The 20 Democratic House Incumbents Leading Their Party To Ruin In November

Gallup was out with some interesting findings this morning: Record-High 42% of Americans Identify as Independents. Look at that chart! It should be sending waves of fear through the hearts of the worthless careerists who run the Beltway establishments of the two corrupt political parties.

Forty-two percent of Americans, on average, identified as political independents in 2013, the highest Gallup has measured since it began conducting interviews by telephone 25 years ago. Meanwhile, Republican identification fell to 25%, the lowest over that time span. At 31%, Democratic identification is unchanged from the last four years but down from 36% in 2008.

...Americans' increasing shift to independent status has come more at the expense of the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. Republican identification peaked at 34% in 2004, the year George W. Bush won a second term in office. Since then, it has fallen nine percentage points, with most of that decline coming during Bush's troubled second term. When he left office, Republican identification was down to 28%. It has declined or stagnated since then, improving only slightly to 29% in 2010, the year Republicans "shellacked" Democrats in the midterm elections.

Not since 1983, when Gallup was still conducting interviews face to face, has a lower percentage of Americans, 24%, identified as Republicans than is the case now. That year, President Ronald Reagan remained unpopular as the economy struggled to emerge from recession. By the following year, amid an improving economy and re-election for the increasingly popular incumbent president, Republican identification jumped to 30%, a level generally maintained until 2007.

Democratic identification has also declined in recent years, falling five points from its recent high of 36% in 2008, the year President Barack Obama was elected. The current 31% of Americans identifying as Democrats matches the lowest annual average in the last 25 years.

…Americans are increasingly declaring independence from the political parties. It is not uncommon for the percentage of independents to rise in a non-election year, as 2013 was. Still, the general trend in recent years, including the 2012 election year, has been toward greater percentages of Americans identifying with neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party, although most still admit to leaning toward one of the parties.

The rise in political independence is likely an outgrowth of Americans' record or near-record negative views of the two major U.S. parties, of Congress, and their low level of trust in government more generally.

The increased independence adds a greater level of unpredictability to this year's congressional midterm elections. Because U.S. voters are less anchored to the parties than ever before, it's not clear what kind of appeals may be most effective to winning votes. But with Americans increasingly eschewing party labels for themselves, candidates who are less closely aligned to their party or its prevailing doctrine may benefit.

This year there is not a single candidate on the Blue America House endorsement page-- all progressive, independent-minded, anti-corruption Democrats-- who has yet to be backed by the anti-independent/pro-corruption DCCC. Grassroots voters are sick of the DCCC Republican-lite strategy, both in Congress and on the hustings. 2014 is likely to be another disastrous year for Steve Israel and the DCCC. Their wrong-headed strategy will keep Democrats and progressive-independents away from the polls in droves, just like it did in 2010 (the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse). There are 20 Democratic incumbents who, on crucial roll calls, have voted over 50% of the time against the progressive side and made common cause with Boehner and Cantor. WHy should grassroots voters even bother going to the polls to support them? Them… these (along with their 2013 ProgressivePunch crucial vote score):

• Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL- 49.61)
• Dan Maffei (New Dem-NY- 49.24)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA- 48.48)
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA- 46.92)
• Nick Rahall (WV- 45.86)
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL- 45.80)
• Cheri Bustos (IL- 44.96)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN- 42.11)
• Joe Garcia (New Dem-FL- 42.06)
• Raul Ruiz (CA- 40.91)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX- 39.10)
• Carolyn McCarthy (New Dem-NY- 35.42)- retiring
• Kyrsten Sinema (New Dem-AZ 33.60)
• Bill Owens (New Dem-NY- 33.08)
• Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY 31.58)
• Pete Gallego (New Dem-TX- 31.54)
• Mike McIntyre (New Dem-NC- 30.00)- retiring
• Ron Barber (New Dem-AZ- 25.40)
• John Barrow (New Dem-GA- 23.31)
• Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT- 22.56)- retiring

Matheson, who would have had no chance to be reelected this year, is retiring "voluntarily." None of these incumbents deserve to be reelected. The only worry I haves is that the antipathy they have created towards Democrats could spill over to regular Dems the way it did in 2010. Looking for Democratic candidates from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party? Check here.