Good Riddance To Rubbish Democrats! We're Better Off Without Them-- And We Do NOT Need Them

The screenshot above is from ProgressivePunch. It shows where the 9 worst Democrats meet a bunch of Republicans who sometimes stand up to Trump. The worst of the Democrats-- Blue Dogs Jeff Van Drew (NJ), Joe Cunningham (SC), Anthony Brindisi (NY) and Kendra Horn (OK) vote far more frequently with the GOP than with the Democrats on crucial roll calls. These Democrats muck up the party brand and always drag the congressional party right-ward. Brindisi particularly is like a whiny 8 year old always bitching how progressive votes will lose him his seat and that if he votes against them, Democrats in his district will turn on him but that if he votes for them, conservatives in his district will vote against him. Let's face it; we would all be better off without Anthony Brindisi. And without Van Drew, Cunningham and Horn to boot. They are a detriment, not an asset, in Congress.

Yesterday, NBC News focused on Cunningham, who represents a red South Carolina district which includes much of Charleston. He won it last year when the GOP kicked out Mark Sanford in a primary and replaced him with a deranged Trumpist Cunningham managed to beat 145,455 (50.7%) to 141,473 (49.3%). Although Cunningham came close in Dorchester and Berkeley counties, his victory was all about winning Charleston County (which is where the Democrats live). This cycle there are at least half a dozen Republicans competing to take him on. Last cycle he outspent Republican Katherine Arrington $2,388,237 to $1,563,050 and so far this cycle his has outraged his perspective Republican opponents: Only 5 have raised any money so far:

• Joe Cunningham (D)- $1,770,525
• Nancy Mace (R)- $487,199
• Katherine Landing (R)- $352,833 (79% self-funded)
• Mike Covert (R)- $146,733
• Chris Cox (R)- $89,735
• Phil Norris (R)- $28 (100% self-funded)

What NBC News wanted to know is how worried Cunningham should be? After all, Obama lost the district twice, and althoughTrump didn't do as well as either McCain or Romney, he still beat Hillary 53.5% to 40.4%. And, it was his opposition to Sanford that lost the former governor and incumbent congressman his reelection. Reporter Lauren Egan wrote that Cunningham is counting on the "all politics is local adage" still being true in the Age of Trump. When Cunningham reluctantly voted in favor of the impeachment inquiry at the last minute-- after opposing it for months-- he said, "Today’s vote is not a vote on impeachment. It is not even a vote to approve of the impeachment inquiry. And as I’ve stated multiple times over and over again, I have yet to make up my mind about impeachment."

[N]ational Republicans are wagering that the House inquiry, which is likely to force Cunningham to cast a public “yes” or “no” vote on whether to impeach Trump, could cost him his re-election.

“The Democrats’ obsession with impeaching and removing President Trump from office will cost Joe Cunningham his seat in November,” said Camille Gallo, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, in a statement to NBC News.

Political strategists on both sides of the aisle say Trump-district Democrats like Cunningham have a delicate balance to strike. On one hand, he risks turning off a liberal base that is itching to see Trump go down. On the other hand, if he comes across as overly enthusiastic about impeaching the president, he could alienate some independent and Republican voters who were critical to his winning coalition in 2018.

Cunningham needs to get Democrats out to the polls in record numbers and persuade Independents to vote for him. He doesn't need Republican votes. NBC should know better. Besides, most voters in the district told NBC that impeachment isn't a big issue for them-- at least not yet. They're more interested in how Cunningham voted on the minimum wage-- against it-- than on the impeachment inquiry.

A right-wing website, the American Spectator-- on the other hand, sees impeachment as defeating Cunningham and many of the other congressmembers from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. David Catron predicts that a vote to impeach will cost them their seats. He points out that the Republicans need only flip 19 seats to win back the majority. He left out one word: net-- they need to win a net of 19 seats. A more likely outcome is that they win 5 or 6 Trump districts and lose 40 others. Bad net for them.

He focused on 7 seats-- a stretch:

Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-SC): In 2018, Cunningham beat a weak opponent by fewer than 4,000 votes in South Carolina’s 1st District. During his campaign, and until just recently, he spoke of impeachment in the following terms: “I’ve warned members of my own party that a partisan rush to impeach the president would be bad for the country.” Last Tuesday, however, he announced that he would vote for the resolution. Like most of these faux moderates, he will tell his constituents that Thursday’s vote merely affirmed an ongoing investigation. This will not mollify the voters to whom he so brazenly lied. In a district that the president won by 13 points in 2016, Congressman Cunningham is a dead Democrat walking.

Rep. Max Rose (D-NY): Rose defeated Republican Dan Donovan in 2018 in New York City’s last Republican stronghold, the 11th District. Like Cunningham, he told his constituents he was against impeachment. In fact, he wrote an op-ed that included the following denunciation of any such course of action: “Impeachment will not improve the lives of the hardworking Staten Islanders and South Brooklynites that I fight for every day.” But Congressman Rose had an impeachment epiphany after he arrived in Washington. The president won NY-11 by 10 points in 2016. With Trump at the top of the ticket again in 2020, plus a strong Republican opponent backed by the NRCC, Representative Rose is very likely a goner.

Rep. Kendra Horn (D-OK): Horn narrowly defeated incumbent Republican Steve Russell in Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District, a major upset in a state dominated by the GOP. Her margin was painfully thin, and her victory was no doubt facilitated by her alleged opposition to impeachment. As recently as a month ago, she was still trying to have it both ways when talking to her constituents: “While I didn’t support an impeachment inquiry, I certainly know that these are serious allegations that have to be investigated.” Yet when Thursday arrived and she had the opportunity to keep her promise or cave to political pressure, she opted to betray the voters who elected her. Rep. Horn won her seat by a mere 1.4 percent in a district Trump carried by 14 points in 2016. She’ll be history after 2020.

