trouble in paradise

National Democrats are still reeling from another special election loss in 2017.

The DCCC’s lack of investment in progressive candidates threatens to further anger the activist base tired of being ignored by their party leaders. The DCCC essentially admitted in a post-Montana memo their investment in the race was a token effort designed to get the progressives off their back.

Below are a few highlights from CNN’s story on the continued turmoil in the Democratic Party.

Via CNN:

• The refusal to spend heavily in Montana, which follows a similar decision in a special election for a House seat in Kansas, has left some progressives howling that even as an energized base breaks off-year fundraising records, the party’s infrastructure isn’t trying to win back the red territory where Bernie Sanders won Democratic nominating contests and then Trump trounced Hillary Clinton in the general election last year.

• It has in some ways exposed rifts over the party’s approach that are still lingering from the Sanders vs. Clinton contest, particularly after Sanders spent the weekend before the Montana contest campaigning alongside Quist.

• But in 2006, the Howard Dean-led Democratic National Committee had launched a “50-state strategy.” New DNC Chairman Tom Perez has promised a return to that 50-state approach — but he is in the early stages of rebuilding the DNC from the ground up. That means the national party isn’t well positioned to play a supporting role in the House special elections.