Will The DCCC Change Its Name To The Incumbent Protection Racket For 2010?

Bill Young (R-FL)- Time to say goodbye

One of the little secrets Congressman X told me is that the DCCC had promised the freshmen that 2010 would be all about incumbent protection and that the big guns would be focused on retention rather than expansion. Thursday the DCCC's recruitment team-- Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Joseph Crowley, Steve Israel, Adam Schiff, Russ Carnahan and Bruce Braley (Emanuel and Artur Davis weren't there)-- to talk about what kind of recruiting they would be doing. Exactly a week ago, we suggested some good targets: Republicans who barely won their seats, some who ran against Democrats with no funding and no DCCC help at all, like Dan Lungren (CA), Ken Calvert (CA), Thaddeus McCotter (MI), Judy Biggert (IL), and Addison Wilson (SC). None of these were races on the DCCC radar and all of them came close enough to losing that Monday morning quarterbacks can safely speculate that at least a few could have been defeated if the Red to Blue program had done a better job, Wasserman Schultz had screwed up the program in Florida and it's a miracle that Alan Grayson managed to win-- and all too predictable that her rightist allies Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the notorious Diaz-Balart Brothers and Adam Putnam are still in office. Mario Diaz-Balart and Putnam look like good targets for next year-- unless Wasserman Shultz is in a position to protect them again.

Today's Hill makes the point that with 53 pickups in the last 2 cycles, there aren't that many districts left for them. That's patently absurd-- an attempt to create Inside the Beltway conventional wisdom out of thin air. A muscular and smart DCCC could win as many seats in 2010-- if Obama and the Democratic Congress actually address the real problems of the country in the next two years (admittedly a big "if")-- as they won in 2008. "The DCCC’s recruitment team met Thursday morning," writes Aaron Blake, "and concluded that 2010 would be an incumbent retention cycle, according to a Democratic strategist with knowledge of the meeting." This goes beyond DWS just trying to protect her Florida cronies.

There's no reason not to expect another surge of Republican retirements, a huge factor in this year's slaughter. I was looking over an interesting academic study about why members of Congress retire. "Factors such as age, electoral peril, and job satisfaction have been tested as possible explanations and evidence has emerged that each of them has at least some affect. However, congressional retirements have not been completely accounted for. One largely unexamined factor is the surge in party polarization since the 1970s. The increase in polarization created moderate and cross-pressured members in the House who were increasingly out of step with their party. It is possible that becoming isolated from one's party at a time when party was becoming increasingly important induced moderate members to retire." That accounted, at least in part, for the retirements this year of many mainstream conservatives and lead to disaster for a Republican Party caught in an accelerating downward spiral into extremism and regionalism.

Last December the House passed legislation-- unanimously-- that raised the mandatory retirement age for airline pilots to 65. One has to wonder when they look in their own House. But just taking age into account leads us to several likely retirements for 2010. The average age of a House member is 57, the oldest it's ever been. Ralph Hall (R-TX) will be 87 in 2010. Bill Young (R-FL), who will be 80 in 2010, for example, is almost surely retiring and his district really is a Democratic district now. Some of the other really old Republicans who are potential retirees (with their ages in 2010):

Roscoe Bartlett (MD)- 84
Sam Johnson (TX)- 80
Howard Coble (NC)- 79
Don Young (AK)- 77
Jerry Lewis (CA)- 76
Vern Ehlers (MI)- 76
Henry Brown (SC)- 75
Judy Biggert (IL)- 73
Buck McKeon (CA)- 72
Dan Burton (IN)- 72
Mike Castle (DE)- 71 (who, incongruously, may want to run for the Senate)
Frank Wolf (VA)- 71
Joe Pitts (PA)- 71

Several of these members had a rough time being re-elected this year and others are miserable working in a Republican Party that has become increasingly extreme and whose policies are more and more difficult to justify. The story in the Hill postulates that the DCCC "will continue to try to put pressure via paid and earned media on those who might vacate their seats-- a tactic that contributed to some of the 30 GOP retirements in the 2006 cycle."