House Dem: Liberal groups need to back off for party to win in 2012
Liberal groups need to stay out of Democratic primaries if the party is going to retake the House majority, according to a conservative Massachusetts Democrat.Rep. Stephen Lynch was one of several Democrats who faced an aggressive primary challenge from the left in 2010. His challenger Mac D’Alessandro, a former top official with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), received almost $300,000 from labor groups for his campaign.
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Clearing primaries for members and discouraging liberal groups from spending against incumbents should be a priority for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he said. “It would definitely help, I think. You need to talk to those groups.”
FTW comment goes to somebody named “John Puma”:
Great, another “we can only win by NOT distinguishing ourselves from the GOP” idiot.
If you think Lynch is a lone-nut think again. They may not admit it publicly but his pro-incumbent beliefs are widely shared on both sides of the aisle in Washington.
Look at what happened last year on the GOP side – Tea Partiers aggressively challenged incumbents in the Republican primaries, winning many of the contests. Most of those challengers went on to win in the Republican tsunami last November.
But the Village Idiots focused on a few races (like Delaware and Nevada) to argue that the Tea Party cost the Republicans several seats and possibly the Senate majority.
Speaking of idiots, let’s check in with Booman:
I think it is safe to say that progressives did not cause the loss of a single seat in Congress through the use of primary challenges to incumbents or moderate candidates. But that isn’t stopping some people from whining.
What? That actually makes sense. Has Booman finally seen the light?
It’s possible to screw things up by adopting unrealistic purity tests. We all saw that happen with the Tea Party. But it didn’t happen on our side. We lost almost every single competitive contest in the country, regardless of funding, the quality of the candidate, the campaign strategy, or the quality of the opponent. We lost because our base didn’t turn out and their base did. It’s that simple. Under the circumstances, nothing in the known universe could have saved Blanche Lincoln, or countless other backstabbers. But voting progressive wouldn’t have saved them either. In the last election cycle, the only thing that could have mitigated disaster would have been something that created real fear or real excitement in our base. Individual candidates had no control over that. As for excitement, our opinion leaders were too busy nit-picking to do anything but crush what little excitement that might have existed.
Sometimes, it’s just not your cycle.
Okay, there’s the Booman we all know.
“Our” base didn’t turn out because they were disgusted with the 2% less evil DINOcrats. And now Obama is signaling he plans to take a hard right turn for the next two years.
Filed under: 2010 Elections, 2012 Elections, Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Politics, Uncategorized Tagged: | 2010 Elections, 2012 Elections, Democratic Party
Via Not Your Sweetie:
You should front page this
Yea, that’s a good one.
Very impressive.
The same Liberal groups Donna Brazil said the party didn’t need?
Donna Brazile said with the ‘creative classes’ the Dems didn’t need Hillary’s people: old, female, working class.
I think Brazile considered ‘liberal groups’ as part of her creative classes.
Yes I think Donna still needs the young urban progressives and suburbans to turn out. But the thrill is gone, so scaring them awake with Palin and Bachman is the strategy for now.
Standing for economic justice might be another way to go, but strangely OFA doesn’t seem interested in that strategy.
If it’s Obama vs Palin, his bots will turn out. But in 2016 what if it were Dullwhiteguy vs Palin?
One of the arguments against Hillary was that she would energize the Republican base.
How fast they went from “Change We Can Believe In” to “Don’t Mess With the Status Quo”.
Hard to believe they referred to Obama’s general election opponent as “McSame.”
Heh, Worked out to be “OSame”.
Same-O, Same-O
it occurs to me that Mubarak thought because he has such rich and powerful friends that he really didn’t need to give a damn about what the people thought…
I wonder if the Dems have taken any sort of object lesson from that?
nah…
Nor do they seem to make any connection to the dissatisfaction expressed by American voters in the November elections, otherwise known as “a great stomping that dems might want to learn from.”
Quick! Time to attack Palin again before they figure out the Democrats have no message.
LOL. That will happen in 3… 2… 1…
Oh the power of the circus of demonization of liberals and the ensuing wailing and rending of hair and dramatic political discourse signifying nothing(/snark)… it’s just a variation of pro-wrestling characters in a faux battle for faux dominance (D vs R).
