Schumer: Cal Cunningham "couldn't keep his zipper up"

[brooklynite]

Axios

Chuck Schumer told party donors during recent calls that the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the fact that Cal Cunningham "couldn't keep his zipper up" crushed Democrats' chances of regaining the Senate, sources with direct knowledge of the conversations tell Axios.

Why it matters: Democrats are hoping for a 50-50 split by winning two upcoming special elections in Georgia. But their best chance for an outright Senate majority ended when Cunningham lost in North Carolina and Sen. Susan Collins won in Maine.

During a recent donor call, the minority leader lamented being unable to successfully recruit Stacey Abrams to run for a Senate seat in Georgia, one of the sources said. He also said he regretted successfully recruiting Cunningham.
Schumer has made the zipper comment on numerous calls, the source added.

[JI7]

1. I agree with this. I think North Carolina would have ended up like Georgia and Arizona with

Biden and Cunningham winning a close race if not for the sexting .

People judge democrats more harshly than they do Republicans.

[LisaL]

2. I agree with him.

We could have won a Senate Seat in North Carolina if not for the scandal.

[dem4decades]

3. Not for the scandal? Nope, if not for the idiot.

[liskddksil]

4. Chuck is making excuses for his failures over several

cycles as DSCC Chair. Maybe you should have let the voters of each state decide their nominee instead of trying to clear the field and make pre primary endorsements which only serve to divide the party. Maybe your team should have come up with a coherent message and framed the issues on our terms instead of theirs. This is not just a 2020 problem, this goes back more than a decade.

[JI7]

6. Voters did decide in the Primary.

[sweetloukillbot]

7. Nope gotta blame Dem leadership

This is DU - gotta be Schumer or Pelosi’s fault that a candidate loses.

[liskddksil]

8. If we can't acknowledge the fundamental reasons why we keep losing winnable races

cycle after cycle after cycle and our leaders do not change course, we will keep losing.

[JI7]

9. We know why we lost this race. Cunningham's numbers went down after the affair

not sure what you mean by winnable races but this race wasn't some easy win for democrats.

[liskddksil]

11. That would be true if it was just this race and just this election, but our problems

go back multiple cycles. We keep doing the same things and expecting different results. Its the definition of insanity.

[JI7]

14. Not sure what you mean by "we" . But MArk Kelly won in Arizona and Biden won GEorgia and Arizona

Every state and race is not the same. Most of the country is not like California. Even parts of California are not like California as a whole.

[liskddksil]

16. Our party, and its leaders but by extension us for not demanding more from them.

I'm talking specifically about the Senate races, which bar Arizona and a Georgia miracle were not a good result to any objective observer.

[JI7]

19. You ignore voters and how white people are scared easily

[BumRushDaShow]

42. "which bar Arizona and a Georgia miracle..."

Seems everyone forgets poor John Hickenlooper who defeated Cory Gardner in this 2020 general election. But maybe it's because he has a "funny name" and "Democrats suck".

Hickenlooper Ousts Gardner in Colorado, Handing Democrats Crucial Senate Seat



By Carl Hulse
Nov. 3, 2020


Former Gov. John Hickenlooper defeated Senator Cory Gardner on Tuesday in the high-profile fight for Colorado’s Senate seat, securing a victory essential to Democrats’ push to take the Senate majority.

The outcome was not a surprise since Mr. Gardner, who had been considered a rising Republican star when he was elected in 2014, trailed in polls throughout his re-election race. But it was the first Senate seat to flip from one party to the other during an evening in which Democrats and Republicans were jostling for the majority.

In the end, Mr. Gardner was unable to overcome the increasing Democratic tilt of his state and President Trump’s poor standing there, despite some stumbles by Mr. Hickenlooper.

