College Democrats Turn on the DCCC Over New Policy That Protects Incumbents
“This is a policy that’s going to silence a lot of voices like ours.”
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is trying to protect Democrats from primary challenges. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has spoken out against this and the College Democrats are siding with her.
The Atlantic reports:
The Democratic Party Just Ticked Off Its Youngest Organizers
The youths in the Democratic Party are angry.
Sixty-eight chapters of the College Democrats are urging voters not to donate to the party’s congressional-campaign arm after it instituted a new policy to protect incumbents from primary challenges. The protesting students say that the change will deter young candidates and people from historically marginalized communities from running for office. Their outrage isn’t just noteworthy because they represent younger voters in the electorate—these young people are also some of the party’s key organizers and activists.
“As College Democrats, we did a lot of work to build the new Democratic majority,” says Hank Sparks, the 20-year-old president of the Harvard College Democrats, which is spearheading the boycott. “This is a policy that’s going to silence a lot of voices like ours.”
They did do a lot of work: College Democrats help form the backbone of the party’s organizing infrastructure. The chapters currently boycotting the policy change from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee canvassed and phone-banked for dozens of Democratic congressional candidates across the country, including some of the 40 so-called majority-makers who flipped House seats from red to blue. Alumni from these College Democrats chapters have gone on to work for lawmakers on Capitol Hill and as staffers on presidential campaigns, and some have even run for office themselves. And current members are already gearing up to help Democrats up and down the ballot win in 2020.
Until the boycott’s announcement, progressive organizations and lawmakers such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York had been the most vocal opponents of the DCCC’s new rule.
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