Election Reflections-- Blue Dogs, Schumer, Texas, Florida... You Want To Know What Went Wrong?

Anthony Brindisi (NY) and Joe Cunningham (SC) were elected to the House in the 2018 anti-red wave-- just when Blue Dog chairwoman Kyrsten Sinema graduated to the Senate. Sinema was the worst Democrat in Congress-- by far. She voted against anything and everything that smacked of progressivism. She voted with the GOP on progressive roll calls around 75% of the time. Now she's the worst Democrat in the Senate, although we'll soon see if Frackenlooper gives her a run for her money.

Back in the House, Brindisi and Cunningham spent the last two years see-sawing back and forth for the #1 and #2 worst Dems. Both are virulent Blue Dogs with ghastly voting records that could only be analyzed in one way: Republican. At the moment, Cunningham's record is slightly worse-- 76.54% against progressive initiatives, while Brindisi "only" voted against progressivism 75.31%. None the less, Pelosi and Bustos decided to waste $4 million trying to save Cunningham and $5.5 million trying to save Brindisi. Two of the GOP's best friends inside the Democratic caucus-- but especially Brindisi-- spent their time whining about how if anything progressive was brought to the floor for a vote it would doom their reelections.

Cunningham was defeated by Republican Nancy Mace (having out-spent her by $2 million) 216,042 (50.6%) to 210,627 (49.4%). It looked like Brindisi would be joining him in the losers' column-- and he still may-- but... yesterday Syracuse.com reported that Brindisi has surged back into contention, winning the absentee count 73-27% (25,998-7,787)... Brindisi has now cut Tenney’s lead to 10,294 votes, down from 28,422 votes on Election Day. There are at least 20,000 ballots remaining to be counted across the district. Brindisi will have to win at least 77% of those ballots to overtake Tenney." That's a steep hill to climb but it isn't impossible that Congress will be stuck with Brindisi and his whining for two more years.

Let's flip back to the Senate for a minute-- although the DCCC operates exactly like to DSCC-- and take a look at a post from July by Andrew Perez, with the benefit of hindsight-- Senate Democrats’ Machine Spent $15 Million To Destroy Progressive Primary Candidates. Short version: "The Democratic establishment has successfully blocked progressive Senate candidates in primaries, with the help of labor unions, Wall Street tycoons and corporate interests."

Now that the Schumer and the DSCC have managed to confound every pollster and lose the Senate again, it's worth looking at how they undermined every single progressive who tried to run-- spending $15 million in the process during the primaries. They hate progressives and fear them more than Republicans, who they have much more in common with.

While Schumer's DSCC hand-puppet, Catherine Cortez Masto (NV) promised last year that the DSCC would support progressive incumbent Ed Markey if he faced a primary challenger, they reneged entirely when he was challenged by a far less progressive Rep. Joe Kennedy III. Although a SuperPAC set up by Kennedy, the New Leadership PAC, spent $4,126,114 bolstering him, neither the DSCC nor Schumer's slimy Senate Majority PAC, spent a nickel helping Markey. Instead, they spent millions helping very right-wing Democrats like Frackenlooper to defeat progressive former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff. "In the final weeks of the race," wrote Perez, "SMP spent $1 million to boost Hickenlooper, after he spent his failed presidential campaign attacking key tenets of progressives’ legislative agenda, including Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. At the time of the cash infusion, Hickenlooper was losing ground in the polls and engulfed in scandals: He had just been fined by Colorado’s Independent Ethics Commission for violating state ethics law as governor, the local CBS station uncovered evidence of his gubernatorial office raking in cash from oil companies, and a video circulated showed Hickenlooper comparing his job as a politician to a slave on a slave ship, being whipped by a scheduler."

The Schumer-controled SMP spent $228,490,266, "pooling cash from both organized labor and business titans to promote corporate-aligned candidates over more progressive primary challengers. Working for Working Americans, a super PAC funded by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, has donated $5 million. The Laborers' International Union of North America’s super PAC has given $1.5 million. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers’s political action committee has chipped in $1.3 million. SMP has received also big donations from groups affiliated with labor unions like the Service Employees International Union ($1 million), the National Association of Letter Carriers ($750,000), and Communications Workers of America ($500,000). Overall, the top donor to SMP so far this cycle has been Democracy PAC-- a super PAC that’s bankrolled by billionaire George Soros and the Fund for Policy Reform, a nonprofit funded by Soros. Democracy PAC has contributed $8.5 million to SMP. Other donors from the financial industry include: Renaissance Technologies founder and billionaire Jim Simons and his wife Deborah ($5.5 million) and billionaire D. E. Shaw & Co. founder David Shaw ($1 million)."

Some major donors have financial stakes in current and future legislation.

For instance: SMP received a $1 million donation from billionaire Jonathan Gray, an executive at Blackstone, which owns the hospital staffing chain, TeamHealth. SMP also received $2 million from the Greater New York Hospital Association.

In late 2019, Schumer helped stall Senate legislation that would have kept patients from receiving “surprise medical bills,” the hefty charges that occur when they visit hospitals that are in their insurance network but are unknowingly treated by providers who are considered out-of-network.

SMP is affiliated with Majority Forward, a dark money group focused on attacking Republican Senate candidates. Majority Forward received $450,000 in 2018 from pharmacy giant CVS Health-- which also owns health insurer Aetna. The group also received $300,000 from the American Health Care Association (AHCA), a trade association that represents the nursing home industry.

The Democratic primary candidates backed by the DSCC have expressed reservations about Medicare for All, arguing they believe people should be allowed to keep their private health insurance if they want it. Many of the DSCC’s favored candidates do support creating a public health insurance option.

Meanwhile, the Real Estate Roundtable, a trade group for real estate investors, donated $50,000 to Majority Forward. Schumer and Senate Democrats recently helped Republicans unanimously pass pandemic relief legislation that included a special, little-noticed provision that amounted to $170 billion worth of new tax breaks for wealthy real estate investors.

In addition to the Colorado race, SMP has waded into at least three other Senate primaries this year.

In North Carolina, SMP funded Carolina Blue, a super PAC that spent $4.5 million to help veteran and former state senator Cal Cunningham win the primary in March. Cunningham handily defeated his chief opponent, state senator Erica Smith, who was running to his left...

In Iowa, SMP spent nearly $7 million to promote real estate developer Theresa Greenfield. She easily bested her two primary opponents, including progressive Kimberly Graham, who campaigned in support of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.

SMP has already spent more than $2 million in Maine, including nearly $500,000 to promote House Speaker Sara Gideon in the Democratic primary. Some of the group’s advertising against Republican Senator Susan Collins was also designed to boost Gideon.

The final polls and final predictions showed Sara Gideon, Theresa Greenfield and Cal Cunningham beating, respectively, Collins, Ernst and Tillis. Instead the 3 Republicans are returning to the Senate. Gideon's share of the vote was a pathetic 42.7%, Greenfield's was 45.2% and Tillis' was 47.0%. The DSCC and Schumer's PAC spent ungodly amounts, as did the Democratic candidates.

In North Carolina, Cunningham raised $46,795,495 to Tillis' $21,474,728. The DSCC spent $24,542,003 and Schumer's PAC spent $35,838,924.

In Maine, Gideon raised $68,577,474 to Collins' $26,511,555. The DSCC spent $4,667,250 and Schumer's PAC spent $27,909,459.

In Iowa, Greenfield raised $47,004,937 to Ernst's $23,536,707. The DSCC spent $27,899,050 and Schumer's PAC spent $41,225,046.

Both the DSCC and the DCCC have decided to blame progressives for their cataclysmic losses, even though every single incumbent who lost was a conservative and every single progressive-- including progressives in tough districts like Matt Cartwright, Dan Kildee, Andy Levin, Peter DeFazio and Jahana Hayes-- won.

Last week Ryan Grimm asked progressive challenger Mike Siegel this question: "Do you have to run as a kind of centrist or moderate in some of these districts, or can a progressive message win in a swing district in Texas?" Mike began by comparing his race to that of another re-match Texan, Sri Kulkarni (who had an open seat this time). Kulkarni is an avowed conservative, a corporate Democrat and careerist endorsed by both the Blue Dogs and New Dems. He raised $4,863,231 compared to Troy Nehls' (R) $1,532,299 and the DCCC and Pelosi's PAC spent $7.3 million bolstering him. He lost 209,735 (51.6%) to 181,318 (44.6%). Mike Siegel is a Squad-grade progressive who raised $2,332,415 compared to Michael McCaul's $3,515,771 (as of Oct. 14). The DCCC, which preferred a conservative Democrat run, spent $270 on Mike's race and Pelosi's PAC spent zero. Yes, you read that right-- $270. McCaul was reelected 215,896 (52.5%) to 186,350 (46.3%). Had the DCCC spent part of the $7.3 million they wasted on Sri, would Mike have won? We'll never know, will we?

In answer to Grim's question, Mike pointed out that being conservative didn't help Kulkarni and even though he campaigned loudly on Medicare for All, the Green New Deal and racial justice, Mike outperformed him by every possible metric.

[W]hat I would have liked to have tested is if we had an entire progressive ticket. You know, it could be that the most consequential decisions about my campaign were made March 3, Super Tuesday, when we decided that Bernie Sanders wasn’t gonna be the presidential nominee and, in Texas, we decided that Christina Tzintzún Ramirez wasn’t going to be our Senate nominee.

So with my analysis that I’m doing now with our team and many others in Texas is what would it take to really get out more poor voters? I mean, I’m talking about poor people. Like, when you canvass in rural Texas, in a town like Eagle Lake, or Brenham, in the summer, you meet people who are in these rundown, double-wide kind of houses, basically falling apart at the seams-- people who have to survive three months of 100-degree weather with no air conditioning at all, people who have very marginal employment. What’s it going to take to get those folks to care about an election? You know, whether you’re talking about black folks and Latinx voters in a city, or poor rural voters-- black, Latino, and white-- what’s it gonna take for them to really care about an election?

