If you were in charge of the DCCC, what would you do differently?

[Tekken_Guy]

If you were in charge of the DCCC, what would you have done differently to help House Democrats and Democratic candidates out?

[MATTROSE94]

Not eliminated in person canvassing and shifted money towards vulnerable Democrats.

[TML]

Eliminate the vendor blacklist rule for those supporting primary challengers and not try to coronate preferred candidates. In many cases the coronation of preferred candidates may actually deprive them the opportunity of fine-tuning their political campaigning skills, thereby leaving them more vulnerable against opponents in the general election.

[Mr.Phips]

Not eliminated in person canvassing and shifted money towards vulnerable Democrats.

Pretty much this.

[Schiff for Senate]

Sounds radical, but... I'd pull every single dollar out of every single race where we're down by more than ten points. And if we're up by more than 10 points we can give those races a lot less funding. Either we have the race locked down (if we're more than 10 points ahead) or we're not going to win (if we're more than 10 points down), and we shouldn't waste too much money on those races. That way we can direct our focus and resources to the truly competitive seats. Specific to 2020, we should give more focus to protecting weak incumbents, like Cunningham, Horn and McAdams. Technically Collin Peterson of MN07 was weak too, but I don't think more money would have changed the outcome...the district was just too polarised and too pro-Trump to keep reelecting Peterson, and if not 2022, he'd be done by 2022. And he's not even really a party-line vote; he supports gun rights and is socially more conservative than every other House Democrat and a couple of House Republicans; and he also voted against impeaching Trump in 2019 (the only Democrat other than now-Republican Jeff van Drew). So I'd focus on really preserving incumbents like Cunningham; Horn; McAdams; Torres Small; etc. And I'd focus on holding IA02, which flipped red by seven votes after Democrat Dave Loebsack retired - just a few hundred dollars, and probably less, could have swung the race, made Marienette Miller-Meeks a four-time loser - and in the process gotten us Rita Hart instead of Miller-Meeks.

So I'd remove funding from every race where we're down by over ten points completely to stop the throwing away of money (for example, no funding in a race like KY01, where a Democrat ran and lost to James Comer by 50 points), and also reduce our funding significantly in safely blue districts (for example we could waste a lot less money if we cut back our funding by a lot in districts like, say, VA11, where we won by over 40 points). I'd pay these districts in particular a lot more attention to maximize our chances there:

IA02 (went red by 7 votes (!) - I'd give this district much, much more attention; this is one race we could have easily kept in the blue column)
NY22 (nearly stayed blue despite voting for Trump by 11 points - I'd give this district much more attention)
CA25 (Republican Mike Garcia's seat - a safely Biden seat - it voted for him by 10 points! - that flipped blue in 2018 to elect Katie Hill over incumbent Republican Steve Knight, but when Hill resigned a year later following scandal, elected Garcia in a special election and reelected him in 2020; but if we'd kept a few less Biden voters from voting for Garcia we could have won here)
CA21 (the seat David Valadao [R] won back from T.J. Cox; Valadao is fairly moderate and is CA's only Republican to vote to impeach Trump in 2021, but this district broke for Biden by 11 points while narrowly electing back Valadao)
UT04 (an urban seat, centred in Salt Lake City won by Democrat Ben McAdams that narrowly reverted to the GOP to elect Burgess Owens, a crazed Trump supporter and one of just two African-American House Republicans, the other being Byron Donalds of FL19, also elected 2020)
CA39 (another safely Biden district that went for him by over ten points, while electing a Republican, Young Kim - among the first Korean-American women in Congress, along with fellow CA Republican Michelle Steele and Washington Democrat Marilyn Strickland - narrowly enough)
SC01 (a Charleston-based, urban seat that elected Democrat Joe Cunningham after Republican Mark Sanford lost renomination, and has been trending somewhat leftward, but which elected Nancy Mace [R] by 1.3% in 2020)
TX24 (one of just nine Biden seats to elect a Republican to Congress - after the retirement of a long-term incumbent it stayed red by narrowly electing Republican Beth van Duyne)
CA48 (went for Biden, though narrowly compared to the 21st, 25th and 39th, but elected conservative Republican Michelle Steel)
IA01 (a lot more, but not huge amounts, either - I'm not sure if money would've saved Abby Finkenauer from Ashley Hinson in a Trump district - on the other hand it went for Trump by less than 4 points)
FL27 (it's still a Biden district that's got a D+5 CPVI - I think the solutions were paying more attention to Southeast Florida, more funding, and nominating someone who wasn't in her eighties, didn't know Spanish and was actually a Wisconsinite)
MN01 (not too much more - it'd be an uphill fight in such a pro-Trump district that it flipped red in 2018 - but it did vote red in the House election by just 3 points)
FL26  (same logic as FL27, but more money would be needed in this district since it actually voted for Trump by 5.5 points after going for Clinton by 18)
IN05 (based in the suburbs of Indianapolis...went for Trump by pretty less, and elected Victoria Spartz by just 4% - given that the suburbs are the region of Democratic gains, IN05 doesn't seem like much of an exaggeration)
TX23 (based on the border and beyond; yes, it swung to Trump, but I think some cash couldn't hurt our candidate; he lost by only 4 points)
OK05 (based in Oklahoma City - flipped for Democrat Kendra Horn in 2018 and back red for the GOP's Stephanie Bice in 2020; the district's trending bluer and Horn lost by just 4.2%)
AZ06 (Shweikert's district - it went for Trump by just 4 points, and some money could have been spent to remind the voters of Shweikert's corruption [see this article]; he outran Trump and won by 4.4 points)
NE02 (self-explanatory: went for Biden by 6.6 points but reelected Don Bacon [R] by 4.6; an ad or two in the area tying Bacon to Trump and watching him squirm couldn't hurt us)