Mr. Hickenlooper, 68, a two-term governor and former mayor of Denver, will add an experienced voice to Democrats’ Senate ranks, one with a background in Western energy and environmental issues. After initially professing no interest in running for the Senate, he reconsidered after his 2019 bid in the Democratic presidential primary went nowhere.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/03/us/politics/colorado-hickenlooper.html

[liskddksil]

44. That was expected to be a win and it was a win. Not sure what your point is nt

[BumRushDaShow]

46. Goal post move noted and expected!

[sweetloukillbot]

15. You mean like all the Dems in red states who lost the last time

When they had to vote on a pro-life Supreme Court nominee? Since you're so dialed into Senate races, I'm sure you knew that was what happened and that Schumer made them vote against comfirmation, even though it meant they would lose their seats.

[liskddksil]

17. Again, our party's problems go beyond one election cycle. We are not fixing what is fundamentally

broken if we only focus on externalities like the news-cycle. That is fixing the windows before fixing the foundation. We need to focus on State-party building and empowering the people on the ground with the resources early (not top-down mandates and clearing the field to their chosen candidates which is what happens now), consistent engagement with hard-to-reach voters (not just weeks before an election), and most of all better messaging early on before the other side can define the issue on their terms.

[JI7]

20. It costs money to build state parties early on and many people don't

want to give unless there is a specific candidate.

[liskddksil]

22. Than that's something we need to figure out. As we saw, all the billions of dollars

we raised in the 5 weeks before the election because of the Supreme Court, didn't get us very far. Party strategists admitted in articles that it was too late in the game to really move the needle.

[George II]

25. Who determines races are "winnable"? You? If they're winnable we'd win them, but there are many...

...factors involved in winning and losing elections, particularly when we're dealing with different demographics in states north/south/east/west.

[liskddksil]

30. The Cook Political Report, Saboto's Crystal Ball etc.

[NurseJackie]

59. It seems that everyone wants an easy, instant, black-and-white binary solution to everything.

[liskddksil]

10. When the DSCC clears the Field the voters don't have the full menu of options

available to them. In North Carolina, Chuck and team choose Cal and his zipper baggage, long before the voters did. Erika Smith was the only non-Cal candidate left in the Primary after the DSCC endorsement and didn't stand a chance going up against the money that came with that endorsement in the Primary.

[JI7]

12. Of course Voters have options . And Smith was funded by McConnell's PAC

Cunningham got most of his money from Veterans groups.

And Cunningham was going to win until the affair which is what the OP is about .

[George II]

27. So, who would you have recommended other than the candidate who was "chosen"?

Remember, Cunningham ran in a four-way Primary this year and crushed the opponents - getting 57% to the next closest rival's 35%.

"Chuck and team" didn't choose Cunningham, more than 1,250,000 people voted in the primary.

Were you as equally hard on Democratic Senate leadership in 2010 when Elaine Marshall won the nomination and lost the general election? What's your beef with Chuck Schumer?

[liskddksil]

29. I'm a results guy. When things aren't working I like them to be fixed. I don't

like to put our heads in the sand and then wonder why 2 years later when we are making the same mistakes, we haven't learned anything from before.

[Celerity]

54. Jeff Jackson would have won, and hopefully does win for the open seat in 2022

Foxx and Stein would have been better than Cunningham as well. I do agree that Cunningham would have won if not for his stupid actions.

[dsc]

58. Stein barely won his race as an incumbent

so I am not sure how much better he would have done. The default sadly wound up being around 52/48 in favor of the GOP in the statewide races. Cooper did much better than that, Stein, Marshall, Wood, did enough better to win, Beasley in essence tied but on the wrong side of that, and the rest did around that performance (Biden slightly better but no where near enough).

[George II]

24. Chuck Schumer hasn't been the chair of the DSCC since 2008 - TWELVE YEARS AGO!

If you want to bash a Democrat or Democrats in general, please be sure of whom you're doing it to.

Thanks!