And to me, Bernie Sanders would have helped us make that populous case. You know, Texas has this tradition of populism; it goes back 100 years or more. But like, if we were really talking about farm policy, if we were really talking about water policy, if we were talking about rural jobs programs, things that really affect their lives. I mean, as a congressional candidate, I was talking about these things, but it’s hard to really break through.

Same thing with Christina. You know, statewide in Texas, we’re not going to flip Texas if we don’t win the RGV, the Rio Grande Valley. And, you know, if you haven’t been to Texas, you might not realize there are communities along the border called colonias, where they don’t even have running water and municipal sewage in some of these developments. I mean, these are like, you know, sometimes undocumented residents, sometimes U.S. citizens who are living in abject poverty. What’s it gonna take to get those folks to care? And it’s not some slick TV ads, it’s not a poll-tested message. Even for me, I got some DCCC support, and some of my messaging was about prescription drug prices and protecting pre-existing conditions. But I feel like that’s too nuanced for these folks. I mean, it has to be more direct.

You know, this, this might be a little off-topic, but one of the things I’m thinking about is, think about the movements in Venezuela under Hugo Chávez or Bolivia under Evo Morales. Evo Morales is supported by the poorest indigenous farmers from the high plains of Bolivia. Those people are engaged in the electoral process. In this country, poor people are not engaged in the electoral process.

And so, for me, on a gerrymandered map, I don’t know if I could have gotten more than 210,000 votes, like McCaul got, unless we were really doing organizing with poor people. And I think that’s a longer-term investment. That’s where it’s this question, these people who gave me $2800, when I called them and spoke to them for a minute, would they give me $1,000 if I was gonna say: We’re going to invest in a five-year project to do deep organizing these communities? Is the donor class willing to invest in changing the fundamental conditions in areas like mine that would really enable progressive change in the long term?

...[O]ne of the things I’ve been preaching on the campaign trail, you know, and I got to do some events with Bernie and he absolutely loved it-- you know, this is our New Deal moment, American history: crumbling U.S. infrastructure, massive wealth inequality, unemployment-- major crises we need to confront. In the 30s it was fascism rising in Western Europe; now, it’s climate change.

And how did we enact a New Deal in this country? You know, a 15-year program, the Works Progress Administration, massively investing in infrastructure, putting people to work in all sorts of jobs. It was FDR, when he ran for president the first time, talking about the New Deal every chance he gets: We’re gonna give you a New Deal. Whatever the question was-- economic policy, jobs, health care, you name it, we’re gonna give you a New Deal.

Imagine we had a candidate for president who for 10-12 months is talking nonstop about fundamental economic change. That’s what it takes. And that’s where the Democratic establishment, which to some extent supported me, although not as strongly as they could have, they’re not talking about that, because we’re too invested in conservative donors who don’t want us to say that.

And so we’re caught in between. You know, half the Democratic Party is still taking the corporate PAC money, moderating the message, saying: OK, we’re only going to talk about this extremely narrow issue, you know, protecting pre-existing conditions or negotiating prescription drug prices downwards, whereas like people don’t have AC and it’s 100 degrees every day, they don’t have gas in the car, they’re making $10 an hour and getting 20 hours a week. I mean, they are struggling to survive. They’re completely cynical about democracy as something that’s even real in the world. And we’re not speaking clearly to them about why it matters to vote.

Today, the Washington Post reported that "The parts of America that have seen strong job, population and economic growth in the past four years voted for Joe Biden, economic researchers found. In contrast, President Trump garnered his highest vote shares in counties that had some of the most sluggish job, population and economic growth during his term. Trump fared well among voters who said the economy was their top concern, and he even won votes in places that didn’t fare particularly well under his presidency. This is perhaps a continuation of the 2016 election, when Trump won a huge share of places that had struggled under President Barack Obama. Democrats tended to view the 2020 election more as a referendum on Trump, especially his response to the pandemic." It's worth hitting that Intercept link above and reading Ryan's whole interview with Siegel. But now I want to leave you with a quirky but apocryphal story by Richard Cooke in yesterday's Daily Beast: I Covered Congressional Races in Florida in 2018, and Boy Do I Know Why Trump Won the State in 2020. "One party’s aides were courteous and organized," he wrote. "The other’s could barely tell me when the candidate was speaking next. Wanna take a guess?" He covered FL-26 and FL-27 in 2018, when Debbie Mucarsel-Powell and Donna Shalala both flipped those very blue (but Republican-held) districts blue. This year, both flipped back to red.

Situated in and near Miami, these districts make up some of the most volatile and interesting political territory in the United States. FL-27 had voted heavily for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but the House seat had been held by a socially liberal Republican, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, for 30 years. Ros-Lehtinen was retiring, and on paper the district seemed a natural Dem pick-up. The districts also overlapped with Miami-Dade, the most populous county in Florida, whose turnout would be critical in deciding a narrow gubernatorial race.

Instead of requesting interviews, I decided to see the candidates like an undecided voter would, joining the audience for stump speeches and campaign events. This seemed standard, almost old-fashioned reporting. It never occurred to me that it would be hard, let alone so hard that I’d need to extend my stay in Miami. By leaving time, I felt not like an undecided voter, but like a private detective. Finding a schedule of Republican campaign events took 15 minutes. With Democrats, this process took five days.

...Perhaps this information was at one of the other offices. Volunteers tried to be helpful. One suggested a website might have the information, and when pressed, offered unsarcastically that I “try Google.” Another showed me an event dated two weeks prior. Finally, with fanfare, someone produced a number for another campaign office. They could put me in touch with the right person. I stepped outside and dialed. I had called the switchboard for the City of Miami Gardens, Florida.

Irritation was turning into intrigue, and while the next few days were mileage and frustration-heavy, they were in some ways a reporter’s dream. The factional fighting between Miami-Dade Democrats, Florida Democrats, Senate campaign offices and the national party was flagrant. One of the few times I saw the operation energized was when I mentioned the Miami-Dade Democrats to a staffer for and she rolled her eyes. I heard more than one volunteer try to remember the names on the ballot and fail. I was left unsupervised in campaign offices, in prime eavesdropping real estate, though this was just a bonus: campaigners were ready to vent their frustrations, and I opened my confessional.

By comparison, the Republicans I encountered were courteous, organized, and dedicated. I heard a speech by the GOP challenger for FL-27, Maria Salazar, and afterwards her apparatchiks handed me business cards. At voting locations drowned in GOP paraphernalia, campaign staff showed me detailed spreadsheets, tallying how early turn-out numbers tracked with their booth-by-booth strategy. They asked if I needed anything. The competition dynamic was starting to remind me of 1980s comedy movie: a ruthless, well-heeled team up against a band of plucky misfits.

My grail quest became no easier. At one field location, I arrived just before the advertised opening time and waited by myself for hours before leaving empty-handed. Finding the number for one press secretary took phone calls to 22 different people, most of whom didn’t know who he was. Several times I was told that a particular volunteer was important and “knew everything.” Tracked down at a polling booth, he turned out to be a young backpacker, freshly arrived from Spain, who knew as little as anyone else. Later, I realized the source of this special status: he was one of the few people on the ground who could speak Spanish. Donna Shalala herself (i.e. the candidate) could not.

Following a hot tip about a possible press contact, I turned up at another campaign office with a different strategy: I would refuse to leave. After the traditional greeting-- bewilderment, being offered a chair within earshot of indiscrete conversations-- there was a short conclave. I could speak with Ben. Ben and I sat facing each other, in the middle of an open-plan office. By this time I had become a kind of connoisseur of incompetence, and I sensed that Ben was good at something, but he had not dealt with a reporter before. “Can I ask what your role with the campaign is?” Ben was a policy adviser. He had no idea if his candidate had any events that day, and no idea why he was speaking with me.

When the comms person did come in (this was treated as a special occasion), our conversation had an informality that was almost charming. I explained my difficulty with the Democratic campaigns, and the contrast with Republicans. “They’re a lot more organized than us!” she said, and I had to laugh. They sure were! Here at last was some kind of schedule, but as we stepped through it, something was missing. Through exhaustive internet searches, I had found a digital ticketing website offering a Q&A event featuring Donna Shalala. Why wasn’t it on the schedule? “Ohhh, that’s cancelled.” Perhaps, she said, they could line up an interview instead? I explained that I had been trying to see the election from the perspective of a voter, not a reporter, and how information was freely available from Republicans and almost non-existent from Democrats. Catching my drift, she started to flush.

The call came through later, when I was in a Haitian-owned coin laundry. A DNC flack in Washington, D.C. had heard I was making trouble, planning some kind of “Dems in disarray” story, and as I scribbled notes on top of an industrial dryer, I picked up the story that had been relayed to him, as much from his tone as his words. A foreign correspondent had arrived in Miami expecting VIP treatment, then got miffed when the red carpet wasn’t rolled out. Smearing the ground game would be revenge for a bruised ego. “Money at a national level has gone into these seats,” he assured me.

Walking him through what I’d seen-- and hadn’t seen-- only made him angry. “We’re going to win both of those seats,” he said, berating my ignorance. It was a strange reaction. By then I probably had as clear a snapshot of the election in Miami as anyone. Wasn’t that information useful? Potentially important, even? Instead, someone hundreds of miles away was blithely junking this eye-witness evidence in favor of obnoxious confidence. “You’ll see,” he insisted, “when we win FL-26 and FL-27 on election night, I’ll message you.” And they did, and he did.