Meanwhile back at the ranch the real games of power are about the elites versus the rest of us…
Simon Johnson on Davos… Davos: Two Worlds, Ready Or Not http://baselinescenario.com/2011/01/29/davos-two-worlds-ready-or-not/#more-8584
The gap between the CEOs’ world and the real world should be bridged by the official sector. But where are the politicians and government officials who can explain what we need and why? Who can confront the CEOs in the highest profile public forums, and push them on the social responsibility broadly defined? The biggest disappointment at Davos was not the attitude of the corporate sector; these people are just doing their jobs (as they see it). To the extent the U.S. or eurozone official sector showed up at all, it continued to demonstrate the deepest levels of intellectual capture. The reasoning seems to be: As long as we do what the big banks and big firms want, everything will turn out all right. There was zero high-profile public debate at Davos this week on anything related to this way of seeing the world. Corporate Davos was borderline exuberant. Even if a deeper crisis looms, does the global business elite really care?
Simple answer, No. And that goes for their owned politicians as well.
Golf Summit!
All the better to collude together, sportingly assisting the increase of corporate power and collaboration with the gov’t at the expense of the little people and small business. Bwhahahahahaha….
This is what Dim-o-crats SHOULD be doing:
It’s kinda hard to do though, when all the advocacy groups have been co-opted by the party establishment.
Still hard to stomach that the only populist movement in the country is from the Right.
“We lost because our base didn’t turn out and their base did. ”
Well yeah, because after you called people RF’s, bitter, old, racist, tea partiers, and stupid, there just weren’t many voters left standing. Heck, I didn’t leave the Dem party, I fled in terror. People can’t vote when they’re laying under a bus.
“Vote for me you racist, vicious, Nazi” wasn’t a good campaign slogan. Who’d have thought it
I am still so furious at the so-called new democratic party that until the day I die I will curse them.
They trashed everything I believed in for almost 50 years.
They gave no thought to the good of the country when they selected a know-nothing – racist – anti-American and put him in a position to do the most harm to this country.
I was one of the dummies who worked the polls ,made phone calls and did what I could to help get democrats elected. I feel like I should apologize to my kids for ever doing so.
Right now both parties better make a lot of changes. The economy sucks, The future looks as bleak as I have ever seen it. I do not trust either party to really understand the American people and what they stand for.
In 2008 I became an Independent and learned to really check-out the people who want my vote.
WOMEN WITH INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERIENCE,MEN WHO SUPPORT THEM AND COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY ALWAYS
PUMAS,BUBBAS,EQUALISTS AND THOSE CHATTERING PEOPLE RULE
From people I speak with, I think her voters are more serious about it than normal. Lots of them are not the same old GOP stalwarts at all.
By and large, people don’t throw away their vote. Hillary supporters didn’t even vote for McCain in very large numbers and he had a good chance of winning.
I still think Sarah Palin is better off running just for the experience. It puts her in a better position for 2016. If she doesn’t run, her endorsement will be gold for whomever she picks. If a bunch of Romney guys bully her out, she’ll give a non-endorsement like the one that destroyed Chris Daggett in NJ.
Interesting. Looks like Republicans better take a look back at the Dem primary because they will need to treat SP well because this kind of thing is purfect for PUMA action if they don’t behave.
But they are asking now with these polls…
Whoa. Yea, the GOP might want to think about their current approach of trashing or ignoring Palin.
Harry Belafonte apparently has not paid attention. Every poll and all the work t to include the public option in the health care went nowhere. Obama and the Democrats ignored emails and public opinion polls.
The voters got the message and took the next step by either staying home, or voting GOP in the 2010 midterms.
It’s too bad Belafonted didn’t tell Obama that he’d get all the slack on January 20, 2013.
TPTB replaced W with Obama for that very purpose: his “historicalness” would mollify the angry left by the mere color of his skin. It had worked beyond their wildest dreams. And tons of money will make sure it’ll work again in 2012. Somehow.