Jul 23 2010
Alarm Bells Ring In 40 Democrat House Seats, Veil Of Denial Ripped Away
"Baghdad Bob"
(Select the image to review some of Baghdad Bob’s classic claims)
Despite all the delusional and misleading denials by DC Democrats regarding their chances this coming election (especially that schtick by “Beltway Biden” this last week on ABC News), the reality of the Democrats’ situations is clear when you focus on where they are spending their money. The Politico reports on ad buys in 40 house seats the Democrats need to defend to keep control of the House, basically identifying those races the Dems know are in trouble:
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has invested approximately $28 million worth of television air time to defend vulnerable incumbents running for reelection this fall, a senior Democratic official confirmed to POLITICO.
…
The scale of the DCCC’s ad reservations showcases the committee’s massive financial strength: just two days ago, the DCCC announced it had $34 million in the bank, doubling the National Republican Congressional Committee’s $17 million war chest.
The fact is the Democrats are spending 82% of their war chest on defending these seats. Now Dems are down to $6 million in the bank. An let’s also be clear here, that buy is roughly $700k per districts – which is good in rural distracts but a pittance in urban/suburban districts.
The Politico can try and spin this as ‘massive financial strength’, but it is actually a blatant Hail Mary move – way early in the game. If this fails, there will be little chance in the fall to add more financial stimulus to their caucus, at least on this scale. Donors could be (and probably already are) backing away from the Democrats. I mean, who haven’t the Dems blamed for all their mistakes and horrible policies? Is Big Business going to rescue the Dems? Small Business? Doctors? Seniors? Energy companies? Wall Street? Main Street? The Dems have turned off most of the country. Who wants to spend money on a losing bet?
Also what is fascinating is how far up the seniority chain the alarm bells are ringing inside the DCCC:
The DCCC reserved air time in 40 districts, according to a document provided to POLITICO. Most of the buys are designed to shore up vulnerable first-term Democrats, including Alabama Rep. Bobby Bright, Colorado Rep. Betsy Markey, Florida Rep. Suzanne Kosmas, New Mexico Rep. Harry Teague, Pennsylvania Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper, Michigan Rep. Mark Schauer, Nevada Rep. Dina Titus; Ohio Reps. John Boccieri, Steve Driehaus and Mary Jo Kilroy; and Virginia Reps. Tom Perriello and Glenn Nye and Gerry Connolly.
The committee is also devoting resourcing to helping a small group of veteran lawmakers facing unusually stiff challenges, including South Carolina Rep. John Spratt, who chairs the House Budget Committee; Missouri Rep. Ike Skelton, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee; North Dakota Rep. Earl Pomeroy, Pennsylvania Rep. Paul Kanjorski, Texas Rep. Chet Edwards and Iowa Rep. Leonard Boswell.
In a sign that Republicans have succeeded in broadening the playing field for the midterm campaign, the DCCC bought time in several districts represented by members previously viewed as safe, including Ohio Rep. Betty Sutton, Texas Rep. Ciro Rodriguez and Florida Rep. Allen Boyd.
Emphasis mine. The warning flags are out and danger is ahead an all fronts (especially in VA where there is a chance the Dems lose 3 seats just there). Biden can lay on the fiction all day long, but it only adds to the image of a party spiraling down the drain – and painfully unaware why they are being flushed.
Update: More here:
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee reserved television time in 40 districts across the country, including those of Representatives John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina, chairman of the Budget Committee, and Ike Skelton of Missouri, chairman of the Armed Services Committee. The committee also reserved time to help Representative Chet Edwards of Texas, who is seeking his 11th term in November and is among the party’s most vulnerable members.
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The 40 districts that Democrats selected, based on polling, candidate fund-raising and the strength of Republican opposition, include five seats in Ohio, four in Pennsylvania, three in Arizona and in Virginia, and two each in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New York and Texas.
So, the Dems are on track to lose 11 governor seats and drop down to only 14 states (28%), the Democrat Senate Majority leader is in serious trouble and 2 Dem chairman are on the endangered Democrat list. But according to Beltway Biden we are going to be surprised?!?!?
I might have to agree with Beltway Bob – Dems who believe the MSM certainly are going to be surprised. No time for victory laps yet – there’s still plenty of time left to screw this up. Still, the failure of the Climate Bill yesterday brought a smile to my face, even though we’d known that had been coming for a long time. Imagine the pain of the True Believers, like NYT columnist Tom Friedman, who were sure that Obama, Reid, and Pelosi were going to pull some rabbit out of the hat at the end.
