Why Congressional Recruitment Really Matters

This morning one of the Beltway trade papers ran a piece about how weak GOP backbencher Rodney Davis, is kicking the ass of Steve Israel's pathetic mystery meat candidate, Ann Callis, in Illinois' most swing district, IL-13. Earlier in the cycle, PPP polled the district and found Davis' job approval rating underwater and that more voters were ready to defeat him than reelect him. When informed that Davis had voted to shut down the government, 42% of registered voters said they would vote for him and 47% said they would vote for his Democratic opponent.

And that's when the DCCC and EMILY's List jumped into the primary, undermined the progressive Democrat running, George Gollin, and backed Dick Durbin's hapless and inspiring hack. She's raised about half of what Davis has-- $1,351,880 to his $2,621,132-- and has inspired no one but other partisan hacks and people who vote based solely on a candidate being a woman. The ultimate swing district-- PVI is zero and Obama won in 2008 55-44% and lost in a deadhead in 2012, 49-49%-- Callis is about to drastically underperform, as anyone with a bit of sense could have predicted. She has nothing to offer progressives… and conservatives already have their candidate. Polling shows Davis with 55% and Callis with an abysmal 36%. (In the last election, Davis squeaked by progressive grassroots Democrat David Gill with a bare thousand vote margin, 47-46%.)

So far this cycle, the DCCC has spent an ineffective $27,818 in the district and they and their ironically-named House Majority PAC have reserved $1,180,000 on St. Louis broadcast from Oct. 21 to Nov. 4 and $813,000 on Champaign broadcast and cable starting Sept. 30 to attack Davis. Now there are rumblings that Callis has run such a dreadful campaign-- doing exactly what the DCCC tells her to do-- that they may pull the ads, although no one at the DCCC is confirming that yet.

Freshman Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill., a top Democratic target this cycle, had a 19-point lead over his opponent with six weeks to go until Election Day, according to a poll conducted for his campaign and provided first to CQ Roll Call.

…Democrats recruited Callis, a former judge from Madison County, and touted her as one of their best candidates.

But Davis has had a visible presence in the district since he was first elected, and the poll showed he is known by 85 percent of voters in the district, with 41 percent of those voters viewing him favorably.

Callis, who Democrats privately say has not lived up to expectations as a candidate, was familiar to 63 percent of voters and just 19 percent viewed her favorably in the poll.

This morning, Greg Sargent covered the "midterm drop-off problem" for his readers at the Washington Post, although his concern was about the Senate rather than the House-- and he didn't mention lousy Democratic recruitment and prioritization at all. (If I had been writing that column, I would have mentioned the DSCC should be helping pull Rick Weiland in South Dakota and Shenna Bellows in Maine over the hump, instead of wasting millions of dollars on virtually unwinnable races for dull, uninspiring Establishment conservatives in Kentucky and Georgia. His point-- that "core Dem groups such as minorities, young voters and single women are expected to stay home in disproportionate numbers, leaving behind an older, whiter, more-GOP-friendly electorate"-- put he doesn't go beyond the horserace aspects of the campaign to ask why.

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Annenberg poll drives home the point in a fresh way. It finds that registered voters prefer a Democratic controlled Congress by 46-42. But “high interest” voters-- those who rate a nine or 10 on the intensity scale-- prefer a GOP-controlled Congress by a lopsided 51-43. Those “high interest” voters represent 44 percent of all registered voters.

...This mirrors recent Washington Post polling finding that core GOP voter groups are certain to vote in larger numbers than Democratic groups are. Other polling from CBS News offered similar findings.

As I reported the other day, Democratic focus grouping has found that midterm drop-off voters just aren’t persuaded of the stakes in this election. Democrats are throwing everything they have at this problem. They are using carefully selected issues not just to persuade voters, but to turn them out. The goal of emphasizing a women’s economic agenda focused on the minimum wage and pay equity is to motivate single women. Meanwhile Democrats hope to refine tactics designed to ensure that drop off voters are contacted again, and again, and again.

There’s a lot at stake here that goes well beyond this election. As pollster Celinda Lake has explained, shifting demographics are leaving the Democratic Party increasingly reliant on a growing coalition of “irregular” voters-- even as the Republican coalition is increasingly reliant on voter groups that do turn out in midterm years. Broadly speaking these demographic changes may portend bad news for the GOP in national elections. But they may also prove key to continued GOP success in Congress, and for Democrats, this represents a problem that may not be going away anytime soon.

Not a word about the uninspiring, even horrible, lesser-of-two evils candidates Israel has recruited (in his own Blue Dog image). And it isn't only pathetic Ann Callis. His prize recruit was virulently anti-gay, anti-Choice, pro-NRA, pro-fracking conservative Jennifer Garrison in Ohio. She has exactly zero chance to win for several reasons but one is certainly that progressives are not eager to turn out to elect the Sarah Palin of Ohio… even if she is wearing a blue t-shirt. Israel is more interested in stocking the Democratic caucus with conservative corporate shills like himself than he is is winning back the House. He will fail on both counts though… and miserably.