RCP: November continues to loom for Democrats.

Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics – an underrated blogger, possibly because RCP is such a good site generally that its bloggers get overshadowed – still holds his opinion from April that the House is going to flip big in November:

The bottom line is that Democrats are on pace for an ugly November. They’re increasingly running out of time to change the dynamic, and it looks about as likely that things will get worse as that they will get better. If the elections were held today, the balance of the evidence suggests they would lose 50-60 seats. If you think the political environment will improve for Democrats, you can adjust your expectations accordingly, but if you think they will get worse, you can do the same.

He’s basing that on a few things: the Gallup and Rasmussen generic ballot polls, and the NPR analysis.  Continue reading RCP: November continues to loom for Democrats.

#rsrh Jim Geraghty does yeoman’s work on House races.

This made me laugh:

“Hey Jim, could you put together a list of House races where it’s either an open seat race or a vulnerable incumbent?” the editors ask, oh-so-innocently.

Do they have any idea how much work that entails?

…because even if the NR editors don’t. I do. It entails thirteen webpages’ worth of work, and it’s interesting to see all of that in one place. Well worth reading, the better to refresh your memory; and bear in mind that this isn’t the final list; we’re still six months out from the election.

Democrats now taking it one election at a time. #rsrh

I too can name that tune in five notes.

Ahhhh… the Old Standby, “there are 435 individual elections, each decided on a case-by-case basis” claim. I remember offering that weak hope myself in 2006, right before we got walloped as so many of those individual elections turned the same damn way. Gee, it was almost as if there was some unifying force that strongly influenced each election and turned the majority of swing voters in the same direction.

The problem here for the Democrats is that they assumed that the President’s sky-high approval ratings of January 2009 – or even April of 2009 – would not have dropped this far by now. “You’ve got me,” and all that.  Nobody really expected things to be any different, in fact: back in 2009, whenever I noted how badly the administration was polling I would note that ‘well, yes, of course the polls will go back up again, but…’ before I got on with the kicking.  And I’ve always been the rampaging optimist about this sort of thing.

So it’s a bit of a pickle for the Other Side, what-what?  Well, I’m sure that they’ll think of something.  Eventually.  Almost certainly.  Hey, they could blame Bush!  It won’t work, but warm fuzzies from nostalgia are not something to be spurned.

Moe Lane

Adam Nagourney’s failure of imagination.

There’s a good deal to criticize in this article – not least of which is its rather sad attempt to equate the potential November election problems of the two parties – but I’d like to highlight one particular stumble, right out of the gate:

Republicans are luring new candidates into House and Senate races, and the number of seats up for grabs in November appears to be growing, setting up a midterm election likely to be harder fought than anyone anticipated before the party’s big victory in Massachusetts last week.

Bolding mine. “Likely to be harder fought than anyone anticipated.”

Actually, not just no. Hell, no.  Anybody who could look at a map could have told you last November that this election cycle was going to be problematical for the Democrats; in fact, maps were drawn illustrating the opportunity.   The increasingly favorable conditions about this midterm were only going to be a surprise to people not paying attention.  Or to people not imaginative enough to look past confident assurances that this time there would be a permanent political realignment.  Or to people who just wanted to believe that last.

It’s an open question which category Adam Nagourney and Carl Hulse fall into, of course.  Or categories.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

DCCC: Expect more Democratic retirements in the next two weeks.

The Washington Post, on fallout from the recent retirements of Democratic members of Congress:

What most concerns Democrats is that the latest round of retirements will prompt other longtime lawmakers in competitive districts to rethink their reelection plans, [former DCCC Chair Martin] Frost said. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, acknowledged that “some more” Democratic retirements will be announced before the end of the year, but that the number will be “nothing on the scale of 1994, when you had 28 Democratic open seats” and the party lost control of the House.

Unfortunately for Van Hollen, the Washington Post isn’t interested in supporting the spin:

Joe Gaylord, who was chief strategist for former House speaker Newt Gingrich in the 1994 cycle, said Democratic retirements accelerated in 1994, compared with their pace in 1993, and he predicted the same could happen this time. “It got collectively worse as they moved along,” he said.

In other words, it’s early days yet. And take that cliche however you like.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Reverse the Vote!

Reverse the Vote! is a program set up to specifically target 24 Democrats who voted for health care rationing, and against their constituents’ desires, last week. The list is entertaining:

Arcuri NY 24
Bean IL 8
Berry AR 1
Bishop NY 1
Carnahan MO 3
Connolly VA 11
Dahlkemper PA 3
Donnelly IN 2
Driehaus OH 1
Ellsworth IN 8
Foster IL 14
Giffords AZ 8
Kilroy OH 15
Kanjorski PA 11
Hall NY 19
Hill IN 9
Owens NY 23
Salazar CO 3
Schrader OR 5
Shea-Porter NH 1
Snyder AR 2
Space OH 18
Titus NV 3
Kagen WI 8

Continue reading Reverse the Vote!

