Just Two More Congressional Races Left To Call In California-- One District Held By A Democrat And One Held By A Republican

 

Officially, there are 3 uncalled congressional races in California-- CA-21 in the northern Central Valley, CA-25 in the northern part of L.A. county and part of Ventura County and CA-39 in northeast Orange County with bits of Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. But... there really are just two races left, and both are incredibly close.

New Dem Gil Cisneros, the lottery winner who bought a seat in 2018 with $9 million of his winnings, didn't want to spend much of his own money and not many people wanted to donate to him... and he lost to Young Kim, the woman he beat two years ago. AP called the race late Friday. So far, Biden is beating Trump in Orange County 811,916 (53.51%) to 674,231 (44.44%)

Cisneros, a pointless New Dem, was a waste of a seat. His ProgressivePunch grade is "F" and there isn't a reason in the world for anyone to vote for him other than knee jerk Democrats. That wasn't enough this year, even though Hillary beat Trump in CA-39 by about 8 and a half points in 2016. Of the 4 Democrats elected in the 2018 anti-red wave, the two progressives were re-elected and the two rich, reactionary "ex"-Republicans lost. Cisneros' district has an even PVI so it should have been easy to hold by a halfway decent incumbent. Katie Porter's seat is much trickier (PVI is R+3) but she's a great congresswoman and her constituents love her. She won by 7 points. Levin's district has a PVI of R+1 and he has been an outspoken champion of the Green New Deal and won reelection by about 6 points. The other loser, like Cisneros, Rouda, a right-of-center New Dem who contributed money to Romney when he ran against Obama, lost by a bit over 2 points in a difficult R+4 district. The DCCC and Pelosi's PAC spent $9.5 million, $840 on Katie Porter, $135 on Mike Levin and $2.6 million on Cisneros (who conceded on Twitter).

So, that leaves one Democrat-- a New Dem actually-- and one Republican in races still too close to call: TJ Cox and Mike Garcia. Cox's district has a PVI of D+5 and should be an easy hold for a decent candidate (which he isn't) and Garcia's district's PVI is even, although the Democrats have a registration advantage and, again, a decent Democrat should win there-- which Christy Smith is about as far from being as anyone could imagine.

Absentee ballots being counted now in CA-21 heavily favor Cox and Valadao's election night lead has been cut in half. As of Friday, just 2,065 votes (50.6% to 49.4%) separate them and Cox still has a decent shot at reelection. It's one of the most pitifully low-turn out districts in the country but perhaps more people would vote if there weren't always being asked to pick the lesser of two evils. In 2018, the race wasn't decided for weeks of counting, surprising everyone when Cox ousted Valadao (57,239) to 56,377 (49.6%). Cox raised $4,798,088 to Valadao's $3,721,619. The DCCC and Pelosi's PAC kicked another $7 million into the race. There is no real telling who's going to win this time but the absentee ballots need to be stronger than they've been for Cox to pull this one off.

CA-25 is another sad district with two dreadful candidates, neither of whom should be anywhere near Congress. Christy Smith isn't a real Democrat and Garcia is a Trumpist imbecile. But it's one of the closest races in the country, just 104 votes separating the two of them. On Friday Garcia was leading by 219 votes so it looks like Smith will win if there are enough absentees to be counted, something that is unclear now.

By the way, New York has 7 uncalled congressional races. We'll get to that mess soon.

Today's Democratic Party Was The Republican Party From When I Was Growing Up-- And That Is NOT A Good Thing

 

Yesterday, reporting for the NY Times, Luke Broadwater used the word "brand" half a dozen times in writing about the House freshmen from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- conservative Blue Dogs and New Dems. He called them "brand ambassadors for the Democratic Party in red districts" but never addressed the fact that by distorting the Democratic brand in the eyes of millions of people, they are turning the party-- once the vehicle for the legitimate aspirations of working families into a second corrupted, corporate-friendly cesspool of careerist politicians. The Cheri Bustos Democratic Party is just as corrupt as the GOP-- not the lesser evil, exactly as corrupt-- but it more or less tolerates the LGBTQ community, is mostly fine with abortions and takes an anti-racist stance. As the Republican Party moved further and further right-- into out and out authoritarianism and fascism-- the Democratic Party establishment was only too happy to occupy the mainstream Republican ground it was ceding. Today's Democratic Party is largely the Republican Party of my childhood. The brand that conservative Democrats represent are not the brand of any Democratic Party I ever backed.

