Progressives have been annoyed recently with comments by supposedly Dem pundit James Carville, who has been blaming Howard Dean and his “50-state strategy” for the fact that Dems didn’t win even more house seats this year. He’s about the only major player saying this, so IMO, his credibility is at stake here.

A closer look, such as the one that Hotline gave it recently in their excellent seat-by-seat analysis of the close races, quickly debunks that theory, and attributes several narrow Dem losses (including NY-25 and 29) to lack of foresight at Rahm Emmanuel’s DCCC. It’s a good, quick, instructive read. And it’s telling that the DCCC poured millions into Rahm’s pet candidates who lost, but others, like Massa and Maffei, got a pittance or nothing.

The losing Democratic candidates that legitimately could have a beef are: Tessa Hafen (NV 03), Dan Maffei (NY 25), Victoria Wulsin (OH 02) and Eric Massa (NY 29). These candidates ran in the type of third-tier races where the DCCC was only able to fund late. The New York environment was uniquely favorable this year, and another week of attack ads against Rep. Jim Walsh (R) perhaps could have brought him down.

MyDD’s Chris Bowers adds what I would say is the final word on the
situation:

I would like to add something to this. You know who was trying to fund the seats that the DCCC left out? The evil, barbaric, left-wing netroots.

(snip)

If Carville wants to complain about money being left on 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. But I wonder how many big-money Democratic “leaders” even noticed what happened in Western New York this year, since it has been long ignored and inexcusably written off as a conservative bastion for some time. In three different seats, we were inches away form sweeping the region, and making the Rochester Democratic Caucus a reality. We had these seats. We should have won these seats. We were leading in all polls in the NY-25 and NY-29 heading into Election Day. Whoever is at fault for coming up just short there, it certainly is not the netroots. We were a major part of bringing what little noise there was to the region and to many of the other seats that the national party ignored. Along with Jack Davis in NY-26, who refused to campaign, I think some of the big-money people form New York City who are supporting Carville’s efforts need to look themselves in the mirror for this one, and make certain that it is a high priority we do not come up just short in Western New York once again in 2008.

See, I’m not posting this in an attempt to start an unproductive, finger-pointing pissing match with the DCCC, money-hoarding incumbents, and beltway pundits, but, as Bill Clinton said on his Oprah visit a couple years back:

Once you’ve reached an age of accountability and you make a mistake, you don’t have any excuses. But, there are explanations and only a fool does not seek to understand why he or she makes a mistake.

The DCCC did some great work this season, as did all of us. But let’s all learn from our mistakes, from the grassroots, to the netroots, to the big power structures. We owe it to our kids to do the best we can to make the world a better, more compassionate, more sustainable place. If we can do something better at RT to acheive that end, I want to hear about it. I can only hope that the folks in power feel the same.