Backstory on Carville v Dean

By Sara

Have had a nice Thai meal, some nice red wine, and I am still irritated at James Carville, and in the mood for storytelling.  But first some Sociology. 

How is the Democratic Party actually organized?  It is interesting to keep in mind that because the Constitution gives running elections to the states, but the judgment of the validity of an election certificate to the bodies of congress -- or the electorial college as counted by congress -- what we have is a system that requires political parties to be incorporated under state laws -- not federal law.  Thus the Democratic Party is 50 incorporated bodies, that receive a franchise to use the title (or a variation there of, for instance the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party), which then use bylaws and a constitution to construct the national party, The DNC or the Democratic National Committee, which actually is a committee made up of about 500 persons, selected by the state parties.  The Governing Body is the state chairs, co-chairs (which must be of opposite gender) and delegates selected according to rules requiring some version of election, with the number based on population and a formula for performance in recent elections.  It is this body which hires and fires the National Chair -- the seat Howard Dean currently occupies.  The DNC can appoint a relatively small number of additional members from constitutant groups, for instance, we normally appoint Labor, Feminists, and Civil Rights delegates to the DNC. 

Now to my knowledge Mr. Carville is not a delegate from Virginia (where he lives and votes), and he does not represent any constitutant group.  He is, simply put, not part of the DNC and is irrelevant as to whom they should select as their National Chair.  Nor has he participated in any deliberations of the committees or commissions of the DNC over the past two years where the program of the DNC was authorized. 

Two years ago I spent a good deal of time on local blogs organizing meetings with our DNC delegates when Dean and his program were the core of the vote the DNC was about to take in the wake of the 2004 Election Disaster.  This was not to be simply a mid-winter social gathering in DC -- it was serious business.  We eventually got all our votes for Dean and his program.  I was in a good position to argue for the program because in the 1980's while chairing Alan Cranston's campaign here, I had discovered how pathetic many of our state parties actually were.  Many were literally bankrupt, the office supplies and machines (typewriters) had been taken for unpaid debt, and padlocks were on the door.  The State Committees that had the franchise were held in one or another lawyer's file cabinet, (In Georgia it had been Bert Lance's for about 20 years), and the reason for this condition was frankly racism.  The Southern States would not allow the release of the franchise to a newly elected Central Committee or Board, because it would be Black.  They could do this because the parties were in bankruptcy, and whatever lawyer had the letterhead in his files was also the court appointed trustee. 

When Dean took over the DNC -- this was the condition of about twelve of our State Parties.  He actually had to find lawyers to go into court and get the parties out of this kind of "Trusteeship" before he could even begin to reorganize.  In fact, one of the reasons some of the Field Organizers Dean appointed are on the staff of the DNC rather than state parties is because it avoids dealing with old trustees and old court judgments. 

The really sad thing is that Democrats all around the country don't know about all this -- about how the party structure was sabotaged essentially over the matter of race over a long stretch of years.  By not actually dealing with the matter -- and it should have been argued out and dealt with in at least the 1970's -- it has festered, and now we have this assumption by James Carville that he is the great white master, who can dictate the structure of the DNC, including which African American should head it as opposed to Dean, or whom ever else the properly constituted DNC should elect. 

Yes, given what Dean has done, in 2008 the DNC will be still supporting state parties and field organizations that might elect a Congresscritter or two in the really red states, but may also progress in electing state legislators, county commissioners and all the rest.  But he has also created the model for the "voter file" -- the microtargeting that the Republicans call their Voter Vault -- and it was rolled out in a number of states this year, and is ready for National roll out next year.  Every state now has the technical ability to use it, access it, and apply it to all sorts of requirements.  In 2004, using old fashioned methods, we came within two seats of controlling our State House.  Using these new methods we picked up 19 seats, nearly a veto proof House.  Of course it has maintence costs -- but it is worth it.  Dean also introduced the idea of putting field offices in every Congressional District, not just in the State Capitol.  Off years, the staff will do organization, election seasons they will coordinate all activity in each district.  It is so simple minded it boggles the mind.  But yes, it does mean that a Washington DC operative cannot actually control how local parties operate.  And with Carville, that is the crux of the problem. 

