criterion, he said, was who could win." This kind of single-minded, values-be-damned vision is anathema to some on the party's left. Writing for The Nation after the election, John Nichols complained that "many of the Democrats who prevailed on November 7 did so despite efforts, not because of them" and argues that liberal candidates could have won had Emanuel made the decision to support them. Yet as Bendavid points out, "of the 30 candidates who took seats from the Republicans, about 20 had been nurtured, funded, advised, and yelled at by Emanuel for months. Perhaps a half dozen had been supported by grassroots activists with little help from the DCCC."

Howard Dean has a different view of the numbers and said it out loud. Video

"Nine out of the 35 races that were selected by the DCCC were winners...the rest of them were all folks who started on their own with enormous grassroots organizations."

(Key word here is selected. Most started out on their own with grassroots groups and DCCC and DNC helped fund some eventually. I had to listen a couple of times to get what he was saying.)

That is truly amazing, really. The majority ran because they were inspired and wanted to change the country.

He mentioned that some never got much help from either the DCCC or the DNC but won anyway. He named as examples Carol Shea-Porter, Jerry McNerney, and John Hall. He said it was all the netroots, people knocking on doors, people going out and talking to their neighbors.
Dean thanks progressives in 2006

More from Bendavid about attitudes from some leaders toward the activists and progressives.

The relationship that epitomizes the rift between Emanuel and the party base is the congressman's tenuous partnership with Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean. As the book relates, Emanuel spent most of the campaign furious with Dean, whose Fifty State Strategy to build up party infrastructure nationwide he saw as little more than a way to throw money to the wind. In May 2006, Emanuel and Senator Charles Schumer, his counterpart in the Senate, met with Dean to ask for more money for their respective campaigns. Banging his hand on the table, Emanuel chided Dean's grassroots plan, "No disrespect, but some of us are arrogant enough, we come from Chicago, we think we know what it means to knock on a door. You're nowhere Howard. Your field plan is not a field plan. That's fucking bullshit." The two wouldn't speak again until election time.

With or without Dean, Emanuel is a master fundraiser; he spent most of the 22 months before the midterm elections raising money, yelling at candidates to raise money, and yelling at donors to pledge more money. And it worked. The Democrats, who have always trailed Republicans in fundraising, raised more money last year than they had in any previous campaign for Congress ($140 million to the Republican's $175 million).

To be sure, there's some benefit to breaking fundraising records. But any Emanuel-style strategy of focusing on the wealthy is sure to exclude from candidacy all but the wealthiest and those who know how to attract them. If the Democrats continue on this path, finding candidates who represent a district's constituents will become increasingly difficult as those very constituents are shut out. Too bad that this, as Bendavid points out, is no longer Emanuel's fucking problem. Neftali Bendavid

We are seeing the fruits of the choice of wealthy candidates who tend to be conservatives.

I think we will pay a dear price on health care.