In my reply, I pointed out that Andrew Gillum, the Democratic favorite to become Florida’s governor, had lost by a narrow margin, and that poor turnout in Miami-Dade was the culprit. And perhaps you can imagine my lack of surprise two years later, when FL-26 and FL-27 both fell to GOP challengers, one of them Maria Salazar. On the presidential ballot, Clinton’s 30-point lead in Miami-Dade shrunk to a 7-point margin for Biden.

In a piece titled What the Hell Happened to Democrats in Miami-Dade?, Rolling Stone observed ruefully that “Miami-Dade is considered safe—until election night, when suddenly it’s not,” and quoted Maria Elena Lopez, first vice-chair of the Miami-Dade Democrats.

Lopez lamented how the Democratic National Convention did not talk to, fund, or advise the local parties. “We don’t get any feedback from the DNC,” she said. “They don’t come to us and say, ‘Hey, what is the messaging that would work in your community? Where are we weak?’ [The party] doesn’t do that, at all. We are on our own.”

“Unfortunately, this is not the first time that we’ve seen this,” she said. It was not the first time I had seen it either.

Debbie Mucarsel-Powll raised $6,178,239 compared to Carlos Gimenez's $1,946,504. The DCCC and Pelosi's PAC spent about $6 million trying to save her. She lost the blue D+6 seat 177,223 (51.7%) to 165,407. Donna Shalala (the one who speaks no Spanish in a 71.7% Latino district) raised around the same $3,000,000 that her opponent, Maria Salazar (from 2018) spent. Shalala was so out of touch with her own constituents that she didn't even request help from the DCCC. In fact, she gave them money! She lost 176,114 (51.3%) to 166,705 (48.6%).

Neoliberalism Is Not Your Friend-- But What Can You Do About It?

 

When it comes to discussing the dangers of neoliberalism to the Democratic Party, Adolph Reed is amazing. (Politico should have asked him to interview neoliberal Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) instead of Tim Alberta.) Look, I hate and avoid zoom, but please watch this enlightening video of Katie Halper's show above (or you may never understand what "McWokeyism" is). "A famous organizer," Reed said in reference to Jane McAlevey (also on the show), "once made a distinction between mobilizing, which is going to your standing constituency and getting them to do stuff, and organizing, which is building a constituency that you don't have." Do you think anyone at the DCCC has ever had a thought like that cross their mind? Or is it always just about raising money? I hope you're been reading DWT enough to know the answer to that already. And that the Democrats who lost their races-- both incumbents and challengers-- raised and spent far more-- in some cases two, three and four times more-- than the Republicans who beat them.

Just focusing in on Blue Dog losers from the class of 2018, defeated after one Republican-lite term:

• Joe Cunningham (SC) raised $6,278,942 and was defeated by Nancy Mace who raised $4,891,696.
• Xochitl Torres Small (NM) raised $7,509,987 and was defeated by Yvette Herrell who raised $2,498,130.
• Max Rose (NY) raised $8,350,467 and was defeated by Nicole Malliotakis who raised $3,052,007.
• Anthony Brindisi (NY) raised $5,359,636 and appears to have been defeated by psychopath Claudia Tenney who raised $2,053,931.
• Kendra Horn (OK) raised $5,465,349 and was defeated by Stephanie Bice, who raised $3,089,972.
• Ben McAdams (UT) raised $5,137,258 and appears to have been defeated by Burgess Owens, who raised $4,021,248.

Remember, in theory, every congressional district-- Montana has more and is about to be split into 2 districts-- has the same number of voters. But they don't really. Some districts have a culture oof participation and are filled with civic-minded citizens who make a point of voting. Other districts have really small turn-outs. Although ballots are still being counted, only 15 candidates for Congress (in contested races) had over 300,000 votes:

• Barbara Lee (D-CA-13)- 327,278
• Diane DeGette (D-CO-01)- 331,453
• Joe Neguse (D-CO-02)- 316,916
• Neal Dunn (R-FL-02)- 303,879
• John Rutherford (R-FL-04)- 308,447
• Daniel Webster (R-FL-11)- 316,958
• Nikema Williams (D-GA-05)- 301,847
• Matt Rosendale (R-MT-AL)- 335,214
• Deborah Ross (D-NC-02)- 310,979
• David Price (D-NC-04)- 329,679
• Earl Blumenauer (D-OR-04) 342,458
• Dusty Johnson (R-SD-AL)- 321,984
• Don Beyer (D-VA-08)- 301,454
• Pramila Jayapal (D-WA-07)- 386,321
• Mark Pocan (D-WI-02)- 318,492

Who had the most votes of anyone standing for a congressional seat anywhere in America this cycle? Pramila Jayapal, who didn't even have a series opponent, is co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and very much one of Congress' top organizers. That's her background, something she brought with her to the Washington state legislature, honed there and then brought it to Congress. She once asked me if I knew which members of Congress run anything other than a fundraising effort on their campaign side. Jamie Raskin sort of does, although not the way Pramila goes about it. Her campaign efforts on that front are mammoth and should be studied closely and emulated by the DCCC. The idea of her replacing Pelosi as Speaker is mind-boggling but-- with the power of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party (the New Dems and Blue Dogs)-- almost unimaginable.

This morning, Pramila told me that from the minute she got into Congress 4 years ago, "I was committed to running a year-round organizing effort through my campaign. What does that mean? It means instead of just having a fundraiser (or many of them) on the campaign side, I hired an organizer-- and depending on the time of year, several. We kept our thousands of volunteers engaged, not just on our race but on critical issues in the country, on ballot initiatives and on other critical races. I believe that is a big part of why we have such huge turnout here in the district-- because people stay engaged, they see me fighting for them all the time, and they have come to believe they can make a difference through their votes and their volunteering. That’s how we turned out the largest crowd for our healthcare rally in early 2017 when Republicans were gutting healthcare. Our volunteers played an important part in turnout for statewide ballot initiative on climate change and police accountability. They worked on Stacey Abrams' race in Georgia and on other swing district races across the country, like Katie Porter’s. And this year, in just 6 weeks, we trained over 600 volunteers who made over 140,000 phone calls into Pennsylvania and here in Washington state to turn out voters for Biden-Harris and other progressive candidates. When people donate to my campaign, they don’t just donate to keeping me in office-- they donate to the organizing we do all year to build leadership, to keep people engaged and to help drive the movement for progressive policies and candidates across the country."  

Pramila and AOC by Nancy Ohanian

Useless Conservative Democrats Like New Dem Elissa Slotkin Keep Attacking Progressives And Then Start Screaming And Wailing When Progressives Punch Back

 

Freshman Elissa Slotkin (New Dem-MI) is aggressively anti-progressive. In the 2018 anti-red wave, she ousted Republican Mike Bishop 172,880 (50.6%) to 159,782 (46.8%), despite Trump having won the district 2 years earlier by 7 points. The Oakland-Ingraham-Livingston counties district has a PVI of R+4 and she just won her reelection bid 217,929 (50.9%) to 202,519 (47.3%). She out-raised her opponent $8,329,945 to $1,950,832. Trump's base turned out and he won Slotkin's district again.

Generally speaking, she's been a lousy member-- unless you like conservative Democrats. ProgressivePunch gave her a strong "F" and it's worth noting that she's the furthest right of any Michigan Democrat in Congress and that there are 217 members of Congress with more progressive voting records than hers, including several odious Blue Dogs like Stephanie Murphy, Tom O'Halleran, Max Rose, Jim Cooper, Brad Schneider, Dan Lipinski, Charlie Crist, Kurt Schrader... yeah, she really stinks.

Yesterday, Politico ran a puff piece by Tim Alberta on her, Elissa Slotkin Braces for a Democratic Civil War. She whined to Alberta that she watched some of her fellow right-of-center pals in Congress lose their jobs and how she listened to fake fellow faux-Dems "blame the party’s left wing for polluting the Democratic brand and watched progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez critique the centrists [corporate shills like Slotkin] as stale and outdated in their approach." Here's Slotkin's own stale and outdated approach:

“It’s not just that [Trump] eats cheeseburgers at a big celebratory dinner. It’s not just that he does things that the common man can kind of appreciate. And it’s not even because he uses kind of simplistic language-- he doesn’t use complicated, wonky language, the way a lot of Democrats do. We sometimes make people feel like they aren’t conscientious enough. They aren’t thoughtful enough. They aren’t ‘woke’ enough. They aren’t smart enough or educated enough to just understand what’s good for them… It’s talking down to people. It’s alienating them. And there’s just certain voters who feel so distant from the political process-- it’s not their life, it’s not their world. They hate it. They don’t like all that politics stuff. Trump speaks to them, because he includes them.”

Alberta wrote that she worries that the Democratic Party is now "fundamentally unwelcoming to anyone with supposedly retrograde views of the world around them. This is not merely about race and racism. The schisms go far deeper, to matters of faith and conscience, economic freedom and individual liberty. Indeed, for the heavy losses Trump sustained among affluent college-educated whites, he nearly won a second term because of his gains with Black and brown voters. That these Americans were willing to support Trump, often in spite of his rhetoric, reveals an uncomfortable truth for the left. There are millions of voters-- working-class whites and working-class minorities-- whose stances on social controversies put them out of touch with the Democratic Party. It’s a truth they might be willing to overlook, if only the party could do the same." She seems to be afraid that people "feel looked down upon." And she feels like she's too unhip to be part of the in-crowd. Between her two twitter accounts the former CIA agent only has 111.5 followers-- a far cry from fellow Michigander Rashid Tlaib (1.2 million), let alone AOC's 10.3 million followers. Her jealousy of AOC is mind-boggling.