One essential difference between Democrats and Republicans, I think, is that we actually conduct elections for Party Chair.  How Mehlman morphed to Steel and then on to Martinez, I don't really know, but I do know that kind of "top down" was not how Dean got his job.  He got it because he understood that in many places the party was sick -- and he had a plan to bring it back to health. 

According to reporting on KO, Hillary Clinton's office is saying they did not "sign off" on the Carville attack on Dean.  As Keith said, that is a bit nuanced, and it needs follow up.  The language of "sign off" bothers. 

Indeed the ultimate question is whether local party organizations can select their own representatives or whether that power will be taken away from the state parties by the DSCC and the DCCC who substitute themselves (as elected officials) for the party organization or the DNC and what creates it.  That is what is at stake. 

The sad thing is that so many do not understand that now is the time to deal with this matter -- before the contest for nomination begins.  Wait till you have a presidential candidate or a president, and that is too late.  It has to be part of the early bargin. 

Comments

[DeWitt Grey]

Sara -- many thanks for this essential backstory, ludicrously ignored by our so-called leading political journalists (guys like Broder and Russert, having lived through it, know the story, but it's the real "inside baseball" they don't reveal).

I was solicited by both the DCCC and the DSCC for contributions -- I made it clear that a condition for fulfilling the pledge I made was unqualified support for the victor in the Connecticut U.S. Senate primary. The condition wasn't satisfied, of course, and your post helps make it even clearer as to why.

There is no "national" Democratic party, except for the de facto parliamentary Democratic party that is loyal to itself, having progressively detached itself from its roots. It's how a dyed-in-the-wool Connecticut politician like Joe Lieberman, protegé of Abe Ribicoff, biographer of John Bailey, elected to the State Senate from New Haven when the legendary Arthur Barbieri was still the Democratic machine boss, and state Attorney General, can turn himself into a stranger to his own party, beaten from one end of the state to the other except for his stronghold in Stamford and for the machine remnants in Bridgeport (aided by the unaccounted-for $387,000 in walking-around money).

The proof of the pudding, so obvious that practically nobody mentions it, is that our parliamentary Democratic party is so seriously out of touch that Al Gore can't carry his home state of Tennessee when he's running for President and John Edwards can't carry his home state of North Carolina when he's running for Vice President -- does anyone really think Lyndon Johnson would have been nominated for Vice President in 1960 if the Kennedys thought he wouldn't carry Texas?

It's also why a "one size fits all" ideological litmus test for the Democratic Party has never, and will never work, and generalizations from the particular are absurd. Of course Heath Shuler and Brad Ellsworth are more conservative than Chris Carney and Chris Murphy, just as western North Carolina and southern Indiana are much more conservative than northeastern Pennsylvania and central Connecticut. As unrealistic as it may be for progressives to think that conventionally progressive candidates can win in the Great Smokies and along the Wabash, so is it unrealistic for the chefs at Rahm & Chuck's to serve up the same menu everywhere in the country -- tempering the message probably cost Lois Murphy, for example, an eminently winnable seat.

We shouldn't be naive -- state party barons can be as bad as Washington barons, and until campaign finance is reformed (and pigs fly), we have to respect the ability of K Street to raise serious dough for the battles ahead. But the salutary message for Rahm, Chuck, et al. is that what is true in the policy realm is likewise true in the organizational and structural realm -- to refashion the Democratic party in the reflected image of the Republican party is to doom Democrats to the irrelevance that Karl Rove would like, and that the Democratic party with its grass roots motivated and mobilized, and with savvy power brokers making the Government work, is a force that sweeps Karl Rove's conjuring tricks aside with disdain.

[John Casper]

Great, great post, thanks Sara.

