(this is a summary of a guest-post I have over at
Down With Tyranny...so yeah, I guess I'm a blogwhore)
Not only was Rahm Emmanuel not responsible for last Tuesday's takeover by they House, and examination of the actual numbers show that Rahm's strategy was a complete failure.
A week or so ago, I ran across the DCCC's "Red to Blue" page which listed the candidates in "Red" Congressional districts that the DCCC was supporting. I immediately notice two things -- first, a lot of the names on the original list had lost, and more importantly, a lot of the candidates that were added very late in the game were those with strong NetRoots and BlueAmerica support.
So I decided to start doing some research.
What I found was this...
Rahm had targeted 21 seats last April for takeover by the Democrats (and actually, one of those seats was VT-01, Bernie Sanders old seat, not a "Red" one.)
As of today, only 9 of those seats (including VT-01) switched parties... four remain undeclared, wit a Democrat holds a miniscule lead in one (CT-02), and the Dem losing by 1400 or more votes in the other three. (see this chart)
In other words, even if all the "undeclared" races go our way, Dems would have picked up only 12 seats...three short of a majority.
Rahm added 14 more names in a "second wave" in July... including an "open" Democratic seat (OH-06). Nine of these (including OH-06) were winners, with one "undeclared" (FL-13 where Jennings is down by 373 and pursuing a recount.) However, of the eight actual "Red to Blue" victories, five of them (Sestak, Braley, Arcuri, Carney, and Pat Murphey) had already received significant support from the progressive blogosphere's ActBlue pages (NetRoots, BlueAmerica, Atrios). (see this chart)
In other words, by July, Rahm was already "piggybacking" on the success of the "netroots" -- only two of his "second wave" "Red to Blue" conversions hadn't received significant "netroots" support.
Rahm eventually added a 3rd and 4th "wave" in mid-September and late October -- candidates in races that Rahm originally considered "hopeless" that had demonstrated their competitiveness thanks to "netroots" support or on their own (or thanks to the Foley scandal). (see this chart)
Bottom line on Rahm is that of the 20 GOP-held seats he originally targetted, there are only 8 declared winners... and of the 33 GOP-held seats he targeted by July, there are only 16 declared winners -- and five of those became competitive thanks to the grassroots/netroots efforts.
Rahm's strategy was a failure, pure and simple. The Democratic Party success was due to Howard Dean empowering state parties, and the efforts of grassroots/netroots activists who supported good progressive candidates, rather than simply "target" districts where Bush had gotten under 50%, or where the incumbent was involved in a scandal.
As I noted earlier, this is just a distillation of a much longer piece you can read (if you feel like it) at Down With Tyranny