DNC hires Mary Beth Cahill as interim CEO

[Ken Burch]

12. Yes...but the mindset at the DNC informs the way campaigns are run.

How likely is it that a "fight like hell for the people!" campaign will be run if the DNC is saying "We can't fight back against smears, we have to defer to the GOP, and for the love of god we can't ever try to win the argument on the issues"-which was the attitude that dominated both the Dukakis and Kerry campaigns.

Neither of those campaigns featured anybody doing anything that should ever be repeated in any future Democratic campaign.

And I don't know of Ms. Cahill actually having any particular skills.

To my knowledge, neither the Dukakis nor Kerry efforts encouraged the idea of building State Party organizations OR demonstrated any particular competence at fundraising. Their main fundraising idea was the Tony Coelho notion that we should be just as much a party of corporate donors as the GOP and that we should privilege the policies big donors supported over what rank-and-file Dems wanted. What was EVER to like in that?