House Race Bloggers: So Little Knowledge, So Much Hot Air is a bloggerbash of a story that will have Chris sleeping in late. Stuart must be feeling like he needs some attention from the bloggers, so I put the link there with his getting some face time. Without a doubt, there are some inside the DCCC that got a good chuckle from Rothenberg's Roll Call article.Rothenberg is a good objective analyst, but as he points out, the bloggers are biased from the start. He call's us "ideologues" and "pie-in-the-sky idealists", but what we really demand is reform. A reform that is not ideological at all, and very pragmatic for a party that wants to win-- that of rebuilding the Democratic Party into a 50-state national party.
I like a good scuffle, but Rothenberg has framed the criticism without acknowledging the strength of the Democratic partisan bloggers. Without the bloggers attention on CO 4th, there would not have been a Democratic challenger to Marilyn Musgrave. The bloggers seeded Stan Matsunaka's campaign against the hatemonger Musgrave, and then the 527's stepped up to the attack. This was without any help at all from the DCCC, which walked away from the race after 2002. In the repeat of 2004, Matsunaka himself only spent $850K, but Musgrave had to blow her warchest of over $3M, and the NRCC had to come to the resuce with another $2M (nd that's $2M that the NRCC didn't have for NY 27th). That's something the bloggers can do with 3rd party groups, that the DCCC cannot.
And in fact, the bloggers with 527's do a better job, at least if you are focused on CO 4th. In 2002, in an open race, Matsunaka was a favorite of the DCCC, yet lost to Musgrave by a 55-42 margin, being just barely outspent, 1.2M to 1M. In 2004, the DCCC ignored Matsunaka, who was outspent 4:1, and yet the netroots and 527 effort narrowed the incumbent Musgrave's margin to 51-45 percent. OK, that's only one case, but it does show a flaw in Rothenberg's niche criticism.
One of the points Rothenberg criticizes bloggers for, is advocating that the DCCC make sure that they have a Deomcratic candidate in all of the 435 House races. We blogged that in 2004, but we'll demand it in 2006. If the DCCC wants strong funding from the netroots, they'll make it a priority. If the DCCC does business as usual, then BlogPac will make sure all 435 House contests have a Democratic candidate, and we'll be sure to channel the netroots funding into BlogPac's PAC, 501c3, and 527 to accomplish that task. If the DNC is going to be reformed to fund each of the 50 states at least $200K, then the DCCC can be reformed to fund each of the Democratic House candidates.
The other criticism that Rothenberg laid out, is that of bloggers demanding "80 serious challenges" against Republican House members by the DCCC. Rothenberg might be right, that this is something that the DCCC is just incapable of doing. In fact, I've argued that the DCCC should focus their limited resources on targeting just ~10 seats, and making incremental gains, instead of targeting for a Majority takeover each cycle, and systematically losing.
80 challenges, or even 120 or 150, is doable, it just likely doesn't involve the DCCC. In 2004, a 527 named Project 90 laid the groundwork for something that might develop in 2006, which funds Democratic challengers, alongside the bloggers pushing attention, resources, and workpower toward the races. The 527's that massively funded Bush-opposition in 2004 are not going away. In 2006, they will be focusing on state-level, congressional-level, and even at the legislative-level and initiative-level campaigns. It's not like the DCCC is the only game in town for the bloggers to look toward, in getting things done.
So overall, Rothenberg pulls up short, because he fails to include the wider picture of whats occurring on the campaign landscape that involves bloggers. We are not trying to be objective anaylsts, he's got that right, but fails to see how that shifts the strategic role of bloggers from being merely advice-givers to the DCCC (where he finds the national strategy naive ), to an actual force in rebuilding the Democratic party (where it's a necessity) to become a national majority again.
Anyone want to sound-off on the DCCC?
Here's the link, Tell Rahm Emanuel What You Want to See Online
House Race Bloggers: So Little Knowledge, So Much Hot Air
By Stuart Rothenberg
Roll Call Contributing Writer
January 27, 2005
After spending much of 2004 pummeling the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, liberal bloggers have now turned their keen analytical skills to 2006.
Contributors to two of the better known political blogs, Daily Kos and MyDD, seem to believe that they know more about House campaigns than do the professionals who have spent years actually working on races and running campaign committees....
...Last summer, he [Bowers] penned a piece, "DCCC Not Aggressive Enough," in which he complained about his party's House campaign committee. Now, in a two-part series called "Taking Back the House," he insists "we need to attack everywhere."
"I want 80 serious challenges to GOP House incumbents every two years and a Democratic name on the ballot in all 435 districts," he demands. "I have had enough of just targeting the twenty or so top races -- let's engage in a full-frontal assault. ... The first step is to identify eighty Republicans against who we could mount a serious challenge."
It is undeniably true that you can't defeat an incumbent if you don't run someone against him. So, yes, it's better for a party to field candidates in 435 districts, if possible.
But some Republicans didn't have Democratic opponents because they were unbeatable, and no Democrat wanted to waste his or her time (to say nothing about money) by running. You can't make a race competitive simply by putting a name on the ballot, and the Democrats would not hold even a single additional seat had they put a name on the ballot in every district during the past two cycles.
As for Bowers' assertion that he wants "80 serious challenges" to GOP incumbents next year, he might as well ask for 120 or 150. I want vacation houses in Napa Valley and Palm Beach, and I'd like to be 35 years old again. "If wishes were horses, beggars might ride," as the English proverb puts it.
If Bowers had any historical perspective, he would know that there have been cycles when there were five or even 10 dozen competitive races, and where the DCCC showered money on second- and third-tier contests that it hoped would develop during a political wave.
Of course, if no wave develops, much of that money is wasted, and the committee is criticized for "throwing away" money on long shots when it should have poured all its resources into the candidates who had the best chance of winning.
I'm sure the DCCC would be thrilled to come up with 80 competitive races for 2006, and if Democrats get the political version of a tsunami running in their favor next year, I'm sure they will. But you simply have to be painfully naive and uninformed to think that there could have been 80 competitive Democratic challengers last cycle.
...Bowers and many of his fellow bloggers may like the idea of beating up a high-profile Republican incumbent even though there is no chance of defeating him or her. That's OK, since they are ideologues, not analysts. But the DCCC doesn't need advice from pie-in-the-sky idealists who think that every idea they have is a new one and every new idea is good.
Blogging is getting more attention in the mainstream media and from the political parties. As vehicles for fundraising, blogs can't be ignored. And some bloggers have interesting things to say. But when it comes to campaign savvy or understanding how the campaign committees operate, two of the most high-profile liberal bloggers have an exaggerated sense of their own importance and insights.
Stuart Rothenberg is editor of the Rothenberg Political Report.
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