Sealed, Signed, and Undelivered
By The Prowler
THE BIGGEST LIAR OF THEM ALL
Gov. Gray Davis may not have been the biggest loser in the California recall. Some Democratic National Committee members are calling for DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe to explain his odd behavior in the days leading up to Tuesday's election debacle.
McAuliffe appeared on cable news channels and gave print interviews citing DNC internal polling data that showed the recall election too close to call. He also claimed that he had numbers indicating Democrats would emerge unscathed from the election. He also claimed that even if Arnold Schwarzenegger did win, he'd do so with fewer votes than Davis would receive from voters opposed to his recall in the first place. In fact, Schwarzenegger outpaced Davis by more than 100,000 votes.
"I don't know where the hell McAuliffe got his info, but he was treating it like sacred writ, and it was just trash," says a California Democratic Party official in Los Angeles. "I know he likes to blow a lot of sunshine up peoples' behinds, but this was just embarrassing for us."
McAuliffe's misdirection -- and this is putting it kindly -- was even more egregious when you consider that on Monday night, Davis advisers showed their boss tracking poll data that indicated the Republican frontrunner had actually widened his lead over Davis in the previous 48 hours.
"Davis knew he was dead on Monday night," says a Democratic operative in Sacramento. "By Tuesday morning, this was all about trying to put a dignified face on defeat."
McAuliffe has attempted to beautify his party's electoral performance before. He willfully misled his faithful followers during the 2002 midterm elections, claiming his party would at least hold their seats in Congress, and instead saw the Democrats lose ground in both houses.
"We're getting tired of his shtick," says a DNC donor in New York. "He's been telling us how we're doing great in raising money for the convention in Boston, but there are more than a few of us who don't believe it. On the ground, we're hearing that we aren't raising much of anything to pay for the convention."
McAuliffe has defended his brand of optimistic spin as a necessity in times when the party is down in the dumps with no clear successes in sight. That said, his recent performances aren't helping in the fundraising front. The Democrats trail Republicans badly in almost all categories of fundraising. Things are so bad, the national party isn't in a position to help its state parties.
Recently, according to a DNC staffer, the South Carolina Democratic Party contacted the DNC for help in raising a little more than $500,000 to finance its 2004 presidential primary. The DNC couldn't help, and didn't. Now the state party is looking into other options.
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