Aug 19 2010
GOP Offensive, Democrats Need To Play Triage
Dick Morris has a great article out (H/T Reader Trent Telenko) noting how the Democrats are in such bad shape they need to decide, now, which congress critters to save because if they tried to save too many they could end up with even larger losses by spreading their money too thin:
Take Virginia, for example: Three House Democrats are facing tough re-election races there — and one is as good as gone. In Charlottesville, freshman Democrat Tom Perriello is running more than 20 points behind his GOP challenger, Robert Hurt. In Norfolk/Virginia Beach, Glenn Nye is slightly behind his Republican opponent, Scott Rigells. In the southwestern part of the state, longterm incumbent Rick Boucher still leads his GOP challenger, Morgan Griffith — but the Republican could well come on and win.
So where should the Dems put their money? They’ll probably need both the Perriello and Nye seats to keep their majority. But if they put funds there, they won’t have enough left to protect Boucher.
So do they endanger Boucher to try to protect Nye and Perriello, or fall back and make sure solider incumbents like Boucher win — even if it means virtually guaranteeing a loss of their majority by giving up on the Nye and Perriello seats?
It is a solid observation. The Democrats are going to lose the House, it is now just a question of by how much.
The GOP and its allies are on the offensive, building momentum and hammering the Democrats. If the conservatives can produce more of these excellent videos, outlining the difference between left and right, they will come into November very strongly.
Of course, if they promise to dismantle the nanny state. They will be unstoppable. For example: the DoD protects us (so it stays), whereas the EPA lectures us on CO2 (falsely) and prioritizes small, useless fish over the lives of human beings (so it gets gutted to the bare minimum).
Enjoy and share the videos. First one was found at Ace of Spades:
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Free To Prosper, AJ Strata. AJ Strata said: new: GOP Offensive, Democrats Need To Play Triage http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/14007 […]
AJ,
I’ll give you a profile of a triaged long term Democratic incumbent — Chet Edwards of Waco Texas.
He is a rural, Red energy state, Congressman who is 12 points behind his Republican challenger:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=38615
Nevertheless, Democratic strategists were urging their party to embrace the Pelosi/White House political scheme to make this fall’s election all about Bush and not about the economy, jobs and trillion dollar budget deficits.
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“If Americans believe there are two paths from which to choose: a clear Obama path or the Bush path, progressives will control the debate,†advised the left-leaning Third Way, a Democratic think tank based in Washington.
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As the long August recess continued, there were growing reports that many Democrats were shunning town hall meetings to avoid having to face angry constituents who packed town halls last year to denounce Obamacare.
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One of them is Rep. Chet Edwards, Texas Democrat, who “has dedicated the recess period to avoiding the public at every possible turn,†the National Republican Congressional Committee said last week. “Instead of engaging with his constituents face-to-face and owning up to the unpopular, job-killing policies of the Obama-Pelosi agenda, Edwards has decided to simply ignore the Texas families who put him in elected office.â€
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Polls showed the longtime Waco congressman running a dozen points behind his Republican challenger Bill Flores.
I don’t expect any Democratic House or Senate campaign committee money to go to Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, or Alabama due to the BP Oil spill fall out/wash up.
Neither will Democratic seats in Michael Barone’s “Jacksonian belt” fronting Appalachia, unless we are talking Democratic committee chairmen.
Western, South & Central Florida, Mississippi and Georgia, otoh ,will get a lot of cash due to “beaches and blacks,” as one of the Louisiana political types I talked to put it.
I have also talked to a 1/2 dozen Dallas area Republican activists in person or by e-mail who are or are planning to spend week ends in Edward’s district in September and October campaigning against him.
And he isn’t the only one, if the cross talk at the Free Republic and Red State are any indication.
A lot of Republican activists are doing triage of their own and planning on working week ends outside the Republican swing districts of the last two election cycles and move to nearby recently taken Republican seats or newly threatened incumbent Democratic House districts (usually rural) to get lots of anti-Democratic mail in votes in October, then working their own districts the the last few days of the campaign.
AJ, WWS,
One other triage factor to look for in Late September-Early October for Democratic House seat triage is how badly Democrats are doing in the Governor and Senate seat level in a state.
A Democratic polling collapse in those races signals down ballot quicksand for House incumbents and lots of wasted resources if they are committed to such states.
Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania are all trending towards such top of the ticket collapses.
The DCCC doubling down in those states (& the DSCC throwing a lot of money in California to save Sen. Barbara Boxer) tells you we are looking at an election cycle where not a single Republican House incumbent loses, all the open House seats go Republican, and a lot of Democratic incumbents in the House and a couple in the Senate no one expected too will go down.
Good news about Chet Edwards! He’s been a thorn in our side here in Texas for a long, long time. The fact that he’s not doing any meetings at all tells me that he – and I suspect most of the moderate Dem’s across the country – has finally given up, and accepted the fact that he’s retiring in January. Easy way to go out, really – hang onto the campaign money, use it for personal affairs (they’re allowed to with just a little bit of slick accounting) and coast on out to the easy life.
Because really, minds have been made up and the election is already set. It’s a myth that minds change a lot in the last two months, in most elections 90% of the individual decisions have been made by the August before the election.
So now we just got to let the clock run, and not make any huge mistakes. (ones like those which Obama keeps making)
and Look at this – new jobless claims “Unexpectedly” went back up above 500,000! Who could ever have predicted that???? (cough, cough)
http://tiny.cc/df6xw
We’re sliding down into the second valley of that double dip recession that all the apologists swear can’t possibly happen, and all the One’s horses and all the One’s men can’t get this economy going again!