Xochitl Torres Small (D-NM): Torres Small is yet another candidate who ran in 2018 as a different kind of Democrat and eked out a narrow victory over Republican Yvette Herrell in New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District. Small did suggest a creative way to dodge the resolution: “The president’s conversation with the Ukrainian president must be investigated.… Designating this as an impeachment inquiry, though, has led some in the public to believe that a conclusion has been reached while … facts are still being gathered.” Yet she kept her toe on the party line during Thursday’s vote. Torres Small won her House seat by 1.8 percent in a district Trump won by 10 points. She should update her résumé.

Rep. Anthony Brindisi (D-NY): Brindisi defeated Republican Claudia Tenney to win New York’s 22nd District and has always claimed to be averse to impeachment. After the fabled phone call between presidents Trump and Zelensky, however, his position began to evolve: “The thought that any government official, especially our commander-in-chief, would hold up foreign aid to an ally and suggest they investigate a political opponent, is a grave and troubling accusation. It is clear that this administration needs to provide answers.” Inevitably, he voted for Thursday’s resolution. In 2018 Brindisi won by less than two points in a district President Trump won by more than 15 points. He’ll be crushed in 2020.

Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-PA): In 2018, Cartwright fought off a challenge by Republican John Chrin in Pennsylvania’s 8th District. Cartwright has, unlike the other alleged moderates, not been coy about his support for impeachment. As early as September, he was pretty much committed: “We need to get to the bottom of these serious allegations through comprehensive impeachment proceedings.” The overall ideological bent of Cartwright’s district is difficult to gauge because it was redrawn in 2018 by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania pursuant to a gerrymandering lawsuit. It is, however, located in a part of the state that the president won by double digits in 2016. Cartwright probably won’t survive 2020.

Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME): Golden represents Maine’s 2nd District, despite his failure to win the most votes on Election Day in 2018. Pursuant to Maine’s ranked-choice voting, he was declared the “winner” several days after the polls closed. He has temporized on the impeachment resolution for some time, but finally caved to pressure from his caucus the day before the vote: “While I disagreed with the initial decision to open the impeachment inquiry, it is clear that the investigation has confirmed information contained in the whistleblower complaint.” Trump won Maine’s 2nd District by more than 10 points in 2018, so it’s a pretty good bet that Golden will be departing the House after the 2020 election.

In addition to all these “moderate” Democrats ensconced in districts where President Trump won by double digits, a number occupy districts that he won by more than six points: Rep. Ben McAdams (D-UT) won Utah’s 4th District by 694 votes in 2018. Trump carried UT-4 by seven points in 2016. Rep. Antonio Delgado (D-NY) eked out a victory in his first attempt at New York’s 19th District in 2018. Trump carried NY-19 by seven points in 2016. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) narrowly won her first term in Michigan’s 8th District in 2018. Trump won MI-8 by seven points in 2016. Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ) won New Jersey’s 3rd District by 1.3 points in 2018. President Trump carried NJ-3 by more than six points in 2016.

And the beat goes on. In addition to the 12 listed above, there are 18 more Democrats clinging to districts that Trump won in 2016. That brings the total to 30. As noted above, the Republicans need to flip slightly more than half of these to retake the House. Moreover, the GOP is awash in campaign cash. As Open Secrets reports, “RNC continues to dwarf DNC in fundraising.” This means that the GOP project of retaking the House will enjoy three major advantages-- a target-rich environment, the ability to fund any campaign that shows real promise, and the moral high ground associated with defeating an attempt to oust a president whose faults just do not rise to the level of impeachable offenses.

All of this brings us back to Thursday’s hyper-partisan vote and the resolution that purports to lay out the framework for the next phase of the “impeachment inquiry” launched by fiat during a news conference last month. This resolution, departing from 150 years of historical precedent, endows the House Intelligence Committee with extraordinary power over the inquiry, codifies Adam Schiff’s closed-door hearings, severely limits the powers of the Republican minority, and violates the president’s right to due process. The Democrats whose districts were won by Trump in 2016 have signed their own political death warrants by voting for this tawdry resolution. Execution day will be November 3, 2020.

Matt Cartwright looks safe-- as do Slotkin, Delgado, Rose and Golden. Catron makes himself look like a fool and a party tool by writing that "Cartwright probably won’t survive 2020." It's wishful GOP thinking, not anything related to actual reality. Cartwright is well-liked and respected by his constituents. Last year the GOP put up a self-funding bankster, John Chrin, and Cartwright beat him 135,603 (54.6%) to 112,563 (45.4%) inside the new district boundaries. Cartwright raised $2,396,418 while Chrin wrote himself a check for $1,687,182-- 74% of the total $2,276,322 he spent trying to unseat Cartwright. The NRCC put another $625,778 used to smear Cartwright and it didn't do a bit of good. So far this cycle, no Republican has raised a dime against Cartwright and no serious candidate has stepped forward. Cartwright has $1,047,665 in his campaign war-chest. The idiot Catron should run. Meanwhile, though, please consider contributing to Cartwright's campaign by clicking on the worthy incumbents thermometer on the right. He's the only one of the Trump district Democrats we're helping raise money for and he's the only one of them with a progressive voting record.

How Does The NRCC Target And Attack?-- Especially Now That The DCCC Has Practically Ceased To Exist

HR-1 was supposed to be Pelosi's big reform legislation to start off her new speakership. No one imagined #MoscowMitch would ever allow a vote in the Senate, so HR-1 will never be enacted until the Democrats take back the Senate-- and the White House. It takes some necessary steps towards reform, but not nearly enough. Lobbyists and Republicans have opposed it with all their might-- and now the NRCC is trying to twist the meaning of the bill is they can use the it to attack Democrats who voted for it. And they can certainly take their pick since every single Democrat voted yes and every single Republican voted no. It passed 234-193, one Democrat and 4 Republicans not voting.

The last desperate attempt of McCarthy and the Republicans to stop the bill in the House was a motion to recommit with instructions to have hearings with the intention "recognizing that allowing illegal immigrants the right to vote devalues and diminishes the voting power of American citizens." It wasn't germane and normal Democrats don't fall for these Republican maneuvers to gum up the works. In 1974 Joe Biden told a reporter from The Washingtonian that "A lot of us sit around thinking up ways to vote conservative just so we don’t come out with a liberal rating. When it comes to civil rights and civil liberties, I’m a liberal but that’s it. I’m really quite conservative on most other issues." That was 45 years ago. These Democrats are still operating the same way today! They voted with the Republicans to sabotage HR-1:

• Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY)
• Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog-SC)
• Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK)
• Lucy McBath (New Dem-GA)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)
• Jeff Van Drew (Blue Dog-NJ)

In the end McCarthy's childish scheme failed 197-228.

