Ellen Tauscher Ranked Most Offensive Democrat

Ellen Tauscher Weekly, V2.03

Today, a new project of "top Democrats" launched and named Ellen Tauscher as the Democratic Party's #1 Worst Offender. Called the Working for Us PAC the goal of the new org is to hold people like Tauscher to account for being out of tune with their districts.

This has changed the dynamics of the 2008 CA-10 primary by fundamentally upending conventional wisdom on the race, especially in the following areas:

The Money Race It is now likely that Ellen Tauscher will be the financial underdog in her primary campaign. Since bloggers started targeting her, it has become apparent to everyone that she has lost her ability to cut deals across the aisle, which dries up her corporate PAC support. In fact, considering Tauscher's long-standing feud with Nancy Pelosi, the smart business PACs will contribute to her opponent and kiss up to the Speaker. And Tauscher's New Dems didn't raise much last year even with PAC support.

In 1996, Tauscher spend $1.7 million to buy her seat, but she lost that ability following her divorce. In short, Tauscher has lost access to the two main sources of support that have been there for her in the past.

But her opponent will be able to raise huge money online with DailyKos and Moveon and receive a great many checks from the trial lawyers. We're talking millions.

Even more important is that there will be more than enough easy money to free the challenger from the phone to go out and campaign while Tauscher is begging for donations.

Candidate Recruitment What potential candidates want to hear are things like, "courageous primary challengers will have immediate, substantive, significant support." Removing viability concerns means that we no longer need to find a self-funding candidate, we are free to find the best candidate. And with the emerging time-frame, there is no rush.

Primary campaigns are like recalls, the first question is whether the incumbent should be retired followed by a traditional comparison race.

It makes sense for a challenger to announce early in the quarter to be able to report good fundraising numbers out of the gate. Nobody wants to announce in the summer. That leaves early April or early October. The former turns this into a marathon and we can do better in a sprint. To make a long story short, the smart move isn't until at least the first week in October (setting up a sprint 2 months longer than Lamont).

Until then, it will only be about Tauscher. Not about her compared to somebody else, but about what she is doing.

And now, there is a perfect vehicle to advance the debate on the first question. Working for Us probably has 9 months to keep the focus squarely on Tauscher while organizing the district and raising an army.

Field One huge potential for a challenger is the ability to leverage the entire Bay Area and deploy activists via the 6 different BART stations stretched across Tauscher's district.

With Moveon and Kos working in tandem to electronically mobilize their tens of thousands Bay Area supporters the online potential for offline volunteering is enormous and scalable. The unions have impressive infrastructure in place and taken together there is an army waiting for walk kits and phone lists.

Communication Frank Russo has a great read on the democratizing of ideas that this race is triggering. Tauscher's opponent is going to have real-time message capability across the blogosphere.

Voice in traditional media are going to be held to account -- publicly. This is now the number one primary race in the country and online fact checking is going to keep the discussion in the reality-based world.

And newspapers aren't just going to follow this in print, they are going to do it online. Already, this story has been blogged on by Lisa Vorderbrueggen, Robert Salladay and Josh Richman

In fact, within 70 minutes of the Richam piece it was discovered that Tauscher Press Secretary Kevin Lawlorlied to both the Oakland Tribune and Associated Press.

This isn't suprising, the Tauscher press office also mislead Lisa Vorderbrueggen the day before. Some might call that a pattern. Two things are for sure: Tauscher is going to have a nationalized primary campaign and her press office can't be trusted.

Joementum Plagues Tauscher Re-Election Campaign

Ellen Tauscher Weekly, V1.02

If last week was defined by Katie Merrill catapulting a primary campaign against Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, this was the week that Tauscher tried in vain to distance herself from Joe Lieberman.

The following is how the week developed, you can activate a free email subscription at the Ellen Tauscher Weekly website.

Sunday, December 17, 2006 - Sunday morning began where late Saturday night had left off. Before dawn, Crooks and Liars posted with five links to the continuing fallout from Representative Tauscher's federal staff scrubbing her official government website of "The Caress" picture.

Rain Storm said the picture was, "definitely worth a thousand words" while pointing out, "In case anyone hasn't been paying attention, the 2008 election cycle has already begun." A short time later, skippy the bush kangaroo said, "if you enjoyed the lamont run against lieberman, pull up a chair, grab some popcorn and feast your eyes on california district 10, where ellen tascher, aside from being terribly out of touch with her constituents, made the unfortunate gaffe of knocking blogtopia (and she didn't even acknowledge that yes! we coined that phrase!)."