[knut wicksell]

Thanks for the post. I hope it gets a lot of reads. Have you cross-posted to Kos?

Ah. Arthur Barbieri. A name from the past I had ong forgotten. I remember watching his people hand out money at a poll on Willow Street in New Haven in 1968. Memories.

[kim]

I'd say that the Dems did well this year because of these sorts of arguments, diversity v. the monolithic Repubs. The only person who looks bad in this is Carville, the best cure would be to see some more warming between Rahm and Dean.

[opu]

Carvelle and Clinton go to Toronto during local elections. NDP who elected the mayor, gets confused between Liberal Democrats and New Democrats.

Now, it's Dean. Going to Ottawa for the Liberals. Liberal Democrat. So, why is Dean okay? He's considered 'radical,' but is the DNC, so why are Liberals upset? They are being shown for what they are-run by the US democratic party, which is worse than anything that can happen to a Canadian.

[Jodi]

Thanks Sara,

I can give a little more distant or neutral viewpoint.

First I don't like Dean or Carville.

That said, it is pretty durn obvious that Dean has done the Democrats a great service since 2004 and maybe even before.
I would say more than any other Democrat with the exception of Bill Clinton..

Dean is not always smooth, but Carville is generarlly obnoxious.

What Dean has is unbridled enthusiasm, and desire, and a work ethic. He brings to the table an honesty of purpose.

There is always the old 20/20 hindsight thing where someone says, "well looking back maybe we should have ..."

It is also possible that there is some fear that Dean might get back into the candidate business.

[Jodi]

Sara,

you might have missed my question earlier.

What/who are you calling "Unreconstructed Segregationists?"

[p.lukasiak]

One essential difference between Democrats and Republicans, I think, is that we actually conduct elections for Party Chair.

with all due respect, in BOTH parties the position of "party chair" is (for all intents and purposes) an "appointed" position when that party controls the White House, and an "elected" position when it doesn't control the White House.

[Mimikatz]

Carville also has a vested interest in this fight. he is a campaign consultant who makes money taking a cut of media buys. Dean stresses grassroots and field. No money there for Carville. Carville has outlived his usefulness for Dem candidates and should be pastured. After all, is he really going to criticize his wife's employers very seriously?

[al-Fubar]

What I am left wondering about is the substance of Carville's gripe. Did Dean leave a bundle of money sitting in the bank in the last few of weeks, when shoveling it into close races might have pushed several more of our candidates over the line?

If he did, that was a really big screw up, and has to be weighed against his successes in party building. But if there's some Hillary subtext going on here, I want to know about that, too.

[Carolyn in Baltimore]

I didn't know how bad the state parties were until Dean was campaigning for DNC Chair. I'm from Baltimore and NJ where the party is strong and there is a party machine we take for granted - and have to fight sometimes because it is 'the machine'.
So thanks for the additional info on organization.
I used to like Carville when he seemed populist but he is a hack and in bed with .....well I sure don't trust him.
I do trust Dean - would be pleased if he became a candidate again but he is surely creating a strong party. Happy Birthday, Howard.

[John Casper]

Hesiod did a Kos diary yesterday in which he argued that Carville was acting on behalf of Hillary.

[John Casper]

Appreciate your 11:41 Mimikatz, I had no idea about that angle.

[Sara]

Well, I didn't support Dean for President in 2004, I was one of the early petition signers for Wesley Clark. I too belong to one of the healthy Democratic Parties -- the MN DFL -- and I suspect because most of my adult experience is with such that I understand the consequences of states that allowed their parties to go into bankruptcy. Thus when Dean was recruited to run on a platform of rebuilding the party everywhere, I became very interested. He had discovered in two ways the problem -- many states where he ran in primaries had zilch in terms of a Democratic Party. For starters one can ask a very simple question -- who has custody of the lists of Democrats, and what do I have to do to access it? When you find there are no lists, and no custodian -- then you have to wonder if there is really a party. Dean also got hit with the Democratic version of Swift-boating in Iowa when he appeared to be front-runner, and at the time I doubt if he knew what hit him, and where it came from. We know now that it was private money from DC funneled in through Richard Gebhardt, but with the help of Vilsack's wife. A healthy party makes such back-room deals more difficult to pull off. The more wise observers you have, the less likely something like that will succeed. Anyhow, Dean's genius is perhaps not as an elected executive, it is more as an organizer, and thus with his plan, I think he was exactly what the DNC needed in late 2004.

