*More* Democratic House retirements this week?

I will believe it when I see it, but that’s the buzz right now: “[CNN’s John King was] told the Florida special election results were the last straw for at least two and perhaps more House Democrats facing tough 2014 races.” The problem with that is that it’s late for retirements; primary season has already started and at this point anybody who retires is going to put his or her party through an unseemly scramble to find a replacement. Pulling this on the Democratic party would be highly obnoxious, in other words; and while I don’t personally care I can still say that it’s not very professional to put your caucus through that sort of thing.

But leaving that aside… if I had to guess as to who would be dropping I’d say Nick Rahall of West Virginia and Collin Peterson of Minnesota.  The former is sliding into electoral oblivion in the polls and the latter is making an announcement on the matter tomorrow.  Mind you, Peterson may simply taking advantage of the speculation to score free publicity, which would be smart of him.  Guess we’ll see?

Via

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: If there are significant retirements then the Democrats would be well-advised to not only give up on the House, but the Senate as well: they should immediately retreat to the governors’ and state legislature races and pour all of their resources into them. Admittedly, they won’t see dividends on that until at least 2018… but then, nobody told them to put all of their freaking chips on Obamacare in the first place.

PPS: Do you really think that I’d offer this advice if I thought that the Democrats would take it?

9 thoughts on “*More* Democratic House retirements this week?”

  1. When they’re squabbling over tile contractors trying to get elected to their condo HOA boards then I’ll call it victory.

    Remember, when they break and run THEN you run them down with horse and saber.

  2. “highly obnoxious”, Moe? That’s a bit of understatement, yes? I’m sure most states have obnoxious LaRouchies ready to crawl out of the woodwork ..
    .
    That said, they’ve been led, in the House, by San Fran Nan, who has a tin ear almost as bad as Hillary, and the #2 guy, Stenny Hoyer, never met a sweetheart contract he wouldn’t take.
    .
    I can certainly see why some Purple State Dems, ones who may have been clever enough to see Obamacare as a suicide pact, would want to be “obnoxious” on their way to the political gallows.
    .
    Mew

    1. “I can certainly see why some Purple State Dems, ones who may have been clever enough to see Obamacare as a suicide pact, would want to be “obnoxious” on their way to the political gallows.”
      .
      And wouldn’t that just be a shame?

  3. In addition to retirements at the end of the year, one might expect to see a run of early OCare Congresscritter retirements in States with Blue Gubernors. The Gubernor can then then appoint a fresh OCrat to fill that seat who is untainted by an OCare vote.

    These untainted Ocrats could then run for election in the Fall without the OCare albatross around their neck — assuming of course that sometime around Sept, there’s no vote to repeal offered up by the GOP. The GOP leadership probably isn’t going to go there because, well, that’s what they do — go nowhere…

    1. Congressmen are never appointed. The US Constitution makes it explicitly clear that any vacancies in the House must be filled with an election.

  4. Depending on who is retiring, this could be a good thing or a bad thing.
    –
    If we’re looking at say Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi retiring, I’d say that’d be a good thing. If on the other hand we’re looking at say Joe Manchin of West Virginia (one of the few Democrats who demonstrates the ability for independent thought in a rational manner instead of marching in lockstep with Reid and Pelosi)retiring, I’d say it would be a bad thing.

    1. We disagree about Manchin’s nature. He isn’t any more independent than he can get away with and still win elections.
      .
      Remember just how long the West Virginia delegation has been Democrat, eh? That’s *finally* changed, and Manchin knows it.
      .
      Mew

      1. Manchin isn’t exactly up for re-election this year (I don’t think he’s up in 2016 either, but I could be wrong); how a politician is behaving when they are up for re-election isn’t necessarily a good indicator of how they’ll behave while in office. Yes, they might do things in response to public backlash if they don’t, but Manchin seems to be going against Reid more and more.
        –
        In any event Manchin was the only example I could think of whom is actually in congress (I really couldn’t think of any Democrat congressmen/women that weren’t acting like mindless robots, I only could think of Senator Manchin), whom was a Democrat and not behaving like a lemming willing to follow his party over a cliff. I can think of a few others whom aren’t in office anymore, but I didn’t think they would be relevant examples.

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