No rabbits, no hats, no green jobs, no new energy economy. Just lies that have finally worn out their welcome.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Free To Prosper, AJ Strata. AJ Strata said: new: Alarm Bells Ring In 40 Democrat House Seats, Veil Of Denial Ripped Away http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/13776 […]
AJ,
A friend in LA sent me the following:
>> LOUISIANA POLLSTER BERNIE PINSONAT: “Democrats in Louisiana are headed
>> for a long period of being inconsequential. Landrieu voting for
>> President Obama’s health care legislation and against the stated wishes
>> of the vast majority of her constituents here in Louisiana was a
>> disaster for Democrats. Now the Obama oil moratorium is pushing
>> Louisiana to being the most anti-Democrat of the fifty states. Louisiana
>> is now fire engine red.”
My take on the 2010 Federal elections in Louisiana is that Pres. Obama has so racially polarized the electorate there — with the BP oil spill fiasco — that we are going to see what an American state looks like when whites vote nearly as Republican (85% +/- 5%) as blacks vote Democrat (93 % +/- 5%).
I don’t see a state wide office, or majority white Federal House seat, going Democrat in LA for 20 years, starting in 2010.
The implications for elected Black political power of that is harsh, and made worse by the blatantly Racial/Partisan nature of DoJ Voting Rights enforcement black lash from Whites, who no longer see the Fed’s as legitimate agents of justice.
Popular, mass, non-compliance by Whites, combined with highly restricted Republican majority Congressional budgets for DoJ Voting Rights enforcement litigation spells lower long term Black voter turn out, however you cut it.
We MUST be ever vigilant the Dims and Rinos will not go easily.
We MUST not go to the polls alone. Take an uninterested party along.
Grandma or the 18 year old. Register them NOW!
If they are too disinterested try to get them an absentee ballot an HELP them fill it out and submit it!
Do not assume grandma and grandpa in the nursing Homes or your college kids won’t vote else the Union labor at the Home or some Lib at college will HELP them.
If we each took ONE otherwise non-voter to the polls we would swamp the corruptocrats in a landslide of new voters and end their reign of terror!
Another thought about the money being spent – it’s all being thrown at the dinosaur media, which means that just about all of it is going to disappear like a pebble thrown in a mud puddle. Bloop! Current campaign advertising completely ignores how the internet, especially the blogosphere, is changing the way people are getting their information. Every day, more people give up the MSM and take to the web to find out their own info. Every day, the reach of the MSM gets a little bit shorter, and the new media becomes stronger. The most significant effect of this, with regard to elections?
Advertising money no longer has the effect that it used to have, because it doesn’t reach those people who’ve dropped the MSM. It can’t. But campaign operators keep piling in cash, because it’s all they know how to do, even though they long ago have reached the point of diminishing returns. More and more money gets less and less results, but all they know to do is to try and throw even more money at the problem.
It won’t work. It can’t.
Allow me to make an analogy which may seem to be a bit of a stretch, but I think it holds. What is the ultimate reason the Stimulus bill failed? Beyond all the self dealing that you have so ably chronicled, the fundamental failure of the Stimulus is the failure of Keynesian Economic Theory in general. Ideas of Stimulus are based on the belief that $1 in spending produces $1.60 in economic activity – Joe Biden’s words. The Dems bought that hook, line, and sinker, and that’s why they are so amazed that the stimulus has failed. That result doesn’t fit into their theory of How the World should Work, and they have no alternate models to fall back on. Real world results suggest that $1 of government spending may produce only about .20 cents worth of economic growth, which means (since the money has to be pulled from the private sector) that you have actually *diminished* your economy by .80 cents for every government dollar spent!
That is not just anathema to the Keynesians, that is a heretical result that destroys their entire worldview and leaves them unable to cope, or function. Their answer will always be to just keep doing more of what they’ve been doing, since they have no intellectual framework which will allow them to do anything else, no matter how self destructive those actions may be.
This, btw, is how the endgame for political and social movements play out – the group in question finds themselves locked into a series of actions which guarantee their self destruction but which their ideology demands they adhere to. This is where the Dems are today, and where the country as a whole will be if we continue to allow them to hold power.
