Rantz: Progressive attack on Reichert mind-bogglingly dumb

On Wednesday, Congressman Dave Reichert announced he was retiring from Congress. Immediately after, the official campaign arm of the Democrats in the House sent out a statement that contradicted itself.

Related: A sleazy, baseless attack on Rep. Dave Reichert

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has been going after Reichert since the election of President Donald Trump. They noted Reichert’s district voted for Hillary Clinton over Trump, so they viewed the district as competitive. Since then, they’ve offered endless, petty and cheap attacks against Reichert. But yesterday’s statement is one of their dumbest.

“It’s become increasingly clear that the Republican Party is out of step with the values of Western Washington, and Dave Reichert’s retirement is testament to how wide that gap has grown,” said DCCC spokesperson Drew Godinich said in statement. “As one of the most Democratic districts held by a Republican Representative, this district was always going to be competitive. Clearly, Congressman Reichert saw the writing on the wall, and realized that he was in for an uphill re-election campaign…”

That’s a pretty standard, boilerplate response (the DCCC is known for just copy-pasting generic statements, while just updating the name of the Republican they’re attacking; sometimes they forget to make the change.

But, the DCCC contradicts itself in the own press release. At the end of the release, to feed the media some talking points to shift the narrative and give Democrats some momentum, they write:

Upon Reichert’s retirement announcement, Sabato’s Crystal Ball and Cook Political Report IMMEDIATELY moved this race to ‘Tossup’ from ‘safe Republican.’

OK, let’s get this straight since the amount of dumb in this press release is pretty high, even by DCCC standards.

First, they say “this district was always going to be competitive” but then link to a source that said, had Reichert run, it was a “safe Republican” win and thus, wasn’t at all competitive. Presumably they trust the sources enough to include in a press release. So why didn’t they trust the sources when they said it was a safe seat for Republicans?

Simple answer: they’re partisan hacks blinded by ideology so severely, they can’t even notice when they call themselves out for pushing shoddy analysis.

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