[liskddksil]

28. As Senate party leader he has enormous sway over the selection of chair and

Last edited Tue Dec 1, 2020, 12:28 PM - Edit history (1)

the overall operations of DSCC.

[BumRushDaShow]

45. He's not the Majority Leader

That title goes to Turtle because you had people still running away from Obama in 2014 like what happened in 2010.

I'm not that big a fan of Schumer but in terms of seniority in there, it boiled down to him or Durbin after Harry Reid (who was similarly eviscerated on DU) bowed out.

[liskddksil]

48. Fixed, but those candidates all followed the DSCC playbook in 2014 to try to thread the needle

and they all lost by appearing to be weak and un-principled.

[BumRushDaShow]

49. There are people put in charge of that Committee each cycle

https://www.dscc.org/news/dscc-announces-senior-staff-2020-cycle/

But you knew that?

[liskddksil]

50. I do, but organization problems tend to start at the top and work their way down nt

[BumRushDaShow]

52. And who is "the top"

because you know that it isn't just the ones who happen to be in the leadership of Congress at this point in time. And how does that square with 2018 or is that to be carefully shoved under the rug because it doesn't fit the narrative?

[liskddksil]

57. 2018 was not a smashing success either, especially on the Senate side.

Florida, in particular, gave us a lot of red flags about what would happen there in 2020. Didn't help that it took months for Bill Nelson to fight back on Rick Scott's attacks and that Nelson ran a pretty lazy campaign.

[BumRushDaShow]

62. Hmmmm.... more goal post moves.

M'kay.



(same "top" )

[liskddksil]

66. Wanting success and promoting discussion

that moves us towards more wins and less losses is not moving the goal posts.

[BumRushDaShow]

72. One of the caveats of "discussion"

should (as I saw posted elsewhere) include viable "solutions" vs "whining", and it needs to go beyond what you posted in this thread because in a number of cases, the line items you post have been attempted before with mixed results. I.e., it might work in some states but not others (e.g., many of the ones that are in dispute - the "coveted swing states" ).

The idea of a "cohesive message" cannot mean a "monolithic message", and this is what seems to continually be promoted. So when a state/local party and/or a candidate narrowly targets their message to certain planks selected from the party platform that appear to resonate to their constituencies, then the whining commences from the great beyond with the "Well what about this?" and "What about that?".

The election of Connor Lamb here in PA in a special election in 2018 after redistricting, along with his re-election this year, on his own, and in an election in a state/district with a record turnout) demonstrates what target-focusing can do.

So it's not easy to dissect past elections and do the so-called "Lessons Learned", and it's also not helpful in a "discussion" where one manufactures a "boogieman leader" and creates CTs out of routine party mechanics. It only leads to a Catch-22 where these "leaders" attempt to prop up state parties, but when doing so, are then accused of being "top down". And if they allow the state parties to try research and narrow their messaging to the top priorities of their electorates, they are attacked for not making them follow the entire party agenda, item for item.

There is also an issue of a myriad of "fundraising" entities out there now that are helpful for candidates and/or causes, but these actually end up cannibalizing monies from the DNC (where the DNC's "role" would have been to help financially "prop up the state parties" ), so that is something that needs to be looked into as well. I know that I received literally dozens and dozens of emails daily from candidates/causes that asked me to not only donate to them, but eventually they asked that I "split" the donation with the DNC.

At one time (and to a degree, it still does), the DNC tended to aim for money from the "big donors". But that whole business model has been pretty much demonized in favor of going after the "small donor", and in the case of the "small donors", they often have little to give but when they do give, it will be to whoever and whatever they believe in and not something as "nebulous" as the DNC and its goals (that do impact the state apparatuses).

[George II]

61. In 2020 there was a Democratic Primary in North Carolina among 4 Democrats. The Democratic....

....voters chose Cal Cunningham by an overwhelming majority to be their nominee: 57% to 34% to 4% to 3% to 2%.

Chuck Schumer wasn't on the Primary ballot.

