DCCC Chair on Midterm Strategy: We ‘Made the Right Decisions’

DCCC chair Steve Israel isn’t sugarcoating how badly the Democrats did in the midterms. Well, okay, maybe he is a little; in a new Washington Post interview Israel says that they “fundamentally made the right decisions.”

First off, Israel makes it a point in the interview to talk about his late-night emailing to candidates to give them some bad news about financial support (note: this is the same DCCC, mind you, that’s notorious for its emails; just not those ones). And what public comment does Israel give about that late-night emailing? “Most of that was the function of being an old guy with an overactive bladder. That might be too much information.”

Yes. Yes it is.

But as for the overall midterm strategy, Israel admits “we fell short,” but doesn’t have many regrets about the tough decisions they had to make. “On the whole,” he said, “I think that when bombs were bursting in air, and we were in the trenches, we fundamentally made the right decisions, as tough as they were.”

And Israel also argues that because of their strong ground game, they managed to cushion their losses.

He also had this to say: “It’s hard to talk about refinancing college debt when people are being just saturated with news about how Ebola would sweep the country.”

[image via screengrab]

— —

Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!