Moe Lane

The DCCC confirmed to Politico that WI-08′s Steve Kagen had his ad buys canceled; the usual face-saving excuses were made, but the two-term Congressman is a dead man walking (with some help from Reid Ribble).  Also, it looks like AR-02′s Joyce Elliott has been likewise abandoned: I don’t think that that one’s really hit the radar yet, probably because it was an open seat and heavily favoring Republican Tim Griffin anyway.

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Via Hotline, here are the latest races where the DCCC has begun the euthanasia process:

• AZ-08.  The incumbent is Gabrielle Giffords, facing Jesse Kelly.  The DCCC has cut one week’s worth of ad buys, claiming that Giffords doesn’t need its help.  Cook rates this race as Leans Democratic; polling is very sparse, but shows a tie.
• CO-04.  The incumbent is Betsy Markey (yes, the one who has her supporters babbling about internment camps): her opponent is Cory Gardner.  They’ve cut back her outside ads, probably because she can’t get any traction (and has supporters babbling about internment camps).  Cook rates this race as Toss-Up: the most recent polling shows Gardner ahead.
• FL-24.  The incumbent is Suzanne Kosmas; her opponent is Sandy Adams.  Like Markey, her outside ads have been cut.  The DCCC is claiming to be planning to still match the NRCC’s buys there. Cook rates this race as Toss-Up: there is no recent polling, but RCP lists the seat as Leans GOP.
• KS-03.  Open seat.  Democratic candidate Stephene Moore, facing Republican candidate Kevin Yoder.  The DCCC has canceled one week’s worth of ad buys. Cook rates this race as Leans Republican: there is no recent polling, but RCP lists the seat as Leans GOP.
• NM-02.  The incumbent is Harry Teague; his opponent is Steve Pearce.  Here the DCCC is moving its ad buys down a week in either an attempt to firewall, or as a preliminary to canceling them altogether. Cook rates this race as Toss-Up: the most recent polling has Pearce ahead.

There’s also LA-02, but that might legitimately be the DCCC thinking that they don’t need to worry about that race. The article also mentions IN-08 and TX-17, but that were covered a couple of days ago. (more…)

Cute bit of political theater, here.  The short version is, House Minority Leader John Boehner brought the GOP caucus together and shook ‘em until three million dollars fell out; coupled with the million that he’s donating from his own campaign funds, that’s four million that’s going to the NRCC, just in time for the fall election cycle.  That should fund a bunch of races.

I’m noting this for a few reasons.

• First: it amuses me.
• Second: it’s interesting that they were able to get to three million in about thirty-five minutes; that was obviously set up ahead of time, but it’s still nice to see.
• Third: contrast to the DCCC’s recent curious worries in getting outstanding dues out of its own members.
• Fourth: admittedly, the reason for the difference between the second and the third points is that more than one-third of the House Democratic caucus have competitive races this year, while barely one-tenth of the House Republican caucus does.  And that those numbers are getting worse for the Democrats for the last two years.
• Fifth: did I mention that I find this amusing?

It’s odd to think of the Democrats being short of cash at this point in the game, but they are, aren’t they?  They don’t have enough to protect everybody, and if they guess wrong, they waste what they have.  Heck of a thing to have to worry about, no?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

So, let’s see:

• Over at Cook Political Report, they’re reporting that another five races (MA-05, ME-02, MS-04, NY-22, & WA-09) have upgraded from Safe Democrat to Likely Democrat.  This is consistent with trends against the Republican party in 2006 and 2008; what wrecked the GOP in those years was not that we had seats at-risk, but that we could not stop more and more seats from becoming at-risk. With about five weeks left for this election cycle, Cook reports that the Democrats have 110 seats at risk, while the Republicans have… 17.  The numbers are even worse when it comes to seats in real danger: the number there is currently 53 to 4.
• Speaking sort-of of Maine, it turns out that the Congresswoman from ME-01 is a searing hypocrite when it comes to private jet use.  Short version: Chellie Pingree made a name for herself as being extremely down on Congressional use of private jets, period, end sentence, no, really, under ABSOLUTELY NO CIRCUMSTANCES AT ALL, she didn’t care what the reason was.  So, yes, she got caught using her hedge-fund boyfriend’s private jet… and getting reimbursed for it, apparently (because she’s that dumb).  There’s video: it even features the stereotypical red carpet.
• Need I say Dean Scontras for ME-01?  Well, I’ll say it anyway. (more…)

‘…get even.’

After the across-the-board defeats in 2008, conservative pundits didn’t rail at the voters. You didn’t see the right blogosphere go after the voters as irrational (How could they elect someone so unqualified? They’ve gone bonkers!) with the venom that the left now displays. Instead, there was a healthy debate — what was wrong with the Republican Party and with the conservative movement more generally?

[snip]

When things go wrong for the left, it blames the people; when things go wrong for the right, it blames the governing elites. (more…)

To sum it up: Barack Obama must visit toss-up seats because in the past districts with Presidential visits had a higher retention percentage than districts without them.

