Rut-Roh, White House Bad Mouthing Labor Now

It does seem odd that after hearing Lincoln won, the first instinct of a "senior White House official" was to pick up the phone to call Ben Smith in order to trash Labor for spending money against Lincoln:

A senior White House official just called me with a very pointed message for the administration's sometime allies in organized labor, who invested heavily in beating Blanche Lincoln, Obama's candidate, in Arkanas.

"Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members' money down the toiled on a pointless exercise," the official said. "If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country, that could have made a real difference in November."

That set off a firestorm on twitter.com and I'm sure we'll hear more about it. Apparently, the White House political team, which has a reputation for being clumsy, thinks it controls labor's political spending. Weird. And, yes, "clumsy" and "inept" are the words I hear most from people around town when describing that political operation at the White House, which is under the jurisdiction of Rahm Emanuel and Jim Messina. And, for the record, I don't think the exercise was "pointless." Incumbents aren't royalty. If they're not voting for with a constituency, that constituency should not only try, but has an obligation, to beat them. The NRA never backs away from a challenge like that -- and that's why they're powerful. The fear of a primary challenge keeps members in line.

It"s a mixed bag of emotions out there after last night's election. To a certain degree, what won most in California was big money candidates on the Republican side. Good luck with that when the general election comes around.

The push back from the White House in the Halter/Lincoln matter will hurt them. As most progressives are already indicating, Lincoln will not be able to hold on to her seat, and they are moving on. Oh, we are sure to receive all kinds of requests to "help out" financially in that upcoming race, but the White House keeps forgetting that you can only slap a bitch a few times before the bitch will leave. First they threw the GLBT group under the bus, now the unions. Where else do they think MONEY is going to come from to support them? The same groups that give money to the Republicans? Yeah, pretty sure that's where they are counting their fund raising dollars. So, as I've often gloom and doom projected, the White House and Congress could lose the advantage we netroots handed them on a silver platter in 2008, simply because they have shown they can't aim the gun straight, and keep shooting their feet.

From Crooks and Liars, the AFL-CIO response:

"If that's their take on this, then they severely misread how the electorate feels and how we're running our political program. When we say we're only going to support elected officials who support our issues," said AFL-CIO spokesman Eddie Vale. "When they say we should have targeted our money among some key house races among Blue Dog Democrats — that ain't happening."

"Labor isn't an arm of the Democratic Party," Vale said. "It exists to support working families. And that's what we said tonight, and that's what we're going to keep saying."