Punchbowl News, Fly Out Day: What comes next for Democrats after the midterms? DCCC Chair DelBene weighs in
Highlights from Chair DelBene’s interview below:
“Think of the underlying issues that really drove this. One, people are hurting across the country, and they across the board were tired of the broken promises they had heard from the administration, from Republicans, and no recognition at all this entire cycle of what folks were going through. Then you have great candidates, and we really do. […] They’re all incredible. They really were the secret sauce for us, who are on the ground talking about the issues that matter and communicating with folks. Because I think a lot of Republicans shied away from even talking to their constituents. And then […] you have kind of all the changes that went on with trying to rig the system, gerrymandering, et cetera, and so people are angry about that too. And definitely, the people of Florida and Texas and North Carolina were angry about that. They didn’t get to have a say. And so I think it’s the combination of all of those things that really drove what we saw happen on Tuesday night. People really wanting a change and wanting folks who are going to stand up for them.
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“So I smile because leading up to this, all I heard from folks was, ‘Oh, you guys might be stretching too much here, looking at all these districts.’ And when we started out, we had seats like Kentucky 6 on our map, Ohio 10, and folks were like, ‘What are you thinking? How could those even be on your map?’ And so we were looking at what a map would look like early on, and clearly there was redistricting that got involved, especially when you talk about Florida, et cetera, or Tennessee, North Carolina, even. And so, absolutely, we were expanding all the way through. We put out our memo talking about how we had opportunities, we needed more resources, and then we had our ‘F Around and Find Out’ kind of push at the end for seats that we saw coming online at the end, where we wanted to make sure we had more resources and people respond. And even in those final list of 15 of, you know, of the FAFO seats, we won eight of them, so we were expanding all the way through, and absolutely saw the shift that was happening, and we’re trying to get resources as much as we could out to all of these districts.
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“We’re going to be fighting on affordability, you know, tariffs, on health care, the cuts to Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act tax credits, the war, right? But it’s all of those things, and moving forward in terms of making sure that we are moving forward to build—to address the issues that happen, but actually build a place where people feel like they have opportunity again.
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“I think we’ve got to make sure that we put policy in place that puts working families first, and make sure that our policies and our agenda is supporting them. […] We need to make sure that working families are thriving across the country. They are struggling across the board, and so policy that flips that on its head, that makes sure that families are able to not just struggle to get by, but can thrive. That’s important. And so the way I look at it, and I’m a little bit of a geek, so, but the way I look at it, it’s about making investments that give us a great return on our investment, and return is not just the dollar return, which can be one piece of it, but it’s also the return that we get in terms of impact on our communities and how our kids are doing. And the investments we make and health care is a good example. We actually do better when folks across the country have affordable health care, when they’re able to get primary care when they need it. We actually save money, and our communities do better. […] Republicans ignored this.
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“You had just kind of MAGA Inc. and Elon Musk, and just I mean, it was infinite money, and no message […]. You know, when they were spending all this money against our candidates, against our incumbents, they had nothing to say. And so, you know, my quip has always been: infinity times zero is still zero. The impact that they had of spending all this money […], they lit that money on fire.
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“The reflecting pool speech at the end, kind of, like, was a perfect culmination of where Republicans were at. No interest in what people were going through, never addressed or had policy ideas about how they were going to help folks, and they spent all this money with no message, and again, nothing from that. […] It’s not about–you can’t just throw all that money [and] expect to win because you spent more. It’s about the substance, and I think that’s what we knew even last cycle. You know, we won 14 districts that Trump won in. It’s about having great candidates. It’s about investing smartly so they can get their message out. But fundamentally, it’s on the ground, actually, understand what people are going through and talking about the issues that matter. And [Republicans] never seemed interested in that.”
