The DCCC has been less than forthright about Ginny Schrader's candidacy, as I feared in a comment to V's post last night.

Not surprising, and yet more reinforcement to stay away from the party and its recently ineffectual apparatus (unless Howard Dean and his Dozens can clean it up over the next decade or so).

It's not clear how all of this will turn out. I enjoy the DCCC weblog more than the DSCC's but their "strategy" for tough races leaves a lot to be desired. If they do start suggesting to Ginny that, after duly winning the primary, she step aside for someone of the DCCC's choosing, I hope she tells them to Cheney off. Maybe then they'll finally learn the wisdom of Leave No Republican Unchallenged. A commenter at dKos sums up:

She ran in the primary and won it, and she better stand her ground and tell anyone who wants her to step aside that if they wanted the spot, they should have run in the primary too.

This is VITAL to the leave-no-seat-unchallenged (LNSU) strategy. Maybe Schrader isn't the strongest possible candidate from that part of PA. It doesn't matter. Say Jane Babykisser is a stronger candidate who didn't want to run against that mean nasty Republican, but wants the spot now that the Republican has bugged out. If Schrader wins in November, Jane smacks herself in the forehead and says "damn! I could have had that seat, by just running in the primary!". If Schrader loses, Jane smacks herself in the forehead and says "I could have run in the primary and won that seat!". The result is the same either way: next cycle, Jane and other candidates like her enter the contests early instead of waiting for shots at open seats to fall into their laps.

LNSU says: run the strongest candidates in every district, and never stop kicking ass. For Schrader to step down would mean reinforcing the DCCC's losing strategy of running lame placeholder campaigns. If they had a stronger candidate, then they must be thwacked for not running him or her in the first place. Even if Schrader loses this one, the kick in the pants will strengthen the D field for 2006.

Why do we even have primaries, if the DCCC gets to pick all the candidates at its whim?

We'll see. Maybe they won't be jerks, but the first quote from their PR flack, a "no comment" about whether Schrader would be replaced, was not encouraging.

Update: Greg Speed, the original "no commenter" has posted a highly unsatisfactory "explanation" at the DCCC site. My title stands, for the moment. This is fairly egregious, given that people were trying to write his script for him. Something like: "We look forward to working with Schrader to give the PA-8 Democratic representation in November" would be better than the insipid non-support that's been disclosed twice now. Tsk. Shame on them.