Is there any way to get numbers for the percentage of DCCC dollars went to DLC incumbants and how much went to Democratic challengers?
In other words, is the DCCC consciously funneling massive amounts of money into expensive campaign commercials for "old Democrat" incumbants at the expense of new Democratic challengers?
It might explain the difficulty the DCCC has in recruiting a challenger for every district if they do not offer any financial assistance in getting a campaign up and running. I suspect that if they were offering $50,000 in seed money to qualified Democratic challengers they would be having better luck recruiting.
In a perfect world it would be great to give $50K to every challenger (not even the Repubs do this) but resources are finite and a lot of this money would be wasted in completely unwinnable seats. Imagine giving $50K to a challenger in a deep red district where the incumbent is not scandal tarred and won with 80% of the vote. That money could be used to help another candidate in a marginal district.
There is nothing wrong with targeting money at winnable seats but the DCCC needs to do a better job of identifying these seats. Their track record the last few cycles has been horrible.
Also, we cannot expect the DCCC to identify challengers in every district. The local parties must help with this since many times the local parties develop the candidates and receive DCCC money after they have proven their strength as a candidate.
