I was disheartened reading a number of self-flagellating Busby diaries and comments yesterday. Yes, she lost and we wish that she won. Nobody said taking back the House was going to be easy. It's not the time to lament about Busby being an imperfect candidate or complain about the Republican noise machine. Those are realities of hardball politics. It's time to use the Busby loss as a learning experience for November and repeat what Democrats did right and change what Democrats did wrong.
The following article in the New York Times outlines some areas to think about. On the good side, CA-50 was
"...about as friendly ground as they [Republicans] are likely to find in the months ahead. This was never considered a truly contested district, and most of the districts where both parties are focusing their energy and money are less reliably Republican than this one."
CA-50 is a proof that the 50 State Strategy works. The RNC had to pull out all the stoppers and spend $5M to hold onto a `safe-seat.' That's $5M that they won't have in November.
"Republicans will be hard-pressed to duplicate that expensive and elaborate campaign they waged for Mr. Bilbray in every district where an incumbent is under assault."
With all of that, they only squeaked out a 49% victory.
Now, onto what we're up against:
Republicans demonstrated yet again their ability to raise more money than Democrats and to deploy the get-out-the-vote and absentee-vote operation developed by the Republican National Committee.
The committee's chairman, Ken Mehlman, said Wednesday that Republicans had 160 people in this district helping to get out the vote.
"They made 164,000 phone calls," Mr. Mehlman said.
Democrats said the Democratic National Committee had no similar effort on the ground here.
Mr. Mehlman said the victory also "showed the importance of turnout and the power of grass roots."
I would also add that the Republicans have the advantage in exploiting gaffes - as they have a honed media distribution network of radio and newspaper operatives.
The Republicans learn from their mistakes,
"I saw in 2000 when the Democrats came in with the big-labor bosses and just pummeled me and there was no help from any of the party people," he said. "This time they came in. They are on the top of their game. I could never ask for more support than what I got."
However, why didn't the Democrats have get-out-the-vote telephone banks? Geez, my local school district candidates do that. It's something to do for the races in November.