Assuming we can elect a President in 2008, I would agree that a sitting President should have some influence over who heads the DNC. But that should be based on consultation with State Party Chairs who move things in the DNC. That didn't happen during the Clinton Years because the DNC was nearly morbid -- but if that can be changed the party will be the better for it. What happened this year as a result of Dean's efforts was a huge increase in live-wire races for State Legislative Seats and other down ballot positions. We picked up several hundred of these. Now if state parties sustain the effort we will be a long way toward the goal of empowering those state parties to take back power from the DSCC and the DCCC to "select" the candidates for federal office.

I certainly can illustrate. Paul Wellstone's race in 1990 was written off by the DSCC before it hardly started, and at least some in DC actively supported his republican opponent. It was only when the numbers moved in the last month of the campaign that some money moved into the race, and the normal Democratic funding organizations supposedly independent of the party were permitted to cut some checks.

In a sense, the same thing happened this year. The DCCC was not at all happy about 5th District's decision to endorse and then nominate an African American Muslim to perhaps the most progressive district seat in the whole country, on the grounds that we could elect him, keep him there for 20 years, and he would add diversity to the party. Not only could the convention nominate -- but he would be supported by the district and county elected officials, including all of the members of the Hennepin County legislative delegation who had worked with him in St. Paul. I don't know the whole story yet, but it appears there were serious derailing efforts out of DC -- but the decision was successful largely because the party is strong here and able to push back. The only way to get the DSCC and the DCCC to collaborate with local parties instead of acting as an authoritarian structure, is to be sufficently organized to exercise power when necessary. The prospect of this working is, I think, what motivates Carville and his crowd.

[Sara]

Jodi, you really need to do some serious reading in American Political History if you really don't know what an "unreconstructed segregationist" is. If you seriously want to know why the Democratic Party was dependent on the single party racist south between the Civil War (and even earlier) and more recent years -- you actually have to crack the books and study the subject. And one cannot possibly know anything about the contemporary Democratic Party without knowing the long history of this struggle to free the party from dependence on legal racism with all its institutional structures.

If you are serious about comprehending it, I'll furnish a reading list that will keep you busy for a couple of years.

[Mimikatz]

Al Fubar: It is more complicated than Carville makes out. It depends on what you mean by funneling money to races. My feeling is that many of the close races we (probably) lost like CT-04, IL-06, PA-06, NM-01, OH-01, 02 and 15 would not have been helped by more money for ads. Dem reported on the total innundation of the airwaves in CT and I saw it firsthand in NM the week before the election. The only one that might have used that money was OH-02 and maybe 15. What lost those races IMHO was a combination of overly cautious candidates following the DCCC script, too many R's in the district, the last minute GOP robocalls and not quite enough field. Field has to be built up over a matter of weeks if not months, so money wouldn't have helped that much.

The races where the money would have helped were places like IL-10 and 11, WY-AL, NE-01 and 03, ID-01, WA-05, NY-25 and 29 and certainly NC-08. But those were never on the DCCC radar so it wasn't a matter of Dean withholding money from where the DCCC thought it should go. They actually lost most of the races in their initial Red-to-blue list, and abandoned races where their primary candidate lost, like KY-03 and CA-11.

Many of the races where the Dems won had good grassroots and opponents that were caught napping or inept. Races like CA-11 were won by the grassroots with only a last minute assist from the DCCC that made the margin 6% rather than 2%.