The non-partisan League of Women voters urged support for HR-1 with this note to its members in nearly 1,000 local chapters across the country:

The League of Women Voters urges you to vote YES for final passage of HR-1, the For the People Act. The League will be paying close attention to debate on this bill and the final vote on the House floor. We implore you to reject any amendments to this legislation that would weaken our democracy.

Throughout our nearly 100-year history, the League of Women Voters has worked to "level the playing field" of our election system by registering new citizens to vote, fighting unfair district maps in court, and advocating in Congress for fair election processes. Key provision in HR1 that should be maintained include:

1.      Break down barriers that prevent Americans from registering to vote. The Act requires states to allow same-day registration, establishes an opt-out system of automatic registration, and includes the establishment of an online voter registration for all eligible voters.
2.      Restore the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and strengthen our elections by cutting back the obstructive laws that have kept eligible voters from exercising their right at the ballot box.
3.      Establish independent, citizen redistricting commissions at the state level to draw congressional districts allowing voters to pick their politicians not the other way around.
4.      Empower small donors by creating a public financing system to match small contributions to presidential and congressional candidates. It will also close disclosure loopholes that allow outside groups to flood elections with millions of dollars of secret money.

HR-1 is an historic opportunity to put power back into the hands of the people. The League has worked tirelessly over the last few months to support and promote this legislation to all members of Congress.

Vote YES on final passage of HR-1.

Vote NO on weakening amendments and the motion to recommit.

The League of Women Voters didn't release this Ministry video though.



Yesterday the NRCC began a digital ad campaign against a dozen vulnerable Democrats, laughably calling them Socialists!!!! for voting for the mild reform package that would help drain the ever-increasing Trump-Republican Swamp in DC. It's a weak, melodramatic ad that feeds the low-info Republican base but that normal people will laugh at. So who gets called a "Socialist!!!!" in the GOP ad campaign? AOC? No. Rashida? No. Ilhan? No. In fact no left-of-center Democrats at all. The NRCC is targeting a dozen right-leaning DINOs-- a gaggle of Blue Dogs and New Dems, who tend to vote with Republicans out of fear. Like a mad dog, when the NRCC smells fear, they attack. The ad up top targets South Carolina Blue Dog, Joe Cunningham, who literally votes less progressively than some Republicans! All of the targets are right-of-center, fear-based Dems-- mostly Blue Dogs and New Dems-- and all have voting records that are rated "F" by ProgressivePunch. Cunningham's "F," though is even lower (less progressive) than the voting records of NRCC protection priorities Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and John Katko (R-NY), as well as Tom Massie (R-KY). Cunningham's crucial vote score is 20.93%. Former Republican, Justin Amash (I-MI) has score for this session that's more than twice as progressive: 55.81. These are the other 11 NRCC targets for this ad campaign-- in order of most Republican to less Republican:

• Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK)
• Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT)
• Jared Golden (ME)
• Elaine Luria (New Dem-VA)
• Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog-NM)
• Elissa Slotkin (New Dem-MI)
• Andy Kim (NJ)
• Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY)
• Susie Lee (New Dem-NV)
• TJ Cox (CA)
• Susan Wild (New Dem-PA)

And with the Cheri Bustos have completely wrecked the DCCC already, there is no one to respond to the ridiculous NRCC attacks.

If the NRCC wants a stronger reform package, they should get behind this one that has been ignored by Pelosi and the Democratic establishment

The NRCC Wants Everyone To Know Who Their Weakest Incumbents For 2020 Are

The GOP defeat was so stunning and so overwhelming that HALF of these 10 random losing incumbents didn't even get into the NRCC Patriot Program

The NRCC Patriot Program-- which is charged with protecting vulnerable Republican incumbents-- was a total hot mess last year. Of the 30 members included in the program, 20 were defeated. These were the victims of the Patriot Program's inability to fight an anti-red/anti-Trump wave (the is bound to remain strong, or even strengthen, in 2020):

• Mike Bishop (MI)
• Rod Blum (IA)
• Mike Coffman (CO)
• Barbara Comstock (VA)
• John Culberson (TX)
• Carlos Curbelo (FL)
• Jeff Denham (CA)
• John Faso (NY)
• Steve Knight (CA)
• Jason Lewis (MN)
• Tom MacArthur (NJ)
• Erik Paulsen (MN)
• Bruce Poliquin (ME)
• Dana Rohrabacher (CA)
• Keith Rothfus (PA)
• Scott Taylor (VA)
• Claudia Tenney (NY)
• David Valadao (CA)
• David Young (IA)
• Kevin Yoder (KS)

On Friday the NRCC announced the first 8 members they added to the doomed program. It's a nice roadmap for Democrats to check who the opposition party thinks their weakest incumbents are. No surprises at all though:

• Fred Upton (MI)- won re-election with 50.2%. Trump carried the 6th district by 8.4 points.
• Don Bacon (NE)- won re-election with 51.0%. Trump carried the 2nd district by 2.2 points.
• Lee Zeldin (NY)- won re-election with 51.5%. Trump carried the 1st district by 12.3 points.
• John Katko (NY)- won re-election with 52.6%. Trump lost the 24th district by 3.6 points.
• Brian Fitzpatrick (PA)- won re-election with 51.3%. Trump lost the 1st district by 2 points.
• Michael McCaul (TX)- won re-election with 51.1%. Trump carried the 10th district by 9.1 points.
• Pete Olson (TX)- won re-election with 51.4%. Trump carried the 22nd district by 7.9.
• Will Hurd (TX)- won re-election by less than half a point (49.2%). Trump lost the 23rd district by 3.4.
• John Carter (TX)- won re-election with 50.6%. Trump carried the 31st district by 12.7.
• Jaime Herrera Beutler (WA)- won re-election with 52.7%. Trump carried the 3rd district by 7.4.