[BumRushDaShow]

64. Exactly.

[liskddksil]

70. But it wasn't exactly an even fight, when Cal had the DSCC endorsement months before

which was a signal to donors to direct their resources to Cal.

[George II]

76. That's not it either. The reality is Democrats in North Carolina preferred Cunningham.

[radius777]

73. Agree, Chuck and Durbin are just too mild mannered

and out of touch with the party's diverse base. Bustos also did a terrible job as DCCC. Pelosi did the right thing in playing hardball with the stimulus, as Trump would've taken credit and he likely would've been reelected. It may've cost us somewhat downticket for that but getting rid of Trump was job number one.

I doubt the sexting cost Cal, as his performance tracked with Biden's. I think if Biden won he would've won. NC is slightly to the right of GA, so the narrow loss makes sense. Maine is the state which makes no sense.

Basically, the Dem party is too old and white at the top. We need a stronger grass roots. It's not about left vs centrist but about having a compelling message that moves people and standing strong against RW attacks. The Repubs have an extreme base w/Qanon, Proud Boys etc - yet they don't seem to apologize for it and voters don't make them pay a price for it. Our progressive base is not extreme - 'socialism' and 'defund the police' didn't make us lose - it was in failing to counteract the RW framing and being afraid of our own shadow. Voters like confidence and vote accordingly.

[essaynnc]

5. It's all in messaging......

Cal ran a decent campaign. When the news of his infidelities broke there were always back to back ads on, slick ones saying if we can't trust Cal with his personal life.... followed by Tom Tillis is a crook!!!! Unfortunately, IN THE SOUTH, marital infidelities always tRump good old senate insider stock trading and investigations into "creative" campaign financing. Once again, voters were steered into seeing the Dem's alleged "crimes" as worse than the Repub's real ones.

Wouldn't it be great if we had a national campaign to call out and prosecute these bastards for the real crimes that they've committed???? Just a thought.....

[Dem2]

13. Haha, article on reddit points out that Democrats attack each other when

...they should be attacking Republicans. I assume this is what they were referencing.

[ananda]

18. He's blaming RBG? Really?

I would go with Jim Clyburn's assessment.

[JI7]

21. He is talking about how Collins used that to take attention away from her

support of Kavanaugh.

How she voted against ACB and made statements about how we need to wait until after the election and other bs .

Even the reality was that Republicans could still get what they wanted without her vote .

[liskddksil]

23. Both of their takes are too attributive to the news-cycle

(if it wasn't "defund the police" it would be something else they would use as a cudgel), and ignore the deeper problems that they as party leaders have either ignored or been the cause of, by doing the same things over and over and expecting different results from election cycle to cycle.

[George II]

33. Instead of pointing fingers and finding scapegoats, why not tell us what the....

....."deeper problems that they as party leaders have either ignored or been the cause of"?

Back in 1972 when I graduated from college, our last gathering was with the Dean of Students, giving us advice for our upcoming careers.

He said that throughout the next few decades we'd see things we wouldn't agree with. But he admonished us, saying "if you're going to complain about something you'd better have a suggestion about how to do it better."

I still remember and use that advice 48 years later.

[liskddksil]

43. I've outlined suggestions in multiple posts in this and other threads

Last edited Tue Dec 1, 2020, 03:15 PM - Edit history (1)

1. Empowering state parties on the ground early on and giving them the freedom and tools to do their thing. Instead of top-down dictates, let the people who know what's going on make the decisions. That also means staying out of competitive primaries. There is just no reason for a national party to be involved there. Let the voters decide and then give the nominee the support to run the race their way.

2. Consistently stay engaged with hard-to-reach voters including voters of color or white working class. Don't just show up 8 weeks before the election to beg for votes. It will not work. Deep canvassing methods could work in this area.

