Emanuel to Dean: Hand over the money!

Rahm Emanuel needs to buy a clue: You will not wear Howard Dean down.

In May, the Washington Post reported that Emanuel stormed out of Howard's office after a meeting, "leaving a trail of expletives." The reason:

The blowup highlights a long-standing tension that has pitted Democratic congressional leaders, who are focused on their best opportunities for electoral gains this fall, against Dean and many state party chairmen, who believe that the party needs to be rebuilt from the ground up -- even in states that have traditionally been Republican strongholds.

Emanuel's fury, Democratic officials said, was over his concern that Dean's DNC is spending its money too freely and too early in the election cycle -- a "burn rate" that some strategists fear will leave the party unable to help candidates compete on equal terms with Republicans this fall.

Raw Story is reporting, based on a story in subscription-only Roll Call, that Emanuel wrote a letter, dated June 22, "demanding $100,000 per targeted district from the DNC to defray the cost of the DCCC’s proposed field operation, several individuals who have read the letter said."

Sounds like extortion to me. Nice party you've got here, Dean. Shame if anything happened to it.

By way of justifying this demand to treat the DNC as his own personal piggy bank, Emanuel attached a sample field plan, presumably to show Howard that the money would be well-spent, "itemizing various projected expenses, down to details such as $1,500 for T-shirts." (I hope they're nice shirts.)

Emanuel based his "request" on the 1994 mid-term elections when the RNC earmarked $20 million for Newt Gingrich’s successful drive for a House takeover. Apparently, Emanuel thought that Howard's offer of $20,000 per district was "woefully inadequate."

Because I'm sitting on the sidelines, I think Howard should offer Emanuel $15,000 per district and each time Emanuel makes another demand, the figure goes down. I'm just saying.

Raw Story doesn't report that Emanuel has demonstrated that candidates are receiving any less money than they have in the past. (And since this is based on Roll Call's reporting, I presume that RC hasn't mentioned it either.)

This is another pitiful power play from the anti-grassroots Emanuel, who wants a top-down, tightly managed campaign this year in stark contrast to Howard's grassroots-focused 50-State Strategy. While the DSCC's and DCCC's roles are focused on incumbent protection, Howard, on the other hand, was elected chair to tend to overall health of the party. And that includes his responsibility to hundreds of non-federal candidates as well.

The "recreational ballet dancer with the vocabulary of a longshoreman" has clearly met his match.