The New Dem-Dominated DCCC Would Rather Lose Than Change… What Happens When A Party Fears Its Base?

The Road To Minority Rule Is Paved With DCCC Recruits

Americans disapprove of Trump— both as a person and in terms of how he is doing his job. When asked who they plan to vote for in the midterms, more say a Democrat than a Republican. In fact, more people say they consider themselves a Democrat now than a Republican— a switch from last year. All that said, no one really likes the Democratic Party. It’s just not as bad in their eyes as the Republic Party. Being the lesser evil is the top strategy the Democrats have used as an electoral strategy for decades. Lesser evil is still evil. And that’s the state we’re in today. 

The party establishment is untrustworthy and unlikeable. Last night I saw DCCC chair Suzan DelBene, a multimillionaire out of touch with Americans’ lives and a practiced liar, on MSNBC. She kept repeating how the Democrats have great candidates for 2026. There are, despite the DCCC, some great candidates, although the DCCC only recruits shitty candidates who mirror DelBene and her New Dem congressional cronies. Take CA-22 in the Central Valley, a Democratic-leaning, Latino-majority district with a Republican congressman, David Valadao. In 2020 Biden beat Trump by double digits— 55.3% to 42.3%. Hillary had beaten him even more strongly— 55% to 39%. And then last year, the district flipped to the Republicans and Trump beat Kamala Harris 51.6% to 45.8%. Suddenly the Democrats were the greater— not the lesser— evil. The DCCC had re-recruited their worst candidate from 2022, Rudy Salas, a super-corrupt, very conservative Assemblyman who lost to Valadao 51.5% to 48.5% (after the DCCC spent immense amounts of money on the campaign). He did even worse in 2024, losing to Valadao 53.4% to 46.6%. This cycle, the Democrats have fantastic candidate in Randy Villegas.

But, DelBene and her clueless New Dem posse see Villegas as “too progressive” and so worked tirelessly to recruit a Salas doppelgängernger in a pants suit, conservative Assemblywoman Jasmeet Bains who can’t beat Valadao (although if the anti-red wave is big enough…). But for the New Dems, Villegas is the kind of principled reformer they do not want in Congress. They’d rather sabotage him and allow Valadao to have another term. It's worth noting that the only Democrat to have beaten Valadao, TJ Cox (in 2018), ran as a progressive, then joined the New Dems and voted against what he campaigned on. And after one shitty term, he lost to Valadao again (in 2020, while Biden was kicking Trump’s ass in the district). Now Cox is on the verge of a prison sentence, arrested by the FBI on 15 counts of wire fraud, 11 counts of money laundering, one count of financial institution fraud and one count of campaign contribution fraud. He pleaded guilty in a plea deal, agreed to a $3.5 million restitution and is awaiting sentencing… a perfect DCCC “great candidate.”)

If Suzan DelBene was flushed down the toilet and the DCCC ceased to exist, the Democrats would easily win 50 seats in the midterms. The DCCC strategy is to win half a dozen, which would make the utterly useless careerist Hakeem Jeffries Speaker, their only goal, a completely dysfunctional one that serves no long-term interests of anything resembling movement-building. Much like MAGA Mike, Jeffries stands for nothing but power for the sake of power, certainly nothing remotely transformative.

This is the rotten fruit of a political machine that prizes obedience and corporate compatibility over bold ideas and public trust. The Democratic establishment keeps failing not just because of bad messaging and uninspiring candidates, but because it doesn’t actually want to deliver transformative policy. It wants control, not change. You can’t excite a generation of voters living through climate collapse, debt peonage, housing crises, complicity is genocide  and skyrocketing inequality with tax credits, means-testing and polite incrementalism. People want Medicare for All, a Green New Deal,medical and student debt cancellation, public housing, a fair tax system, and real accountability for corporate criminals and war profiteers. They want candidates who don’t just echo the language of justice but fight unapologetically for it.

Instead, the DCCC recruits grifters, cops, landlords and lukewarm opportunists who toe the corporate/New Dem line and run from anything resembling a fight. Candidates like that only win in an anti-red wave and then get swept out of office when there’s no wave or an anti-blue wave. And when those candidates lose, the party learns nothing. Worse, it blames the left— the only faction in American politics offering a remotely coherent, humane alternative to the status quo.

If the Democratic Party actually embraced the energy and values of candidates like Randy Villegas— candidates who come from working-class communities and run on transformative policy— they’d not only win elections, they’d build a durable majority. But that would require giving up control. And people like Suzan DelBene, Hakeem Jeffries, Pete Aguilar and their coterie of donors and consultants would rather lose elections than lose their grip on power. Like I said, the lesser evil is still evil. But there’s a difference between the Democratic Party and the Democratic base. If there's hope, it's not in the DCCC or the party's rotten establishment— it’s in the people, like Zohran Mamdani, building something better in spite of it.

Which Democratic Party?