Besides, Dean's strategy is a longterm strategy; it shouldn't be confused with the challenge every race and really hit 100 races (spreading the field) that people like Chris Bowers at MyDD, Ruy Teixeira and yours truly pushed beginning last year. That was never the DCCC strategy, and they only expanded their board late in the game.

[AmIDreaming]

This piece may be the single most illuminating internet posting I have ever seen. Bravo. Thank you.

[Northern Observer]

This explains things I have never understood before. If the state parties are so depleated, no wonder we've been on a slide. The flip side is, investing in party infrastructure is like compound interest, it builds on itself. If we keep building up the party we are going to grow from strength to strength. And it helps resolve the DC corruption issue because it places the states at forefront of party building and candidate selection. I can see why the DC insiders are so afraid, they will lose must of their control. Still it would be nice if they could adapt. Why not work with us? Give up your little DC kiddie pool to be part of the greater Democratic Party ocean.

[Rick B]

Sara, Mimikatz, DeWitt Grey especially

Thank you for a highly informative article and thread.

If I wanted to find the status and structure of the Texas Democratic Party, can anyone tell me where I might find it? Same question for the Republican Party of Texas.

I have just realized that I understand how the primary and precinct and County caucusus and the State Convention are all held. I know little else about the party structure here. Since Texas is a bastion of unreconstructed segregationists, I know a bit about them also, and I am reasonably sure that that is a bit of the problem. The other problem is that two decades ago the Republican Xtian evangelistis found that if they sent about five people to a sizeable percentage of the precinct caususes, then got them elected delegates to the county caucus, then the county caucuses would be able to send enough delegates to state to totally control the state convention. It is the same system the Communists used in the USSR to maintain party control of the government. That system explains the horror story that is the Texas Republican Party Platform.

So how would I as an individual get information on the structure of the state parties here. Any ideas?

[John Lopresti]

Nice methodical development of the story, Sara. After the Republican instaAssistance to Lieberman to stave off a Lamont win; and that combined with the mysterious temporary withdrawal of the fairly conservative Mark Warner from preExploratory nationwide campaigning after a year on the trail recently, I wonder if the Rove plan for this postHalftime multiPurpose hyperactive state we have witnessed in the past ten postelection days might include attempts at sowing more dissension among the Democrats' ranks, though that exercise would require extraordinary agility, given Democrats' innate propensity for a kind of cheerful chaos. The fragments I was attempting to juxtapose there were, well, if Lieberman now is to arbitrate some schemes in the Senate as a more reliable vote for the Republicans than Jeffords will be for the Democrats, perhaps, the Rovian plot might go, how about confusing the winnowing process during the next fourteen months among Democrats, reinventing MWarner as a demiliberal, even if only as the VicePresidential candidate on ticket2008. MWarner's illiberal policies with respect to jurisprudence are the polar opposite of Edwards', the latter himself far from progressive, widely. And taking the longview 2012, 2016, prospective MWarner ticket leading candidacies might advance the Republican strategy to keep the Democrats' drift more rightward than progressiveward; MW as crown prince; but he would be advanced in age by then, so perhaps the age span which we need to consider for Rove's tryouts for conservative Democrats needs to be a selection from the young generation of Democrat leaders. I like the idea of the young leading, but not to the rightSide of the political spectrum; by then, Rove will be oblivious, as well; but his legacy is likely in his mind now, as he, too, is looking at likely distancing from active party life after the administration ends in 2008. Maybe he enjoys clearing brush on TX ranches.
I voted for Dean, and donated. His organization grasped the utility of internet, and soon the Republicans emulated his approach. Dean has more longevity doing this; as Sara points out, it is a work in progress and is producing results. From my bailiwick view, Dean was fairly staid, and unjustly ridiculed when he exited the race; but ad hominems are part of the fabric of primary season and to be expected. Clark had some excellent hourlong interviews on PBS when it was an objective broadcast facility; mostly I cannot tolerate the specious wingnutia NPR-PBS intercalates with its journalism now; Pacifica is doing excellent reporting, for a nascent organization. But Clark was Way Right of exGovDean. Save for the strange four years around Gene McCarthy's national campaign, I have opted to vote Democrat. But our local committee controls the local slate, so it is like a politboro in that regard; I guess that is free world democracy, unseemly, even awful, but the best we have figured out how to sustain. Cranston was an interesting guy; maybe a bit understated and egregiously centrist, but had some fine progressive moments, and was eloquent. I have wondered often if PaulW's plane really had a mechanical problem; but that is past. The only recoup was Jeffords' bailing to limbo, saving the country of four years of CheneyFristian rule; though with the recent rerenomination of the likes of jedgeBoyle et al, likely Republicans are planning a nuclear future for the US Senate; kind of as an enabler for all the dozens of signing statements Addington has crafted on the president's behalf. Fortunately, our system seems to elicit greatness as a kind of prerequisite for progressing into leadership. It is kind of extraordinary to think some officials in our times get discovered with a freezer full of greenbacks, or that, as DEllsberg asserted in a 2005 interview transcribed by lukery recently that a recent holder of the post Boehner is to have in the 110th congress house accepted a valise of lucre. Though when I worked in the lobbyist world as an invisible background person, not a lobbyist, I learned political processes often are subterfuge related, and permeated with maxCash; indeed, being more progressive than the upper echelon officers in our organizations, sometimes I had the assignment to connect with the liberal legislators' campaigns; it felt incongruous, given that the famous individuals usually responded only when contacted by other prominent public figures; but at the infrastructure level my progressive voice was useful for one of the industries which we served by contacting liberal legislators, as the latter would find my approach disarmingly friendly; say, we would like to send your campaign a cool thousand dollars, ok; we really like your style of politics. It was fun. I resisted doing this job, and eventually let it evanesce. While Dean is pursuing invocation of the roots of the Democratic Party, maybe he will stir some independent voices and encourage a new vitality and vision; this party has snoozed for much of the past four decades.