The DCCC and the NRCC are two of the lamest and most incompetent organizations in American politics-- and every year they battle it out, wasting tens of millions of dollars with their lame and ineffective strategies. One of the ugliest dances I see them doing every year is for the DCCC to warn their swing district candidates to trying to sound like Republicans as much as possible and to even vote like Republicans when they can. Two great examples are Blue Dogs Joe Cunningham (SC) and Charlie Crist (FL). Both have extraordinarily low "F" grades from ProgressivePunch. In fact, Cunningham has the single worst voting record of any Democrat this session-- a 30.77 lifetime crucial vote score. Two Republicans-- Justin Amash (MI) and Brian Fitzpatrick (PA)-- vote more progressively than Cunningham! Crist's lifetime crucial vote score is 56.77, indicating he votes slightly more frequently with Democrats than with Republicans. The DCCC tells them that will make them safer. But does it? Do they attract Republican voters? Not many, but that strategy sure turns off progressives and other Democratic base voters. And, instead of staving off criticism from the Republicans (and their right-wing media allies), it attracts it. Which Democrats do they put the most money and energy into attacking? The 3 most recent posts on the official NRCC blog were all posted on Thursday by Camille Gallo-- one on North Carolina Blue Dog candidate Dan McCready which also allowed them to sling some mud at Ilhan Omar:

Last night Dan McCready tried to thread the ol’ anti-Semitism needle, tweeting that he refused racist Ilhan Omar’s donations because he disagrees with any anti-Semitic comments.

But then he oddly stood up for the anti-Semite in his very next tweet.

Democrats were not happy, as one state Senator slammed McCready’s wish-washy decision to refuse Omar’s money.

Looks like McCready can’t have it both ways.

NRCC Comment: “Dan McCready’s faux condemnation of anti-Semite and racist Ilhan Omar is pathetic. If McCready is this feckless now, how can North Carolinians expect him to stand up to the socialist Democrats in Congress?” -NRCC Spokeswoman Camille Gallo

And the other two posts? Crist and Cunningham. No matter how many times they vote with the Republicans, the will always be attacked by the Republicans-- until they flip their registrations and become Republicans. Cunningham:

On the campaign trail, Joe Cunningham couldn’t stand lobbyists.

...He even said, lobbyists have had “a stranglehold over American politics for far too long.”

But now that he’s in the swamp, he’s fallen in love with them. The Charleston Post and Courier reports that Cunningham has hired THREE DC lobbyists to work for him.

That "stranglehold" is strong in Joe’s office.

NRCC Comment: “One of Joe Cunningham’s first decisions after being elected was to hire a bunch of DC lobbyists-- the very same thing he railed against on the campaign trail. Joe Cunningham is a joke, period.” -NRCC Spokeswoman Camille Gallo

The title of the post about "former" life-long Republican Charlie Crist is hilarious, especially since it beckons back to when he was the Republican governor of Florida: Charlie Crist-- The Socialist Democrats' Congressman. See? No matter how right-wing the voting record-- and Crist's is pretty right-wing-- the NRCC has a formula they'll stuff you into anyway: "Socialist! Socialist! Socialist! Venezuela!"

When Charlie Crist was Florida’s governor he ran as "The People’s Governor" and now proudly refers to himself as "The People’s Congressman." Through his long political career he’s claimed to put "people over politics," and that being loyal to a political party over the people is wrong.

But it looks like Charlie has ditched this conviction quicker than he’s switched political parties by joining the DCCC’s leadership team with the main goal of electing more socialist Democrats to Congress.

So much for putting people over politics, right?!

NRCC Comment: “Charlie Crist is going to need a new catchy campaign slogan. By joining the DCCC’s leadership team, Charlie has proven he’d rather be a party boss for the socialist Democrats than represent the people of Florida.” -NRCC Spokeswoman Camille Gallo

Democrats-- like Crist and Cunningham-- would be better off to stop dancing with the GOP and go for the jugular-- like like the Republicans do. The Democratic Establishment is whispering already about abandoning the state of Ohio because it's just "too red" for them to deal with. Bernie's having none of that bullshit. Last year Sherrod Brown, an unapologetic progressive, was reelected convincingly, beating multimillionaire Trumpist congressman, Jim Renacci 2,358,508 (53.4%) to 2,057,559 (46.6%), despite Renacci dumping over half a million dollars of his own it his failing campaign. Likewise, Obama beat McCain there is 2008 and then beat Romney in 2012. So why is it too red to contest for the establishment goof-bags? They all come from Hillary's failed campaign and she lost badly, after not seriously contesting the state anyway. Bernie's response? Watch this video his campaign released yesterday; this is how it's done-- right in their faces:

Question And Answer Time With Rep. Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog-SC)

Joe

I got an e-mail yesterday from Joe Cunningham, a freshman from the most progressive area of South Carolina. The subject line was "Howard -- Could we talk about the GOP's strategy to beat me?" Here's the letter and my response. Was I too harsh?

-----Original Message-----

From: Joe Cunningham
To: Howard Klein
Sent: Wed, Feb 20, 2019 9:06 am
Subject: Howard -- Could we talk about the GOP's strategy to beat me?

Hi Howard,

The National Republican Congressional Committee's top political operatives say SC-01 is one of the five seats the GOP should not have lost during the midterms, so they're making my re-election campaign a number one target early on. The NRCC already has more than two dozen potential candidates in their pipeline to unseat incumbents like me. And earlier this month, the DCCC added me to its Frontline Program and Cook and Sabato rate my race as a “toss-up.”

