If Trump Loses By A Billion Votes, The DCCC Will Still Fail To Win Back The House-- It's What They Do: Fail

The bright side: it can never get worse than this

Wednesday, we wrote about how polling shows that endorsing Hillary could be harmful to the career health of some congressional Democrats. Maybe not. The Wall Street Journal correctly points out her negatives and unfavorables but asserts that "an offshoot of [her] low favorability rating is that candidates who tie themselves to her risk alienating voters they need to win." It may be technically true that her low ratings will hurt some Democratic candidates, but how many of them are in districts, after decades of hyper-partisan gerrymandering in states like North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Tennessee, where it makes any realistic electoral difference at all? Democratic incumbents are generally safe because so many Democrats have been packed into so few districts. And the voters who will be more opposed to candidates who back Hillary are in districts Democrats have little to no chance of winning in any case.

The Journal goes on and on about how North Carolina Democrats could be hurt by Hillary's unpopularity. Which one? None are in close districts. In 2012 Romney narrowly won North Carolina-- 2,275,853 to 2,178,388 but by concentrating Democratic voters into a few bizarrely drawn districts, the Republican legislature managed to create 10 Republican districts and 3 Democratic districts. These are the 3 North Carolina Democrats in Congress-- all of whom are enthusiastic Hillary supporters-- with the PVIs of their districts:

• G.K. Butterfield- D+19
• David Price- D+20
• Alma Adams- D+26

The Journal, as usual, was talking out of its ass. Which candidates are they talking about? Not these three incumbents, that's for sure. And I'm sorry to say that due to an incompetent, withering and basically moribund DCCC there are no viable Democratic House candidates in North Carolina, regardless of how badly Trump (or Hillary) does at the top of the ticket. The closest thing to swing districts in the state would be NC-09 (Richard Hudson's seat) and NC-13 (an open seat), but neither is remotely winnable and neither has a candidate the DCCC is backing anyway. The Journal states that their survey "asked whether people would be more inclined to vote for a Democratic candidate who endorsed Mrs. Clinton’s presidential bid. Some 32% said they would be less likely to vote for that candidate." So? Those are voters in red districts held by entrenched incumbents without viable opponents. It's 100% irrelevant.

Another side to this coin was a Politico post yesterday by Edward-Isaac Dovere touting the DCCC's deceptive fund-raising ploy that they're betting the House on Trump. They know they have exactly zero chance to win back the 30 seats it would take to win the House-- even if there's an anti-Trump tsunami. The DCCC haven't recruited 30 plausible candidates in winnable districts and, with Pelosi now terminally senile and being propped up to prevent a Hoyer take-over, they have continued to refuse to embrace progressives like Zephyr Teachout, Mary Ellen Balchunis and Tom Wakely who have won their primaries in winnable districts but who are seen as too progressive for the tastes of the wretched reactionaries who run the DCCC. Dover takes the opposite approach from the Journal, claiming "House Democrats have begun collaborating with Hillary Clinton’s campaign to build what they’re calling their 'Trump model' of persuadable voters." The DCCC, he points out, is "preparing to go up on television in districts earlier than in any previous cycle with an ad campaign designed to buttress the Trump-centric messaging guidance that’s already emanating from Washington-- all built around a 'party over country'-themed plan of attack for the fall."

The hope is that a combination of Democrats riled up by Trump, moderate Republicans and independents turned off to the party brand, and disaffected Republicans staying home will accelerate blue shifts in marginal districts to start their long road back to the majority. But more immediately, they’re hoping to pick off enough moderate Republicans to leave House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) squeezed by the Freedom Caucus come January, which they believe will neutralize him both in Congress and as a potential 2020 challenger to Clinton.

The Republican nominee has already taken on a starring role in House campaigns around the country.

In Texas, Pete Gallego, who’s running against Rep. Will Hurd to try to win back his seat, simply asked the Clinton campaign to post its Spanish-language ad full of Trump’s comments about immigrants on his own website.

In Kansas, while trying to flip a suburban district where the DCCC thinks Trump makes the race competitive, Jay Sidie uses the presumptive GOP nominee as his closer as he campaigns against Rep. Kevin Yoder.

Gallego, one of the most right-wing (and corrupt) Democrats elected in 2012, served one miserable term and was turned out by TX-23 voters 2 years later when Democrats just refused to go to the polls to bolster someone who voted more frequently with the GOP on core issues than with Democrats. He sucks-- and he's the quintessential 2016 DCCC candidate, someone who opposes the party on almost every issue. The DCCC wants to waste money on Yoder's district, which voted for Romney 54-44%, rather than in the open race for NY-19 (Zephyr Teachout's race) where Obama won 52-46% or in PA-07 (Mary Ellen Balchunis' race) where Obama and Romney fought to a virtual tie but where Democrat Bob Casey won a convincing re-election battle the same day. That's why the DCCC loses year after year after year and why they'll lose this year too-- no matter how badly Trump does.

Going into this cycle, House Democrats had expected to net fewer than 10 seats, barely enough to track back from their historically low current numbers. Trump’s already pushed that number into the mid-teens. Now they’re looking for ways to get closer to 20. (They’d need 29 to win the majority.)

Too bad their loser-mentality dictated their recruitment which might fulfill their 10 seat expectations. When Dovere repeats the DCCC talking point that "Trump’s most likely to help elect Democrats in districts trending more diverse and more highly educated-- and they’re counting on him being the factor that puts races in places like Florida and California over the top," he doesn't mention that those were seats the Democrats were expected to win back anyone-- primarily because of demographic shifts-- and the chance of Democratic candidates winning or losing is as likely to be harmed by the DCCC as it is to be helped. The proven moron who runs the DCCC for Steve Israel (and his sock puppet), Kelly Ward, a sad clown who should have been fired years ago, "projects that 60-70 seats are now in play with Trump [and] predicts they could be up to 70-80 after the Republican convention." I wonder what it would take for the DCCC to fire her and ban her from Democratic electoral politics permanently. Shockingly, Dovere mentioned that "Others who’ve drilled down on the races see a much narrower battlefield, and argue that recruiting issues left Democrats out of contention or behind in districts where the Trump factor might have made the race more competitive." Thank you.

If you want to help progressives in districts where they can win-- and hold-- seats, ignore the DCCC and their godawful candidates and do what you can to help these men and women, most of whom are being either ignored or actively sabotaged by the DCCC: