Okay.  I get it: Dean's 50 state strategy worked.

The answers show that DCCC and Emmanuel - with hurricane at their backs - had a 60% hit rate track record on the high priority races.  Your question #1 lists a bunch of races where Emmanuel spent about $15m and lost them all.  But nobody wants to hear about that.  We finally won!

You're other exam point is better.

A lot of the surprising CD wins came in places that Dean and the DNC were criticized for bothering with.  But campaigning in Montana looks like a pretty good idea now.  They're still counting in Wyoming.  Came close in Idaho.  And forced the Republicans to play defense in Nebraska.

So how does Emmanuel answer the question.   Did he want to write off Wyoming and Montana?

Will Dean get any credit?  Can Emmanuel et al. make peace by acknowledging that the 50 state strategy is already working?

I think the DCCC is doing its job when it targets specific races, and the DNC is doing it's job building up the national party.  Sure the DCCC should be looking at the long term, but as a general matter, their operations occur on a two-year cycle.  They can and should focus on the narrow, and let the DNC focus on the broad.  I think that division of labor is the right way to work things, and it worked.  

That makes sense.  But hasn't Dean been a target of ridicule for doing his job?  The irony is that it appears that the DNC did an effective short-term job too.  

It would be helpful to understand why the DCCC priority list didn't work out as well as some of the lower tier candidates.

The DLC and the DCCC still have insider-itis and just don't get it. Here is another thought:  Vilsack hasn't a snowballs chance in hell of getting anywhere in his "bid" for the 2008 nomination.  Not even here in Iowa is he THAT popular.  But he thinks he can be a spoiler of the Iowa Cacuses because he is a "favorite son." That is, if a favorite son is running then the results of the Iowa Caucuses will be meaningless.  Vilsack must be in someone's back pocket already just as he was in 2004 (Kerry).  Since Edwards and Obama are popular here in Iowa, who would taking the Iowa Caucuses out of the equation help?  Answer may be among the membership of the DLC.  (Vilsack is chair.)  Think about it.

Leaving aside the obvious point that a broad offense worked, we should ask why we didn't do as well w/the top targets as the overall results suggest we should have.  Seems like it has to be either:
a)  The targeting was wrong to begin with.
b)  The DCCC ads were ineffective (bordering on harmful).
c)  DCCC field was ineffective (bordering on harmful).
d)  The RNCC was working off the same early target list, and their field and ads work a lot better than ours when they have enough lead time.

If it's (d), which I suspect, we have work to do.  We need to be able to win an evenly-matched head-on fight, not just when they get caught off guard.  I doubt it's (a) or (c).  Could easily be (b).

how about E they have no idea what they are doing and simply got lucky because the Republicans kept screwing up and hung themselves

On how this year's results vindicate Howard's strategy.

Well... the problem with this assessment is that many of the Republican incumbents targeted by the DCCC were expecting a stiff challenge in 2006.  They did what they had to do to survive well before November.

On the other hand, incumbents who never expected a serious challenge were not prepared.  Incumbents like Ryun, Gutknecht, Bradley, Pombo, et al, had to scramble at the last minute to try to save their seats and it didn't work.  Many of the incumbents who lost were essentially going through the motions up through September or October, unlike Gerlach, etc., who were running hard from November 2004.

The Gerlach-Murphy campaign may be a great case study.  The DCCC exercised strong central control.  The campaign manager was the field manager for Kerry in Ohio in the 2004 mess.  The direct mail was done by the ultimate old school firm.  

The other races fit with the Matt Bai/NY Times thesis on what the 50 state strategy really means: you reduce the role of Beltway intermediaries, provide grassroots with the necessary tools, and let the campaigns define the themes.  Get the lobbyist/consultants out of the way and let the campaign grow locally.

I don't get it. Where are the Cliff Notes?

Some thoughts:

1 - Targeting districts/drafting candidates is a lot like pro sports drafts - it is a bit of crap shoot.  See Heath Shuler - first round draft pick, crappy NFL QB, good candidate for Congress.  The point is you never know until you actually face the competition.  The top list looked like a good set of seats to target in late 1995, and I would be interested in an indepth look at why we lost all of them.

2 - The DCCC should NOT get involved in primaries.  Encouraging candidates to run is great but they shouldn't pick sides or spend $$ in primaries.  Let the strongest candidate win.  That, in mind, was the biggest mistake of the cycle.

3 - This test completely ignores Red to Blue which most of the winners were on including Gillibrand, Hall, Hodes, etc.

