John Hickenlooper, Chuck Schumer and the DSCC’s choice for Democratic Nominee for Senate, has literally drunk fracking fluid in an attempt to suck up to Halliburton.
The DSCC has put the word out that consultants work with other candidates in the primary will be blacklisted.
This is worse than the clusterfuck that is the DCCC, where the hapless Cheri Bustos (Seriously, don’t announce this publicly) limits their meddling to candidates challenging incumbents in primaries:
Before the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee endorsed former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper in a 2020 Senate race, it pressured consultants from at least five firms not to work with a leading progressive in the race, the candidate told The Intercept.
Andrew Romanoff, who is one of more than a dozen candidates vying for Republican Sen. Cory Gardner’s seat, told The Intercept that multiple consultants turned down jobs with his campaign citing pressure from the DSCC.
……….
At least five firms and 25 prospective staff turned down working with his campaign, said Romanoff, who has raised more than $1 million in individual contributions so far. “I spoke to the firms, my campaign manager spoke to the staff prospects,” he said. “Pretty much everyone who checked in with the DSCC got the same warning: Helping us would cost them.”
A consultant who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity said that their firm had been far along in talks to work for Romanoff when they got word that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the DSCC weren’t happy. The firm was told by a top DSCC staffer that they “absolutely under no circumstances could work for Andrew Romanoff, so we withdrew our offer to be his consulting firm.”
The DSCC is using an “unquestionably far more heavy-handed approach this year than they have in previous cycles,” the consultant said.
Earlier this year, the DSCC’s companion organization in the House, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, made it official policy to cut off funding and vendors to Democrats who challenged incumbent Democrats. Putting the policy in writing ratcheted up what had been more of an informal understanding in prior cycles. But if the DSCC’s intervention in Colorado is any indication, the Democrats’ Senate campaign arm is taking the blacklist one step further, by discouraging consultants from working not only for challengers to incumbent Democrats, but also for progressives running against the establishment’s preferred candidate in a seat currently held by the GOP. In Romanoff’s case, the DSCC did so before it had been clear whether Washington’s choice, Hickenlooper, even planned to run.
What could possibly possess them to do such a destructive and stupid thing?
Also this:
Six of the seven women candidates running in the Colorado primary sent a letter to DSCC leadership on Monday, Women’s Equality Day, urging it to reconsider its endorsement of Hickenlooper. “All of us, like many women in Colorado and across the country, have seen well-qualified women passed over for male candidates in the workplace time and again,” they wrote.
Oh, right, MONEY:
Meanwhile, health-care and fossil fuel industry lobbyists raised almost $1.5 million for the DSCC during the first six months of the year, according to a review of campaign finance and lobbying records by Sludge and MapLight. The lobbyists’ clients include major health insurance and pharmaceutical companies whose profits are threatened by the prospect of a universal public health-care system, as well as oil and gas companies and utilities whose businesses depend upon Congress refusing to pass meaningful climate change mitigation measures.
While lobbyist fundraising only accounted for a fraction of the $28 million the DSCC raised in the first half of the year, it fits into a broader pattern of Democratic Party committees cozying up to corporate interests. In April, Sludge and MapLight reported that corporate lobbyists raising money for the House Democrats’ campaign arm had doubled their bundling from the previous election cycle.
It’s bad politics, uninspiring candidates don’t inspire voters, and it’s bad policy, Anthropogenic Climate Change and the Insurance Companies are both trying to kill us.
The only winners in this are the Washington, DC consultants, who are under paid and under performing, witness their performance in 2016, when they lost to a fucking orange toupee.
I get it: Corporate suck-ups raise lots of money, and consultants are given a percentage of the resulting ad buys, (Ka-Ching) so even if the money is largely wasted, the consultants make bank.
The well being of political consultants is no basis for a system of government.
I’d prefer to rely on strange women lying in ponds distributing swords as a basis for a system of government.
At least when some moistened bint lobs a scimitar at me, it does not cost $12 million.