I missed the "who would you like to see added to Blue Majority" thread (0.00 / 0)

at SSP last week, but since I read and post at both sites regularly, I'm gonna comment here.

It seems to me that Blue Majority has evolved over its two cycles (three, if you count the Dkos Dozen in 2004).  Early on its core purpose seemed to be an effort to expand the playing field, reach out to promising but underfunded/undernoticed/undersupported challengers in promising districts, and try to vault these good candidates into contention, partly by vaulting them from obscurity into DCCC-supported viability.  In the 2006 cycle, Vic Wulsin, Larry Kissell, Charlie Brown, Dan Seals, Jim Webb, Tim Walz, Gary Trauner were all this kind of candidate: chosen because they were good on our issues, but also chosen in a very deliberate effort to turn second-string races into first-string, and third-string into second-string.

Along with the rest of the blogosphere, it seems to me that Blue Majority has drifted into "better Democrats, rather than more Democrats" as its central orientation.  The list we have now doesn't reflect an effort to promote good but marginal candidates into viability the way it once did.  Now it seems built around rewarding candidates who seem like our kind of Democrats, the good kind, regardless of how much other support they are already getting.  

Dan Seals is kindof a perfect example for both cycles.  We picked him in the first cycle (06) because he was considered a longshot, running against an unassailable incumbent in an expensive district, with demographic advantages but nothing else on his side.  We chose him because the Illinois netroots said he was great and we wanted to help elevate him into contention.  After some failed googling, I wasn't able to determine when or if he was finally added to Red to Blue, but Vic Wulsin, by comparison, was added in the very last wave, October 06, and I imagine based on polling at the time that Seals was also eventually added -- too late in the cycle to do much good, but still, better than nothing.  A very similar progression happened with Trauner, Hodes, Kissell, Wulsin, and others.  In an awful lot of ways, and helped along by the dynamics of that election year (which the netroots foresaw), we succeeded.

Now, in early 08, many many of these candidates are already Red to Blue (I count seven:  Burner, Maffei, Massa, Seals, Brown, Trauner, and Kissell).  They are starting this cycle at the point we raised them to in October 2006 -- with explicit, public declarations of support and assistance from the DCCC.  

In the original sense of what Blue Majority was trying to accomplish, it has already won in these districts.  It has taken challengers and districts that were not being seriously contested, and made them into the premier contests of 08.  I don't know the underlying mechanics of how much fundraising money a Red to Blue listing and associated DCCC promotion is worth, but my sense is it means a lot of establishment dollars flowing into their pockets right now.

However, Blue Majority is still backing most of these same candidates.  In some cases this is approaching the point of absurdity: Dan Maffei is practically already a congressman at this point, with Walsh having retired, the two top GOP recruits declining the race, a D+3 district, and no declared opponent two months after Walsh retired.  He's a very extreme case, but many of these candidates are in a very different position than they were when we chose them.  Even some of the newer additions -- Al Franken, Joe Garcia -- are probably not hurting for money.

I think that in many cases we're rewarding these candidates for being "our kind of Democrats", and that's good, but I would like to see the focus on expanding the playing field to candidates not currently recognized by the DCCC return, side by side with the newer focus on "reward good candidates"

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called away from computer.  i'm posting this even though i didn't really get to finish the argument i was making.

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by: texas dem @ Wed Apr 02, 2008 at 22:38:00 PM UTC