(I included basically every district that went red, but by less than 5 points.)

[coloradocowboi]

I used to do contract work for the DCCC, so pardon the long post but my tl;dr answer is everything.

1. Polling: The way that the DCCC conducts polling relies on really faulty methods and obviously thus produces completely useless data. You'd think they would fix this after royally screwing up three of the past four elections, and part of this is because they don't hire the best talent but rather the most loyal Democrats--a stupid move in and of itself that has to change (see points 2 and 3). They need qualified, unbiased, professional (i.e. social scientists with PhDs) pollsters to do their work from now on, and they need to rely on methods that would pass scientific muster (i.e. that would pass peer review) otherwise the "data" they are relying upon is completely useless.

To explain more fully what I mean, let's take a look at the empirically untrue and yet nonetheless prevalent criticism that "defund the police" lost of all of these House races...

Not a single Democrat who lost used the slogan, and as a matter of fact most who lost had invested substantial resources into content meant to reassure voters that they didn't want to defund the police. Beyond that, "defund the police" has been proven to be an unpopular and ineffective slogan, true, but the actual policy that it refers to, i.e. decreasing police budgets to increase social services, is hardly as controversial and in some polls (depending on area and snapshot in time) is actually pretty popular beyond the Democratic base. So, why the "defund the police" strawman?

Well, in part it's because of the way that the DCCC and campaigns, etc., do polling. Generally in a horse-race poll, you just ask about people's positions on a handful of controversial issues (which has its own serious data limitations anyway), the favorability of candidates, and the horse race. Sometimes, e.g. in Democratic primaries or really discursively fraught campaigns, they also test "messages" which is a horrible and stupid practice. What it means is essentially you ask the poll respondent "If Catherine Cortez Masto were to defund the police, how much more likely would you be..."

Such a question is so stupid for a lot of reasons, starting with the fact that the poll itself is media that is asking about policy that is neither proposed or supported by the candidate--that CCM is defunding the police, implicitly by 100% which is called "abolition" anyway "Abolish the police!" It also assumes that voters are so stupid that their cognitive processes are limited to slogans anyway and not policy, which is not only not true but especially not true for the highly educated, frankly high IQ voters that the Democrats rely upon to win elections.

Finally, this method of polling just makes the Democrats central problem worse: they become the party of releasing meaningless statements meant to defuse the culture wars (and which never do) instead of popular policies that destroy the inequality that produces it.

Instead of A/B (or A/B/C ) polls about "messaging," they need to spend a lot more on focus groups, even ethnographic studies of potentially swingable communities... They need specific messages, heavy on big policy ideas, that can be pitched to different communities.

2. Candidate recruitment: There is a serious disconnect between how democratic elites imagine "regular people" and how these people actually are. It seems like in competitive races, Democrats believe that nominating candidates with a record of success either in the bureaucracy or business are preferable because they think that that's what the avg. Joe aspires toward, missing that three things working people hate in this country are: 1. liberal elites, 2. big govt', and 3. big biz.

