Laura Moser
Other folks have weighed in on the DCCC drive-by on Laura Moser from Thursday – Mother Jones, Stace, Campos, Indivisible Houston, the HCDP, and others. I’ve seen plenty of talk of this on Facebook, and I’ve yet to see a single person defend the DCCC’s actions, including plenty of self-identified supporters of other candidates. I honestly can’t think of a single thing the DCCC could have done to make people here feel more favorably towards Moser and more contemptuous of themselves. I truly have no idea what they were thinking.
TPM has a good story on this kerfuffle, including (anonymous) quotes from the DCCC and examples of similar activity from other recent elections. Again, I get the motivation – if you believe this is a genuinely winnable race but that one potential candidate is much less viable than some others, you want to do something about it. “Better to be a jerk than a loser” is the quote at the end, which is easy enough to say but a lot harder to do well. Part of the problem here was that the attack was as subtle as a cleaver to the head, and part of it was that the reasons given were so lightweight. As skeletons in the closet go, this wasn’t exactly an archaeological dig. It’s one thing to go after a truly toxic candidate. If, say, Lloyd Oliver or Kesha Rogers has filed in CD07, no one would complain about a campaign to keep them out of the runoff. But Moser, whether you prefer her as your choice in CD07 or not, is basically a standard-issue Democrat. I can’t imagine too many Dems in that district would have walked away from her if she’d won the nomination in a DCCC-free election.
The DCCC would argue that maybe Dems would stick with Moser, but Republicans – the ones who voted for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in this district – would not, or at least would not in comparable numbers to Lizzie Fletcher or Alex Triantaphyllis or Jason Westin. That could be true – you’d have to show me some high-quality polling data to convince me of it, but it’s at least plausible. That assumes that any measurable number of Republicans would cross over for any of these candidates; remember, John Culberson won by 11 points in 2016. Those Hillary-voting Republicans still voted for him, and (with the exception of Kim Ogg) pretty much every other Republican on the ballot that year. An alternate hypothesis would be that Moser might do a better job driving Democrats to the polls in November, and that it will be a surge in Dem turnout that carries someone to victory. I’m not saying this is a more likely outcome than the one the DCCC is proffering, but it’s no less within the range of the possible. You want me to buy into your story line, you’re going to need to convince me the others aren’t going to happen. To say the least, the DCCC came up empty on that.
Which brings me to my main point. We’re all going to have to row in the same direction in this race, and in all the others we hope to win. Forget the national handicappers’ ratings, Dems remain the underdog in this race, for the simple reason that until proven otherwise there are a lot more Rs in CD07 than there are Ds. That 11-point win Culberson achieved in 2016 came in the best year Harris County Democrats have had in anyone’s memory. What we need is unity, which this salvo – and the AFL-CIO’s attack on Lizzie Fletcher, which also annoyed me – is the opposite of. The way to beat a bad guy who will support the Trump agenda is with a good guy who will oppose it. All seven of the CD07 contenders qualify. Let’s all please keep that in mind.
UPDATE: Here’s a Chron story on the saga.
It’s not as if the national D establishment has such a great track record itself. Besides, there’s likely at least a plurality of people in the 7th who agree that amateur dentistry is far preferable to living in Baja Oklahoma.
Like I said. I will no longer give a dime to them. If I wanted groups attacking progressive Democrats I would give to the Republican groups or the Koch brothers affiliated. If I lived in that district I would now be campaigning for her.
A stupid DCCC decision.
This was silly. For one thing, if the DCCC wanted to make sure Moser is not the candidate, why not wait until the runoff (which you have to think is almost certain)? Then they could aid the other person in a more subtle way that wouldn’t blow back on Moser if she is the nominee.
Also, Paris is not in CD7, and a lot of people who live in CD7, and frankly a lot Democrats, would not want to live there either. So, I don’t see why that even came up.
“Better to be a jerk than a loser”
If we want good, honest government, jerks NEED to lose.
Every story I have read about this on Twitter, Facebook, Daily Kos, and other web sites has had an ad for Lizzie Fletcher. The DCCC should have left this alone. Moser was running such a Hillaryesque campaign that she was heading for a fourth place finish.