House Democrats always assign corporate-friendly New Dems to run the DCCC and never learn what a mistake it is. Before the current disaster, Suzan DelBene, there were equally awful Sean Patrick Maloney, Cheri Bustos, Ben Ray Lujan and Steve Israel, all from the conservative wing of the Democratic Party establishment, all looking to recruit other conservative Democrats, all having done a lousy job, winning only when circumstances dictated it and overrode their sheer incompetence.
DelBene, from a struggling Alabama family, was all through life motivated by accumulation of money and became personally wealthy working in Microsoft’s marketing operations. Her net worth is somewhere in the vicinity of $200 millions and she is absolutely clueless about how the voters she has failed to appeal to live their lives. She ran for Congress — a self-funder— in 2010, lost and ran again two years later and won, first using her massive fortune to beat a progressive in the primary.
She has no imagination and no guts, just a nose to the grindstone attitude that has served her well personally but has done nothing for the Democratic Party or the DCCC. This is going to be a good cycle for Democrats, despite her, and she is eager to take all the credit. She could have gotten off to an heroic start by giving a hand to Josh Weil’s uphill battle to win in FL-06, now a margin-of-error race. Instead she lied about what the DCCC would do to help, did nothing at all and is counting on him losing, an obvious likelihood in an R+14 district. Republicans, meanwhile, have freaked out, seen the possibility of Weil beating their crackpot candidate Randy Fine, and, panicking, have started shoveling money into the race, while DelBene... lunches with lobbyists. Last night, we learned even Musk has rushed to start spending.
Yesterday, Max Cohen and Jake Sherman, not even mentioning the imaginationless DelBene or her pathetic, plodding DCCC, reported on the Republican panic in Florida. “House Republicans,” they wrote, “shouldn’t have to worry about Florida’s 6th District special election on April 1. It’s a deep-red seat that former Rep. Michael Waltz won by 33 points five months ago before decamping for the Trump administration. But many GOP officials are concerned that Republican candidate Randy Fine’s lackluster fundraising and sky-high Democratic enthusiasm could put the race in uncomfortably close territory. Fine, a GOP state legislator, has raised just under $1 million since entering the race and has just $93,000 on hand. Meanwhile, Democratic candidate Josh Weil has brought in a stunning $9 million and has $1.2 million on hand.
The money situation has gotten so dire for Fine that we’re told he’s been calling GOP House members, pleading for funds.”
No help from the DCCC, Weil is considerably closer to $11 million today than he is to $9 million. The one hint of a DelBene/DCCC mention— so typical of her and the DCCC: “Democrats tell us they aren’t expecting to come close to flipping the seat blue.” Cohen and Sherman didn’t mention the first thing I found out about Weil when I called him— he’s a Berniecrat in a district where people hate Democrats but love Bernie. It isn’t something DelBene is capable of grasping, let alone acting on. In her world, only people like Chuck Schumer win election— and people who can buy their seats, the way she did.
It is past time for progressives to take over the Party and make it work. Somebody has to.
______________UPDATE_____________
Two old guys talking, and this DCCC trainwreck GOP-lite mess could blow it anyway.