"What bothers me a little bit is that we have this false dichotomy-- either you’re young and bold and have big ideas and you’re passionate, or you’re old and moderate and boring and pragmatic. I hope this bench of leaders that are coming up in the freshmen class, my closest peers, are going to just explode that stereotype. Because I’m as passionate as the next person. I believe deeply in change on the issues I care about. I don’t think I’m that boring and I don’t consider myself that old. So, we have to break through that. But in the meantime, you represent your district. Don’t tell me how to represent mine when you come from New York or California."

...“If we are classifying Tuesday as a success from a congressional standpoint, we will get fucking torn apart in 2022,” Spanberger shouted.

With a few hundred ears now perked up, the Virginia Democrat proceeded to slam her progressive colleagues for flirting with two fads-- “defund the police” and democratic socialism—that she said cost the party multiple seats and threatened to doom those who did survive in their future campaigns.

“When we want to talk about funding social services, and ensuring good engagement in community policing, let’s talk about what we are for,” Spanberger beseeched her colleagues. “We need to not ever use the words ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again. Because while people think it doesn’t matter, it does matter. And we lost good members because of it.”

Unfortunately, Spanberger, a far right Blue Dog with an even worse voting record than Slotkin's-- and Slotkin's best friend in the House-- survived, albeit barely. With 98% of the vote counted, Spanberger has 232,995 votes (50.9%) to neo-fascist crackpot Nick Freitas' 224,679 (49.1%). What if the Republican Party wises up and runs someone next time who isn't an actual Nazi?

Meanwhile Alberta reported that Slotkin "fired a warning shot at anyone who might pressure the Biden administration to chase big progressive policies out of the gate."

“I will not be voting for Nancy Pelosi,” Slotkin told me. “I have no idea if people are gonna run against her, or who might run against her. And I will of course have this conversation directly with her. But I believe we need new leadership. I would love to see more Midwesterners, because if you look across the leadership. … I respect these people, but it’s New York and California.”

To translate: “New York and California” isn’t simply code for liberalism. In this case, rather, Slotkin is hammering a perceived aloofness in the leadership-- a perception that spans the party’s ideological divides. Both Slotkin and her like-minded moderates, as well as AOC and her insurgent progressives, believe Pelosi and her lieutenants treat them with paternalistic condescension, insisting they know what’s best for them and for the party. Sometimes this approach has helped the center at the expense of the left, such as when Pelosi slow-walked impeachment proceedings. Other times, however, particularly over the past year, Pelosi’s refusal to engage in real negotiations with the White House has left moderates fuming.

When the speaker slapped down a bipartisan Covid-19 relief package this summer-- then gave a bizarre interview on CNN in which she insulted a member of her party who was pushing for it (and Wolf Blitzer for even bringing it up)—inboxes and cellphone screens lit up across the House Democratic Caucus. Even some of the members who backed Pelosi’s strategy of not moving from her initial offer were vexed by her imperious tone. In hindsight, given the closeness of the presidential election, Pelosi’s allies may have been politically astute to refuse any concessions that would have given Trump a timely victory at a time when his campaign was flagging. On the other hand, this gets to Slotkin’s basic point about the Democratic Party: It has spent the past four years defining itseleves by what it is against, and it very likely cost it on Election Day.

Slotkin isn’t sure how many other Democrats will join her in rebelling against Pelosi’s quest for a fourth term as speaker.

Also writing for Politico yesterday, Sarah Ferris, Heather Caygle and Ally Mutnick reported that many in the party are warning that the biggest priority for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee must be overhauling its message. They say it needs to craft a proactive campaign that counters GOP attacks on everything from Medicare for All to fracking-- if they have any hopes of keeping their majority in 2022." The "defund the police" ads the GOP used to attack Democrats did several conservatives in. Unable to intelligently defend themselves, Blue Dogs like Max Rose, Anthony Brindisi, Collin Peterson, Xochitl Torres Small and Kendra Horn are as against "defunding the police" as any Republican. But none are talented political leaders with the ability to persuade voters of anything. It's not tragic that they're gone; it's tragic that the DCCC will start working forthwith to recruit conservaDems just like them to run in 2022.

Are Big 2022 Losses For House Dems Already Baked Into The Cake?

 

We've been predicting for all this year that the Republicans would win seats in 2022. But... that was based on several assumptions, which turned out to me overly optimistic about the course of the 2020 cycle and the ability of Democrats to prosper even with a completely inept and incapable DCCC with the worst chairperson in living memory. The assumptions were:

• that an anti-Trump tsunami would give the Democrats many new seats in traditionally Republican districts;
• that this year the Democrats would hold the reddest seats they had won in 2018;
• that going forward, the Democrats would have control of both Houses of Congress and the White House;
• that going forward the Democrats would accomplish nothing-- or at least nothing big-- that would help working families.

The first 3 assumptions were all wrong. If there was an anti-red wave, it was weak and didn't impact down-ballot races... at least not in favor of Democrats. In the House, the Democrats picked up 3 seats and lost around a dozen (votes are still being counted in several). The Democrats failed to win the Senate and it isn't likely the two January 5th runoffs in Georgia are going to go their way. If they did, that would get them to a 50-50 tie, which could be broken by Vice President Kamala. BUT... getting to that 50-50 vote is dependent on a shitload of garbage senators cooperating... like Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Joe Manchin (WV), Tom Carper (DE), Jacky Rosen (NV), Mark Warner (VA), all of whom vote against progressive proposals, and soon to be joined by Mark Kelly (AZ) and Frackenlooper (CO) who will certainly be as bad, if not worse.

Back to the House, minority leader McCarthy came out yesterday and said that he guarantees that Republicans will win the majority in the 2022 midterms: "We have never been stronger in the sense of what the future holds for us-- we have never been in a stronger position. We won this by adding more people to the party. And we won this in an atmosphere where we were the one group that everyone guaranteed we would lose. And we’re the ones who won." Yeah... and the seats they won:

• Collin Peterson (MN-07)- R+12
• Joe Cunningham (SC-01)- R+10
• Kendra Horn (OK-05)- R+10
• Xochitl Torres Small (NM-02)- R+6
• Harley Rouda (CA-48)- R+4
• Max Rose (NY-11)- R+3
• Anthony Brindisi (NY-22)- R+6
• Ben McAdams (UT-04)- R+13

That's what you call some low-hanging fruit. And then there were the two overwhelmingly Hispanic districts in Miami-Dade, where only the Democratic Party would be stupid enough to not run Hispanic candidates. They were begging for losses and they got them, from prominent Republican Latinos.

Washington Post reporter Paulina Firozi, wrote that the 2020 suburban thing didn't work out for the DCCC the way they predicted it would. "Democrats," she reported, "have spent years wooing suburban voters, seeking to build a durable House majority on a foundation of affluent, well-educated voters repelled by President Trump and a hard-right GOP. But last week, that foundation developed serious cracks. Republicans not only reversed Democratic midterm gains in rural districts that had voted strongly for Trump in 2016, but clawed back at least one seat in Southern California while leading in other suburban districts that are yet to be called. Even more alarming for Democrats, predictions of broad gains in the suburbs of Texas, Indiana, Missouri and other states simply failed to materialize-- casting doubt on the party’s long-term House strategy of offsetting the party’s dwindling appeal among less-educated White voters with greater support among the more educated."

That's what I always mean when I talk about these losers-- the Kendra Horns, Harley Roudas, Anthony Brindisis, etc, ruining the Democratic brand. In most places a Democratic coalition of unionists, women, people of color, young people... turned out for Biden-- most to get rid of Trump, rather than to elect Biden per se. Democratic messaging isn't offering them anything much-- Pelosi's PayGo?-- beyond Trump must go. Whether or not McCarthy will be able to deliver on his "guarantee" for 2022 will depend on how seriously the Democrats take the identity crisis they're living through now. If they are determined to remain a Republican-lite party... well, we all know how that always turns out.

The Democrats should try to pass a progressive agenda that would clearly help working families. If that gets blocked by the Senate again, they-- including Biden-- can and should blame the gridlock on obstructionist Republicans who don't want people-- voters-- to get a fair shake. If the Democrats do that, rather than take the Republican-lite road-- they can defy historical projections and win seats in 2022. When FDR won a landslide in 1932, House Democrats won a net of 97 Republican seats. They did stuff for people for the next two years and were rewarded in the midterms, watching 14 more Republican seats flip blue. In 1944, FDR was reelected to her 4th term and he brought 20 new Democratic House members in on his coattails. The 1946 midterms was another reward for Democrats who did stuff for people: 55 more seats! The midterms after Bill Clinton's reelection saw the Democrats win 5 seats, which led to Newt Gingrich's resignation.

Replacing Cheri Bustos At The DCCC With Someone Just Like Her-- The Current Plan-- Will Accomplish Nothing At All Except For Even Worse Losses In 2022

 

House Democrats, under the guidance of Cheri Bustos-- who has already fallen on her sword-- and Pelosi-- who insists she is an indispensable historical figure and never will-- have spent close to half a billion dollars to lose. The cycle started well for the House Dems. The North Carolina Supreme Court redrew district lines and handed the Democrats two seats previously held by Republicans. Cheri Bustos was eager to claim them as part of her brilliant ability to flip red seats blue. But on election night, that wasn't the narrative that unfolded. Three North Carolina challengers failed to dislodged other targeted Republicans. And it was far worse for the DCCC around the country. As of this moment, 6 conservative Democratic incumbents have seen their seats flip from blue to red, despite millions of dollars wasted on them by the DCCC and Pelosi's House Majority PAC (the figures below):

• Harley Rouda (New Dem-CA)- $9,542,690
• Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (New Dem-FL)- $6,221,973
• Donna Shalala (FL)- zero (maybe if she had just joined the New Dems or Blue Dogs...)
• Abby Finkenauer (secret New Dem-IA)- $3,520,621
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- $4,939,977
• Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog-NM)- $6,258,912
• Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK)- $5,290,990
• Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog-SC)- $3,935,049

It's almost like the DCCC gave a dollar to each candidate for every time they voted with the Republicans against progressive measures! But this doesn't describe the extent of the carnage. New York has 7 uncalled races, 5 for Democratic incumbents, 2 of whom are as good as dead: Blue Dogs Anthony Brindisi and Max Rose. Of California's 3 uncalled races, 2 are for Democratic incumbents and though TJ Cox and Gil Cisneros may both win, one or both is just as likely to lose. The uncalled race in Illinois is from Lauren Underwood's seat and it looks like she'll be ok. The uncalled race is Iowa is for the seat Democrat Dave Loebsack gave up and with 89% of the vote counted, the Republican, Mariannette Miller-Meeks has 196,860 votes and Democrat Rita Hart has 196,812, a 48 vote spread! The DCCC spent north of $6.5 million trying to hold this seat and Hart outraised Miller-Meeks $3,631,135 to $1,518,295. And that leaves Utah, where 99% of the votes are counted, leaving Blue Dog Ben McAdams losing to retired football player Burgess Owens, 172,678 (47.5%) to 171,039 (47.0%). The DCCC spent $5,975,685 trying to save McAdams, who mostly votes against anything that even hints of progressivism.

