The DCCC’s Recruiting Secret: Movie Night!
The DCCC finally let slip one of their recruiting “secrets” this morning and, boy, is it a doozy.
“Forget polls and talking points. Steve Israel likes to show top Democratic recruits a scene from the movie 300 to get them riled up about running for Congress.’
“Israel, the man in charge of winning back the House for Democrats as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, says he cues up a confrontation between the vastly outnumbers Spartan warriors led by King Leonidas and the invading Persian army, led by Xerxes.”
Apparently DCCC Chair Steve Israel’s recruiting meetings are a cross between a college film class and a Michael Scott office meeting…
“The cadence of the New York congressman’s speech slows and his voice deepens as he sets the scene.”
First of all, the effectiveness of the Siskel and Israel technique is all about results.
And by the looks of it, they’ve had a quite a bit of “success” in the past few years:
National Journal: How a Calif. Legislative Race Complicated DCCC Recruiting Efforts
From The Rothenburg Political Report:
“Some might see the weak Pennsylvania class of challengers as a “recruiting failure” by the DCCC and particularly by its recruiting chairwoman, Rep. Allyson Schwartz (Pa.). But you can’t make interesting, credentialed candidates run if they don’t want to, and it looks as if Keystone Democrats have decided this isn’t the year to run against incumbent Republicans in Pennsylvania.”
DSCC/DCCC suffer joint recruiting failure as best potential candidate Carte Goodwin rules out WV-SEN & WV-02
— andysere (@andysere) February 20, 2013
Second, the hypocrisy is stunning.
It wasn’t two years ago that Democrats were up in arms after House Republicans showed “The Town” during a meeting.
Let’s take a walk down memory lane…
“Democrats are hoping to cease on House Republicans’ use of a clip from the crime caper ‘The Town’ to rally troops at a closed-door meeting on Tuesday. Today, the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee said the GOP’s use of the clip shows that Republicans want to hurt people.
“I don’t think anyone anticipated that our disagreements would lead to the type of vitriol and negative tone that this clip was meant to incite,’ Wasserman Schultz told reporters at news conference this afternoon.
“Who are they planning to hurt?’ she added.”
So, the Democrats hold press conferences after Republicans watch “The Town,” yet when Steve Israel shows recruits “300”—one that is widely noted for its violence and gore—there’s barely a peep.
But that’s what happens when Democrats don’t have a winning message. Their vision of taxing and spending is so unpopular, they’re resulting to violent movies to woo recruits.
Free advice to Israel, stick to what your good at: spending wastefully, raising taxes, and recruiting weak Democratic candidates.