Once Again, Let's All Repeat That Dean Was Elected
by Matt Stoller, Thu May 11, 2006 at 06:57:23 AM EDT
Rahm Emanuel cursed out Dean yesterday for inadequate DNC spending on his priorities, and he's tracking the Presidential candidates to see how helpful they are for DCCC fundraising. The leaders are Kerry, Clark, and Gore (though Emanuel has come out publicly for Hillary Clinton). This is in addition to the point system Emanuel has implemented for House members. This is basically what Tom Delay did to cement control and discipline in the Republican caucus, liberally sprinkle candidates with money and punish those who can't or won't raise it. I think it's going to be harder to implement this system of control on the Democratic side, but I don't see many other attempts to build a political machine that can wield power.
My guess is that Emanuel's verbal attack on Dean is a mixture of anger and CYA in case the Democrats don't take the House. There's a lot of self-promotion going on with his tough image, and he's a bully. I know credible people who have been thrown out of his office for not hewing to his ideological brew. I've also heard that his DCCC doesn't listen particularly well to local leaders, claims credit for pretty much everything, and tends to throw its weight around. The big single issue groups operating out of DC often look to the DCCC endorsement to see whether they should come in on a race (see Duckworth, Tammy).
At the same time, if your perspective is simply that of a partisan, I kind of have to ask, so what? Emanuel is an effective fundraiser and competent at the mechanics of elections. He's a smart operator in the House, and it's clear that House Democrats desperately need a system for wielding power and a set of incentives/disincentives for cooperating with each other and acting as partisans.
Still, this anger is silly. Emanuel has to know that Dean was elected DNC Chair on a promise to not spend money on behalf of national committees like the DCCC. He also has to know that he could have intervened during the DNC Chair race, but he did not. He's probably kicking himself for allowing Dean in there.
I worked on that race against Dean, but it's very much a good thing Dean is following through on his promises to state parties. I'm not a fan of Dean's recent pandering (neither is Taylor Marshor John Aravosis) and his lie about the Democratic Party platform, but promises should be kept. And Dean won that race fair and square on a platform of spending money in the states and not on a cycle basis, so bitching now about how he spends the DNC's money is sour grapes.
Tags: DNC, gay rights, Howard Dean, Noam Scheiber, Pat Robertson, TNR (all tags)
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