Broadwater comes off not as a dispassionate reporter but as a cheerleader for a Democratic Party slipping and sliding-- and marching purposefully-- into a kind of Wall Street-friendly centrism that has gradually come to dominate the Democratic Party ever since Henry Wallace was forced out of the vice-presidential slot just before FDR's death. He's all filled with cheer that the conservative incumbents who were once regarded as "vulnerable"-- just wait for 2022-- are now mostly shoo-ins in the anti-Trump wave that fools are mistaking for a "blue wave."

He never found it relevant to mention that of the half dozen biggest DCCC expenditures for incumbents-- as of this week-- all ten were made on behalf of unpopular conservatives:

• Blue Dog Xochitl Torres Small (NM)- $3,357,753
• New Dem TJ Cox (CA)- $3,163,927
• New Dem Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (FL)- $2,782,776
• Blue Dog Kendra Horn (OK)- $2,484,176
• Blue Dog Anthony Brindisi (NY)- $2,437,435
• New Dem Harley Rouda (CA)- $2,109,487

Same story for Nancy Pelosi's SuperPC, the House Democratic Majority PAC:

• Blue Dog Max Rose (NY)- $6,193,069
• New Dem Harley Rouda (CA)- $5,768,556
• Blue Dog Collin Peterson (MN)- $3,994,597
• Blue Dog Ben McAdams (UT)- $3,091,534
• New Dem TJ Cox (CA)- $2,286,172
• New Dem Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (FL)- $2,205,976

And something all these fine brand ambassadors have in common? Each and every one of them has an "F" grade from ProgressivePunch-- no "C"s and no "D"s... all "F"s. What great brand ambassadors! Do you want to support progressive candidates running in districts that Trump won in 2016? That's what the ActBlue thermometer on the right is for.

Broadwater: "Across the country, Democrats like [Virginia Blue Dog Abigail] Spanberger, a former C.I.A. officer who has cultivated a brand as a moderate unafraid to criticize her own party, are playing a pivotal role that has positioned Democrats to maintain control of the House and build their majority." Someone should sit Broadwater down and explain the difference to him between a "moderate" and a "conservative." And then show him the results of the 2010 Great Blue Dog Extinction Election which is being re-set for 2022 because... well, not pointing any fingers, but some people just can't learn anything at all from history, not even recent history.

Broadwater is happy, happy that these right-of-center Blue Dogs and New Dems are "leading their Republican challengers in polling and fund-raising headed into the election’s final week." He's very good at regurgitating DCCC talking points: "Speaker Nancy Pelosi likes to call this group of about 40 lawmakers-- most of them young, many women, and predominantly moderates-- her 'majority makers,' while the House Democratic campaign arm calls them 'frontliners.' And they have largely managed to buck intense Republican attempts to brand them as Ms. Pelosi’s minions, socialists or out-of-touch coastal elites."

And Broadwater is biting his nails down to the nubs because, he wrote, "there are still a handful who are at real risk of defeat. Representatives Kendra Horn in Oklahoma, Max Rose and Anthony Brindisi in New York, Ben McAdams in Utah, TJ Cox in California, Xochitl Torres Small in New Mexico and Abby Finkenauer in Iowa are all struggling to head off Republican challengers." He's wrong about Finkenauer; she's in no trouble whatsoever but in any case, the House Democratic caucus would be far better off if all 7 lost their seats since they're better thought of as the aisle-crossers than what Broadwater and Pelosi prefer to call the "majority makers."

After Democrats picked up 41 House seats in 2018, Republicans immediately vowed revenge, targeting more than 50 seats, including 13 districts that Mr. Trump carried by six percentage points or more, as their ticket to reclaiming the majority.

Polling showed voters in these districts viewed socialism negatively, so Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, embarked on a strategy to try to tie the freshmen Democrats to that label, predicting that their party’s “embrace of socialism is going to cost them their majority in the House.”

Democrats were prepared for the onslaught, moving quickly and aggressively to protect the more than 40 members of their Frontline Program-- almost all freshmen-- through aggressive fund-raising, volunteer recruitment and online networking.

They rushed to build individual brands distinct from their party’s, and hauled in campaign cash that scared off some potential challengers from the right. And Mr. Trump’s sinking poll numbers in the suburbs has given them an even broader advantage in the closing months of the race.

Like Ms. Spanberger, several-- including Representative Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former C.I.A. analyst; Representative Jared Golden of Maine, a Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan; and Representative Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, a Navy helicopter pilot-- are known for their robust national security credentials.

Ms. Sherrill’s race is not considered competitive. National conservative groups have shied away from challenging Ms. Slotkin again, after spending millions on unsuccessful attack ads against her two years ago, and recently decided to cut their advertising campaign against Mr. Golden. And this month, the Cook Political Report moved Ms. Spanberger out of its “toss up” category, judging that her district was leaning toward re-electing her.

