The DCCC Can’t Stop Eating Their Own
How the Laura Moser candidacy highlights the structural challenges of working within the Democratic party
2018 — two months in, and we’re already preparing for the upcoming Democratic party primary season. 2017 had some positive moments. Despite the horror show that was the first year of the Trump Administration and the Republican tide which swept into the White House, steadily swallowing local, state, and national races into a blob of nationalism, white supremacy, and feudal levels of economic inequality, we’ve actually had some breakthroughs.
In 2017, we had the sweep of Virginia, with candidates the most red DSA member rise emoji crowd can get into (Love that boy Lee Carter) as well as very Third Way friendly candidates like Ralph Northam. Even if goofy Doug Jones won the Senate seat in Alabama against a notorious predator, it's still Alabama and it is not entirely clear the authoritarian base of the Republican party even minds, much less believes, the charges against Judge Roy Moore.
The operational structures of the Democratic party have been rapidly changing over the past 10 years, especially concerning campaign finance. The most notable example of this shift is the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign shockingly successful fundraising model that took the small 50-100 dollar donations that amazed the political press in Obama's 2008 campaign and shrunk the average donation size by half while taking no corporate money.
This small donation model of fundraising has broken down barriers for candidates, helping lead to an explosion in the number of congressional candidates running in 2018. If more people are engaged, interested, and invested in electoral politics than in generations, then why is the DCCC getting in the way of the popular will of the Democratic base?
Examine the case of Laura Moser, candidate for Texas’s 7th congressional district. Moser helped make one of the most popularly used technological activism projects from the last year, Daily Action. She is archetypal Why, then, has the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee posted opposition research targeting Moser on their website? Why would the DCCC dedicate resources to attempt to favor a candidate running in an open Republican seat?
She also has raised a lot of that money from a large number of small donors. One would think that this would show MORE reasons to support her, or at the very least not get involved until after the primary election. But after analysis it becomes clear that the issue the DCCC has with Moser has very little to do with electability or party unity, but rather that she is at the forefront of a transformation of the structures of power that reproduce the same kind of Democratic party apparatus that compromises the democratic will of the base with the interests of big money donors.
Moser, who is no socialist or radical, is offering a kind of liberal progressivism that most Democratic operatives act as though is the bare minimum. But it is not WHO Moser is: it is the way in which Moser is leapfrogging the gatekeepers in the party and democratizing the funding process by running her campaign around small donations.
This is an existential threat to the current resurrect of party institutions like the DCCC, an organization known colloquially as the ‘consultant factory.’ As explained by Ryan Grim and Lee Fang in the Intercept, the DCCC has become a well oiled machine that finds, recruits, and helps select candidates on a singular metric: how much money can you raise?
Examine the case of Jeff Erdmann, a 27 year veteran school teacher and football coach who had to make serious financial sacrifices, including his wife taking a second job to help pay for the high costs of his primary while he had to go to a reduced schedule to keep up with his campaign work. A great candidate from a middle-class background with grassroots connections in the community could not make it happen against a well funded candidate from an upper class economic stratum.
As campaign costs skyrocket, the personal cost of being in politics have continued to expand. This is something even liberal reformist Brits knew in the 1830s reforms that introduced the modern parliamentary system when they instituted a salary for members of parliament. When the personal costs of political involvement begin to rise, the more middle and working class citizens are discouraged to become involved, creating a system that favors the rich.
Moser, a Bernie Sanders supporter in the 2016 primary, had a target on her back from the more vindictive members of the party apparatus, but she is just one of many Berniecrats running in 2018. It is when she uses her connections with the grassroots, and yes, even The Resistance®, to democratize the funding process of her campaign, that the Consultant Factory gets nervous. How are they gonna easily get their cut? Scott Dworkin can’t run his “Liberal Grift” forever.
By going to the people for funding, labor, and organizing, Moser and other party outsiders are proving that another political arrangements, as meek as it may be for my radical comrades’ taste, is possible. To those enriching and empowering themselves off a grotesque abdication of democratic principles, any attempt to lower the barrier to entry is an existential threat. It is that barrier to entry that gives them power, purpose, and wealth.
Let's break down the barricades, shall we?
Ben Udashen is a writer and podcaster based in Seattle.
Listen to his podcast Chip Guys at chipguyspodcast.com or on iTunes
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