4 - Ground conditions change in an election just like momentum can shift in a football game from one half to another.  Dumping money into Duckworth was a mistake but for the most part the DCCC used late money very effectively.  Remember they dumped close to a $1 million dollars into Paul Hodes race late and considering NH doesn't have a lot of media markets I wonder if that also benefited Shea-Porter.  That would be an interesting case study.

5 - I don't think Tom Reynolds was high on any target lists until the Foley scandal hit.  Evidence please.  Reynolds might well have lost if Jack Davis had actually run a real campaign against him.  The guy was basically a rich, pissed off Repub who switched parties and did nothing but run some commercials and get press hits. Very disappointing.  

6 - There is plenty of credit to go around.  Dean deserves credit for starting to rebuild the state parties.  Rahm and Chuck deserve credit for doing a good job running the committees and for the most part spending their money well.  The netroots deserve credit for identifying and working for lots of strong candidates.

Some of this carping on Rahm and Chuck reminds of all Repubs saying that Bill Clinton had nothing to do with the economy of the 1990s.  Big wins like this don't happen by accident.  We need to do a post-mortum about what worked, what didn't work, how we can improve things for 2008.  However, this constant harping when we won a historic victory makes it sound like we lost.

WE WON.  Now we have to build upon it.

So, we should only contest the seats that aren't expensive and that we're assured of winning in case people turn their hindsight on?  Are you really saying we shouldn't have been fighting hard enough to make PA06 a tossup?  Are you saying that the DCCC shouldn't have been contesting Reynolds' seat?

Also, you may not want to list seats that are still undecided as failures.

If the DNC and Dean are getting proper credit, then you're right, the tone of the exam is too negative.

But taking a critical look at which races were well run doesn't seem to be an inherently bad idea.  

13. Which states did Rahm Emmanuel specifically ask to have disqualified from receiving DNC support and picked up ZERO seats:

A. Illinois
B. None of the above

"This diary is obviously written in a dishonest fashion.  It starts out by highlighting 8 races the DCCC lost..."

This all looks different in the context of the Carville rump action that was launched against Howard Dean.

The intensity of the attack on the poster surprised me. The original post was clearly meant to be provocative satire.  The title - which is what interesed me - was clearly meant to be ironic.  It might have been a little-bit too sarcastic given the likely audience.  But so what - it provoked comment and raised some questions.

One question raised was whether Howard Dean was going to continue to be the Michael Dukakis of internal Democratic politcs - by turning check after each disingenuous Beltway distortion of his record.

That question was answered yesterday when Dean fired back at Republican capitulator Carville.

The second question is whether everybody really is committed to an objective review of all the races.  And asking Jerome to "steer" us away from spontaneous debate isn't going to accomplish that goal.

The survival of Dean-affiliated progressives depends on aggressive critiques of all the players and races.  That's how excellent organizations improve.  And it is not healthy to simply declare that everyone is terrific. A Bush-Cheney "hurricane" gale blew at our backs our backs for one day.  That doesn't mean that everybody did a great job.  Some did better than others.  

Dean's 50 state strategy was plucked, singed and tortured by the Emmanuel gang throughout the year.  Those attacks affected the campaign.  Dean was forced to surrender resources to placate the critics. Less money went to roots and more money went to the Beltway.

There's now some evidence that the democratic/viral ideas and cost-effective grassroots-enabling tools of the DNC - and the 50 state plan -worked.  

So, ironically, Emmanuel allies now want to just make high-level declarations.  Skip the critical thinking.  Sorry, not good enough.  When you look at the costly Washington-based consultant-driven approach in those top 20 races - and set aside the peculiar scandal-impacted ones - there's are some real questions raised about what kinds of campaigns work.

Now that Carville's out of the closet, we know that everyone isn't playing nice.  So let's go through and find out what works.

We learned on Tuesday that fifteen seats can disappear in one gust of wind.  This is a fragile majority.  The Party needs to find out why the DCCC performance faltered in those races, and it needs to recognize and explain the successes in those unlikely red places.  

Where did the Democrat come within 5% of an entrenched Republican incumbent, in a district that statewide Democrats traditionally take 50% of the vote?

Where could a little party or even netroots support have made a huge difference?

Michigan's 9th.

It's about the district. The 9th is drawn 50-50, but Knollenberg continues to win on name ID. He won this year with only 51%, instead of his traditional 58%...These 50-50 districts need to be targeted. Great candidates lose all the time.

Well That was also almost Pa 15th too