State races are vitally important this year.

This is why.

In the 43 states where the congressional redistricting process is in partisan hands, Democrats control both houses of the state legislature and the governor’s mansion in 15 states, while Republicans hold 8 states, and 20 states are split between the two parties. Going into 2010, Democrats control redistricting in nearly twice as many states as Republicans, but states where the GOP controls the process – for instance Florida, Texas, and Utah – are also the most likely to be adding congressional seats. And for the first time since it joined the union in 1850, California may not add a congressional seat.

…37 states will elect new governors and 36 new state legislatures next fall. That means that every state house race – especially in states like Tennessee, where the legislature is closely-­divided – has the potential to have effect on the next decade’s political landscape.

(Via 73Wire, via The Other McCain)

Let’s look very quickly at the eight states listed here as being the ones most likely to lose seats: Continue reading State races are vitally important this year.

Quote of the day, Tom Maguire edition.

On our current ruling party’s top-down decision to actually run on their record to date – stop laughing! – instead of running away from it, Tom writes:

I sort of like the old days when we had a debate and then passed legislation, but this new approach – legislate first, then debate – may work out, too.

This is certainly turning out to be a rather more straightforward short-term political recovery than anticipated for the GOP.  Of course, it helps when one belongs to the political faction that the Other Side had previously decided to enthusiastically (and as it turns out, prematurely) shut out of the original debate.

Crossposted to RedState.

Be careful what you wish for: 111th Congress Edition.

Just a quick focus on this one sentence in this one paragraph in an article by Greg Gutfield:

The White House is focusing on Fox News because there is no one else around to mess with. I mean, aside from Rush, and perhaps a reunited version of April Wine – they got nobody. The Republicans are hanging back, somewhere, waiting for their moment, which may never come. The Dems, however, have everything – the Houses, the President, the media, the international community of dimwitted Norwegians- but they can’t get their crap together.

This isn’t ‘hanging back’ as much as it is ‘waiting.’  The ruling party has made it clear that the GOP’s input is not wanted; the role that they envisioned for our legislators was to meekly sign off on whatever damfool notion the Democrats came up with. If they did that, the Democrats might deign occasionally to throw Republican lawmakers a bone – to be shared with every Blue Dog Democrat in the pack, of course.  Might.  After all, there are ever so many Democratic allies to assuage.  And the Democrats consider this to be a compromise.  After all, their base would prefer to skip ahead to the place where the GOP all died in fires.

So one can hardly blame Republicans for declining to read the lines that the Other Side has written for them.  Particularly since this state of affairs will only last until January 2011 anyway.

Moe Lane

PS: “Party of No?”  “We need to give our own ideas?”  Bless your heart, the Democrats didn’t need any actual ideas in 2006 or 2008 to win.  They ran on a platform of Look At The Horrible Republicans both times – and are now proceeding to demonstrate the difference between ‘bad’ and definitely worse, which makes our work a lot easier, honestly.  For that matter, the people now running for office – and the people who will be winning in 13 months – have their own views on how to run a country, and they don’t need or want input from the party’s central leadership.  In fact, many of them don’t need or want my input, either.  I only pass for a populist in a place like DC.

Crossposted to RedState.

Winning with ‘No.’

From last week’s article on the growing awareness of Democratic corruption, by the always-interesting Jen Rubin:

…with the growth of government and the enormous amount of cash sloshing through Washington, the corruption problem is about to get worse. The stimulus money could, according to the FBI, be the breeding ground for its own crime wave. If the experts are right and 10% of the $787B stimulus plan will be lost to fraud and abuse, then $80B worth of graft and the congressmen, officials, lobbyists, and donors with their fingers in the pie will make fodder for plenty of headlines — just in time for the 2010 races.

No wonder the MSM is nervously sounding the alarm. There is the prospect that the age of “liberal dominance” could come screeching to a halt before it’s even gotten up to speed. Not only does it portend an electoral train wreck and loss of a governing liberal majority, but it sheds doubt on the notion that government was the knight in shining armor needed to ride to the rescue when the free market “failed.” If bigger and bigger government gets us more and more crooks and tens of billions in fraud, then maybe there is a better way to go than inflating the size and scope of the federal government.

Continue reading Winning with ‘No.’