Tag: congress

October surprise: Obama’s killing Democratic House prospects.

Let me just list the House races that Democratic strategists are willing to admit – some, even by name! – as having been endangered by Barack Obama’s sub-par October performance.  Just list.

And then there’s the generic ballot, which has gone from plus-Democrat to even-steven. Also note the ostensible swing-state nature of most of the races on that list; you can be certain that official political operatives from both parties have.  All in all, this is pretty good news to have, less than two weeks out – both on the Congressional, and the Presidential, level.

Needless to say, the Republicans in all of the races above could use whatever support that you can muster.  The Democrats were counting on taking or holding all of those seats.  Deny them the satisfaction.

Moe Lane

http://sulia.com/channel/capitol-hill-insiders/f/41a85fb6-5ca1-41a4-96b9-9ed885ad13f9/?source=twitter

#rsrh Interesting House Forecast from The Monkey Cage: D+ …1.

Which is pretty close to ‘standing pat.’  I’m not really going to go into the tall weeds on this one – my math isn’t up to the task – but the result is pretty darn close to my own gut call of “single-digit Democratic gains*,” so clearly these people are geniuses.

Moe Lane

*I expect a good bit of churn, though.  We have a large freshman class and redistricting is affecting both sides; but the Democrats have a lackluster lineup this election cycle and the last three cycles have been pure hell on any Congressman who had any visible weakness at all. So we will lose people, and so will they, and the Republicans will retain the House.

#rsrh Politico: there are 18 CONFIRMED fools in the Democratic House Caucus.

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

#rsrh QotD, It’s The Democrats’ Own Darn Fault edition.

The Wall Street Journal, on the Democrats’ Obamacare oopsie:

The drafters and defenders of the health-care law have only themselves to blame for this mess. With a filibuster-proof Senate and total domination of the House, they did not trouble to build the consensus necessary for transformative legislation of this scope.

More importantly, they did not take seriously their obligation to legislate within the limits set by the Constitution. Indeed, when a reporter asked in October 2009 what the constitutional basis was for the statute, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissively responded, “Are you serious?”

Either the drafters of the legislation should have stayed within the generous bounds of authority established by prior precedent, or the administration’s lawyers needed to offer a legal defense for going beyond those precedents that does not do violence to fundamental structural features of our Constitution. They could hardly expect the independent judiciary to write Congress a blank check of plenary regulatory authority, without discernible limit.

Although, to be fair to the Democrats: the judiciary had been more or less doing precisely that, up to now.  Of course, that just encouraged Congress to spiral more and more inward, until it reached a point where the judiciary got alarmed.

Moral of the story: don’t get grabby.

#rsrh Edolphus Towns (D, NY)… will not run for re-election.

Yes, I normally refer to this as ‘cutting and running,’ but Towns has been decent on free trade, net neutrality, and endorsed Giuliani for Mayor of NYC.  Also, Al Sharpton hates him.  That’s worth at least a little mercy.

Besides, the news that a sixteen term Congressman – and one of their heavy hitters, too; Towns was Oversight chair before the GOP took the House back in 2010 – isn’t running for office again should be sufficiently unnerving for the Democrats anyway.  As the National Journal helpfully notes, this puts the score for retirements to 25: 15 Democratic, 10 Republican.  And if you’re wondering why that number isn’t being widely mentioned, it’s probably because it’s not very helpful to the existing narrative that the Democrats have a hope of retaking the House this year. Continue reading #rsrh Edolphus Towns (D, NY)… will not run for re-election.

Sabato’s Crystal Ball predicts… DOOM for Congressional Democrats.

For a given value of ‘DOOM.’

They crunched some numbers, put together an equation or two, sacrificed three white cockerels to Moloch and came up with… the Democrats picking up three seats in the House, and losing seven in the Senate.  Which will lead people all over the spectrum to write posts and articles all using a variant of the concept Yes, probably.  (pause) But…

Continue reading Sabato’s Crystal Ball predicts… DOOM for Congressional Democrats.

#rsrh :raised eyebrow: Boehner’s comment is news, Mediate?

The quote in question:

[Congress is] just a slice of America, it really is. We got some of the smartest people in the country who serve here, and some of the dumbest.

I mean, I say this every freaking day. There are Members of Congress that I wouldn’t trust to put their shoes on the right way three days running.  I’m cheered to hear that the Speaker of the House is under no illusions, either…

#rsrh Nancy Pelosi, out in the cold (where she belongs).

This would be sad…

At Thursday’s White House meeting between President Obama and congressional leaders, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner laid out in stark terms the awful economic repercussions of allowing the debt ceiling to lapse. Everyone in the room agreed that defaulting on U.S. debt would be disastrous and that something must be done. At that point, Nancy Pelosi asked: Why couldn’t the debt ceiling be decoupled from deficit reduction?

Her query, after so many weeks of reports and talks centered on deficit reduction tied to a debt ceiling deal, visibly surprised some leaders in the room, several Republican and Democratic sources say. Obama politely informed the House Minority Leader, those same sources say, that that train had left the station weeks ago.

…if it had happened to anybody else except the House Minority Leader.  As it is, it’s a glaring (or entertaining) reminder of why former Speakers of the House typically, you know, leave after they’ve been repudiated.  The woman has less power now than she did as House Minority Leader in 2005, when both Congress and the White House were held by Republicans; when a politician slips down from the pinnacle of power to his/her old position, that politician has by definition demonstrated an essential weakness.  Expecting other politicians not to note that, and act accordingly, is… foolish.

Continue reading #rsrh Nancy Pelosi, out in the cold (where she belongs).

#rsrh Shocker: Speaker Boehner, Senate Minority Leader McConnell…

…apparently get along well.

I presume that the goal of the New York Times here is to try to get Republicans currently riled at McConnell also riled at Boehner, and vice versa.  Which is their privilege as an unofficial, yet obvious Democratic party house organ; but I fail to see why the obvious truth that the two men have decided to work together is such a surprise.  As Samuel Johnson once noted:

Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

…and God knows that four years of Democratic control of Congress and three of the Presidency have certainly done much to slowly strangle the fiscal life out of the country already.  That the two top Republicans in Congress have decided in response to act like adults and not like spoiled, petulant children is hardly newsworthy, is it?

(pause)

Don’t answer that.

Moe Lane

(Via Hot Air Headlines)