Candidates from the nonprofit world, activism, social media and entertainment, all make more sense for Democrats. They need candidates who are empathetic but tough, and populist instead of deferential when it comes to elitism. And this problem transcends ideology. When establishment-oriented Democrats vote for a progressive, it's someone like Warren instead of Bernie... which is to say someone who is controversial when Bernie is not, despite actually being well to his right.

What's the difference (besides sexism)? It's that Warren is less relatable. She's some snobby college professor who lives in Cambridge, MA and talks about intersectionality.

Bernie Sanders remains the most popular Democratic Senator not because of or in spite of his ideology, but rather because he remains one of the few honest politicians in Washington. You get his sincere beliefs. They aren't focus grouped slogans.

Moreover, most of the DCCC-backed candidates are just those who will do the DCCC's bidding, which makes sense if you are an authoritarian institution, but considering that they have to get their puppets approved by a voting public that is pretty stupid, but not as stupid as the Democrats think. They have to pick between personality-less puppets and winning elections, but in order to do that...

3. Staff: They need to fire anyone with connections to corporate OR special interest lobbying. Not only should they reconsider the challenger ban, but also poach and steal operatives from successful campaigns. They have achieved great feats, and should bee capitalized on instead of marginalized. Put those skills to work against Republicans.

4. Ad Strategy: All or mostly digital, focused less on national issues and buzzwords and rather on demographically-tailored messages.


TLDR:
1. replace staff of nepotistic stooges with actual professionals
2. recruit candidates based on how appealing they are, not how loyal they are to the democrats/climbing up the ladder
3. make determinations of appeal based on rigorous analysis, not lazy a/b testing
4. spend ad dollars on targeted, digital material instead of 30 second scare bombs that everyone mutes anyway

[TML]

[...]
2. Candidate recruitment: There is a serious disconnect between how democratic elites imagine "regular people" and how these people actually are. It seems like in competitive races, Democrats believe that nominating candidates with a record of success either in the bureaucracy or business are preferable because they think that that's what the avg. Joe aspires toward, missing that three things working people hate in this country are: 1. liberal elites, 2. big govt', and 3. big biz.
[...]

Could this statement be interpreted to mean that governors, mayors, county executives, town supervisors, and other executive-level public officeholders (whether current or former) are not good candidates to recruit for US House and/or Senate races?

[NewYorkExpress]

I would have abandoned the House, and instructed House incumbents (except for those in competitive districts) to spend time fundraising for Democratic Senate candidates, and campaigning in battleground/Republican held Senate seats.

[coloradocowboi]

[...]
2. Candidate recruitment: There is a serious disconnect between how democratic elites imagine "regular people" and how these people actually are. It seems like in competitive races, Democrats believe that nominating candidates with a record of success either in the bureaucracy or business are preferable because they think that that's what the avg. Joe aspires toward, missing that three things working people hate in this country are: 1. liberal elites, 2. big govt', and 3. big biz.
[...]

Could this statement be interpreted to mean that governors, mayors, county executives, town supervisors, and other executive-level public officeholders (whether current or former) are not good candidates to recruit for US House and/or Senate races?

It certainly could. It all depends on their public image and demonstrable popularity. There are many low-level office holders (co. commission, mayor, etc...) who have never won more than like 5 or 6% of the *local* EVP because of incredibly low turnout. Those people aren't "proven winners" the way that consultants act like they are.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

They need Sinema to carve out for VR reform that's the only way to get a wave going to retain the H, we don't need a big blue wave to keep the Senate, but need one to keep the H

[Non Swing Voter]

Tell Democratic candidates and politicians to grow a backbone. 

[beesley]

Sounds radical, but... I'd pull every single dollar out of every single race where we're down by more than ten points. And if we're up by more than 10 points we can give those races a lot less funding. Either we have the race locked down (if we're more than 10 points ahead) or we're not going to win (if we're more than 10 points down), and we shouldn't waste too much money on those races. That way we can direct our focus and resources to the truly competitive seats. Specific to 2020, we should give more focus to protecting weak incumbents, like Cunningham, Horn and McAdams. Technically Collin Peterson of MN07 was weak too, but I don't think more money would have changed the outcome...the district was just too polarised and too pro-Trump to keep reelecting Peterson, and if not 2022, he'd be done by 2022. And he's not even really a party-line vote; he supports gun rights and is socially more conservative than every other House Democrat and a couple of House Republicans; and he also voted against impeaching Trump in 2019 (the only Democrat other than now-Republican Jeff van Drew). So I'd focus on really preserving incumbents like Cunningham; Horn; McAdams; Torres Small; etc. And I'd focus on holding IA02, which flipped red by seven votes after Democrat Dave Loebsack retired - just a few hundred dollars, and probably less, could have swung the race, made Marienette Miller-Meeks a four-time loser - and in the process gotten us Rita Hart instead of Miller-Meeks.



