Emily's Listin' Out

[Zaybay]

At the end of the day, Emily’s List doesn’t really owe anything to the Democrats. They’ve gone against the DCCC, Berniecrats, whoever stands in the way of electing a pro-choice woman. Do they sometimes endorse weaker female candidates over male candidates? Sure, but they’re not the DCCC, their main priority isn’t winning new seats for the Dems, it’s getting pro-choice women elected. I think people fail to make that distinction. After all, they are a special interest group, not an arm of the party.

name one R they have endorsed in 2018

[MAINEiac4434]

This article lays out my feelings pretty well:

https://splinternews.com/how-emily-s-list-lost-its-way-1823399658

[IceSpear]

Yes. No woman will ever win a primary ever again – at least not a Democratic one.

[Jeppe]

At the end of the day, Emily’s List still boasts a ridiculously high win rate (over 70%), so they must be doing something right.

[Zaybay]

At the end of the day, Emily’s List still boasts a ridiculously high win rate (over 70%), so they must be doing something right.

Jeepe, they have money, and money wins elections. If campaign finance reform passes, then EL loses all of its teeth.

[Jeppe]

At the end of the day, Emily’s List still boasts a ridiculously high win rate (over 70%), so they must be doing something right.

Jeepe, they have money, and money wins elections. If campaign finance reform passes, then EL loses all of its teeth.

They’re actually doing really well on the money front now that you mention it

They raised more than the NRCC & just slightly less than the DCCC in the last reporting month ($7 million for NRCC, $9 million for EL, and $11 million for the DCCC). They’re stockpiling most of that money for the general elections though, as usual. Their involvement in primaries pale in comparison to the amount of money they burn through right before the actual general election.

[136or142]

At the end of the day, Emily’s List still boasts a ridiculously high win rate (over 70%), so they must be doing something right.

Jeepe, they have money, and money wins elections. If campaign finance reform passes, then EL loses all of its teeth.

There can be no real campaign finance reform with either a Constitutional Amendment or a change in the votes of the Supreme Court.

[Zaybay]

At the end of the day, Emily’s List still boasts a ridiculously high win rate (over 70%), so they must be doing something right.

Jeepe, they have money, and money wins elections. If campaign finance reform passes, then EL loses all of its teeth.

There can be no real campaign finance reform with either a Constitutional Amendment or a change in the votes of the Supreme Court.

I know, but Im just saying if something changes that allows it to be passed.

[YE]

EMILY's List more or less is an establishment group in a manner similar to End Citizens United. It generally supports establishment corporate wing of the Democratic Party who happen to be pro-choice, oftentimes over insurgent pro-choice female candidates with similar views on the issues it matters on. As a result, it keeps the Democratic Party more establishment oriented while at the same time incentives the Democratic Party establishment to stay very socially liberal and to shy a way from pro-life candidates, when Emily's list sometimes backs a pro-choice challenger like IL-03.

As a pro-lifeish Dem, I want nothing to do with them.

[wesmoorenerd]

Alright, I guess I will give my opinion on Emily's List

I think that the List is a wonderful organization that has a great goal to get women elected. But sometimes, they make really poor choices in endorsements. There have been some races where they have weirdly endorsed the worst candidate when there was clearly better women in the race. For instance, MEGOV. Mills is terrible and could easily lose to the R, but she was only elected thanks to support from Emily's List. If they had supported, say, Betsy Sweet, then we either would have gotten Sweet, who was a strong candidate, or Cote, who, while weaker, would easily win the race.

Most of their choices seem to be the moderate woman, which is very frustrating when more Left women or even more Conservative women are left out of the equation. And they have almost thrown/ thrown races to terrible candidates multiple times. In PA, the candidacy of Susan Wild almost threw the race to Morganelli. She didnt, and in fact she won, but the fact that she entered last and could have caused Morganelli to win, well, I was very worried about the district. They already support Gina Riamondo, who could lose what should be a safe race, and people like Fletcher and Stephine Murphy, who are poor candidates.

But, they have gotten a lot of good done, and have helped increase female participation in both the Democratic Party, and politics itself. Pro-Choice policies have also been promoted by the group, which has helped destroy the pro-life wing of the Dems, which I supported.

Overall, I think they are great, but they should really make better calls on who to endorse in a race.

Also, I dont think anyone gets it, but this thread is a joke/mockery of this earlier one
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=298368.0

I almost completely agree, but Lizzie Fletcher (assuming that's the Fletcher you're talking about) and Stephanie Murphy are easily the best candidates we can get in their respective districts.

