Rahma can you hear me?
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has yet to jump into NY-25 or NY-29 in a serious way. James Carville and Charlie Cook say they should — to be precise they say that the DCCC should pump money into a lot of “second and third tier races” (NY-25 is considered third-tier, NY-29 is either second or third, depending on who you listen to). Let’s hope that DCCC head Rahm Emanuel is listening:
On a conference call today, James Carville suggested that the Democratic Party should expand beyond just the top targeted races. He believes the party should help fund previously ignored Democratic challengers in second- and third-tier districts–the next 30 to 50 Republican-held seats–to fully capitalize on this environment and help those candidates maximize their chances of winning. Carville went as far as to suggest Democrats go to the bank and borrow $5 million. If I were them, I’d make it $10 million and put $500,000 each of these 20 districts.
Well said.
Massa’s response to a question about party help on WITR Thursday night was basically “I’m going to keep going with or without DCCC or DNC money”. Taking his tone into account, his response was more like “Fuck them - they weren’t around when I started, and I’ll finish this without them”.
That was my take on his comments do. Still — it seems unwise for the DCCC not take a flier on another 20 races or so, given the environment.
I think that the whole DCCC and NY Democratic party have been really stupid to ignore the upstate NY congressional races. With good candidates and enough money the national party could take back the House just by sweeping the New York congressional delegation. We have good candidates, but the only one who’s getting traction is Davis and that’s only because Tom Reynolds is imploding.
And, although I hate gerrymandering, this is the cycle when the Dems could win enough state senate seats to win control of that house, building a majority that would last long enough to skew the electoral map in the their favor once the 2010 census comes out (especially since NY, especially upstate, will lose more seats in the coming decade). So where’s the money?