And I was going to make a connection to campaign finance – just as with Keynesian theory, there is a large professional apparatus in this country dedicated to telling politicians that all they have to do to get elected is spend money. Of course they say that, for that is how they are paid. (David Axelrod, chief case in point) Not only do they not realize that the world has radically changed, they are *incapable of realizing or accepting this, because to accept this means accepting their own personal and professional end. They *have* to preach the message that Money = Winning, even if it isn’t true, because that message is their lifeblood.
But it’s a bad theory, and a failing idea. This is going to be an election where from the bottom grass roots wins, and from the top electioneering fails. In this kind of election, spending more money just means throwing away the resources of your most loyal supporters. (example – the union spending for the far left candidate in Arkansas, $10 million gone for nothing at all)
But the advocates of Big Spending can’t and won’t admit this – how can they? As I said, their personal and professional lives depend on this inconvenient fact never being mentioned.
Even if it leads to the destruction of everyone who believes in them – and it most certainly will.
AJ,
The Obama Administration seems dead set on killing the careers of three 2006/2008 election cycle Democratic house members in Arizona with it’s border control litigation.
When the break down in public order — from the lack of federal immigration law enforcement in Arizona — is so bad that a Federal district judge lectures Department of Justice litigators from the bench during opening arguments, you gotta problem.
Especially since talk radio is going to repeat U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton’s statements over and over again for weeks.
See:
U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton also went beyond dry legal analysis to point out some of the everyday realities of illegal immigration and how that applies to the new law.
Without prodding from attorneys, the judge noted that the federal government erected signs in a wilderness area south of Phoenix that warn visitors about immigrant and drug smugglers passing through public lands. She said the stash houses where smugglers hide immigrants from Mexico before bringing them into the country’s interior have become a fixture on the news in Arizona.
“You can barely go a day without a location being found in Phoenix where there are numerous people being harbored,” said Bolton, who didn’t issue a ruling after the two hearings.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100723/ap_on_re_us/us_immigration_arizona_lawsuits/print
We have a serious situation upon us in that we really do not want any liberal republicans helping republicans get a majority, because of the effects of having to negotiate with them. And the resulting blame the republicans will have heaped upon them.
1. Lindsey Graham who I used to like, is in the pockets of GE, as I understand it. Cap and Trade anyone? Hell no.
2. The New England group have voted for the Financial Reg bill (a total intrusion into our personal lives)
3. They have voted on many other bills of similar consequences. There CANNOT STAND.
I am not against them under normal circumstances BUT these are NOT normal times. We must swing HARD to bring this country back from financial destruction, redistribution(THEFT) and weakened defenses…no time for compromises. We will reserve those for later.
Trent, today’s Houston Chronicle painted the story about the lawsuit between Arizona and US DOJ differently from this yahoo article.
Anyone ever listened to Apostle Claver?
So Cao may have a better chance at getting re-elected in a heavily black district?
WWSon 23 Jul 2010 at 9:23 am
What IF there’s a half trillion dollar slush fund still available from Stimulus in Oct. for Pinnochio to use. For him evaluate where that money needs to go and for which pork barrell, vote buying Congress Critter or Senate Scum?
Does the equation change?
Not if the Repubs frame it correctly!
Example, in my business we relied on telemarketers to set appointments. When the Do Not Call List came into effect we noticed a rapid decline in effectiveness to phone calls that eventually translated into outright avoidance of answering and hostility. We made the decision the calling was doing more harm than good.
Same could be said here IF the cash thrown at the Main Stream media is FRAMED as a waste of taxpayer funds and for feathering of the nests of scoundrels by the demorats!
>Trent, today’s Houston Chronicle painted the story about the
>lawsuit between Arizona and US DOJ differently from this
>yahoo article.
You are surprised by this, how?
dhunter, regarding a potential slush fund: On this blog, AJ has done an excellent job on showing that one of the problems with the stimulus is that it takes so ridiculously long for the bureacracy to implement any kind of plan.
practical impact of that observation: for any kind of money to be used in time to have an impact on the election, that implementation has got to be starting *right* *now*. Amazing to think, but do you realize we’re just about 100 days away from the election? The bureacracy can’t react that fast – if the plans aren’t already in place, then it’s already too late. Doesn’t matter how bad the guys on top may want it, the inefficiency of the bureacracy itself makes this impossible
And given how incompetent this administration has been at everything else, I think it’s a safe bet that they’ll treat this just the same. They never think of taking any action at all anywhere until it’s far too late – at least this time that flaw works to our advantage!