[Paul Lyon]

``so depleated''

So, Northern observer, you think that they have been ironed flat, huh?

[Blue in VA]

I find it hard to believe that Carville is speaking for Hillary. What possible interest does she have in the 50-state strategy one way or the other? She has demonstrated that she can raise all the money she needs and then some.

Further, it seems to me that she can only benefit from strengthening the party at the state level. If she decides to run for president, she will be able to bring in the bucks needed for TV buys, but she will benefit from troops on the ground during the campaign.

[Blue in VA]

I'd be interested in knowing, too, how effective the local parties were in this election. In one of the Washington Post blogs, a commenter indicated that the locals had crappy (and short) lists for calling and that this list was supposedly a product of the 50-state project. This was one guy in one location, so, if anyone has details, please share.

[Rayne]

al Fubar -- keep in mind that based on the track record of elections 2000, 2002, 2004 that any and all of us could anticipate many legal contests over tight races or voting irregularities. Defending these could cost a pretty penny and would require a healthy reserve.

Blue in VA -- I understood that the data for phonebanking varied from state to state, depending on whether the state party in question was a "subscriber" to the DNC database. The IT industry has had strong praise for the DNC's upgrade of its datawarehouse; I have to wonder what the real disconnects are.

[John Casper]

Blue, VA, if it were true, I would expect both Bill and Hillary to bash Carville. Neither has.

Hillary likes the 50-state infrastructure that Dean is rebuilding, she just doesn't want Dean in charge of it. I suspect she wants to mimic Lieberman4Lieberman, posture to the netroots that she is bluer than she is. Easiest way to do that is to attack Dean.

From MyDD"In close Races, the Netroots and Local Dems often stood Alone

[...]

If Carville wants to complain about money being left n the table, I didn't see him jumping on board with the netroots fueled Use It or Lose It campaign, designed to drive more money into districts just like the seven Hotline listed above. I also don't see him criticizing Hillary Clinton despite the huge amount of money she left on the table and the three narrow losses we suffered in my homeland, Western New York.

