To the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee

Dear Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee:

Please rethink your heavy-handed warning that you'll boycott any consultant who works with a primary challenger to a Democratic incumbent. 

Primaries are how we choose our candidates – and leave everyone feeling s/he had a fair shot. Involvement in primaries can strengthen ties to the Party. Telling us we can't try weakens those.

Political parties aren't mentioned in our Constitution. The two-party system has done both good and harm. Our government has grown so complex that the parties function almost as an unofficial arm of the government. The parties have tremendous power – and, I would argue, some obligation to use that power wisely – but are not subject to constitutional restraints on governments. 

Consider the context: heavy criticism of the Party for allegedly tipping the 2016 scales toward Hillary against Bernie, and criticism of DCCC assistance to favored primary candidates in 2018. Your heavy-handed effort to help retain incumbent Democratic congresspersons risks increasing disaffection among Democrats and independents. 

Wresting control of government back from the orange-haired narcissist and his cynical enablers is critical for our nation's future – and perhaps for our continued existence as a democratic republic.

I understand your desire to run the strongest candidates in general elections, and to avoid the expense and potential rancor of primary campaigns.

I understand your desire to run the strongest candidates in general elections, and to avoid the expense and potential rancor of primary campaigns.

But as a Democrat, I wish to be free to run for Congress or to support the best candidate. We have a wonderful Congresswoman; but if we had a corrupt or incompetent congressperson, I would actively seek a better alternative. Your duty is to maintain the majority – which your rigid commitment to established figures may endanger. If you think Rep. Ocasio-Cortez is hurting the party, I've got some interesting video to show you.

While I understand that supporting a challenger won't endear me to the incumbent, formalizing that pressure to conform is repugnant and unethical. Since the Democratic Party is not a government entity, you may not be violating the U.S. Constitution; but you're taking a stand against liberty. (Ironically, in the political arena you're acting in a manner the antitrust laws might not allow if you were capitalists seeking unfair profits.) 

I don't favor term limits. A senior congressperson can use contacts and knowledge of the system to be highly effective, and seniority increases power; but many voters distrust politicians; and rigging the primaries to give incumbents an unfair advantage will encourage the rest of us to counter with term-limits to level the playing field.  

Public faith in our system has been weakening for decades. Trump, Putin, and Jerry Mander have it on the ropes, drooling. Why knock it into the second row?

Your abuse of power will be self-defeating in the long run. For most of us, there's a tension between strict party loyalty and viewing our party association in the larger context of our political beliefs and values. There's both a gravity holding us in the party, and a centrifugal force. You are embittering many of your best people, particularly the all-important younger generations. Consider that the Party's great strength is its openness to change and to different ethnicities and genders; closing primaries to young challengers undermines that strength. 

Absent some compelling justification of your conduct, I will contribute nothing to the DCCC, find other ways to support appropriate candidates, urge others to avoid the DCCC, and mark all your emails as spam. 

                                                                                         -progressive old fart seeking a party

                                                     -30-

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 7 April 2019, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and on KRWG's website.  A spoken version will air during the week on KRWG and on KTAL-LP, 101.5 FM 9www.lccommunityradio.org )]

[Also wanted to say, but couldn't fit it into the column, that DCCC is undermining its own "Let's unify for the general election" refrain.  In 2018, when Xochi won the nomination and election, a woman named Mad Hildebrandt had been campaigning for the CD-2 seat for months, probably a year.  Mad looked good, sounded good in the speeches I heard her make, and deserved some credit for jumping into the race early, even before Steve Pearce announced he'd be running for governor instead.

Understandably some Democrats got fairly attached to her.  Xochi won the primary.  My message to my friends who'd backed Mad was, Democrats have got to unify to have any chance to win this seat -- and winning it is critical because we now have Mr. Trump in the Casa Blanca.   Some folks were annoyed because they felt the DCCC had favored Xochi over Mad, although I don't think the DCCC actually put money into the primary race.

In any case, I recall the bitterness.  I just don't think punishing folks for contesting primaries is going to strengthen that "Unity!" message.  Rather, I'd have a hard time in 2020 saying the stuff I said in 2018; and I wouldn't expect folks to listen as much.  Yeah, it'll still be true that we should maintain control of that seat.  But I might need some reminder myself as to why the folks who act like the DCCC are better than some other crooked bunch.]

[The Party may not see the consequences of this in 2020.  The urgency of wresting back control of our country from Trump and his enablers is still high; but like termites, people's irritation with the DCCC will eat away at the Party. ]   

[I do sympathize with the desire to avoid costly and sometimes rancorous primary fights; but occasional primary fights come with the territory if you're a political party.  It'd be interesting to discuss with top Democrats whether, on balance, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is good or bad for the Party.   She's in some ways what the framers of our Constitution envisioned: an everyday citizen bringing her view to a legislative body of diverse views, speaking up vigorously, and representing her constituency.  I don't agree with everything she says; but I don't have to.  I don't suggest she be our president; but I could make the case in a debate that she'd be far better at it than Donald Trump! ]   

[My father was a Democrat and a passionate admirer of Adlai Stevenson, for whom I wore sandwich signs at the tender age of 5.  My first real interest in the whole thing was really Jack Kennedy against Richard Nixon.  I went to a school where about 70-80 per cent of the students preferred Nixon, but I liked Kennedy.  I worked passionately for LBJ against Barry Goldwater in the fall of 1964, was disappointed in his escalation of the Viet Nam war, and worked for a peace candidate challenging the Democratic establishment's preferred candidate for U.S. Representative, but got disgusted by both parties, and had a particularly strong reaction to the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.  Driving a New York City taxicab, I often opened conversations with passengers by asking, "Which of the three little pigs are you going to vote for?" (Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, and George Wallace) and cast my own first vote in a presidential election for the eminent Eldridge Cleaver -- so I do understand people feeling that both parties suck.  (But by 2000 I was appalled by old ally Ralph Nader's distraction from the Gore-Bush race, and had vigorous discussions with my daughter regarding her support for Nader.] I suppose I was registered Democratic when I initially lived in New Mexico; in California I registered as "Declined to State" (and forgot that fact and tried to vote in a presidential primary in 1984), then registered Democratic when I returned to New Mexico.  

I think for myself.  I'm a Democrat because that party approaches my views more closely than the other folks, because in this part of New Mexico you're missing half the fun if you can't vote in Democratic primaries, and because the Republican Party has moved so far right over the past few decades.  I don't believe stuff because Democrats say it, although my initial reaction to anything Donald Trump says is that it's probably inaccurate. Still, I look into it further, usually.

At this moment, I am concerned about the future of the Republic.  Donald Trump and the folks who manipulate him are dangerously short-sighted and belligerent, and dishonest, and must be opposed, vigorously, and the Democrats do that -- although they themselves are too much dependent upon money, so that I sometimes feel the Republicans represent the Kochs and the other oligarchs, the Democrats represent a managerial class that runs a lot of companies and other entities, and no one represents the average working folks, although  Democratic policies toward the economy and the environment than Republican policies; but that's damning with faint praise.

Someone did ask me to be "Parliamentarian" of the county Democratic Party a while back, and I went to meetings for a year or two.  I liked the people, and generally agreed with them.  But deep down, I still distrust political parties.]