All – please, please remember to help out in your local and state government races! They have as much influence on your life as the federal representatives do.
In the last two state GOP convention, there was a part to retire Chet Edwards. Maybe they will finally get their wish in November!
Chet Edwards used to represent my parents and they disliked him 100 percent. Since Delay’s redistricting of Texas, Chet no longer represented them.
I am not sure but isn’t he representing District 17? Cuz this is one of the top three democratically-held districts in Texas that either moved to red, tossup from blue, to maybe red.
Funny how Pelosi wanted Chet Edwards to be considered as VP under Obama.
My parents would LOVE to see Chet kicked out on his way out. Because his vote not only affects his own district but the entire state, and the entire nation.
AJ,
You need to update this post or put up another one based on the maps at the Vodkaspundit link.
It looks like the Democrats are in deep trouble in 70%(+) majority white population Federal House Districts, outside of districts dominated by university towns or state governments.
http://pajamasmedia.com/vodkapundit/2010/08/18/running-scared/?singlepage=true
From the piece:
…There are 84 races where the Democrats need to worry, and only seven for the GOP. And one of those seats (HI-01) is red only because of that fluke special election in Hawaii a couple months back, where multiple Dem candidates split the vote.
Also note that there is not one region in the country where the Democrats aren’t on defense — except for ubergerrymandered California. When the pundits tell you that 2010 isn’t like 1994, they’re right, but not for the reasons they tell you. The big GOP gains in ‘94 were in large part due to the finalization of the Solid South’s long march from blue to red. This time, the Democrats show significant weakness in the South, the Southeast, the industrial Midwest, the Mid Atlantic states, and in pretty big swathes of the Northeast. Even New Hampshire looks like it’s poised to return to return to the Republican fold.
So a total of 91 seats are in play right now. The Democrats have serious disadvantages in 52 of them, and must commit resources to defend a further 27. In a stark contrast, the GOP has three seats in trouble and another 3 in need of shoring up. Put that way, the Democrats’ cash advantage doesn’t look quite so fearsome.
WWS,
This Hotline column looks like good advice for Democrats.
http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2010/08/how_to_lose_a_g.php
I don’t know that many House and Senate campaigns will take it. This seems to be the common theme for Democrats:
“When in trouble, fear, or doubt, run around, scream and shout.”
And for good reason, from the same column:
The advice from Democratic consultants and strategists is almost unanimous: Run away from the president, and fast. A prominent Democratic pollster is circulating a survey that shows George W. Bush is 6 points more popular than President Obama in “Frontline” districts — seats held by Democrats that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sees as most vulnerable to Republican takeover. That Bush is more popular than Obama in Democratic-held seats is cause for outright fear.
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The more nationalized the election is, the more it helps Republicans. That’s why Democrats have gnashed their teeth so much over the proposed mosque near Ground Zero and Obama’s comments in support of allowing it to proceed. “At a time when people are freaking out about the direction of the country, about the economy, about government spending, he weighs into this issue — forcing them, and every Dem candidate, to explain their position on the mosque instead of talking about the economy,” bemoaned one prominent Democrat.
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Democrats who avoid being sucked into a national debate will have more success than those who get knocked off message by what the Beltway media wants to discuss that day, whether it’s Shirley Sherrod, the mosque or whatever else pops up next. Then again, with Reps. Charles Rangel and Maxine Waters facing ethics trials, that’s going to give the GOP ample opportunity to take the race national.
AJ,
It looks like Bruce Walker of American Thinker reads Vodkapundit’s electoral maps.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/a_coming_landslide.html
…Democrats who unwisely tied their political fortunes to this latest incarnation of the tired old mantra of “hope and change” now find themselves in the backseat of a fast car driven by a reckless teenager.
The current generic congressional ballots, as well as the slower-changing party identification polls, now favor Republicans, and the advantage seems to grow bigger every day. Compounding that problem is the “enthusiasm gap,” which has Democrats at the low end and Republicans at the high end, plus liberals at the low end and conservatives at the high end, which suggests that the vote on election day will be larger — perhaps much larger — than the six-point difference which currently separates the parties.
Obama these days appears less like a smooth political operator and more like a tone-deaf radical leftist who honestly does not understand why not opposing the construction of a mosque at Ground Zero offends such a large majority of Americans. When the pundits he listens to echo his surrealistic “tolerance” of Moslems intent upon destroying the moral foundations of our nation, Democrat candidates outside leftist hothouse constituencies of San Francisco or Vermont can only cringe. Everything Obama does, everything his wife does, seems to show Americans more starkly how their vision of a Joyful Obaman Presidency differs from the reality of this disciple of Alinksy in power.
What does this mean in electoral terms? If trends continue, then Republicans could do more than just win the House of Representatives: They could pick up seventy seats or more, putting the House out of reach for Democrats for perhaps a decade or more. Dick Morris has suggested, and I agree, that many Democrat Senate candidates thought safe a few months ago may not be safe at all. Blumenthal in Connecticut may be the next Democrat in “real trouble.” Gillibrand in New York may be, too. (L’affair du Mosque may hurt her a lot.) Manchin in West Virginia may slip, too. Wyden in Oregon? The numbers look good, until you realize that he ought to be light-years ahead of any Republican, and he is not. Is Milkuski safe in Maryland? Is Schumer safe in New York? The more this class of Senate Democrat candidates looks desperate, the more Republicans may be able to win stunning victories in even Maryland or New York.
The momentum of the November 2010 Democratic electoral collapse is increasing.