I'm reaching out to set up a phone call with you this week to ask for your support personally. Do you have five minutes on your calendar to talk? If you don't, will you pitch in $1,000, $500, or whatever you can to support my campaign's efforts? Here's the link to give: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/joeforsc

Thank you and talk soon,
Joe

Here's a copy of what I sent Joe in response:

You vote the least progressively of any Democrat in the House (tied with Jeff Van Drew) so it's going to be very difficult to ask progressives in the Low Country to hold their noses and vote for you as the lesser of two evils. If you want to beat a Republican DON'T BEHAVE LIKE ONE. If the GOP comes up with a strong candidate with broad appeal, you're cooked. You didn't even sign on to the Green New Deal after all that yelling and screaming about the environment. Joe, I hate to say it, but, so far, you don't even deserve to be reelected. I suggest you start representing your voters by taking a quick turn in a more moderate direction and stop voting so conservatively. At this point I don't think a call would be productive but, I'll tell you what-- we can re-examine this in April and if you're voting like a Democrat by then, let's hop on the phone and see if we can rescue you from yourself. Also-- do you really think you have to identify as a Blue Dog? That's a bad idea. The whole caucus is going to disappear in 2022 again. Get out while you can.

Your pal,
Howie

PS- It's my birthday today but I'm asking people to contribute $20.20 to Bernie's campaign instead of sending me anything. You can do it here: https://bit.ly/2SJPG3o

The Trump Kiss Of Death: Republicans Learn To Lose In South Carolina

Yesterday in this time slot, we looked at the most unexpected congressional win of 2018, Kendra Horn's in Oklahoma City. But there was an almost an unlikely a win in another deep red state: South Carolina. OK-05 has a PVI of R+10... and so does SC-01. Trump won both districts by double digits in 2016-- and his candidates narrowly lost each November 6. The similarities are stunning:

• OK-05

• Trump v Hillary- 53.2%- 39.8%
• Horn (D) v Russell (R)- 50.7%- 49.3% (3,338 vote margin)

• SC-01

• Trump v Hillary- 53.5%- 40.4%
• Cunningham (D) v Arrington (R)- 50.7%- 49.3% (3,982 vote magin)

Joe Cunningham has already added his name to the Moulton letter against Pelosi, an inauspicious beginning of a congressional career for a Democrat. No one inside the Beltway thought he had any chance to win. Nate Silver's final forecast was a 9.4% shot (not even 1 on 10. He gave Arrington a 90.6% chance winning and the only public poll had her over Cunningham 49-42%.

Cunningham outraged Arrington $1,908,175 to $1,313,382 with $346,909 of her money self-funded). It's worth noting that much of what she raised had gone into the primary campaign against incumbent Mark Sanford. The NRCC spent $228,412 attacking Cunningham, while neither the DCCC nor Pelosi's SuperPAC spent a cent to help Cunningham. They didn't believe his race was worth investing in.

Cunningham's policy positions were moderate (neither progressive nor conservative). Example: he didn't come out for Medicare-for-All but his website states that he believes "healthcare is a right, not a privilege. No one in America should go bankrupt because they get sick. In the United States, no one should forego necessary or preventative care because they are unable to afford it... One of the many ways we can improve our current healthcare system is by encouraging the federal government to negotiate with drug companies to lower medication prices for people on Medicare, similar to how the Veterans Affairs Department does. Another possibility is allowing more middle class families to qualify for tax breaks to reduce their healthcare costs. We should also explore lowering the Medicare age requirement from 65 to 55 over the course of ten years." What you might term a liberal-leaning position for a red district. The Blue Dogs ignored him and the New Dems put him on their watch list rather than endorsing him.



The ad above was devastating for Arrington. But Monday evening the Post and Courier took a deep dive into how she could have lost in such a red district, a Republican disaster almost entirely of Trump's making. She beat Sanford because of Trump's last minute endorsement but she could never raise the money she needed to deal effectively with Cunningham and the NRCC refused to put significant resources into the race. They had, according to her general consultant, Andrew Boucher, been "pressing panic buttons since June here, screaming and yelling to little avail.”

But outwardly, the Arrington campaign exhibited little, if any, signs during the race that they were concerned about some of the factors they now say led to their candidate’s electoral downfall. The Trump-heavy messaging that worked for them in the primary stayed largely the same.

Some trouble spots are obvious, like the fundraising gap Arrington could never seem to close, or the fact that Cunningham beat them to TV and stayed on the air throughout the general election campaign.

Other challenges, like Arrington’s failure to appeal to suburban Republican swing voters, becomes a more complicated story to tell. Was it really a split among Republicans who backed Sanford, like she hinted at during her concession speech, or was this a Trump referendum vote?

What happened in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District has been largely reduced to catch-all explanations and sweeping generalizations about issues like offshore drilling, but the story of Arrington’s loss is as nuanced as the coastal district itself.

Though historical election data gives a Republican candidate in the district a built-in 10-point advantage, it is a unique district. In 2016, Trump bested Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in the district by 13 points.

By contrast, the more moderate Mitt Romney outdid President Barack Obama in the district by 18 points.

But Charleston, the most populous county in the district, has shown some movement to the left, morphing in recent years from red to purple in voting preference.

Fundraising challenges

While national analysts continually categorized the district as “safe Republican,” Arrington and members of her campaign team met with the National Republican Congressional Committee in Washington, a customary practice following a primary win.

At the June 20 meeting, Boucher said their goal was to be placed into the NRCC’s “Young Guns” program for competitive congressional seats, where the NRCC would aggressively invest in TV ads and staffing resources for candidates.

Instead, they were put into the Vanguard Program, a designation that treated Arrington like a victor-in-waiting rather than a challenger-in-need. Even NRCC Chairman Steve Stivers said in a July press release that he had “no doubt” that Vanguard candidates like Arrington would win in November.

Efforts to reach the NRCC for comment were unsuccessful.

Arrington, meanwhile, struggled to fundraise.

On TV alone, the Arrington campaign said their numbers show Cunningham outspent them nearly 3 to 1.

The latest publicly available federal election reports from October show Cunningham raised about $1.9 million to Arrington’s $1.3 million during the election cycle. Arrington also dropped an estimated $346,909 to self-finance her run, according to campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets.org.  Post-election numbers due in December could show an even wider gap.

However, the numbers alone don’t tell the full story.

“Her dollar amount comes in over $1 million but a huge chunk of that went into the primary,” Boucher said. “When we were running in the primary, we had to spend every dollar we had to win. We couldn’t spend money to build campaign infrastructure.”