[...]

More from MyDD

James Carville's Consultant Con

by Chris Bowers, Wed Nov 15, 2006 at 04:29:25 PM EST
There are two main reasons why James Carville does not like Howard Dean. The first is that Howard Dean does not trash other Democrats, and Carville prefers Democrats who throw their own party under the bus. The second is that he is a political consultant, and as such many of his friends have gotten rich off of commissions from television advertisements. As far as he is concerned, all donations to all Democratic committees exist so that he and his friends can get richer. Since Howard Dean is spending money on field organizers and grants to state parties, his friends tend to not get rich from the money the DNC raised. This is abhorrent to Carville, since Democratic Party committees exist to make him and his friends rich.

However, there is a serious problem with many of the television advertisements that Democrats run. That is why on MyDD we set up Adwatch in order to monitor if the money we raised for campaigns was being spent effectively. Looking at the final results from the fifteen House races where the DCCC spent its money, one has to wonder if we did spend our money as effectively as we could have:

* 1. PA-06: Lost
* 2. NM-01: Losing
* 3. CT-05: win, but credited the netroots
* 4. OH-15: Losing
* 5. IL-06: Lost
* 6. IN-08: Win
* 7. CA-50: Lost
* 8. PA-07: Win, but raised $1M online
* 9. AZ-05: Win
* 10. KY-04: Lost
* 11. WA-08: Lost
* 12. PA-08: Win, but credited the netroots
* 13. OH-18: Win, but defeated DCCC candidate in primary
* 14. FL-22: Win
* 15. CT-04: Loss

The numbers I used for this ranking come from when there was still one week to go in the election, but they still tell a disturbing tale (see source information here). Why did the DCCC lose, or is in the process of losing, eight of its top fifteen targets? Why have only six of the fifteen candidates the DCCC originally backed in these races win? Over 85% of the DCCC's independent expenditures in these races came in the form of television ads. Will the consultants in charge of thee ads be held accountable for their sub-500 record? Will other consulting firms be tested out in the future in order to see if they can produce better results? Keep in mind that I am not criticizing the DCCC for choosing these districts, because this is not a bad top fifteen-target list at all. Also, in the seats we did win, it was usually by a very narrow margin, and so this amount of money may have been necessary. However, we should have done better in this list than we did, and I do not think it takes much to argue that the main reason for our failure rests with ineffective television advertising.

Yet still, after producing a sub-.500 record int eh top fifteen House targets, Carville has the gall to tell the press that he and his other consultant buddies deserved even more money so that they could have run even more ineffective advertisements. I write this not as someone looking to attack the DCCC, but instead as someone looking to get my money's worth. The Use It Or Lose It campaign helped direct more than $2.3M into DCCC coffers for the final election push. The MyDD / Dailykos / Swing state Project Act Blue page directed more than $1.5M into Democratic coffers since February. I want to make sure that the money I donated, my community donated, and that we all helped transfer to the DCCC was spent wisely. Looking at our performance in the top fifteen targets, I have some serious doubts that it was.

Carville can try and continue his consulting con that more money to the DCCC would have automatically translated into more victories for Democrats in the House, but looking at our performance in the top fifteen targets, I have to say that is hardly a guarantee. What is a guarantee is that it would have made his rich consulting buddies a lot more money. We practically swept every close race in the Senate, so I have no beef with their consultants. However, when it comes to the House, I want answers. Did we use the right consultants? What other options to we have? What commissions are they taking from these ads? How can we work to reduce the size of those commissions if they are being done on a percentage basis? To what extent are other forms of independent expenditures besides advertising on broadcast advertising more or less effective? How much money does James Carville personally stand to gain from the extra money he wanted channeled to close House races?

These are questions that many people, including the media and the DCCC, need to start asking James Carville. We need answers to these questions. Just because we won does not mean we can't do better in the future. Figuring out what happened to DCCC advertising in our most heavily targeted races is a big area where we can start improving.