After describing the Texas CD 07 District, Democrat side, via use of very neutrally worded reporting, the Economist continues:
Ms Fletcher, who is backed by Emily’s list, will probably win the run-off in the seventh district. But the DCCC’s intervention is likely to have two consequences in the run-up to the mid-terms. Ms Moser’s campaign is now more likely than ever to highlight and inflame divisions between the progressive and establishment wings of her party. And further afield other candidates in crowded fields may be emboldened to continue their campaigns, even if their party tries to dissuade them.
This will not stop party strategists from trying to weed crowded fields, though.
Take California, where the stakes are particularly high. In the primary on June 5th the two candidates who garner the most votes in each district will go forward to contest the general election, no matter which party they represent. That means that in a crowded contest Democrats could split their votes, so that only Republicans go forward. In a district in San Diego four Democrats are running to replace Darrell Issa, a Republican who is retiring (a fourth dropped out last week citing concerns that a crowded field would play into the hands of Republicans). East of Los Angeles eight Democrats want to replace Edward Royce, another retiring Republican.
Daraka Larimore-Hall, the state party’s vice chairman, made a speech aimed at congressional candidates who are polling below 10% at its convention last month. “If you step aside today to make sure we don’t send two Republicans to the general, you will be my hero,” he is reported to have said. “If you put your career before your party...I will not support you for fucking dogcatcher.”
Reflecting on the recent past the Clintons most surely put personal ambition ahead of the good of the party and its having a future, and while neither seems inclined toward catching or able to catch a dog, a like attitude could extend to both and beyond to Chealsea, who is younger and more fit. The entrenched innner party types, beltway ones in particular, likely harbor a mirrored dislike toward Bernie, but he ran for a party in the hole, deeply so, to have a future, and they'd rather keep ambitions; the future be damned. There is Biden.
Bernie attracted massive crowds of young enthusiasts for whom his agenda resonated. The Clintons held fundraisers for moneyed ones to whom her agenda represented no threat, (and as it turned out, no promise). The two most unpopular candidates of all of America's history were offered. It was Lesser Evil redux, it was same old same old, and people wanting better stayed home. Is there a lesson about Biden?
___________UPDATE___________
This is for those liking understatement; The Nation (all links in original):
The defining characteristic of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for too many years now has been its well-honed ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Drowning in conventional wisdom, disconnected from realities on the ground, and instinctively inclined to react to Republicans rather than to set its own agenda, the DCCC is such a bumbling enterprise that even the chairman of the Democratic National Committee recently distanced himself from its so-called “strategies.”
When DNC chair Tom Perez was asked his opinion of a ham-handed move by the DCCC to circulate selectively edited and disingenuously framed opposition research against Texas Democrat Laura Moser, a popular progressive running in the party’s crowded primary in the Houston area’s 7th Congressional District, he replied: “I wouldn’t have done it.”