CREDO, the progressive organization, has had enough. They noticed that the DCCC, the campaign arm for Democrats in the House, which solicited fundraising right after the vote on the Let Women Die Act saying that Democrats had to be elected to “protect the health of women,” listed three of the Democrats above as “Frontline” candidates, meaning they will be at the front of the line for that cash (the three are Matheson, Mark Critz and Mike McIntyre). So they have begun a campaign to get the DCCC to stop funding candidates who sell out women.

Incredibly, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is launching a half-million dollar ad buy into New York City with one weekend to go until a special House election in NY-09, the seat once held by Anthony Weiner. That half a million dollars would have come in very handy next year, when Democrats make a push to take back the House, no? Instead, it’s being chewed up in the expensive New York City media market to protect a bad candidate whose district will probably get chopped up in redistricting anyway.

If Obama cannot be swayed, House Democrats will have the choice: do they want to remain in the minority for the foreseeable future? Or did they run for office for some reason other than personal enrichment in their post-Congress lobbying careers?

Bill Clinton was the ultimate DLC guy in office, and a lot of his economic team is sitting in the Obama White House. They don’t want an excuse to do nothing either, I’d suspect.

Except doing nothing is the best hope of actually keeping safety net benefits at current levels. If you “do nothing,” the Bush tax cuts expire, tax rates go back to what they were under Bill Clinton when we created 23 million new jobs, and the medium-term deficit goes away completely. Doing nothing is a pretty darn good idea, at least compared to the alternatives.

With all three candidates financially viable, how will the race shake out? The presence of Davis makes it harder to claim that this is a referendum on Medicare privatization. However, I do think you can say what Josh Kraushaar says, that this has refocused attention on the actual desires of Republicans, which are broadly unpopular.

The Democratic party has made it very clear they intend to make a big issue out of the House Republican budget that would end Medicare and replace it with a privatized voucher program. The DCCC has put together another ad hammering Republicans for this vote.

Why would you play this funny? Why give the message that old people are worthy of derision, essentially because they’re old? This looks like a really bad Super Bowl spot when the issue discussed is deadly serious. Republicans are claiming that the ad represents “scare tactics” but no, I could show you scare tactics. A closeup of a senior’s hand as she struggles in the last throes of life and then pulling out to reveal she’s laying on the middle of the sidewalk as white men in suits ignore her, that’s scare tactics. This looks like a GoDaddy ad.

HR3 – “The No Taxpayer Money for Abortion Act” – is a vile piece of legislation by its title alone. That the bill contained, until yesterday, a provision to redefine rape as “forcible” rape was even more insidious. In a Republican-controlled House, it’s not shocking to see this kind of medieval treatment of women become a priority over, you know, job creation. But let’s focus on the Democrats involved in this travesty. A look at the DCCC’s contributions to and on behalf of the 10 Democratic co-sponsors of HR3 show the committee spent a whopping $3,379,322.85 to keep these members in office – in 2010 alone.

Women members of Congress contribute significantly to the DCCC’s coffers. But they don’t appear to be getting much for their money.

I frankly don’t even know how this is nonsense is possible given that the most recent Bloomberg poll taken during and after the deal was announced shows that keeping the tax cuts for the wealthy is unpopular, with only a third of Americans supporting even temporarily keeping the highest tax rate low. By the same token almost every recent poll before the deal was announced, like this CBS News poll, showed the public is behind the original Democratic position about ending the Bush tax cuts for those making over $250,000 and oppose extending all the tax cuts.