That afternoon, a front-page post on Calitics looked at Tauscher's internet blunders and concluded, "the larger problem is that her campaign should lack the ability to hire a netroots consultant who knows better. Working for Tauscher would be a career killer for a blogosphere coordinator and while the money might be good, it would be likely to cost other clients". A post at Left in SF agreed, "Hiring an internet consultant for the very purpose of insulating the candidate from the internet is a pretty good way to end someone's career. You'd have to be awfully cynical about politics and pretty contemptuous of the netroots to take that job."

Monday, December 18, 2006 - Headlining CA-10 as, "Just One Ned Lamont Away From Being The Next CT SEN", the Hotline Blogometer reported, "Rep. Ellen Tauscher's (D-CA) vote for the Iraq war, her perceived coziness with K Street and Pres. Bush, have already made her the netroots number one target for '08's primary season."

The week's bombshell came Monday afternoon at Fire Dog Lake. You see, not only did Tauscher's congressional office scrub photos of her with George Bush, but two pics of Ellen Tauscher with Joe Lieberman were also scrubbed. FDL noted, "The days when you could hire the idiot nephew to run the netroots component of your campaign are long gone. It should be very interesting to see who might be willing to stand in the line of fire currently being aimed at Tauscher".

Not surprisingly, getting caught scrubbing Joementum pics was the fastest route to permanently brand Tausher as getting Liebermanned in 2008. A FDL reader set up a new home for the pics and the story hit the front page of Calitics with quotes from Tauscher on why Lieberman was rejected by primary voters during the 2004 presidential campaign. And then the story rocketed to the front page of Daily Kos, "for those who want to know the full case against Tauscher, it will be laid out over the coming year in full." Ruck Pad suggested anyone thinking of doing netroots outreach for Tauscher, "would be well advised to think twice" and declared the fiasco, "a textbook example on how not to head off a netroots fueled primary."

Tuesday, December 19, 2006 - The National Journal Blogometer starting things off with, "The samecircles that got such mileage out of naming Sen. Joe Lieberman's (I-CT) SOTU embrace of Pres. Bush "the kiss" have now labeled the pre-Iraq-war picture of Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) sitting with Bush's hand on her lap "the caress.""

Josh Richman won the prize for the first reporter to ask for a comment from the Congresswoman, but he failed to pin down who in Tauscher's office did the scrubbing or whether the Representative sanctioned the cover-up.

Calitics covered "The Caress" and posted two videos from Tauscher's town hall meeting with Rossmoor Democrats.


Wednesday, December 20, 2006 - The Berkeley Bubble started the day off with a post headlined, "Ellen Tauscher: The Caress, the Iraq Mess, Forgetting her District’s Address?" and a short time later it was read by a house.gov I.P. address. The House Race Hotline reported, "Emboldened by their role in the Dem sweep, liberal bloggers are now targeting Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA 10), a Bay Area centrist, pro-business Dem in the mold of Joe Lieberman. Her crime? Bloggers perceive her as too cozy with Pres. Bush and big business. And as chair of the New Democratic Coalition, she's been a proponent of free-trade agreements to the ire of the populist crowd."

A front-page post at MyDD said, "Calitics is doing good work tracking Ellen Tauscher (including video). She's a real problem for Democrats, and should face a serious challenge." A Calitics diary looked back at the type of candidate who has run against Tauscher in the tenth since redistricting.

Later that day, the San Francisco Chronicle's Spun Cycle Blog offered a hyperlink-free post that was widely mocked and Carla Marinucci was quickly refuted at Ruck Pad.

Thursday, December 21, 2006 - A Calitics diary looked at Tauscher's endorsement page from 2006 and notes that neither Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi nor Senator Barbara Boxer made the list.

A MyDD diary (that remained recommended for more than 48 hours) looked back of the major, public feud between Pelosi and Tauscher, "In the end, Tauscher's two blunders ended up with Burton creating a new 10th District that would remove any fear of Tauscher losing in a general, but one that was specifically designed to allow her to lose in a primary if she kept undermining Pelosi. Tauscher wasn't redistricted out of a seat, but was given a clear shape up or ship out choice."

D-Day disputed the Tauscher/Lieberman link, "there's NOBODY like Joementum when it comes to arrogance, false victimhood, dishonesty, and condescension."

Friday, December 22, 2006 - The internet tubes were quiet on the last weekday before Christmas, but the 18 year-old high school student we mentioned last week posted his second diary on Calitics and the Rescue Rangers bumped the Pelosi/Tauscher Feud to the front-page of Daily Kos.

Saturday, December 23, 2006 - On Festivus Day, there was but one airing of grievances. A post at Calitics using the Way Back Machine to see Tauscher's thoughts on her nomination speech for Joe Lieberman.

There should be much, much more next week in the Ellen Tauscher Weekly.