Ms. Slotkin said she and other frontliners have had to labor far more intensively than many of their older Democrats colleagues, who hold safe seats in deep-blue districts.

“It takes work for a Democrat to represent a majority-Republican district,” Ms. Slotkin said. “We came into Congress with a strong sense of what it took to win in tough districts and what it would take to keep the seats.”

Slotkin is an imbecile. Her R+4 district is far from a Republican-majority district. The district, like all the ones won by the "aisle crossers" has a majority that shifts depending on the political winds and which candidate or party can appeal to independent voters. MI-08, Slotkin's district, is won or lost by turning out Democrats in Ingham County and persuading independents in Oakland and Livingston counties. Slotkin is useless in persuading anyone of anything other than that she's a DINO. Trump did all the persuading needed in 2018, when she won and is doing it again for her this year. In 2022 she'll be on her own and I will predict right now that she will lose to whomever the GOP nominates against her-- unless she changes, which is not going to happen. Same for Spanberger.

In some ways, Ms. Spanberger and frontliners like her have served as brand ambassadors for the Democratic Party in red districts, pushing back against Republican attempts to caricature their party and, at times, openly criticizing their own leaders.

On a recent private call with Ms. Pelosi and Democratic colleagues, and confirmed in an interview with Ms. Spanberger, she blasted party leaders for failing to find agreement with Republicans on a new coronavirus stimulus deal, saying she wanted to do “my goddamned job and come up with a solution for the American people.”

It was a familiar spot for Ms. Spanberger, who rose to viral fame in 2018 after a debate with the Tea Party-aligned incumbent Republican, Representative Dave Brat, in which she chided him for repeatedly referring to Ms. Pelosi instead of her.

“I question again whether Congressman Brat knows which Democrat in fact he’s running against,” Ms. Spanberger said then, as the crowd burst into applause. “Abigail Spanberger is my name!”

In this month’s debate, Mr. Freitas, a former Green Beret running as a strict fiscal conservative, attempted to tie her to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the liberal firebrand from New York.

“My opponent votes with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez almost 90 percent of the time and then comes back to the district and claims to be a moderate,” Mr. Freitas said.

This time, Ms. Spanberger ignored her opponent’s comment altogether.

“I don’t fall in line with speaker when I don’t want to,” Ms. Spanberger said in an interview. “I certainly disagree with colleagues, Alexandria among them. But that’s fine. We don’t have to agree.”

AOC and Spanberger were sworn in on the same day in 2019. Since then, AOC has voted 95.06% of the time for progressive initiatives. On those same roll calls Spanberger has voted with the Democrats 28.40% of the time. (Justin Amash was a Republican for half that time and an independent conservative libertarian for the other half. He voted 51.85% of the time with the Dems.) Spanberger's record is much, much closer to that of virtually every conservative Republican in the House than it is to AOC's. The Democratic Party-- and America-- would be far better off if instead of being a brand ambassador to conservative districts, Biden appoints her to be the ambassador to Kazakhstan.

That said, there are virtually no Democrats as bad as Trump and his Republican Party enablers. There are plenty of really terrible Democrats, from top to bottom, but any like this? I don't think so. I don't know anyone who isn't voting against Trump.

Take A Look At The Future Of American Political Leadership: Mondaire Jones

 

This year, Mondaire Jones started to climb a hill most people thought was impossible. He began a primary campaign against one of Pelosi's most powerful allies in Congress, Nita Lowey, who was first elected to Congress when Mondaire was 2 years old, and had since risen to the position of chair of the House Appropriations Committee. NY-17 consists of northern and western Westchester County and all of Rockland County across the Hudson. It's a D+7 district that even Hillary was able to win easily against Trump (58.6% to 38.4%). But the district is mostly white and mostly rich (nearly a $100,000 media family income). Mondaire ran on working class issues, that have a lot of appeal to the upper middle class as well, the Green New Deal, Medicare-for-All, racial justice and police reform...