In any case, the Democrats gained 3 seats-- an open seat in the Atlanta suburbs + the two seats the judges gave them in North Carolina-- and lost between 8 and 14 (or more). So a net loss between 5 and 11-- or worse, but not better. Yet somehow, Politico's "Huddle" writer, Melanie Zanona. thought the best explanation of that would be to write "with Dems likely to have a thinner caucus next year." A sloppy thought like that pisses me off. Why "likely?" Is that some kind of Beltway-moron-Speak?

Zanona asserted that "Tensions inside the Democratic party are boiling over and spilling out into public view. The latest shots came from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who responded to a report that fellow New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries asked other top Dems on a private leadership call: 'Do we want to govern or do we want to be internet celebrities?'"

It might be helpful at this point to mention that Hakeem in an establishment liberal and Pelosi's choice as Next Speaker (her former choice, Joe Crowley, having been banished from Congress when that same AOC beat him in 2018). Jeffries has two Twitter accounts, one under @Hakeem_Jeffries, which has 17,800 followers and one under @RepJeffries with 298,000 followers. Not bad! Almost 316,000 followers if you combine them. AOC, on the other hand, has 10.2 million people following her on Twitter. Maybe there's a reason for the disparity that Jeffries should think about rather than trying-- ineffectively-- to ridicule.

She responded to Jeffries by noting that it is "Pretty astounding that some Dems don’t believe it’s possible to govern, be politically popular, and command formidable bully pulpits at the same time, but it actually explains a lot about how we got here. We don’t have to choose between these things! We can do better and win!"

Yes, indeed. But Zanona wrote that that made he ask herself-- and share with Politico readers "At what point, if ever, do progressives form a Freedom Caucus of the left? The conservative group wielded immense power (and created quite a few headaches for leadership) when the GOP held the majority, by sticking together as a voting bloc and bending the party to their will. And progressives have shown interest in flexing their muscles next year. The Congressional Progressive Caucus recently adopted some major reforms intended to centralize its growing power in Washington. Among the changes: new rules on attendance and voting, as well as eliminating the second co-chair position... [I]t actually wouldn’t take much for progressives to be powerful. And the four-member 'squad' is set to expand its ranks next year with the additions of Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman and Ritchie Torres." I think she left off Mondaire Jones but, no matter, she included Ritchie Torres, no doubt he has more in common with AOC than with Jeffries, which is not remotely the case.

Zanona wrote that "squad members have shown varying degrees of willingness to play hard ball. And they might not want to be seen as obstructionist when Dems finally have the White House. As former Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows once told your Huddle host, they would have to be willing to completely 'burn the ships down' in order to be successful. And so far, most progressives do not appear to be at that point. (In fact, some have directly said they don't want to be the Democratic version of the Freedom Caucus.) But that could change, depending on how leadership navigates the party’s civil war, who Joe Biden taps to serve in his Cabinet and administration, and which policies party leaders decide to pursue."

Party leaders... yes, most of them in their seventies and eighties and long past their expiration dates but refusing to face the reality of retirement. John Harris noted that conservative Democrats, establishment liberals and progressives all agree on one thing: the party leadership is "arrogant, bereft of creativity, generationally obsolete." AOC added that they are "blinded [by] anti-activist sentiment," while right-of-center Democrat Conor Lamb told the NY Times that he and his crowd "don’t always feel that the leadership takes our input as seriously as we would like."

2020 showed the limits of mobilization politics. There is a near-term problem, and a long-term one.

In the moment, the things that a candidate or party do to mobilize their side, even or especially when successful, typically also motivate the other side. It was Trump, on his way to winning the second-most votes in American history, who helped Biden win the first-most. The Democratic turnout for the presidency didn’t translate to gains in the House and Senate; turns out there are still some ticket-splitters out there.

In a larger sense, even if a mobilization strategy wins an election it is a persuasion strategy that will win an argument. If AOC helps fundamentally change the U.S. response to climate change, or systemic racial inequities, these would be outsized historic achievements. She is right that you can’t do this with the strategy of caution and accommodation that some moderates-- but not all-- gravitate toward. But you also can’t do it without a constant calibration of appeals that are both challenging and reassuring. You can’t do it without reframing and updating outmoded terms of debate. You can’t do it without engaging consistently-- in both political and substantive terms-- people whose views overlap only in part with your own.

In some ways, this tension between the politics of mobilization versus persuasion is more central to the Democrats’ future than the increasingly stale debate over whether moderates are too tepid to drive meaningful change or progressives are too radical to win.

It is folly for progressives to avoid the obvious: The reason they are far from achieving their policy aims goes beyond the notion that moderate Democrats are clods who can’t play the game. There are many places in the country where progressives need better arguments to reach people who don’t currently support their goals.

The post-election memo by four progressive groups-- New Deal Strategies, Justice Democrats, Sunrise Movement and Data for Progress-- came closer to the mark than Ocasio-Cortez’s interview. It called for a new set of policy and rhetorical appeals that seek to merge the Black Lives Matter message with an economic message that would also appeal to less--prosperous and less-educated whites who have been attracted to Trump. There is not abundant evidence that this can be successful, but it is at least more attuned to the genuine challenge than scolding fellow Democrats for not being with it on Facebook.

Ocasio-Cortez has earned the right to lecture moderate Democrats like Conor Lamb on how to connect with a rising generation of impatient progressives. Lamb has earned the right to lecture Ocasio-Cortez on how to take a seat that used to be held by Republicans and put it in the Democratic column. But a more promising strategy likely would put listening before lecturing.

Harris, an establishment type through and through dismisses AOC as being "on a political planet where she is amply rewarded for her uncommon skill at framing issues in bold terms, for her stylish spontaneity, for her comfort with political combat, for her instinct to open her sails rather than trim them." He is certainly right about the need for more persuasion, but he suggests progressives need to be more like the Republican-lite members of their own caucus. Why? Because he doesn't understand what giving in to conservatives mean to working families. And never will.

Uncalled House Races-- Just A Dozen To Go

 

The latest election tallies show that Joe Biden is leading President Trump by 5,060,175 votes. That is a larger number than the margin between President Obama and Mitt Romney in 2012. In the 2012 election, Obama had 4,982,296 more votes than Romney.

This morning's election counties have Trump losing by 5,060,175 votes and that number will keep growing as more votes are counted in New York and California. At the moment, it stands like this:

• President-elect Joe Biden- 76,997,481 (50.8%)-- 290 electoral votes
• Señor Donald J. Trumpanzee- 71,926,263 (47.5%)- 214 electoral votes

There were a dozen actual swing states and 99% of the votes are counted in each one. Biden won 7 and Trump won 5:

This morning the race in Los Angeles for CA-34 was called for Jimmy Gomez, a garden variety progressive politician, who was in a D vs D fight with a super-progressive activist, David Kim. That leaves just an even dozen uncalled House races nationally, 3 more in California, 1 in Illinois, 1 in Iowa and 7 on New York.

The other California races are all for seats that were flipped from red to blue in 2018 and each pits a Republican against an uninspiring, pointless New Dem.

CA-21 includes all of Kings County and parts of Fresno, Kern and Tulare. It is 75% Hispanic and the PVI is D+5. In 2016, Hillary beat Trump there 55.2% to 39.7% and in 2018 TJ Cox ousted David Valadao by 862 votes-- 57,239 (50.4%) to 56,377 (49.6%). Cox has been a shitty Congress, not as shitty as Valadao, but utterly worthless. Valadao challenged him to a rematch and, with 91% of the vote counted, is now leading 72,350 (51.4%) to 68,324 (48.6%). Cox raised $4,798,088 to Valadao's $3,721,619. The DCCC spent $3,704,254 and Pelosi's House Majority PAC spent $3,218,656, about the same thing the Republican committees spent trying to help Valadao.

CA-25 is the Santa Clarita Valley/Antelope Valley/Simi Valley district that Katie Hill flipped in 2018 and then resigned from in a sex scandal. Mike Garcia beat pointless conservative Democrat Christy Smith in the special election on March 3-- 95,667 (54.9%) to 78,721 (45.1%). That was despite massive DCCC spending on Smith's behalf in a district with a Democratic registration advantage where the PVI is even but where Hillary beat Trump by 7 points. In 2018, Hill beat the Republican incumbent, Steve Knight, 133,209 (54.4%) to 111,813 (45.6%). With 99% of the vote counted, Garcia and Smith have been seesawing back and forth, with him currently leading her by 159 votes-- 165,178 (50.0%) to 165,019 (50.1%). Neither is fit to be in Congress.