AJ, WWS,
This is from an e-mail friend of mine on the structure of the Democratic wipe out coming in 2010:
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Sometimes there’s nothing you can do right – when everything is just pouring more s*** into the fan.
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There are so many things going wrong for the Democrats right now. Their truly outstanding netroots campaign orgnizations built up over a period of years have been cut off by the long-traditional control-freak attitude of an incumbent presidential administration.
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The only exceptions I am aware of to the latter have occurred in 1940, when Lyndon Johnson ran a stealth campaign for the House Democrats which the FDR administration was unaware of, and 2004 which was Karl Rove’s great moment in American politics. He successfully kept the Bush administration from trying to dominate the state and local GOP campaign efforts.
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In this year the Democrats have completely and irrevocably (at least for this year) lost the one demographic – seniors – which MSM campaign advertising can still effectively reach.
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And, with the Obama administration control freaks blocking the space previously occupied by the Democratic netroots, they don’t know how to reach their other demographics which might be influenced, in turn-out if nothing else, by spending on campaign workers and get out the vote efforts.
.
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When you reward loyalty over competence, you are going to get and deserve neither.
wws, wouldn’t the requirement of bidders that they belong to unions have anything to do with the failure of stimulus bill?
After attending two tea party rallies in the last two weeks and seeing what my local Republican party is doing, I sense that the tea parties are doing things in the background and quietly. They seem to be preparing for something really, really big for the last three months prior to the November elections.
One example: Freedombillboardstexas.com – go check it. The locals are planning on strategic billboard selections around Houston. It costs ten grand for 3 months but I don’t know if it is per billboard or a group of billboards.
Another example is for the tea partyers to attend some baseball game in October 2nd donning their tea party t-shirts with flags and signs.
And there are meetings, presentation, and training on how to become a precinct chairman and what a precinct chairman can do to encourage people within their precints to vote.
Historic statistics show that the voter turnout is very low off-year elections. The local statistics for one precinct showed the Republican turnout at 6 percent but the Democrat turnout at 1 percent.
So the idea is to try and improve the republican turnout because Houston is at threat. If Houston turns blue, Texas won’t go to Perry.
Trent, Houston Chronicle “links” to a LA Times article. So that’s not so surprising. Here it is!
The LA Time article is so misleading.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-arizona-immigration-20100723,0,3498774.story
Raising Republican turnout in Houston is key, since that’s White’s stronghold. (He was a popular mayor, after all)
It’s interesting how the voting will break regionally – White really only has a good shot at taking Harris County (Houston) Dallas County (majority black and hispanic now) Travis County (Austin), Bexar County (San Antonio) and about 10 counties down in The Valley. Perry should take the other 240 counties pretty easily, give or take a handful. (Okay, Corpus Christi is iffy) And yet because those are the population concentrations, it still could be close, and it’s hard to organize and raise turnout much in the rural counties. (population too spread out)
So, big city turnout will be the game.
[…] The Strata-Sphere – Alarm Bells Ring In 40 Democrat House Seats, Veil Of Denial Ripped Away […]
WWS – Re Your post at 9:23a.m. Thank you! That was really insightful, impartial and objective. As do you, I believe the Democratic party has finally reached the point no matter how much money it throws at any particular problem, the money has been wasted.
I can only hope and pray November will prove Liberalism, Progressivism, and/or Socialism is DEAD!!!
If only the youth AND the Jews would finally understand the political definition of “liberalism”, rather than “freedom”.
WWS,
This is an internal Rep Cao (R-LA) poll result:
Cao Poll Shows His Strength Against Democrats
Though rated the most vulnerable Republican incumbent in the House, Congressman Joseph Cao, R-New Orleans, has released a poll showing his surprising strength in the heavily Democratic 2nd District.
The 400-sample Verne Kennedy poll done for Cao has him leading state Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans, 51-26 percent. Richmond is vying for the Democratic nomination against Rep. Juan Lafonta, who was not matched up against Cao in the poll.
The key finding has Cao leading Richmond among African-Americans, 39-36 percent, while being way in front among whites, 67-13 percent.
The New Orleans white vote is going 70-30 for Cao over _any Democrat_ and the Obama Administration has so poisoned the LA economy with it’s oil drilling moratorium that Cao tied with the best black candidate.
[…] claim all day long they will win in November, but that is just propaganda-speak for the gullible. Â Just last week the Dems purchased $28 million in ad buys for 40 endangered D-congress-critters, ranging from freshmen to committee chairmen. That purchase […]