This was one of those posts that ended up rambling: the reasons why this isn’t the game-changer that the author thought it was were all trying to crowd in to get the credit for shooting this one down.  Really short version: dice may not have memories, but Congressional districts emphatically do.  And the President is not actually capable of performing acts of magic.  Or even ‘magick.’

Look, you should have seen what I deleted. Borrrr-ring…

Yes, everything that has happened up to this point has been the overture, prologue, or whatever other metaphor is most suitable for the reader. This is the time when the rest of the people who will be voting in the midterms will start looking around and paying attention to everything that’s going around them. Which is, of course, their privilege; besides, there’s probably less of them this time around. And they’re going to see the following: (more…)

…breaking it all down; but by my rule-of-thumb his current groupings of vulnerable House seats work out to about net GOP +53 or so.  To give you a contrast: RCP’s numbers are telling me net GOP +42, Cook’s is net GOP +30, & Rothenburg’s net GOP +28.  Which tells me that my rule-of-thumb isn’t working, except in the broadest sense of confirming that the Democrats are having a lousy election cycle.

Moe Lane

PS: I expect things are going to get worse for the Democrats – and so is everybody else in this business.  Whether they admit it in public, or not.  So start getting ready for some Maximum Fun Time…

Today’s conservative pick-me-up of liberal gloom and despair comes from Brent Budowsky, whose I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-the-blackest-irony piece in the Hill (called “Revolution in the air:” again, forsooth) will provide you with a piquant, yet filling, compliment to your coffee-and-beverage. Budowsky has come to the realization that a: there is an epic-level anger out there with the people running things into the ground and b: everybody is extremely aware that the Democrats are the ones running things into the ground, and he’s almost as angry with the Democrats for putting him in this spot as he is with the Republicans for not having the common courtesy of killing our families, then ourselves, in a mass suicide cult. Budowsky has a solution, of course (these guys always have a ‘solution’): he thinks that the Democrats “should cancel the week of recess before Labor Day, go to the floor of Congress and fight for American jobs, rally the party base, and go to the country with a campaign worthy of the Democratic Party.”  And then they can ride their Magical Pretty Space Princess Unicorns across the land and transform all those naughty Unemployments into Goodjobs with their Rainbow Sunshine Keynesian Wands!

Oh, wait, this is Earth. So what the Democrats will do instead is hide from their constituents, blame everything on George W. Bush, and get shellacked in November by a voting public ready to have adults with a functioning spine back in charge of fiscal policy.

Well, that works too.

Moe Lane (more…)

Very entertaining news from Stu Rothenberg:

An unusual number of Democratic candidates running this cycle are basing their victory scenarios on the existence of Independent or third-party candidates in their races. Are their hopes reasonable or are they merely grasping at straws?

They’re merely grasping at straws.  To skip ahead a bit:

…more often than not, Independents and third-party candidates see their support evaporate as Election Day approaches, as voters realize that a vote for an also-ran is a wasted vote.

For an example of this, look no further than the 2009 NJ gubernatorial election. If you look at the polls for that election, you’ll see that virtually every scenario that had Jon Corzine ahead relied on double-digit results for the third-party candidate.  The Democrats even went to the point of doing robocalls for the third-party candidate, which ended up doing nothing much for Corzine.  Third-party support had been declining in NJ for weeks beforehand, precisely in the fashion and the reasons that Stu noted above.
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Yes, the title is meant to be subtly mocking.

This article in the New York Times on the awkward disconnect between the President of the United States and the political party that he’s presumably in charge of is actually… not  too bad, really.  This, for example, is pretty clear-headed:

In 2006 and 2008, Democrats did something that had not been done in American politics since the Great Depression, which is to string together two consecutive “wave” elections — roughly defined as a gain of at least 20 seats in the House of Representatives. They gained a total of 55 House seats and 12 seats in the Senate; the tide came in twice and with unusual strength. That means that some significant number of the Democrats elected in the last two cycles, to put it bluntly, really don’t have much business holding their seats in the first place. Either their districts normally trend Republican — 49 Democratic House members were elected from districts that voted for John McCain — or they themselves probably wouldn’t have cleared the threshold for a successful candidacy in a more conventional election year.

…where it breaks down is in considering some of the implications.  Well, that’s why we’re here. (more…)

House Minority Leader John Boehner made a comment late last week that raised an eyebrow or two:

When pressed for a number, Boehner said he believed the GOP could win as many as 100 seats in this fall’s elections.

“At least 100 seats,” Boehner said when asked how wide the playing field for districts is. “I do,” the top House Republican answered when asked if he thinks there are 100 seats in the U.S. “that could change hands.”

Much as I hate to contradict Rep. Boehner, we must fight inaccuracy in all its forms.  There are not currently one hundred Democratic-held seats that could change hands, and he should have known better than to claim that in this media atmosphere.

There are currently only ninety-nine. (more…)