Emily's List is excellent but they really need to stop endorsing weaker candidates just because they're women. Erin Murphy? Kelda Roys? Maura Sullivan? Donna Shalala? These are just objectively worse candidates than Walz, Evers, Pappas, and literally anybody else in FL-27. At the same time, I'm not even sure if they endorsed Rachel Reddick and Kate Browning when they very clearly should have. Sort of a minor quibble in the grand scheme of things and they're still a fantastic organization that does a ton of good, but I'm not sure if they've realized how powerful their endorsement has gotten this year in particular.

If they stayed out of every race where there was a male candidate that people thought were stronger, they wouldn’t have a role as an organization. That’s how they’ve been effective, by highlighting female candidates as the alternative, and making sure they get the funding and attention they need to be truly competitive.

Candidates like Katie Hill, Sharice Davids, Cindy Axne, and Susan Wild would’ve surely all lost their primaries without Emily’s List coming into their district with heavy cavalry. Hell, I watched Katie Hill’s Vice documentary, and all of her campaign donation calls begin with “Hi, my name is Katie Hill, the Emily’s List endorsed candidate in CA-25”,  showing that they add credibility to candidates who otherwise would have been sidelined because of their male opponent’s establishment connections (like Bryan Caforio).

So obviously, the goal of Emily's List is to get more (progressive) women elected to Congress and statewide positions. That's an incredibly noble and valuable goal, but at the same time it occasionally goes against the genuine best interests of a progressive Congress.

Take New Hampshire's first district, this year. The primary is essentially down to Chris Pappas and Maura Sullivan. Pappas is the more progressive candidate (for example, he supports single payer, while Sullivan doesn't) and has a ton of support from local politicians, unions, and progressive organizations. Sullivan, meanwhile, is comparatively conservative, has few ties to the district, and is being bankrolled by national, not local, sources.

So presented with the options above, it would make sense for any progressive to support Pappas. He's both more progressive and more electable, with actual ties to and endorsements from people that matter to Granite State residents. Obviously, though, Emily's List can't support Pappas. He's a man and endorsing him would sort of defeat the purpose of the organization. So that leaves Emily's List with two options: endorsing Sullivan or not endorsing. It's clear to me, and this is sort of the point of my criticism, that not endorsing is the better option of the two. However, they went ahead and endorsed Sullivan anyway, and there's a good chance she wins that primary anyway pretty much entirely because she's the right gender to be endorsed by Emily's List.

To put it mildly, Emily's List has pretty much proven their endorsements are overpowered this election cycle. 70% of their endorsed candidates are winning, so they clearly have huge sway in terms of how Democratic primaries end up. This can be used for good purposes, like supporting Wild over Morganelli in Pennsylvania, or for bad purposes, like supporting Sullivan over Pappas. However, the goal of electing progressive women should come second to electing the most progressive candidates overall. I know you're a passionate feminist and I commend you for that. However, I think it's just common sense that policy and platforms should matter more than identity politics. All in all, Emily's List does more good than bad by a long shot, but they really do need to, on occasion, put identity politics in the backseat and stay out of races where a woman is the worse candidate, while focusing all of their attention on the races where a woman is the better candidate.

[wesmoorenerd]

At the end of the day, Emily’s List doesn’t really owe anything to the Democrats. They’ve gone against the DCCC, Berniecrats, whoever stands in the way of electing a pro-choice woman. Do they sometimes endorse weaker female candidates over male candidates? Sure, but they’re not the DCCC, their main priority isn’t winning new seats for the Dems, it’s getting pro-choice women elected. I think people fail to make that distinction. After all, they are a special interest group, not an arm of the party.

If the choice is between a moderate woman and a progressive man, any self respecting progressive should go with the latter in a heartbeat. Emily's List does a lot of good but my biggest problem with them is how they prioritize who's running over why they're running and what they stand for. And yeah, obviously they do that, that's the point of the organization. So we must ask ourselves: is that really the goal that we're looking for? Obviously, having more women in Congress is a good thing (well, at least until we reach an equilibrium and finally have equal and just representation) but should it come at the cost of electing the candidates that will fight the hardest for the American people? This wasn't a choice we had to make just a few years ago, but since then we've had many, many more women running for office and winning primaries, and a lot of the credit there goes to Emily's List. Now, that development has many more upsides than downsides and I think that goes without saying. However, as Emily's List has grown more powerful alongside the recent development of more women running for office, there are more fundamental questions we have to ask ourselves about what we prioritize. These are questions we have to answer now, or else Emily's List may end up doing more harm than good just to carry out its mission.

[Antonio the Sixth]

A better title would have been "Emilynated". Sure it's further from the original, but it preserves the spirit of it through the pun.