Even If The Senate Dems Avoid A Wave, Pelosi Set The Fate Of The House Dems When She Reappointed Steve Israel

Yesterday's NY Post found some nicely dressed young people who don't get drunk or get arrested for violent crimes and who knew how to use iPhones and dubbed them the next generation of Republicans, "throwbacks-- spurning drugs, crime and disorder, being sexually responsible and making sound choices about education. They might be the least disaffected, least rebellious kids since the Kennedy years. And that might have surprising political implications down the road." [Obviously The Post is clueless-- and this is the real future of the Republican Party-- but let's play along for a minute.] Absolutely... if Republicans just stop being the party of bigotry and hatred-- and kids never figure this economic stuff out-- they will have a chance to win the votes of these kids. Can they become pundits for the NY Post then?

Not everybody's first read of the morning is the NY Post. These days most people interested in politics start the day with Nate Cohn in the NY Times, right? And yesterday he was taking a less long-term view than are silly friends at the Post. He was looking at the upcoming Republican wave widely predicted for the November midterms. Or rather I should say he was looking for the wave or some sign there is a wave. He's not seein' it. He doesn't take Steve Israel's almost inexplicable incompetence into his calculations or talk about the coming disaster in the House, so I don't know how much credibility he will wind up with on the first Wednesday of November. He's saying the polls don't show a GOP takeover barreling down the pike-- even if he does bend over backwards to make believe Mark Warner (D-VA), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) or Jeff Merkley (D-OR) were ever really vulnerable against their trio of fifth rate clownish opponents.

Republicans entered this election cycle with high hopes. President Obama’s approval ratings had sunk into the low 40s, and the rollout of the Affordable Care Act had been an unmitigated disaster. In an off-year election, Democrats weren’t expected to fully mobilize the young and diverse coalition that has given them an advantage in presidential elections. Off-years are also when a president’s party typically suffers significant losses.

This year seemed poised to turn into another so-called wave election, like in 2006 or 2010, when a rising tide of dissatisfaction with the incumbent party swept the opposition into power. Given a favorable midterm map, with so many Democratic Senate seats in play, some analysts suggested that Republicans could win a dozen of them, perhaps even picking up seats in states like Virginia, New Hampshire and Oregon.

The anti-Democratic wave might still arrive. But with three and a half months to go until November’s elections, the promised Republican momentum has yet to materialize.

The race for the Senate, at least right now, is stable. There aren’t many polls asking whether voters would prefer Democrats or Republicans to control Congress, but the Democrats appear to maintain a slight edge among registered voters. Democratic incumbents in red Republican states, who would be all but doomed in a Republican wave, appear doggedly competitive in places where Mitt Romney won by as much as 24 points in 2012.

...But as July turns to August, the G.O.P. is now on the clock. If there is to be a wave this November, the signs of a shift toward the G.O.P. ought to start to show up, somewhere, soon. Every day that goes by without a shift toward the G.O.P. increases the odds that there will not be a wave at all.

How could the Democrats dodge a wave, given the president’s weak ratings and the long history of the president’s party losing in midterms?

Part of it might come from the unpopularity of the Republican Party. The G.O.P. is less popular today than it was in 2010, when G.O.P. favorability ratings increased and Democratic ratings faltered in advance of the midterms. Mr. Obama’s approval ratings might also be deceptive: They’re mainly low because of minimal support from Republican leaners, not because Mr. Obama has lost an unusual amount of ground among his own supporters.

In presidential years, pundits just care about that race and in midterms they just care about the Senate. I agree that the Democrats might avoid the ultimate catastrophe in the battle to hold the Senate, but their weak majority will be a lot weaker even if they don't lose it and the hapless Michael Bennet (and Guy Cecil) will never measure up to Patty Murray's unbelievable series of unexpected victories in 2012 Senate races. But even while she was flushing away GOP hopes in Massachusetts, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Virginia, West Virginia, Missouri, Ohio, Montana, Florida, and Michigan, Israel was demonstrating that Pelosi had selected the worst DCCC chairman in the history of DCCC chairmen.