(I included basically every district that went red, but by less than 5 points.)

Was all the funding you talked about specifically DCCC funding? Also, the DCCC's first priority is to protect incumbents so any sign of a due-paying member being slightly vulnerable, they'll spend, even if it turns out they don't necessarily need to.

This is all well and good too, and I agree with a targeted strategy but for the future it also needs to be determined which races were in that column. Part of the problem was not really knowing that they should've spent money in those races.

[Schiff for Senate]

Sounds radical, but... I'd pull every single dollar out of every single race where we're down by more than ten points. And if we're up by more than 10 points we can give those races a lot less funding. Either we have the race locked down (if we're more than 10 points ahead) or we're not going to win (if we're more than 10 points down), and we shouldn't waste too much money on those races. That way we can direct our focus and resources to the truly competitive seats. Specific to 2020, we should give more focus to protecting weak incumbents, like Cunningham, Horn and McAdams. Technically Collin Peterson of MN07 was weak too, but I don't think more money would have changed the outcome...the district was just too polarised and too pro-Trump to keep reelecting Peterson, and if not 2022, he'd be done by 2022. And he's not even really a party-line vote; he supports gun rights and is socially more conservative than every other House Democrat and a couple of House Republicans; and he also voted against impeaching Trump in 2019 (the only Democrat other than now-Republican Jeff van Drew). So I'd focus on really preserving incumbents like Cunningham; Horn; McAdams; Torres Small; etc. And I'd focus on holding IA02, which flipped red by seven votes after Democrat Dave Loebsack retired - just a few hundred dollars, and probably less, could have swung the race, made Marienette Miller-Meeks a four-time loser - and in the process gotten us Rita Hart instead of Miller-Meeks.



(I included basically every district that went red, but by less than 5 points.)

Was all the funding you talked about specifically DCCC funding? Also, the DCCC's first priority is to protect incumbents so any sign of a due-paying member being slightly vulnerable, they'll spend, even if it turns out they don't necessarily need to.

This is all well and good too, and I agree with a targeted strategy but for the future it also needs to be determined which races were in that column. Part of the problem was not really knowing that they should've spent money in those races.

First of all, yes, I was talking about only DCCC funding. If the Tennessee Democratic Party, for instance, wants to waste their money on a contest they lost by over fifty points (the northeastern TN01), then they can - but the DCCC shouldn't waste a dime on the race. I mean, I'm sure they didn't spend bucketloads on TN01, but there's no point on spending any money in such an overwhelmingly red district. The Tennessee Democratic Party itself doesn't need to worry about any big races - they have 2 House seats safe and everything else is out of reach, so for all I care, they can spend their whole budget on unwinnable House races. The DCCC, on the other hand, has dozens of races with more potential on which they can focus.


To your explanation about the DCCC's incumbency preservation policy - I wasn't aware of that. That might constrain the DCCC a bit, but I still think that even within the parameters of prioritizing incumbents, they can focus especially on the incumbents representing my list of competitive districts. And they can give a secondary focus to the other incumbents and everyone else.

  And to your other point, yes, the DCCC couldn't have forseen exactly how the races turn out prior to the election like we can now. I admit that now it's pretty easy for anyone to lecture the DCCC, and tell them to focus on seats which we now realize were competitive. With hindsight, I'm sure the DCCC would have given more focus to races like IA02 (I mean, everyone knew in advance that it was going to be close, but if the DCCC knew they'd lose there by 7 votes, I'm confident they would have given it a bit more focus). I named those specific races because I knew their exact results, to the tenth of a percentage point. But my general idea is what I described in the first paragraph of this post - that the DCCC should stop wasting whatever cash they're currently spending on races they're definitely going to lose, and should reduce the amount of cash spent on heavily blue districts that are safe for them no matter what (though they should leave a little money as a token gesture).

[Pericles]

Stop overestimating split ticket voting.