It always amazes me that enough people vote for Republicans so that they can often win races. Mostly I chalk it up to Democratic Party incompetence and inability to effectively paint a compelling contrast between the two parties and, sometimes for even blurring difference between the two parties with corrupt conservative candidates. Ever since I’ve been paying attention, the DCCC has had an almost unbroken string of one horrendous chairman after another.
The DCCC started in 1866 and the first chairman set the tone for the impossibly incompetent organization House Democrats depend on today. Chairman #1, James Rood Doolittle of Wisconsin, didn't quite know what he was politically. He started as a Democrat, then switched to the Republicans and then switched back to the Democrats and was a prominent opponent of the Fifteenth Amendment, the one that gave former slaves U.S. citizenship. He was such a lousy chairman (1868) that they operated without one for a decade after.
The congressman who turned the DCCC into an arm of Wall Street and Big Business was Tony Coelho (D-CA). He ran the committee from 1981-1987 after which he was elected House Majority Whip, a position he held until he resigned in a financial corruption scandal with a crooked bankster. The DCCC gained a great deal of influence in 2004 when campaign finance reform gave party committees immense power over campaign cash. Since then, they have never had a good chairman. Rahm Emanuel set the authoritarian tone but stuck closely to Coelho's posture of scraping and bowing before Wall Street. To reward the viciously anti-progressive Emanuel for forcing through NAFTA for Clinton— it had failed under Bush— he was given the chair and his stench is still prevalent there. Emanuel helped elect a lot of corporate whores from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party in 2006, as did Chris Van Hollen in 2008, almost all of whom were defeated in 2010, Democratic voters having caught on to the bait and switch and refusing to come out to vote for these conservative incumbents calling themselves Democrats. Of the 5 Democrats who followed Emanuel, 3 were his acolytes— Steve Israel, Cheri Bustos and Sean Patrick Maloney— and two were relatively poor leaders who passively allowed the staff to run the operation— Chris Van Hollen and Ben Ray Lujan.
Maloney screwed up New York redistricting with grotesque overreach that resulted in the party losing 4 seats and several opportunities for seats. He lost his own seat and the contest to replace him as DCCC chair is on. It always seems like the instinct of the House Dems is to find someone worse than whomever came before. Right out of the box 2 truly terrible New Dems nominated themselves: child rapist Tony Cárdenas and campaign cheat Ami Bera. Watch the trailer for the Khan Tusion: Pariah film coming out in 2023. Believe me, the NRCC sure is.
This guy is going to lead the party’s efforts to win back the House? And now, believe it or not, another conservative California congressman, Ami Bera— so terrible that his race hasn’t even been called yet in a D+7 district— also threw his hat into the ring for the DCCC chair job. Bera, also a New Dem, schemed with other crooked congressmembers and candidates to get around campaign finance laws by using their wealthy parents to fatten each others’ campaign accounts. And Bera actually allowed his 83 year old father to take the rap for him and go to prison!!! A man with no honor and no loyalty... just perfect for the DCCC following Sean Patrick Maloney!
Back in 2016 I wrote that “Babulal Bera, the congressman's father, pleaded guilty to campaign fraud charges in May and is scheduled to be sentenced in federal court in Sacramento on Thursday. Federal prosecutors have recommended a year in prison and a $130,200 fine for his role in a multi-year scheme hatched by Steve Israel and involving half a dozen of the most corrupt 2014 New Dem candidates, particularly Bera and crooked Florida congressman Patrick Murphy and his big-spending Republican parents. In their sentencing recommendation, prosecutors wrote that Babulal’s crime was ‘broad, sustained and knowingly wrong.’ He admitted it as part of a deal to keep his equally guilty wife (who is 81 and very ill) out of prison and to keep the spotlight away from his son, who directed the operation at Steve Israel's instructions. Babulal, who addressed the court through a Gujarati interpreter, doesn't speak English well enough to have pulled this complex a scheme off on his own… Many people are shocked that the Congressman is allowing his father to take the fall and possibly go to prison to advance his own miserable political career. He claims he hasn't even discussed the case with his father.”
The Democratic Party can’t come up with anything better than these two criminals? I heard a rumor that wealthy San Diego congresswoman Sara Jacobs may run but I can’t get a confirmation. I also heard that there are several other people thinking of running. And on last rumor that came in this morning from a top Democratic Party operative: "Cárdenas has it locked up." Damn! So what happens if he gets locked up?)