Bizarro World
Oct 30th, 2006 at 10:26 pm by Susie
Okay, I’m wondering what planet Democratic pollster Thomas Riehle lives on.
In the final three weeks of the campaign, longtime leading Democratic strategists such as Stan Greenberg and James Carville urge the party to maximize the once-in-a-generation opportunity the 2006 election offers Democrats by reaching out for every seat that is even conceivably contestable. Netroots newcomers, however, are not so ambitious, preferring to see the Democrats focus their attention on locking in their potential gains rather than reaching too far and “blowing it.”
That reflects an ironic turn of events for internal Democratic Party strategic debate. Netroots newcomers, throughout 2000, 2002 and 2004, complained bitterly about the cautiousness of Democratic campaign insiders in Washington. Now the tables are turned. Political guru Charlie Cook calls it a generation gap in perceptions of what is happening in 2006. Old-timers who lived through 1974 and 1994 have felt all year that 2006 could develop into an enormous, earthshaking Democratic sweep — they’d seen this kind of thing before, and this felt like that. Netroots activists, in contrast, have not seen that kind of sweeping election victory before - their experience has been largely a series of narrow, nail-biting elections with winners and losers determined by a handful of seats in a 50-50 political world.
Because of their different experiences, netrooters have dismissed talk of a sweep as so much old-timer mysticism. Old-timers have been unable to believe the netrooters do not see what is clearly before their eyes. As a result of their different experiences, netrooters are also more focused on carefully bringing home every victory that’s clearly in reach and leaving nothing to chance in any race, while the old-timers are wondering whether a bank would loan the DNC $5 million or $10 million against future contributions to expand their reach from 30 targeted seats to 50. Old-timers are also speculating about whether they should count as won the top ten prospective take-overs and shift resources from those seats to the Tier 3 opportunities.
Let’s pretend that the netroots didn’t throw its growing weight behind Howard Dean in the race for DNC chair largely on the basis of his 50-state strategy - you know, the one that’s so successful, DLC types like Carville and Bergala are pushing us out of the way to take credit.
Let’s pretend that the Rahm Emanuel-DLC wing of the party hasn’t done everything in its power to undermine Dean both publicly and privately. Why, wasn’t it just yesterday that Rahm was screaming in public about Dean’s refusal to spend money on his rather small handful of targeted races?
Was it Rahm Emanuel or Simon Rosenberg who thought to put the squeeze on safe-seat Democrats to the tune of $3M in the past week? No, if memory serves me, it was MyDD blogger Chris Bowers.
This is just a preview of things to come. Because what they know - what the fear - is that we’ll turn the same laserlike focus on their backroom deals that we did with the Republicans.
We didn’t fight this hard or come this far to let the Democratic party become as corrupt as the gang we worked to boot out.
Heee-Yahhhhh! Hear our barbaric yawp, party group-thinkers. The truth will be out…
If this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, does that mean when the Republicans prevail, I’ll be spared this idiocy for the next 30 years??
Nothing would make me happier a week from Wednesday than to wake up with veto-proof Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. Since that probably won’t happen, I’ll settle for simple majorities as long as Rahm Emanuel loses his own seat. He is a menace to American society.
Susie– I emailed you this link privately (with some background info that I won’t make public), but so that other bloggers can make use of it– there’s a lot of interesting material at the PA campaign finance website– http://www.dos.state.pa.us/bcel
Under state law, candidates for state office (Governor on down to State Rep) have to declare any contribution that’s more than $500 that they get after 10/23, which was the cutoff for the last campaign finance filing, within 24 hours of getting the money. This info is now being posted online, daily, by the PA Department of State. Why is this interesting? Because there are *no* limits on individual contributions for state office in PA. This is the best and easiest time to find out who’s getting $50,000 checks from whom, since it’s comparatively hard to go report by report to look at the campaign reports when they’re filed 30 days after the election, what with the at least 500 reports that will need to be filed (203 Reps, 50 Senators, plus the Governor’s race). And I’m not exaggerating when I say $50,000– a quick glance shows at least three of $100,000 or more in the current list.
Somebody who’s actually interested in going through this stuff (the list ran about 40 pages as of today) will no doubt find some really, really interesting material. As IF Stone used to say, the best investigative journalism is done with publicly available records that the government doesn’t expect anyone to read. I’m a lawyer, not a journalist– I can’t put the pieces together as well as a lot of other people who I know read this blog. (Not to mention the mad journalism skilz of Ms. Madrak herself)
As a little taste, what California real estate billionaire best known as a horse breeder gave Lynn Swann a hundred Gs last week? It’s been in the papers that the same guy has dropped a million on Gov. Ahlnuld in CA, but I wouldn’t have had a clue he was even putting his paws into this race if I hadn’t had to read through the 24-hour PA contribution lists last week for a client.
Well, this was definitely an interesting find on Lionel’s website (above)
Contributor Date Amount
Wayne Huizenga
West Palm Beach, FL 33407-422
9/17/2006 $50,000.00
Occupation: Owner
Employer: Miami Dolphins
Description: Monetary Contribution-
Recipient: Lynn Swann for Governor
Report: 2006 Cycle 4