WASHINGTON — Hours before any polls closed Tuesday, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee dropped the midterm hammer on President Obama.
"The White House failed to define any agenda for voters in 2014," the firebrand progressive group wrote in an "organizational statement" about the midterms. "Progressives will remold the Democratic Party in Elizabeth Warren's image."
"The White House failed to define any agenda for voters in 2014," the firebrand progressive group wrote in an "organizational statement" about the midterms. "Progressives will remold the Democratic Party in Elizabeth Warren's image."
PCCC said. Warren embodied a "clear economic-populist message of reforming Wall Street, reducing student debt, and expanding Social Security benefits is popular everywhere. Red, purple, and blue states." Next year, Obama "will face major public backlash if it puts bipartisanship in Washington above the ideas that Elizabeth Warren has proven to have broad bipartisan support."
Democrats and progressives were still pulling voters out to the polls when the PCCC election post-mortem hit reporters' inboxes. It sparked a small-scale debate among progressive leaders across the country, many of whom disagreed with the group's "it's all Obama's fault" stance.
Democrats and progressives were still pulling voters out to the polls when the PCCC election post-mortem hit reporters' inboxes. It sparked a small-scale debate among progressive leaders across the country, many of whom disagreed with the group's "it's all Obama's fault" stance.
"I think it's overstated to blame this on the White House," one national progressive organizer wrote in an email. "Sure the White House didn't frame it, but DC consultants failed too often followed the same tired playbook and either ran too little or too late on big populist progressive issues."
In relatively small community of organized progressive politics, groups often work together to pool resources and grassroots lists. PCCC is divisive in the progressive community, and their scorched-earth take on the White House and the elections didn't sit well with some. But generally progressives, like many ostensible political allies, don't like to go on the record speaking ill of each other.
But that didn't mean there weren't eye-rolls and outright outrage at PCCC's midday missive.
"Isn't this the same statement PCCC sends out every couple weeks?" one longtime veteran of progressive politics wrote in an email exchange with BuzzFeed News. "I mean what's new there?"
PCCC focused on economic security in its statement, in keeping with the group's general focus on being the most vocal part of the "Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party." The prominent progressive said the PCCC's pure focus on economic issues omitted the role women's issues has played in 2014.
"The thing Warren gets that is omitted from this memo is that there's no way to separate economic security from reproductive freedom for women in this country, and also increasingly true for middle class families since so many are dependent on two pay checks to get by," the veteran wrote. "I've heard Warren (and others including Hillary) start to thread those together quite authentically."
Others were upset that PCCC used Warren to make their attack on Obama and the Democratic strategy.
"If you're going to be this bad at being progressives, don't do it under Elizabeth Warren's banner," said a top official at a Democratic group. "It's just disrespectful."
Progressives have said since the outset of the 2014 cycle that shift to the left on economics was the key to victory for any Democrat on the ballot. But that strategy faced the same uphill climb the Democratic party did in an election cycle where the map and nature of the election strongly favored Republicans.
But some top progressives said that even if PCCC is an imperfect messenger, the group's leaders are capturing an essential feeling on the left as polls close on what is expected to be a rough night for Democrats: Obama and his party should have run to the left on economic issues and stayed there, they say.
"Few groups are as blunt as PCCC, but yeah this is fairly common sentiment," said another national progressive organizer connected to a number of prominent left-wing causes. "I think most progressives believe that an economics oriented populist message around issues such as student loans, expanding [Social Security], and taking on big corporate interests like Wall St and Big Oil would be more popular, both in motivating the Democratic base and appealing to working class swing voters, than the bland 'on the one hand, on the other hand' message a lot of establishment Democrats including the President send out."
Other progressive groups painted Democratic failures this cycle with a broader brush. Democracy For America, the left-wing organizing group founded out of Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign, also shouted out Elizabeth Warren and said they wanted more campaigns in her image this cycle. (Warren has been a top surrogate for all manner of Democratic Senate campaigns this cycle, including those in deep red states.) DFA didn't go hard after the White House like PCCC did.
Democrats who stuck to the progressive script are winning, DFA executive director Charles Chamberlain said in a statement, and those that didn't, aren't.
"The polls are still open and surprises will happen, but there's a reason why Al Franken and Jeff Merkley are expected to post big wins while Mark Pryor is thinking about career options," Chamberlain said. "Democrats win when they run as populist progressives, not when they hem-and-haw about raising the minimum wage or only mention protecting Social Security as a last-ditch Hail Mary."
For its part, the White House dismissed any notion that Obama is responsible for Democrats' expected midterm losses.
"Is today's election a referendum on the president?" White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest was asked Tuesday.
"It's not," he replied.
A former White House official shook off the progressive attacks.
"The notion that Obama hasn't defined a clear and progressive agenda is laughable. Minimum wage. Climate change. Immigration. Equal pay. Obama is the one putting those in the national conversation," the former official told BuzzFeed News. "Ask red state Dems if Obama has been too conservative."
The PCCC doesn't have the entre into the White House other progressive groups focused on specific policy areas like criminal justice or LGBT rights do, the former official said. But the group does command a powerful bullhorn, and one that other progressive groups sometimes resent.
Progressives and their allies expect to have a healthy post-mortem after the final midterm results are tabulated, but they're not willing to get on board with PCCC's anti-Obama take quite yet.
"I'm sure you'll see some people blaming the White House because it's easy. They're not 100% wrong, but [PCCC co-founder] Adam [Green] and his crew like little more than bashing the president at every turn," said one labor official. "As far as I'm concerned, WH did try to set the terms of the debate, and then a bunch of red state senators said, 'oh, we can't do that,' and 'oh, please wait on this.' In the end, all of them except Hagan and maybe Begich are gonna lose anyway."