Soon after he declared his candidacy, Lowey announced she was retiring, setting off a flood of candidates who wanted the safe Democratic seat for themselves. And, after all, how hard would it be to defeat Jones, a black, gay progressive? Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Evelyn Farkas, state Assemblyman David Buchwald, right-wing state Senate "Democrat" David Carlucci and son-of-a-billionaire Adam Schleifer, each thought the seat should belong to them. Schleifer spent $5,197,000 of his inheritance on the race and Buchwald threw $612,342 of his own money in. Mondaire, who eschews corporate money, won and won big with 41.7% in an 8 person race-- more votes than the second and third place finishers combined:

So next question... what is Mondaire likely to be like when he's sitting in Congress? He's a natural-born reformer-- and he's eager to get started. One of his targets sits in the middle of a field of landmines: the Supreme Court. I had asked him about the danger of Trump's nominee abolishing women's Choice. "Unfortunately, the Trump Administration and the Republican Party have systematically undermined women’s reproductive freedom," he said. "The federal government must step in to protect civil rights-- and it cannot leave those rights up to the extreme conservative majority on the Supreme Court. As a member of Congress, I will work to codify Roe v. Wade by statute, repeal the Hyde Amendment, and ensure that any Medicare for All legislation includes coverage for the full range of reproductive services." (His GOP opponent is an anti-choice nut, completely out of step with the values of NY-17.)

But then he got into something related, but not specifically about Choice: He reminded me that McConnell "is poised to ram through a replacement of Justice Ginsburg before the November election, flagrantly breaking with the precedent he set just four years ago. That should confirm for the American people what many of us already knew: the Republican Party sees the Supreme Court as a partisan tool meant to serve its own political ends and further entrench the power of right-wing plutocrats. I refuse to stand by and let them. The constitution gives Congress the authority to add or subtract seats from the Supreme Court, and I fully intend to fight to expand our Court, if elected."

Addy Baird, writing for BuzzFeed News last week, hit the nail on the head about what kind of a congress member Jones is going to be: His Victory Was Major For Progressives. Now He Wants To Keep It Going By Expanding The Supreme Court. And not just by 2 justices; Jones wants to add 4. Jones told Baird that "in 2021, when Democrats have unified control of the federal government, that we will still have as a major obstacle having the progressive legislation that we enact upheld when it is challenged in the Supreme Court. If democracy is to be preserved, we have to expand the size of the Supreme Court and restore balance. … Roe v. Wade, the civil rights of LGBTQ people like myself, [and] the civil rights of racial minorities like myself are all at risk of being abridged by what may end up being a 6–3 conservative bloc on the Supreme Court."

That puts him at loggerheads with Biden who opposes expanding the Court. Last year Biden said that "We’ll live to rue that day." Baird wrote that "Jones says his party is already living that reality. 'Democrats are already ruing the day,' he said. 'I think Democrats rue every day… I disagree with those words by Vice President Biden over a year ago. And my expectation is that he will change his opinion now.'" YES! That's the kind of leadership we need in Congress in 2021.

And what originally caused Jones to win the Blue America endorsement during the primary, wasn't the Court. it was his stands on the other issues powering his campaign. "It's frankly absurd that, in the midst of a pandemic that has claimed the lives of 200,000 Americans, the debate over our predatory healthcare system has been completely shunted aside," he reiterated on Friday.  

This fight is personal for me. After my grandfather died of cancer, I watched helplessly as my grandmother worked well past the age of retirement just to pay for the high cost of prescription drugs and medical procedures not fully covered by Medicare. When I quit my job to try to better my community by running for Congress, I lost my health insurance. That is not a rational system.

I believe health care should be a human right in a nation as wealthy as our own, not tied to employment status or economic means. It has never been clearer to me, and to millions of Americans across this country, that we need Medicare for All. 

I have every confidence that Mondaire Jones will be working alongside AOC, Ed Markey and other climate hawks to fill in the details of the Green New Deal. He told us last week that "In the past month, America has watched in horror as the West Coast was engulfed in flames, and the Gulf Coast was inundated with hurricanes. It is beyond debate at this point that climate change is real, it is here already, and it is disproportionately impacting our most vulnerable communities. The question is, what are we going to do about it? I know where I stand. We absolutely must mobilize our collective resources to confront the challenge of climate change with the urgency required. We must invest in sustainable infrastructure with a particular eye on our Black and brown communities that have experienced generations of environmental racism. Anything less is tantamount to climate denial."

If you're talking about the future of leadership in the Democratic Party and in Congress and in this country, you're talking about Mondaire Jones. "This week, like so many weeks," he said, "it is so difficult to be Black in America. To be reminded that property is worth more than Black life. People protesting the murder of Breonna Taylor are being punished more harshly than the people who actually killed Breonna Taylor. That's absurd, and, people all across this country have had it. I may let myself feel the pain of injustice, but I do not despair. I remain deeply committed to the fight for a more just America. The fact is, our criminal legal system is working exactly as its designers intended. That’s why we need to reimagine that system."

Let's reimagine a system where it's men and women like Mondaire Jones leading out party instead of representatives of special interests who have long ago lost touch with the spirit of fairness and reform that have, in the past, made the Democratic Party worthwhile.