Arrington’s campaign had just three full-time staffers compared with the 10 or so with the Cunningham campaign.

None of Arrington’s full-time positions were dedicated to fundraising. Boucher confirmed that position was contracted out. By contrast, Cunningham dedicated four full-time staffers to fundraising.

But when fundraising numbers showed Arrington trailing Cunningham in a Republican district in mid-October, Arrington campaign strategist and spokesman Michael Mulé issued comments about their alleged momentum and the “tremendous support Katie has across the district.”

South Carolina Republican strategist Walter Whetsell said fundraising can be a reflection of a candidate’s ability or inability to connect with voters. He has run GOP congressional campaigns in South Carolina for U.S. Reps. Jeff Duncan and Ralph Norman.

“In political terms, there are two primary factors that define the best candidates: Their ability to raise money and their ability to get voters to like them,” Whetsell said.

But when pressed as to whether they thought they had a likeability issue with Arrington, Mulé and Boucher denied it. Boucher called Arrington “one of the best stump speakers” he had ever seen. Mulé said she was relentless despite being in excruciating pain every day following her June 22 car accident in which she was critically injured.

“Money talks, and it certainly did in this race,” Mulé said. “But money also made an issue out of something that wasn’t really an issue.”

Offshore drilling

In August and September, the Arrington campaign conducted polls asking voters for their most important issue in the race.

Illegal immigration was at the top followed by jobs and the economy. Offshore drilling polled at 1 percent, Boucher said. The highest it ever got, he said, was 4 percent.

“This is what is called a MacGuffin. It is an issue by which someone can target a specific demographic that they need, right?” Boucher said. “This was the issue that Joe Cunningham successfully was able to use to target the Democratic vote. If it has been a different Republican nominee, it would have been a different localized issue.”

The issue began to take off after Arrington stated during the primary at a Beaufort League of Women Voters forum that she supported Trump lifting the ban on offshore drilling along the South Carolina coast.

When two coastal mayors, who identify as Republicans, later endorsed Cunningham because of Arrington’s stance, she then issued a statement saying she did not did not support drilling.

To combat the comment, Arrington reiterated her opposition to offshore drilling at every turn. She also accused Cunningham of being a one-issue candidate.

Behind the scenes, the Arrington campaign spent about $50,000 on digital advertising to get their message out along with a targeted mailer campaign.

The issue was important enough that Arrington addressed the issue in a TV ad, where she stated she had met with the president to demand an exemption for the Palmetto State.

But by then, it may have been too little too late.

The Cunningham campaign had the Republican mayors-- Isle of Palms Mayor Jimmy Carroll and Folly Beach Mayor Tim Goodwin-- appearing on TV ads supporting Cunningham.

“That gave Republicans permission to cross the aisle and vote for a Democrat,” said Tyler Jones, Cunningham’s spokesman and strategist. “I’ve been working in this business 15 years in South Carolina, and I can tell you that’s never happened before-- ever.”



Whetsell said the offshore drilling issue also represented something far more challenging for Arrington to overcome.

“Katie Arrington’s defenders have missed the point on the relevance of the offshore drilling issue,” he said. “It’s arguable that offshore drilling cost her this election. If it did, it wasn’t on the merits of the issue. It was on the perception that she changed her position.

“What made this issue toxic was that voters perceived that she was misleading them. They perceived that she took one position in the primary then flip-flopped in the general.”

But when Arrington got her chance to speak publicly after her loss, she first blamed Sanford, whom she hammered in the primary for his Trump criticism.

Her unconventional concession speech comments flicked at something few national watchers understood about the underlying dynamics on the ground in this political race.

“You had an internal Republican war going on down there,” said Katon Dawson, a former South Carolina GOP Chairman.

  “With Katie backing the president in the primary and getting some help from him at the last minute to whip Mark, while you’ve got Mark talking about the things that matter to him and his opposition to the president, well, that just doesn’t lend itself to a unified party.”
Charleston’s suburbs turned out to be the battlefield.

Suburban voters and the Trump factor

Arrington’s loss looks baffling on a map. The 1st Congressional District wraps around parts of Charleston, Berkeley, Dorchester, Colleton and Beaufort counties-- linking a conservative mix of retirees, suburbanites and military veterans.

Arrington won Berkeley, Dorchester, Colleton and Beaufort counties. Where she lost was Charleston County, and specifically in suburban areas like Mount Pleasant and West Ashley.

“What defines a suburb?” Boucher hypothetically asked his fellow Republicans. “It’s a place where people care more about what their neighbors think than they do about their own political opinions.”

More seriously, Boucher said the hallmark of a suburban district is looking at the split between “Romney Republicans” and “Trump Republicans.” Where 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney performed better than Trump did in 2016, they considered a suburb.

Arrington knocked on doors in suburban areas of Mount Pleasant and West Ashley from August through the third week in September, Boucher said.

But if the Arrington campaign was aware that they needed to sway Republican swing voters-- especially GOP-leaning women who are finding it difficult to defend Trump-- their messaging didn’t reflect that.

Instead, it echoed national GOP talking points, which included equating a vote for Cunningham as a vote for Nancy Pelosi and claims that Cunningham favored an open border policy.

Already, Charleston Republicans are trying to take lessons from the loss.

“We can’t act like things haven’t changed,” said Larry Kobrovsky, chairman of the Charleston Republican Party. “To win in Charleston County, we have to now go beyond our base.”

How Big Will The Anti-Red Wave Be?

Joe Cunningham (SC) & Amy McGrath (KY)-- their races will be the 1st reported. If they both win, the  Republicans will lose 60 seats

Next Tuesday we may have an idea how big the wave is going to be because of something that happens in South Carolina. SC-01 is, generally speaking, the coast-- not counting the stretch from Georgetown to Myrtle Beach and the North Carolina border. It includes most of Charleston (the white parts of the city), stretches down through Beaufort to Hilton Head and takes in a lump of inland country northwest of Charleston to Summerville and Moncks Corner as far north as Lake Moultrie. The PVI is R+10 but Trump (53.5%) didn't do as well as either McCain (56.1%) or Romney (58.3%). I'll guess it's the least Trumpified of the 6 red districts in the state. And the Republican candidate for Congress this cycle, Katie Arrington, is pure Trump. With Trump's help she ousted Mark Sanford in the GOP primary and now she has to face Democrat Joe Cunningham. People will still be voting in most of the country when South Carolina polls close on Tuesday. If Cunningham wins, it will signal a humongous Democratic wave is sweeping the country. Can he?