Worst of the 3 terrible Democratic candidates in the uncalled California races is Gil Cisneros, the lottery winner who bought an Orange County/L.A./San Bernardino open seat in 2018 with $9,252,762 of his lottery winnings. He campaigned as a fake progressive and, predictably, joined the New Dems when he got to Congress and ran up a voting record rated "F" by ProgressivePunch. He's a waste of a seat and his 126,002 (51.6%) to 118,391 (48.4%) 2018 win over Republican Young Kim is-- with 99% of the vote counted-- not looking good. She leads him 167,564 (50.6%) to 163,396 (49.4%). Refusing to spend much of his own money again (just $370,887), he was out-raised by her $5,319,367 to $3,779,013. The DCCC and Pelosi's PAC put in another $2.6 million but it doesn't seem to have helped combat Democratic lethargy for another useless Republican-lite candidate with no accomplishments.

The uncalled race in Illinois is for the R+5 district northwest of Chicago, where Lauren Underwood ousted Randy Hultgren in 2018-- 156,035 (52.5%) to 141,164 (47.5%), winning in all 7 counties. Having made some progressive noises in 2018, she quickly ran up an "F" voting record (ProgressivePunch). Although Obama won the district in 2008, Hillary lost to Trump by 4 points. Right now with 99% of the votes counted, Underwood is narrowly leading right-wing fanatic and perennial self-funder Jim Oberweis, 198,017 (50.4%) to 194,588 (49.6%). Oberweis kicked in $1,208,179 from his personal fortune, but she out-raised him $7,099,198 to $2,515,192. The DCCC considered her safe and didn't spend in the district.

The Iowa race, in the southeast quadrant of the state (IA-02) is open because Democrat Dave Loebsack decided to retire. The Democrats ran Rita Hart and the Republican candidate is Mariannette Miller-Meeks in the D+1 district that re-elected Loebsack by 12 points in 2018, two years after giving Trump a 4 points win. (Obama took in by 13 points in 2012.) This is another race that is see-sawing back and forth. Right now, with 89% of the votes counted, Miller-Meeks leads 196,860 (50.0%) to 196,812 (50.0%)-- just 48 votes! Right now, this is the closest congressional race in the country. Hart out-raised Miller-Meeks $3,631,135 to $1,518,295 and the DCCC and Pelosi's PAC kicked in about $6.5 million, about the same as the GOP committees.

And that brings us to New York, where there are 7 uncalled races. Trump won both Long Island counties again. The Democrats nominated a conservative Blue Dog, Jackie Gordon. to run for Peter King's open seat on the South Shore. Only 78% of the vote has been counted but she is losing to Republican Andrew Garbarino, 157,482 (57.8%) to 112,584 (41.3%), not a gap she looks likely to close enough to win. On the North Shore New Dem Tom Suozzi looks like he's in trouble behind George Santos-- 137,938 (50.5%) to 133,765 (49.0%)-- but will likely win substantially with 28% of ballots (mostly blue mail in votes) uncounted.

The red-leaning Trump strongholds in Staten Island and south Brooklyn are delivering for the GOP and Democrats have been wiped out there. With 85% of the votes counted Blue Dog Max Rose-- who campaigned against his own party and is not that dissimilar to a stinking pile of shit-- is losing to Republican Nicole Malliotakis, 136,383 (57.9%) to 99,224 (42.1%). The PVI is R+3 and Rose has been one of the worst Democrats in the House and clearly doesn't deserve to be reelected, despite having outraised Malliotakis $8,350,467 to $3,052,007. The DCCC and Pelosi's SuperPAC wasted over $9 million on this race.

Although neither are is called yet, Sean Patrick Maloney and Antonio Delgado (NY-18 and 19) both lead their Republican opponents, Maloney 135,819 (51.0%) to 127,918 (48.1%)and Delgado 141,993 (50.3%) to 134,602 (47.6%), with a Libertarian shaving 1.2% of the vote off the Republican's total. About 80% is in on each candidate and, like Suozzi both these New Dems are likely going back to the House. Maloney has already announced he wants to run for the DCCC chair. I doubt he could be as bad as Cheri Bustos, but he'd be very close if he manages to win (unlikely).

The most exciting races are further north, NY-22 and NY-24. In NY-22 Anthony Brindisi-- the worst Blue Dog in the House, and one who many of his colleagues are actually hoping loses-- is in a rematch with ex-Congresswoman Claudia Tenney, She's a psychotic Trumpster so this is a race without a lesser evil. With 80% counted she's leading 139,926 (54.4%) to 111,539 (43.4%) in an R+6 district. It's hard to imagine Brindisi winning. Good riddance!

NY-24 (Syracuse and environs) is a D+3 district where progressive Dana Balter is working to oust mainstream Republican John Katko. 78% is counted and he leads her 155,830 (58.5%) to 110,728 (37.8%) in a rematch from 2018. Obama won the district by 16 points in 2012 and Hillary won it by about 3 and a half points in 2016. In 2018 Katko was reelected 136,920 (52.6%) to 123,226 (47.4%). This year he outraised Balter $3,541,163 to $2,711,811, but the DCCC and Pelosi's SuperPAC kicked in a little over $5 million, about the same as the Republican committees.

The Moment The Democrats Picked Cheri Bustos As DCCC Chair, As I've Been Saying For Two Years, They Baked Terrible Losses Into The Cake

 

DCCC Chair Cheri Bustos, Born To Lose by Nancy Ohanian

House Democrats are freaking out over more losses as the ballots get counted. According to a Politico piece, House Dems brace for more losses by Ally Mutnick and Sarah Ferris. Already officially gone are Abby Finkenauer (IA), Joe Cunningham (SC), Kendra Horn (OK), Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (FL), Donna Shalala (FL), Collin Peterson (MN) and Xochitl Torres Small (NM) and close to losing Anthony Brindisi (NY), Max Rose (NY), Susan Wild (PA), Harley Rouda (CA), Ben McAdams (UT), Abigail Spanberger (VA), Gil Cisneros (CA), Lauren Underwood (IL)... What do all these candidates have in common? Well, first off, except for Donna Shalala (in a "safe" D+5 district) they all have "F" scores from ProgressivePunch. Shalala has a "D." All of them, with the encouragement-- urging-- of the DCCC decided to stake their career on the false notion that the way to win is by taking the Republican-lite route. That's why they all either lost or are hanging by a thread.

The Democratic Party-- as long a sit holds the majority-- is better off without them. They are almost all Blue Dogs and New Dems from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. They shit all over the Democratic brand and confuse voters and alienate working families while spouting Republican talking points and allowing Fox and other right-wing media outlets to set the debate in terms designed to always result in Republican advantage.

It's worth listening to this shrt talk from Alan Grayson who recorded it while he was the congressman from Orlando, the first Democrat to have represented Orlando in decades.





According to Mutnick and Ferris, "The most likely scenario for Democrats is a net loss of between seven to 11 seats, according to interviews with campaign officials and strategists from both parties. That toll has prompted some tense discussions within the Democratic caucus about its message, tactics and leadership, with an internal race intensifying to succeed Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Cheri Bustos (D-IL). And the fallout means the House is indeed in play in 2022, and the battle will be fought on a whole new set of district lines, most of which will be drawn by Republicans who maintained control of key statehouses."

Pelosi, delusional, said-- after spending over $100,000,000 to win Republican seats-- "We lost some battles. But we won the war. We have the gave." She claimed Democrats in Trump districts faced "almost insurmountable" obstacles, but neglected to mention that outspoken progressive Matt Cunningham-- also in a Trump district-- won his seat while advocating for the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, unlike all the Bustos-Pelosi losers. Maybe voters in his northeast Pennsylvania district actually understand that he represents them, not the elites they hate. He's the whip of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and his ProgressivePunch score is "A." Trump won his district by 10 points in 2016-- 53.3% to 43.7%. Right next door, where New Dem Susan Wild is hanging on for dear life, Hillary won the district by a tad over a point, but Wild is barely a Democrat another's no reason for anyone to vote for her.

They'll both likely win reelection-- as will conservative Democrat Conor Lamb on the other side of the state-- but Pelosi should make an attempt to understand why working class voters hate her and hate where she and other Democratic leaders have taken what they once thought of as their party.

Right now there is just one challenger still standing in a California race against a Republican incumbent: Liam O'Mara-- and he ran in an R+11 district where Trump beat Hillary by 12 points-- who took on Corrupt Ken Calvert with exactly NOT ONE PENNY from the DCCC. Yet he's offering more of a challenge to Calvert than most of the Democrats who Bustos decided to spend millions of dollars on did in their own races. So far-- with thousands of absentee ballots, mostly from Democrats, to be counted, he has 44.5% of the vote. The DCCC and Pelosi's SuperPAC spent millions on Pelosi's costliest 2020 gamble, Blue Dog Sri Kulkarni in Texas, who she and Bustos spent over $7 million on-- and just wound up with 43.0% of the vote. Had they spent a million of that on Kulkarni, O'Mara would have wiped the floor with Calvert. But the DCCC hates progressives and would rather have Republicans in those seats than progressives.

Republicans were ecstatic this week. In a press call held Wednesday afternoon, National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Tom Emmer (MN) mocked Democrats for their upbeat predictions and poor messaging.

“Cheri Bustos laughed in my face when I made the argument that the Democrats’ socialist agenda was going to cost them seats, during a panel that we both attended in September of 2019 in Austin, Texas-- by the way where they didn’t flip a single seat,” Emmer said. [They did-- a single seat.]

The latest DCCC memo was sent to members hours after Bustos and other top Democrats held an emotional three-hour caucus call on Thursday, where some lawmakers traded blame as they processed the string of losses-- even as Democrats are increasingly likely to capture the presidency.

