{"id":948,"date":"2020-12-03T19:57:24","date_gmt":"2020-12-03T19:57:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=131785"},"modified":"2020-12-03T19:57:24","modified_gmt":"2020-12-03T19:57:24","slug":"new-dccc-chair-promises-to-end-controversial-blacklist-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/03\/new-dccc-chair-promises-to-end-controversial-blacklist-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"New DCCC Chair Promises to End Controversial Blacklist Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In 2019,<\/u> after Democrats saw a handful of incumbents ousted by progressive opponents in the House in 2018, including Squad members Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley, Rep. Cheri Bustos formalized a new policy: the DCCC would ban any political consultants or vendors working with candidates running primary challenges against incumbent Democrats.<\/p>\n

Since then, progressives have railed against the blacklist, saying the policy protects the status quo of the Democratic Party while discouraging women and people of color from running for office. The ban also had the unintended consequence of accelerating the progressive movement\u2019s efforts to build its own political infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Just days after the party\u2019s disastrous performance in House races this year, Bustos stepped down from the DCCC position. The blacklist, it seems, will go with her. New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, who won the vote this morning, says he wants to end the ban. Maloney told Axios<\/a> over the weekend that the blacklist \u201cseparated ourselves from some of the most creative and diverse people working in politics, particularly in the area of digital and social media.\u201d His opponent, Rep. Tony C\u00e1rdenas of California, had also vowed to reverse the blanket ban.<\/p>\n

No progressive candidate ran for the position.<\/p>\n

In a recent Twitter thread<\/a> about the Democratic Party\u2019s underperformance in 2020, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who easily won her first re-election, pointed to an \u201cawful execution on digital\u201d and \u201cunderinvestment across the board,\u201d including some campaigns that didn\u2019t spend a dime on digital the week before the election. \u201cIronically,\u201d she continued, the DCCC banned the firms that are \u201cthe best in the country at Facebook\u201d because they work with progressives.<\/p>\n

In many ways, Maloney, a conservative Democrat representing a district Trump carried in 2016 and a member of the billionaire-backed Problem Solvers Caucus and New Democrat Coalition, does not represent a significant departure from Bustos. The New York Democrat has crossed party lines to back a local Republican. Last year, Maloney, the state\u2019s first openly gay member of Congress, endorsed<\/a> a Republican who had previously expressed opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion rights.<\/p>\n

Maloney has criticized the party\u2019s digital operations and reliance on \u201cstuffy old traditional crappy polling.\u201d In 2016, Maloney led an investigation into the party\u2019s problems in the House, though<\/a> made sure that the report itself never got out. In an interview with the Washington Post in 2017, however, he laid out some of the details. The competitiveness of a district could be judged, he said, by \u201c350 unique characteristics\u201d that indicate how it\u2019ll vote. Three of those characteristics, he said, were the most important: the racial makeup of the district, the number of voters with college degrees, and how rural the district is. By that measure, the Post article singled out two successful candidates that fit the model going forward: Josh Gottheimer of suburban northern New Jersey and Stephanie Murphy of suburban Orlando. It\u2019s difficult to gauge which of the two, Gottheimer or Murphy, is more openly hostile to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Gottheimer is the co-chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus and routinely organizes with Republicans to undermine Democrats on the House floor. Murphy, co-chair of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition, calls herself the \u201cvelvet hammer\u201d <\/a>and has also bucked Pelosi publicly from the right.<\/p>\n

In the interview, Maloney also singled out districts he said Democrats made a mistake thinking they could win, specifically Iowa\u2019s First and Minnesota\u2019s Second. Yet in 2018, Democrat Abby Finkenaeur won the Iowa race, and Angie Craig won in Minnesota. In 2020, Finkenauer lost by roughly 10,000 votes as Iowa swung Republican. Craig, meanwhile, won re-election.<\/p>\n

DCCC\u2019s leadership election, which Maloney won 119-107, was decided in a secret-ballot vote at a closed-door virtual meeting on Thursday. C\u00e1rdenas currently leads the Congressional Hispanic Caucus\u2019s campaign arm, BOLD PAC. The California lawmaker, who was favored by many progressives, withdrew from the race to be Assistant Speaker, which is considered the No. 4 position, to compete for this lower position.<\/p>\n

\u201cA strong Democratic majority in 2022 will be essential to our fight,\u201d Maloney said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cI will work every day to improve our campaign operations, connect with voters across lines of difference, protect our incumbents, and expand our majority.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aside from seeing the blacklist policy reversed, Rep. Ro Khanna, a progressive California lawmaker, told The Intercept that he would also like to see the new chair of the House Democrats\u2019 campaign arm, and party as a whole, adopt a \u201cstronger economic message\u201d and agenda.<\/p>\n

\u201cA $15 minimum wage passed in Florida and yet we couldn\u2019t win that state, paid family leave won in Colorado but we didn\u2019t emphasize that nationally,\u201d he said last month. \u201cWe need to have a bold economic agenda that is talking about how to improve people\u2019s lives, that fills the void to overcome some of the sloganeering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democrats managed to hold on to their majority in the chamber but got wiped out in key states, losing a dozen seats and leaving Republicans in a better position to retake control in the 2022 midterms. All the Democratic incumbents who lost were moderates, and nearly all of the Democrats vying to flip Republican-held seats, including progressive candidates, fell short. Before reality hit, Democrats were hoping to pick up competitive seats in states like Texas and California, and maybe even win the Senate. Even Bustos, the person responsible for expanding the party\u2019s majority, nearly lost re-election, beating her Republican opponent by about 4 points after winning by more than 20 percentage points in 2016 and 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am gutted at the losses we sustained,\u201d Bustos wrote<\/a> in a letter to her colleagues last month. She added that the DCCC would conduct a \u201ctransparent after-action-review to better understand why the national polling and modeling environment failed to materialize \u2014 not just for House races, but also up and down the ballot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, Black and Latino lawmakers privately clashed<\/a> with Bustos, expressing frustration with the party committee\u2019s efforts to retain staffers of color in top positions and hire firms run by people of color. Despite the DCCC\u2019s diversity standards<\/a> for political vendors, and other Democratic initiatives, political consultants of color say they\u2019re still routinely overlooked. Maloney promised to make diversity a priority, and has pledged to create a program specifically to protect front-line candidates of color, The Hill reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But, while C\u00e1rdenas bid represented the party\u2019s slow awakening to the importance of Latino voters, Maloney also doesn\u2019t promise any major soul-searching on the messaging of the party. \u201cI don\u2019t give a damn about the past. I\u2019m not a historian,\u201d Maloney told Roll Call<\/a> in November. \u201cMy job is not to whine about it, my job is to win.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the rest of the party\u2019s leadership elections, the now-octogenarian trio that has sat atop the caucus for at least 15 years \u2014 Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn \u2014 all cruised to another term uncontested last month.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2019, after Democrats saw a handful of incumbents ousted by progressive opponents in the House in 2018, including Squad members Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley, Rep.\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=948"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":949,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948\/revisions\/949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}