Well... as of the October 17 FEC reporting deadline he had outraged her $1,908,175 to $1,313,382 and outside spending has been modest on both sides. A very conservative 538 underestimates his chances, which are not great to start with.

In June, soon after Arrington beat Sanford 33,089 (50.6%) to 30,428 (46.5%), she was in a serious auto accident suffering a broken ribs and a back fracture that have kept her from vigorous campaigning. There hasn't been any public polling since the end of August when PPP found Arrington leading Cunningham 49-42%. What's changed since then? Cunningham has become much better known. And Trump has become more disgusting than ever. This week the Post And Courier reported that Sanford won't endorse Arrington. "Sanford’s silence," wrote Caitlin Byrd, "comes as Arrington’s race with Democrat Joe Cunningham is showing signs of being much closer than Republicans envisioned months ago, with the National Republican Congressional Committee on Monday sinking $87,000 into TV ads on her behalf.

The buy signals the race could be more competitive than initially thought, experts say, in a district traditionally considered “safe Republican.”

“She’s in a fight,” College of Charleston political scientist Jordan Ragusa said of Arrington. “She is still likely to win that fight, but it’s going to be a tough battle.”

...The fact the NRCC is investing at all in this race is raising eyebrows among political watchers.

If Arrington wins in an R+11 district it won't say anything at all about the rest of the night's results. If Cunningham wins, the GOP nationally should be on suicide watch. J.D. Scholten's district is also R+11. But the next bellwether seat that will probably be reporting is KY-06 (with an R+9 PVI), where Democrat Amy McGrath has outraised Republican incumbent Andy Barr $7,767,610 to $4,778,302 and has him on the ropes. Ryan's sleazoid SuperPAC has felt that it had to jump in to save his seat and has spent $3,237,558 smearing McGrath. The DCCC and Pelosi's PAC responded weakly with around $1.3 million. If Cunningham and McGrath both win, Republicans waiting on line to vote in Orange County and the Central Valley will stop waiting and start to drift home, understanding that they've lost the House-- by a lot. Cunningham and McGrath victories will signal that the pundits and pros had it all wrong again and that the Democrats won't be taking 25 seats by closer to three times that number!

So what happened to all that GOP enthusiasm because of Kavanaugh? It motivated more Democrats than Republicans. And Trump's rallies? They're  motivating more Democrats (and independents) than Republicans. If anything, the hate rallies are actually turning off mainstream Republicans! The frontlines are mow deep in the heart of Republican territory... like the aforementioned districts in South Carolina, Iowa and Kentucky. No, Democrats can't wage plausible battles against Mo Brooks or Rob Aderholt in Alabama or in the Florida, Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, serious fighting in those districts would be like Republicans trying to win inner city districts in Chicago, Baltimore, Newark, Los Angeles and New York. Instead, there are no longer any safe GOP seats in California... and Orange County-- once the soul of the party-- is about to be free of Republicans completely. Washington state has 4 GOP-held seats. 3 of them are all but gone. Democrats-- if not the lame and short-sighted DCCC-- are fighting seriously for Amish country in Pennsylvania, for Wichita, Kansas, for severely gerrymandered Texas districts, for at-large seats in Alaska and Montana... even for seats in West Virginia.

It looks like this is the year that women take their revenge on the GOP for its anti-family agenda, its anti-education agenda, for its anti-women agenda, for its gun agenda, its pollution agenda, and for the divisiveness, bullying and immoral essence of its contemptible leader. Here's where they get pay-back for the enabling and the rubber stamp attitude just when a Congress with some guts and dignity is most demanded. You think Kavanaugh is going to help GOP incumbents with women in suburban districts.

And the #MAGAbomber Trump rally nut from Florida and the murderous #MAGAshooter in Pittsburgh... you think women appreciate that? Or independent voters. That was a last straw for many-- even in Republican strongholds in Utah, Kansas, North Carolina... where the party never expected to be forced to spend millions of Sheldon Adelson's dollars to defend incumbents in carefully gerrymandered seats Trump won on auto-pilot.

Writing for super-cautious RealClear Politics, Sean Trende reports the outdated conventional wisdom that even he doesn't believe: "The consensus view is that Democrats are favored to take the lower chamber. Analysts disagree on just how large a majority they are likely to win, and how likely that majority is. If you split the RealClearPolitics tossups in half, it results in Democrats gaining about 25 seats, for a narrow 220-215 majority. I tend to think that the tossups will break disproportionately toward Democrats, and see something more on the order of a 225-210 Democratic majority." It's hard to realistically see the Republicans with 200 seats.

He also admits that almost all their House polling comes from a gimmicky and totally unreliable source, the worst polling operation of the cycle-- sillier than GOP polling firm Rasmussen: "[M]ost of our House race polling has come from the New York Times, in partnership with Siena.  On the one hand, this is good, because without them we would have virtually no polling. On the other hand, polling is both an art and a science, and having a disproportionate amount of our data coming from a single view of what the electorate looks like increases the chances of" absurd assumptions and ridiculous mistakes. (My words, not his.)

Trump Won Two Races On Tuesday

In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, Señor Trumpanzee was up tweeting his love for neo-Nazi racist Corey Stewart, a crackpot he had fired as Virginia state campaign chair in 2016, who had just won the Republican nomination to face Tim Kaine in November. Stewart won with less than 50% in the 3-man race.