3. Build coherent messages and easy quick rebuttals to attack-lines from the other side. But more importantly set the narrative early, and hammer the other side so the debate is on our terms and not theirs. Messages should not be one size fits all though. The candidates must be free to use the messages that work for their race. For example, many of the Ads this cycle were about pre-existing conditions which came from DSCC/DCCC paid vendors.

"The health care message is effective, but the only ads anyone wanted to run were on pre-existing conditions. The health care system is broken in 15 different directions and narrow spots on pre-existing conditions are not enough, they’re not an agenda. If we don’t have an agenda, we’ll suffer losses.”
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/527628-democrats-seek-new-identity-in-post-trump-era

4. Fix our digital and social media gap. The reason Republican attacks worked is because they spread like wild-fire on Whatsapp and Facebook, particular in Latino and Asian communities.

[Blaukraut]

51. Good suggestions, actually.

Empowering state parties an building the infrastructure takes money. As mentioned elsewhere, nobody donates unless it's during an election cycle, and even then, it generally takes a presidential election to really open up Democrats' wallets.

[liskddksil]

68. Yeah, that's going to take a long term shift in

our collective mentality about campaigns.

[Cosmocat]

53. Great post

particularly #3, with one addition.

We just are not going to be able to turn it all around when all they have do is say SOCIALISM and nearly 2/3 of the country nods in agreement.

We HAVE to have a national, unified and repetitive framing of the republican party that is repeated 1,000,000,000 times like socialism to counter their negative messaging, instead of defending it and then talking policy with everyone pretty much falling asleep by that point.

[liskddksil]

71. Absolutely. When Republicans say we want to defund the police we need to shout from the roof-tops

that they're the ones defunding the police, because they won't vote for state and local stimulus funds.

[NurseJackie]

77. I doubt that would be an effective response.

[ananda]

55. Well, we definitely need a better 50-state groundgame.

Bring Stacey Abrams in ...

[mnhtnbb]

26. He's right about Cunningham. Polls were showing him 10 points up over Tillis

before the news of his texting affair broke and then broke wide open. It was so ironic that the non-stop anti Cunningham commercials being run by Republicans were all about his affair. Never a word about their orange boy and his adultery, affairs, sexual assaults. But let one Dem have an affair and whoa! Can't have that!

[LisaL]

31. His affair was worse than just a regular affair for several reasons.

One, it was potentially illegal because of military rules.
The other, the woman was married and her husband was a wounded veteran.
I am not suggesting that Trump's behavior isn't atrocious, but Democrats are held to a different standards.

[mnhtnbb]

35. Personally, an affair is an affair to me regardless of

situational ethics. Broken vows are broken vows. The military has rules to make it "ok" to murder other people, because "war", but a woman having an affair behind her wounded husband's back? Sacrilege! Why? Is she property?

Tillis, on the other hand, has supported Trump 100% in all of his lies and traitorous acts, including impeachment.

I'll take the adulterer any day over the corrupt politician who values power, money, and loyalty to a wannabe dictator.

[LisaL]

36. You are in a minority since he lost.

NT

[mnhtnbb]

39. Democrats across the country lost. That Senate seat was important.

Once he'd won, if all the noise over the affair got to be too much, he could resign. Then guess what? Our Democratic governor would have appointed a Democrat to take his place.

Any Democrat who didn't support Cunningham because of his adultery did not have an eye on the long game and fell victim to Republicans gleefully exercising their hypocrisy to make a lot of noise about something to which they will turn a blind eye when it's someone from their party.

[LisaL]

63. I am not argue Democrats shouldn't have voted for him regardless.

Republicans certainly vote for their candidates regardless.
But him cheating cost us the Senate seat as far as I am concerned.

[DeminPennswoods]

32. Maybe the luster of recruiting ex-military

will wear off soon. Recruit real progressives who can speak to voters who feel hopeless and that government doesn't work for them. Whether you or we want to believe it or not, this is what Trump did and why these voters are so attached to him.

