Moe Lane

Cook Political Report, establishing what we knew already:

In many respects, observing House Democrats trying to take back their majority is like watching a soccer team play a comparably skilled opponent with the field slanted 15 degrees against them.

Short version: Section V of the Voting Rights Act.  We’ve gotten into the habit of creating majority-minority districts; the Democrats are utterly reliant on the black vote to win elections; members of the Congressional Black Caucus are always willing to work with the Republican party to keep their seats safe (and to get new majority-minority districts); white Democrats are a bit reluctant to vote for minority Democrats; and it’s really hard to get the courts to throw out a map that the GOP/CBC has collaborated on.  Mix it all together, and hey presto! Structural GOP majority.

This drives the Online Left nuts, by the way: being largely white Democrats themselves and not entirely stupid, most of the smarter ones figure out eventually that they’re being given the shaft by minority Democrats.  The problem is that while the Online Left largely despises minorities they’re also exceptionally well conditioned by now to never, ever let that show.  So they just blame us, instead.  Oh, and vent their ire on minority conservatives: those are apparently safe targets. (more…)

…until I realized that she was just going for shock value, in order to try to get back some relevance.  Seriously: if somebody is telling you that the Democrats are going to retake the House this year, you need to make him or her sit down and show you the races, show why the Democrat will win… and show you why all those races that the Republicans are scheduled to win aren’t relevant.

Look, I expect the Democrats to gain seats.  In the single digits, because they’re going to be offset by a bunch of lost seats, too.  Anybody thinks that’s wrong, they’re going to have to catalog the state of the 435 House races.  This can be done – see here, here, and here – but note that those guys are all more or less saying the same thing that I am.

I kind of hope that the Obama campaign was still planning to use the argument that it was all George Bush’s fault, because: That. Well. Is. DRY.

Sparky.

Two-thirds of likely voters say the weak economy is Washington’s fault, and more blame President Obama than anybody else, according to a new poll for The Hill.

It found that 66 percent believe paltry job growth and slow economic recovery is the result of bad policy. Thirty-four percent say Obama is the most to blame, followed by 23 percent who say Congress is the culprit. Twenty percent point the finger at Wall Street, and 18 percent cite former President George W. Bush.

(more…)

Yes, yes, I know: the real number is much larger.  But note the use of the word confirmed: that term was not chosen at random.  Observe, from this story about incumbent House Democrats sensibly avoiding their dues to the DCCC, thus saving their precious campaign money to save their own seats:

As of June 30, 64 Democrats — around one-third of the entire caucus — hadn’t paid anything to the DCCC, according to a party document provided to POLITICO. Another 109 members had paid only a portion of what they owe in dues, which are calculated based on seniority and committee assignments.

There are 191 House Members. Subtract the 64 who haven’t paid any dues to the DCCC and 109 for those who have only paid a portion of them, that leaves 18 Members of Congress who have paid their dues in full. And, since it is reasonable to equate “anybody who throws money down the DCCC rat-hole while Nancy Pelosi is still House Minority Leader” with “fool” it then follows that AT LEAST eighteen members of the current Democratic House Caucus are self-confessed idiots.

That’s logic, that is.

Moe Lane

…”Do Democrats Have a Shot at the House?”

Not particularly, but I write for a paper whose readers don’t want to see that.

I understand that the folks working for the regular media corporations have minimum output levels to consider, but come on.  At this point in 2010 it was blatantly obvious that the Democrats were going to lose the House; the only question was how far the rubble would bounce.  Today, we’re looking at… an election.  The Democrats could net ten; the Republicans could net… I don’t know, five or so… and it’s probably going to be only a couple of seats, either way.  We’ll win some, they’ll win some, Nancy Pelosi will not be Speaker of the House in 2013.

And thank God for that.

More or less via @CTIronman

A bit early for that, surely:

Democratic hopes of recapturing the House are dimming as a series of race-by-race setbacks and economic uncertainty suggest that the 25 seats they need to net might be out of reach.

The Hill projects that Democrats will net somewhere between 10 and 15 seats, assuming the presidential election remains a close contest.

Although I don’t know where they’re getting 10 to 15 seats, given that their latest available projection (from May) shows the Democrats and Republicans standing pat (seven Democratic seats expected to flip, and seven Republican ones).  Then again, there may be a new projection that’s not available, given that the Hill’s May list is still showing CA-31 as being a Toss-up.  It’s actually Safe Republican, given that California’s bizarre new jungle primary system split the Democratic vote sufficiently that the two Republican candidates ‘won’ the primary.  I’d email to check, except that there’s no immediately obvious way to do that.

Anyway: interesting, no? – And it’s fitting in with my informal, subjective feelings about the race.  The Democrats have simply not been acting like a political party that will win the House of Representatives back.

Moe Lane

PS: We will lose seats.  Expect it.

Essentially, that they’re not really all that, well, volatile.  Here’s a partisan breakdown of what RCP considers to be the most at-risk House and Senate races:

RCP also ranks this year’s gubernatorial elections, but there are only eleven of them anyway (thus making a Top Ten list kind of meaningless).  So, let’s look at the Congressional results: (more…)

And by the ‘House’ I mean the ‘Democrats.’ The House Chief Administrative Officer is Dan Beard: he’s the one who made the formal request, we didn’t have a say in his selection, and we’ve been objecting to his rather naked partisanship for years.

Anyway, this time it’s for ‘incumbent protection’ – and by incumbent protection I mean ‘keeping the Democrats at their troughs‘:

The House wants to increase Members’ office budgets next fiscal year by almost 15 percent, partly because 2010 is an election year and lawmakers anticipate a surge in franked mail.

[snip]

“It’s an incredibly naked admission that Members of Congress abuse the franking privilege for electoral purposes, even though the rules say they don’t,” said Pete Sepp, spokesman for the National Taxpayers Union. “This sends the worst possible message not only to the taxpayers, but to the electoral system as a whole.”

(more…)