The DCCC’s conservative slip is showing
by digby
Ok, can we see what’s wrong with this picture?
Yes, I knew that you could. The primary election hasn’t been certified yet, votes are still being counted and Norman Solomon has gained well over a thousand votes since the night of the election. It is quite possible that Jared Huffman will be facing another Democrat in the fall.
And that, from the DCCC perspective is supposed to be the best of all possible worlds, a race in which it doesn’t matter who wins and they needn’t spend a penny or offer the least bit of support. Whoever wins will have a D after his name and that’s all that counts. We have been told over and over again that this is their only concern, that they don’t give a damn about ideology, it’s purely a numbers game.
So why in the hell are they endorsing Jared Huffman before it’s known whether or not he’s facing another Democrat? Barring total incompetence as an excuse (which I honestly doubt, they’re watching California like a hawk) the only possible reasons they would do this is because they are putting their thumbs on the scale to try to get Solomon to concede before all the votes have been counted or they are interfering in the vote counting by either talking on back channels or trying to influence Democratic election officials, which is shocking and illegal.
We know that if Solomon wins it will be an uphill battle for him to beat Huffman in the fall. And we also know that the powers that be would much prefer to have Huffman in the congress because they simply don’t believe that the left wing of the Democratic Party should have representation. We make their lives more difficult and embarrass them by complaining when they sell out the interests of working families or otherwise betray the values they purport to hold. They much prefer it if they can triangulate against us as outsiders than have to deal with people who are willing to leverage their power on the inside. I get that. They like Huffman, he’s more their kind of guy, a nice “San Francisco liberal”.
But what I don’t get is why they would care so much about that at this moment when they’ve got plutocrats spending billions on behalf of Republicans all over the country. Isn’t this just a little bit petty and parochial in light of what’s really going on? Why waste the energy?
In a way, it’s clarifying. Up until now they’ve only worked behind the scenes as individuals to ensure that Blue Dogs and New Dems are nominated in primaries. Now we see them interfering in a race in a deep blue district between a standard California liberal and a Progressive Movement leader. No matter what, they would always prefer the most conservative Democratic candidate available. Good to know.
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