On the call, Bustos declared that the campaign arm would do a post-mortem in the coming weeks. No Democrats on the call directly criticized Bustos or any other Democrat about the losses, though several in the caucus have begun privately lining up to succeed her as chair. Bustos has not said whether she will run for the position again.

Rep. Tony Cárdenas of California [one of the most sleaziest and most corrupt members of Congress and a child rapist] has told members he is interested in running, and Reps. Linda Sánchez of California, Marc Veasey of Texas and Sean Maloney of New York [a Wall Street pawn who makes his campaign calls out of the office of a hedge fund] are also in the mix, according to multiple Democratic sources.

The DCCC is facing a litany of criticism, from its spending decisions to its Latino outreach to its polling. While health care again remained a central theme in down-ballot campaigns, Democratic candidates and outside groups were yoking their GOP opponents to Trump in dozens of TV ads in districts from Texas to Illinois that the president will likely end up carrying.

Swing district Democrats-- many stung by tighter-than-expected margins in their own races-- say they’ve been privately sounding the alarm about the party’s anti-Trump messaging, which they say hurt in areas like upstate New York, Staten Island and Miami.

Shalala, who holds a South Florida seat Trump lost by 20 points in 2016, said her polls didn’t pick up how harmful the GOP’s “socialism” attacks could be. But those tags-- along with accusations that Democrats would defund the police amid widespread protests over racial injustice and police brutality-- “caught on.”

“It’s not just Biden, it's the whole Democratic establishment that has to work these districts consistently,” Shalala said. “We had not been working them over a generation. It just takes a lot of work. Could we have done more? Absolutely.”

Progressive Democrats have disputed any finger-pointing from the caucus’s centrist flank about the party’s 2020 message.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a member of the progressive Squad, argued that moderates did, in fact, steer much of the legislative agenda for the last two years-- the reality of a House Democratic majority with tight margins, which are only likely to shrink in the 117th Congress.

“They were very much centered and prioritized... No one was really sounding many alarms to me about how they felt about their race,” Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview.

Did You Know That Every Single Blue Dog Candidate Was Defeated On Tuesday-- Even Though The DCCC Spent Millions On Their Races?

 

"A GOP Senate would mean the end of the Biden-Bernie Sanders 'unity' agenda. No death to the legislative filibuster, no new U.S. states, no Supreme Court packing, no confiscatory tax increases, no Green New Deal. If Mr. Biden wins and he wants to get something done, he would have to go through Mitch the Knife." For normal people, this sounds like the worst kind of post-election woe-is-me scenario. But to the editors of the Wall Street Journal, it's like Ian Drury and the Blockheads' one hit song and a reason to celebrate. "Pelosi," they smirked, will keep her majority, but much reduced from 232-197. The GOP flipped two seats in South Florida amid a surge of Hispanic turnout and toppled 15-year Rep. Collin Peterson in western Minnesota. Republicans had picked up a net five seats by Wednesday afternoon and could gain as many as 12 or 13. They regained seats they’d lost in 2018 in Cedar Rapids, Charleston (SC), and Oklahoma City."

Obviously, they didn't mention that the losing candidates were all crap and that there demise helps unify the Democrats in a more progressive direction. There are at least half a dizen other Blue Dogs and New Dems also on the verge of defeat and that that also makes the Democratic party stronger, not weaker. One Democratic congressman praying for the loss of Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog chair in NY-22, who is currently losing with 43.4% of the vote-- 80% counted) told me that Brindisi's "constant whining" prevented House Democrats from moving forward with anything remotely progressive. "He never ceased to cry that we would be make it impossible for him to be reelected... Everything was through that lens... Cynthia Tenney is a right-wing ideologue who, unlike Brindisi, will have no impact on what our conference does in the House. I'd rather see her in the seat than Brindisi."

The Journal editors assert that these losses-- including other reactionary Blue Dogs and New Dems from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party "will reduce Mrs. Pelosi’s legislative running room and perhaps test her party control. Her strategy of refusing to compromise on a Covid-19 relief bill may have cost seats, and now she’ll have a harder time getting a blue-state and union bailout through the Senate. If Mr. Biden wins, the GOP will be better poised to retake the House in 2022." Or maybe the exact opposite. Losses of fake Democratic careerists like Brindisi, Kendra Horn (OK), Xochitl Torres Small (NM), Max Rose (NY), Joe Cunningham (SC), Abby Finkenauer (IA), Collin Peterson (MN)-- as well as for virtually all the Blue Dog and New Dem candidates the DCCC and House Majority PAC wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on-- will allow the Democrats to better define themselves, if they choose to, as a vehicle for the legitimate interests of working families, rather than as the other party of corporate whores.

In her hometown paper this morning, San Francisco Chronicle reporters Tal Kopan and John Wildermuth asserted that "the surprising loss of several front-line Democrats in battleground seats raised questions for Speaker Nancy Pelosi about her leadership of the caucus." Some House Dems are asking her to account for the Cheri Bustos disaster. Kopan and Wildermuth wrote that "Pelosi is not directly responsible for the campaign strategy, though she wields heavy influence. She sets the party’s agenda and the tone for party messaging. Democratic lawmakers directly select their DCCC chair. In a joint news conference on election day, Pelosi had sounded confident and praised DCCC chair Rep. Cheri Bustos of Illinois for her fundraising, strategy and candidate recruitment. '[Tonight, House Democrats are poised to further strengthen our majority ... thanks to you, Madame Chair,' Pelosi said... Many Democrats said they still supported Pelosi’s leadership, but that the party will have to figure out what went wrong."

Beyond backing the crap conservative incumbents who lost their seats, the DCCC's biggest independent expenditures this cycle were done, overwhelmingly, on behalf of conservative candidates backed by the Blue Dogs and New Dems. DCCC and House Majority PAC expenditures are still being reported and it will be another week before we can do an accurate systematic audit but look at these races the DCCC (and Pelosi-- let me just refer to the expenditures of both the DCCC and her House Majority PAC , for the sake of this post, as "the DCCC") chose to spend big in-- at the expense of progressive candidates like Mike Siegel, Julie Oliver, Mondaire Jones, Liam O'Mara, Adam Christensen, Audrey Denney, etc, who they chose to not spend any money at all on.

• TX-22 (open seat- Republican Troy Nehls vs Blue Dog Sri Kulkarni)- $7,310,059
• NJ-02 (Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew vs New Dem Amy Kennedy)- $6,466,505
• NY-02 (open seat- Republican Andrew Garbarino vs Blue Dog Jackie Gordon)- $5,755,272
• OH-01 (Republican Rep. Steve Chabot vs New Dem Kate Schroder)- $5,459,139
• MN-01 (Republican Rep. Jim Hagedorn vs New Dem Dan Feehan)- $5,167,169
• PA-10 (Republican Rep. Scott Perry vs Blue Dog Eugene DePasquale)- $4,467,203
• MO-02 (Republican Rep. Ann Wagner vs New Dem Jill Schupp)- $4,455,799
• IN-05 (open seat- Republican Victoria Spartz vs Blue Dog Christina Hale)- $4,280,277
• PA-01 (Republican Rep Brian Fitzpatrick vs New Dem Christina Finello)- $2,794,118

All of these heavily-financed Democratic candidates lost (or are losing). Hundreds of millions of dollars were wasted. Someone has to answer for that and Democrats had better figure out a way how of finally disgarding the Rahm Emanuel anti-progressive approach to running the DCCC and come up with a better way. Jamie Raskin would make a great chairman-- unlike Bustos, he's brilliant and fair and actually believes in what the Democratic Party stands for and isn't embarrassed to fight for it.

The DCCC Failed Beyond Anyone's Wildest Expectations

 

Let's start at the top, in the northeast corner of Illinois, CD-17, carefully gerrymandered by the Democratic legislature to elect Democrats. But instead of a Democrat, it is represented by Blue Dog/New Dem Cheri Bustos, chair of the DCCC. When I woke this morning 55% of the votes had been counted and this is what it looks like:

• Esther Joy King (R)- 91,942 (51.9%)
• Chris Bustos- 85,187 (48.1%)

One of the problem the Democrats had this cycle is that Bustos was determined to create a Democratic House conference that looked like her-- conservative-- by recruiting and supporting dreadful candidates. It will be a few more days before we know exactly how much the DCCC and the House Majority PAC wasted on conservative Democrats but they raised close to $300 million and tens of millions of dollars were flushed down the toilet trying to save the seats of worthless Blue Dogs and New Dems and in trying to elect more worthless Blue Dog and New Dem candidates.

In terms of IEs, the DCCC spent, for example, $5 million trying to save Collin Peterson's ass. Why? So he could continue voting with the Republicans. Maybe that $5 million could have been pumped into Austin and elected progressives Mike Siegel and Julie Oliver. Instead, if you add up all the money the DCCC and the House Majority PAC spent on IEs for both Mike and Julie together you come up with a grand total of... zero.

All 3 districts-- MN-07, TX-10 and TX-25-- had immense turnout and all three have been officially called for the Republicans. That $5 million helped buy Peterson 137,085 votes (39.9%). And the lack of help from the DCCC didn't prevent Siegel from taking 186,210 votes (45.3%) and Oliver from taking 164,415 votes (42.0%). Siegel and Oliver challenged Republican multimillionaires Michael McCaul and Roger Williams and were seriously out-raised-- McCaul $3,515,771 to Siegel's $2,332,415 and Williams' $2,160,554 (including at least $50,000 from his own personal bank account) to Oliver's $1,809,951. Meanwhile, decades of corporate-friendly corruption helped Peterson keep up with Congresswoman-elect Michelle Fischbach. She raised $2,205,150 and he raised $2,284,742. That extra $5 million from the DCCC didn't do any good at all.

As Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer put it at Politico this morning, "Tuesday was an abject disaster for Democrats in Washington. To imagine the amount of soul searching and explaining the party will have to do after Tuesday is absolutely dizzying. The infighting will be bloody-- as it should be. We fielded text after text from Hill Democrats Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning with existential questions about their leadership and the direction of their party... Democrats and Republicans told us that Dems would win a dozen seats in the House, and knock off a whole host of Republican incumbents, and that was completely wrong. Instead, Republicans-- powered by the NRCC and CLF-- beat a bunch of Democratic incumbents."

Votes are still being counted but it is safe to say that the Republicans are going to be a much stronger minority party in the House than they were in 2019 and 2020. I can't find a single case of a Democrat beating a Republican incumbent but I see at least half a dozen Democratic incumbents-- generally from the conservative Republican wing of the Democratic Party (so no tears spilled)-- losing, including odious Blue Dogs Collin Peterson (MN), Kendra Horn (OK), Joe Cunningham (SC), Max Rose (NY), Xochitl Torres Small (NM), and Anthony Brindisi (NY), plus Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (New Dem-FL) and Donna Shalala (FL), the last two in districts that are, respectively, D+6 and D+5.

I'll go state by state where there were House races worth mentioning. In Alaska, the DCCC supported an independent candidate, Alyse Galvin against Don Young. She out-raised Young $4,390,232 to $1,778,232 and the DCCC and the House Majority PAC spent around $2 million on her. Although just 36% of votes are counted, she's just at 38.2%.

Arizona was a bright spot for Democrats. Biden flipped the state and conservative quasi-Democrat Mark Kelly beat incumbent Republican Martha McSally. Although Blue Dog (and "ex"-Republican) Tom O'Halleran is hanging on to his seat my his fingernails, New Dem Hiral Tirpirneni appears to be about to possibly beat a Republican incumbent-- leading David Schweikert 169,543 (50.3%) to 167,761 (49.7%), with 80% of the vote counted.

In Arkansas, it looked like the Democrats had a shot in the Little Rock district with Joyce Elliott, but incumbent French Hill beat back the challenge 55.1% to 44.9%. California's final results will probably take at least a week-- at least but there are 13 uncalled House races now; these are the ones that might result in a district flip:

• CA-01- 73% counted

Doug LaMalfa (R)- 142,742 (55%)
Audrey Denney (D)- 116,985 (45%)

• CA-04- 81% counted

Tom McClintock (R)- 173,324 (52.9%)
Brynne Kennedy (New Dem)- 154,090 (47.1%)

• CA-08 (open seat)- 60% counted

Jay Obernolte (R)- 90,179 (53.3%)
Christine Bubser (D)- 79,080 (46.7%)

• CA-21- 71% counted (in a disgustingly low turn-out election

David Valadao (R)- 56,269 (51.4%)
TJ Cox (New Dem)- 53,236 (48.6%)

• CA-22- 86% counted

Devin Nunes (R)- 126,022 (53.5%)
Phil Arballo (D)- 109,596 (46.5%)

• CA-25- 82% counted

Christy Smith (New Dem)- 131,218 (50.5%)
Mike Garcia (R)- 128,462 (49.5%)

• CA-39- 85% counted

Young Kim (R)- 134,556 (50.2%)
Gil Cisneros (New Dem)- 133-263 (49.8%)

• CA-42- 49% counted

Ken Calvert (R)- 83,706 (55.4%)
Liam O'Mara (D)- 67,331 (44.6%)

• CA-48- 93% counted

Michelle Steel (R)- 169,179 (50.3%)
Harley Rouda (New Dem)- 167,229 (49.7%)

• CA-50- 78% counted

Darrell Issa (R)- 136,322 (52.2%)
Ammar Campa-Najjar (New Dem)- 124,688 (47.8%)

Colorado has just one uncalled race but it doesn't look good. Neo-Nazi Lauren Boebert beat right-wing Republican Scott Tipton in the primary and now she's leading Democrat Diane Mitsch Bush 51.1% to 45.7% with 91% counted.

In Florida, the state party did what it does best-- lost through lack of trying and through incompetence and self-serving corruption. They lost two seats in very blue districts and failed to win any of the seats that looked flippable.

In Georgia, the two uncalled races in the Atlanta suburbs both show New Dems leading-- incumbent Lucy McBath with 53.5% and Carolyn Bourdeaux with 51.2% in the open red seat.

In Illinois-- aside from the good news about Bustos' agony-- it looks like progressive Marie Newman will replace Blue Dog Dan Lipinski by beating Mike Fricilone 53.2% to 46.8%. Meanwhile with 78% of the vote counted perennial super-rich right-wing nutcase Jim Oberweis may be on the verge of ousting New Dem Lauren Underwood. With 78% of the votes counted, he has 151,425 (50.3%) to her 149,395 (49.7%).

Indiana looked like a chance for a Democratic pickup in an open red seat (IN-05) but with 89% of the vote counted, it looks like New Dem Christina Hale was beamed by Victoria Spartz 51.7% to 44.2%.

Iowa-- TOTAL shitshow: Trump won the state, Joni Ernst was reelected to the Senate over a weak Democratic opponent Chuck Schumer recruited, and all 4 house seats look pretty bad. Randy Feenstra (basically Steve King-lite) beat JD Scholten 62.1% to 37.9% (86% counted) after the DCCC told him they wouldn't help him unless he played down his progressive agenda and allowed them to staff his campaign with their useless operatives; he turned them down. Conservative and useless incumbent Abby Finkenauer is behind 211,573 (51.3%) to 200,814 (48.7% with 91% counted and the even worse New Dem Cindy Axne is barely hanging on-- 218,968 (49.0%) to 212,727 (47.6%). It was thought that Rita Hart would hold onto Democrat's Dave Loebsack's seat but with 89% of the vote counted it's a 50-50 race-- 196,773 for Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks and 196,487 for Hart.

In Michigan it looks like Justin Amash's seat is going to Republican supermarket scion Peter Meijer instead of New Dem Hillary Scholten. The DCCC decided to not help Jon Hoadley (too progressive and too gay for their tastes) and he lost 58-38% to Fred Upton (with 70% counted). New Dem Elissa Slotkin is narrowly holding onto her seat (MI-08) with 50.9% and 96% of the vote counted but fellow New Dem Haley Stevens seems to be losing-- 77% counted-- to Eric Esshaki, 50.4% to 47.6%. Good news: Rashida stomped her GOP opponent 77.2% to 19.5%.

Democrats missed pick-up opportunities in Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska and New Jersey, where New Dem Amy Kennedy looks to be failing to oust fence-jumper Jeff Van Drew who is ahead 50.9% to 47.5% (75% counted).

In New Mexico the Torres Small/Herrell rematch looks like (68% counted) the Republican beat the Blue Dog 53.3% to 46.6% this time. The Trump voters that didn't come out in 2018, definitely voted yesterday!

New York had 6 Democratic losers: New Dem Nancy Goroff and Blue Dog Jackie Gordon on Long Island, Blue Dog Max Rose (with just 42.1% of the vote) in Brooklyn/Staten Island, Blue Dog Anthony Brindisi (NY-22), progressive Dana Balter (58.5% to 37.8%) and progressive Nate McMurray (31.1%). On a brighter note, look forward to Congressmen Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones, while AOC beat back the well-financed ($9,590,891) Republican challenge with about 70% of the vote.

North Carolina reelected Democratic Governor Roy Cooper but it looks bad for Biden and Cunningham and with all House seats now called, the Dems picked up the two lay-ups (NC-02 and NC-06), both with crap conservatives but failed everywhere else they thought they had a chance. Nazi Madison Cawthorn beat Moe Davis 243,898 (54.5%) to 189,516 (42.4%).

The only district the DCCC tried to win in Ohio was in Cincinnati and their New Dem candidate lost with 44.5%.

In Oklahoma, one of the worst Dems in Congress, Blue Dog Kendra Horn was beaten 158,044 (52.1%) to 145,541 (47.9%)-- with 95% reporting. Good riddance!

Pennsylvania is still counting votes but it looks like New Dem Christina Finello is losing to Brian Fitzpatrick in the bluest Pennsylvania seat held by a Republican. Meanwhile conservatives Chrissy Houlahan (52.7%), Susan Wild (46.7%) and Conor Lamb (43%) are having trouble holding onto their seats, Blue Dog Eugene DePasquale is being crushed. With 82% of the vote counted, Matt Cartwright is having a tough time as well but will probably hold onto his seat once all the early votes are counted.

Texas was tragic. Every Democratic hope-- the good, the bad and the ugly-- was dashed. Instead of half a dozen pick-ups, there were no changes and the Democrats came close to losing a New Dem (Lizzie Fletcher) and a Blue Dog (Vicente Gonzalez). The DCCC poured over $7 million into Blue Dog Sri Kulkarni's race and he lost 202,320 (49.8%) to 173,899 (42.8%). Even the "easiest" seat for the Dems to flip-- TX-23, an open seat Hillary won and with an R+1 PVI-- was lost by Gina Ortiz Jones, a mediocre candidate the DCCC spent over $5 million on.

With just 67% of the vote counted, Utah Blue Dog Ben McAdams in barely holding onto his seay-- 109,880 (49.5%) to 102,115 (46%).

In Virginia conservative Democrat Elaine Luria seems to be holding on with 50.7% and Blue Dog Abigail Spanberger is in a 50-50 nail-biter against neo-Nazi Nick Freitas (199,786 to 199,513, with 86% of the vote counted).

And no changes in West Virginia, Wisconsin or Wyoming. In Washington 10's D vs D race, conservative New Dem Marilyn Strickland beat progressive Beth Doglio 50.2% to 35.9%.

Once all the figures are in, we'll look more closely at how Bustos wasted hundreds of millions of dollars trying-- and mostly failing-- to elect conservative Democraps.