• Corey Stewart- 136,544 (44.9%)
• Nick Freitas- 131,267 (43.1%)
• E.W. Jackson- 36,624 (12.0%)

The two other candidates are mainstream conservatives while Stewart is an unelectable Trumpist on the extreme fringes, Stewart caused a bring brouhaha in those fringes when he endorsed the out-and-out Nazi and Hitler lover, Paul Nehlen who is running against Randy Bryce in Wisconsin. Stewart: "One of my personal heroes, not from Virginia, but from the great state of Wisconsin, is Paul Nehlen, who had a lot of courage and took on Speaker [Paul] Ryan, and I can't tell you how much I was inspired by you."

As we noted Wednesday morning, Trump helped knock off Mark Sanford in South Carolina. This is the tweet, that Trump put up when he was still basking in the glow of being fucked by Kim Jong-Un-- and then took down pretty quickly, presumably to prevent a brawl with the NRCC and Paul Ryan.

Right wing radio host and former right-wing member of Congress, Joe Walsh lashed out at Trumpanzee, Jr. for his snark about Sanford's loss and noted that Sanford is a principled conservative who voted with Trump 87% of the time. As I mentioned, Kim has a general in his army murdered for not applauding for him enthusiastically enough. Walsh also challenged Freedom Caucus chieftains Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan to say something about Trump destroying one of their members. So far... crickets.

Alex Isenstadt tried explaining what happened to Politico readers yesterday. Sanford has always been a contrary guy but, his friends say, "in taking on Trump he took it a step too far."

His defeat is bound to raise fears among Republicans about the political perils of crossing a president who remains deeply popular with GOP voters. In recent days, Sanford himself had expressed concern that a loss in the primary would discourage what dwindling GOP dissent among against the White House remains.

At the heart of Sanford’s downfall was a fundamental miscalculation, those close to him said: That he could go after the Republican president-- vigorously, and sometimes in deeply personal ways-- and get away with it.

“Mark had a long and storied career, he was a very famous and successful politician. But he didn’t read the tea leaves right, and that came back to haunt him,” said former state Rep. Chip Limehouse, who hails from a prominent Charleston family and has known Sanford for years. “Mark misjudged it, attacking Trump. That’s what killed him.”

...State Rep. Katie Arrington, Sanford’s rival, cast the congressman as a disloyal Never Trumper. She aired commercials highlighting cable news clips spotlighting negative comments that he’d made, including one instance when he said Trump should “just shut up” and stop spending so much time paying attention to critics. Arrington portrayed the incumbent as an obstructionist who was hell-bent on getting in the president’s way.

“He made a calculation in the post-Trump election that he was going to stand on principle... But there’s an expectation out there, at least in South Carolina’s 1st District, that you have to show deference to the president,” said Scott English, a former Sanford chief of staff who remains close with the congressman. “In this race, the ideas didn’t matter nearly as much as whether he’d been sufficiently loyal to the president in the eyes of voters.”

Trump himself stayed out of the race until just hours before the polls closed on Tuesday, when he sent out a surprise tweet calling for the congressman’s defeat. Arrington’s campaign rushed out a robocall to 50,000 homes highlighting the president’s last-minute endorsement.

Other South Carolina pols say that while Sanford’s opposition to Trump was his undoing, other factors were at play. Some people close to the congressman believe that voters never really got over his affair, which destroyed his national ambitions. Others say there was general exhaustion with a politician who’s been around since the mid-1990s and that voters were ready for someone new like Arrington, a political newcomer serving her first term in the state legislature.

In what was perhaps an early sign his political strength was abating, Sanford received just 55 percent in his 2016 primary, against an opponent who spent little.

Others say Sanford simply failed to run an effective race this year, allowing himself to be out-worked. Sanford’s lethargic reelection bid was a lightly-staffed, shoestring affair. Many of the advisers who guided his gubernatorial and congressional campaigns were not involved.

After realizing he was in trouble, the ever-frugal congressman, who hadn’t spent money on TV ads in five years, rushed out a slate of commercials. Some went after Arrington directly. Others tried to make the case that Sanford had cooperated with the White House.

While Arrington relentlessly cast Sanford as anti-Trump, his backers worried, Sanford struggled to find a coherent message.

“She got up on TV early and defined the message, and he let her define him,” said state Rep. Nancy Mace, a Sanford supporter.

...His political career appears to be over.

Sanford's ultra-gerrymandered district-- from which African-American neighborhoods are largely excluded-- has an R+10 PVI. But it isn't exactly Trump country. With the exception of the 6th district, into which almost all the state's black neighborhoods were congruously dumped, SC-01 had the lowest turnout for Trump-- 53.5%-- on any district in the state. So... can Democrat Joe Cunningham win in November? Only 32,385 votes were cast in the relatively sleepy Democratic primary on Tuesday-- compared to 64,369 votes in the GOP primary. Cunningham won with 71.5% of the vote and there's a lot of excitement, especially in Charleston about his chances. He's not a Blue Dog and the DCCC has ignored his race. But his issues page points to someone who's kind of "progressive-light." On healthcare, for example:

I believe that healthcare is a right, not a privilege. No one in America should go bankrupt because they get sick. In the United States, no one should forego necessary or preventative care because they are unable to afford it.

...With Republicans trying to rip away coverage from millions of Americans and raise premiums and deductibles, as well as the cost of prescription drugs, it’s time we take a stand. One of the many ways we can improve our current healthcare system is by encouraging the federal government to negotiate with drug companies to lower medication prices for people on Medicare, similar to how the Veterans Affairs Department does. Another possibility is allowing more middle class families to qualify for tax breaks to reduce their healthcare costs. We should also explore lowering the Medicare age requirement from 65 to 55 over the course of ten years.

Not bad; not single payer/Medicare-For-All either. The last Democrat the district elected was in 1978-- 4 decades ago. Even a huge blue wave would have to be extra-huge-- and Trump would have to melt down in late October-- for Cunningham to pull this off. So far Arrington raised $583,373 (of which $402,059 was self-funded) and Cunningham raised $527,390 (100% from individual donors). She spent $384,262 and he spent $377,843. Both have seriously depleted war chests-- 199,111 for her and $149,547 for him. My guess if that the GOP will pour money into her campaign while the DCCC will continue to ignore his.