[LisaL]

34. He didn't lose because he was ex-military.

NT

[DeminPennswoods]

37. None of ex-military candidates Schumer recruited

for senate did well. In addition to Cunningham, Hegar and McGrath both lost.

[LisaL]

38. There is not enough of ex-astronauts for recruitment.

[DeminPennswoods]

40. In red states, Dems seem to think the way

to win is with centrist, ex-military candidates that might appeal to conservative voters. It's not working. Try something different.

[Kaleva]

47. Far left candidates can't even make it past the primaries

They are soundly rejected by the rank and file Democrats who live in those states.

[DeminPennswoods]

69. Really? Because in my state

with a closed primary system, in the 2016 primary, Bernie Sanders won my red county pretty easily.

[Kaleva]

78. How did the left wing down ballot candidates do in past primaries where you live?

[XanaDUer2]

41. he's not wrong

I'm in NC and still pissed

[BlueStater]

56. Democrats have won Senate races in North Carolina before.

It’s red, but it’s not Alabama red and Tillis wasn’t and still isn’t very popular there at all.

I agree with Schumer. The race was completely winnable. Cunningham lost because he was a stupid, selfish fuck who put his pecker before what was best for the country. He let down all the people who campaigned hard for him and all the people who donated money to him. May he now disappear into obscurity.

[LisaL]

60. Yep. Governor Cooper won easily in NC.

We could have picked up a Senator seat from NC if not for our cheating candidate.

[BumRushDaShow]

65. "It's red, but it's not Alabama red'

Obama won NC in 2008. It's one of those states that has potential like its northern neighbor VA, that after continual pounding, was finally overtaken by the blue!

From what I gather (and that includes one of my former bosses from years ago), NC became an alternative "snowbird" state, with a number of people from blue states retiring there who were not natives. Couple that with the Research Triangle area and a move by a number of banks there to make the state a regional HQ for their industry, you have an interesting mix of people in the state.

I remember the Harvey Gantt race from a couple decades ago that was actually somewhat competitive, and eventually lead to later party shifts and even successes, including as you noted, a Democrats previously in the Senate (Edwards & Hagan) and currently in the Governor's office.

[octoberlib]

67. North Carolina's purple, not red. Still makes it tricky to win national races here.

[dsc]

74. Cunningham was a bad candidate to be honest

I live here and follow politics, and to be fair I did vote for him in the primary, but that was due in no small measure to his competition being worse than him. But the fact is he never articulated a real message of what he stood for. Other than health care I had no real idea what he would or wouldn't do in the Senate. That made his problem all the worse when his affair broke. When you entire campaign is I am a decent person, and that happens, you have nothing left to stand on.

We are fond of saying that the GOP candidates are the only ones who survive these types of scandals but that really isn't totally true. I do think GOP candidates have an easier time surviving them but the Democrats who do (Kennedy, Dodd, Edwin Edwards) tend to be ones who actually have records of accomplishments and defined beliefs. Cunningham had neither of those, let alone both.

We have one Senate seats with moderate candidates. It wasn't his moderation that was the problem. It was his lack of ability to communicate. I saw one of the debates and he was awful. Just before the debate Tillis' aide had told a constituent that if she couldn't get insurance she would have to work it out. When Cunningham was asked could he guarantee that his aid wouldn't make a mistake, he should have said You're right, my aids will make mistakes from time to time but they won't make that one since the mistake his aid made was to tell us the GOP's real health care policy. Instead he gave a rambling answer. He was just not good.

In Maine, those voters were just stupid and you can't cure stupid. Any one who isn't a fool knew damn well that Collins was given a hall pass for that vote. She is honestly the most worthless senator on the planet.

[Behind the Aegis]

75. Meh. Perhaps.

Frankly, I am sick and tired of prudes who are so fucking concerned about the sex lives of others and would use it as a disqualifier for voting, especially when one considers the alternative.