Despite Murray's sweep and Obama's reelection, Israel never even approached winning back the House. Boehner had a 49 seat majority going in and a 41 seat majority after all this tens of millions of dollars were spent. Israel failed in recruiting and he failed in strategy. Pelosi reappointed him and he's doubled down on those same recruitment and strategic operations. And, of course, he will fail again, much worse this time, because he's learned nothing from his failure-- and insists his failure was actually a success-- and has just dug his heals in even worse this time than last time. By digging in an insisting on the DCCC backing a worthless Blue Dog in NC-11, for example, Israel handed Heath Shuler's seat over to Republican Mark Meadows. Missed opportunities due to bad recruitment and refusal to back progressives included open seats like MI-11 (Kerry Bentovolio) and OH-14 (David Joyce), both of which Israel is giving away again this year. Other seats Democrats probbaly would have won if Pelosi had appointed a vaguely competent DCCC chair instead of Israel:

• CA-10 (Jeff Denham)
• CA-21 (David Valadao)
• CA-25 (Buck McKeon)
• CA-31 (Gary Miller)
• CO-06 (Mike Coffman)
• FL-10 (Daniel Webster)
• FL-13 (Bill Young)
• FL-16 (Vern Buchanan)
• FL-27 (Ileana Ros-Lehtinen)
• IL-06 (Peter Roskam)
• IL-13 (Rodney Davis)
• MI-03 (Justin Amash)
• MI-06 (Fred Upton)
• MI-07 (Tim Walberg)
• MI-08 (Mike Rogers)
• MN-02 (John Kline)
• MN-03 (Erik Paulsen)
• MT-AL (Steve Daines)
• NV-03 (Joe Heck)
• NJ-03 (Jon Runyan)
• NJ-05 (Scott Garrett)
• NY-02 (Peter King)
• NY-11 (Michael Grimm)
• NY-19 (Chris Gibson)
• NY-23 (Tom Reed)
• PA-06 (Jim Gerlach)
• PA-07 (Pat Meehan)
• PA-08 (Mike Fitzpatrick)
• PA-15 (Charlie Dent)
• PA-15 (Joe Pitts)
• VA-07 (Eric Cantor)
• WA-08 (Dave Reichert)
• WI-01 (Paul Ryan)
• WI-07 (Sean Duffy)
• wI-08 (Reid Ribble)

How many of these seats will Israel lose again-- and for the same reasons he lost them in 2012? Almost all of them. The Rothenberg Political Report's most recent ratings show just 51 seats "in play," although he takes far too much "information" from the DCCC and NRCC to serve as a reliable or even credible prognosticator.These are his categories:

PURE TOSS UP

• Ron Barber (Blue Dog-AZ)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Mike Coffman (R-CO)
• open Tom Latham (R-IA)
• Brad Schneider New Dem-IL)
• open Bill Owens (New Dem-NY)
• Nick Rahall (Blue Dog-WV)

TOSS-UP/TILT DEMOCRAT

• Ann Kirkpatrick (New Dem-AZ)
• Joe Garcia (New Dem-FL)
• John Tierney (D-MA)
• Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH)

LEAN DEMOCRAT

• open Gary Miller (R-CA)
• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)
• John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA)
• Bill Enyart (D-IL)
• Cheri Bustos (Blue Dog-IL)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Rick Nolan (D-MN)
• Ann Kuster (New Dem-NH)
• Tim Bishop (D-NY)
• Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm (R-NY)

DEMOCRAT FAVORED

• Kirsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)
• Julia Brownley (D-CA)
• Raul Ruiz (D-CA)
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)
• open Mike Michaud (New Dem-ME)
• Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY)
• Dan Maffei (New Dem-NY)
• Pete Gallego (Blue Dog-TX)

TOSS-UP/TILT REPUBLICAN

• David Valadao (R-CA)
• Steve Southerland (R-FL)
• Rodney Davis (R-IL)
• Dan Benishek (R-MI)
• Lee Terry (R-NE)
• open Jon Runyan (R-NJ)
• Chris Gibson (R-NY)

LEAN REPUBLICAN

• open Tim Griffin (R-AR)
• open Mike Rogers (R-MI)
• Tom Reed (R-NY)
• David Joyce (R-OH)
• open Jim Gerlach (R-PA)
• open Frank Wolf (R-VA)
• open Shelley Moore Capito

REPUBLICAN FAVORED

• Jeff Denham (R-CA)
• Jackie Walorski (R-IN)
• Kerry Bentivolio (R-MI)
• Tim Walberg (R-MI)
• open Steve Daines (R-MT)
• Denny Heck (R-NV)
• Bill Johnson (R-OH)
• Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA)

Notice that in Rothenberg's Beltway universe there are overall 51 seats in play, 25 Democratic-held seats and 26 Republican-held seats. However, of the Democratic seats, only 7 are actual Democrats, the rest all being useless Blue Dogs and New Dems from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- and that counts 3 cowardly Democratic freshmen, Bill Enyart, Julia Brownley and Raul Ruiz, as real Democrats when all 3 of them usually vote with the New Dems and Republicans on values issues. Most of the Democrats with seats in play deserve to lose and many of the vulnerable Republicans have Israel-recruited opponents who are way too lame to win, from Jennifer Garrison in Ohio, Patrick Henry Hayes in Arkansas and Jerry Cannon in Michigan to Sean Eldridge in New York and Ann Callis in Illinois.