There's A Reason I Avoid Washington DC Like The Plague: It's A Truly Disgusting Sausage Making Factory Town

The most powerful political brand of 2018 belongs to Randy Bryce, the iron worker, single dad, caring son and veteran running against Paul Ryan in southeast Wisconsin: IronStache. He's raised over $5,000,000 in small contributions and he's so popular among ordinary working folks that incumbents are asking him to come to their districts and campaign with them! The Republicans had a military vet with a mustache running as well... and on Tuesday his red, red district swung 20 points blue and he lost to some mediocre woos Democrat named Conor Lamb in 2018's first mega-upset... first of many in all likelihood. Republicans are looking for a reason they got creamed. My favorite excuse was in the Washington Examiner. "Frustrated by Saccone’s performance, some Republicans have gone so far as to zero in on his mustachioed appearance. 'It's a porn stache,' said one Pennsylvania-based GOP strategist. 'He should have lost the mustache.'" Tell it to Randy Bryce. Women of all ages seem to swoon over his mustachioed everyman appearance. And, unlike Saccone-- or for that matter Lamb-- Bryce has something to say, something voters pay attention to... and find relatable.

The PA-18 race was pretty simple. The Republicans spent $10,000,000 to make the election about Nancy Pelosi. You don't think so? This is what voters in Allegheny, Washington, Westmoreland and Greene counties were seeing for the last six weeks:



and this:



and, when they wanted to get out of the gutter (a little), this:



But Trump, more than the DCCC, more than the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, and far more than Lamb's campaign, made the PA-18 election about Trump. Trump-- who can't help himself, made the special election (in a district he had won by over 19 points) all about him. Tuesday was a referendum on Trump and Trump lost-- BIGLY! Trump is a fool-- and he won't listen to anyone. He's president so he believes everyone under him is also stupider than him, because... they're under him. In remarks delivered at a private fundraising event for Missouri right-wing nut Josh Hawley on Wednesday and obtained by The Atlantic, Señor Trumpanzee attributed Lamb’s success to the fact that he "sounds like a Republican."

After the GOP spent millions painting Lamb as a Frankenstein monster made up of pieces of Obama, Pelosi, Bernie, Pocahontas and... did we mention Pelosi?, Trump told the Hawley supporters that "The young man last night that ran, he said, 'Oh, I’m like Trump. Second Amendment, everything. I love the tax cuts, everything.’ He ran on that basis," Trump said. "He ran on a campaign that said very nice things about me. I said, 'Is he a Republican? He sounds like a Republican to me.'"

Actually, what Lamb sounds like is exactly what he is, a wishy-washy Blue Dog Democrat with no political courageousness. He's not a Republican; he's from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. And he doesn't sound like Trump at all, although they agree-- to some degree-- on a few issues.

[T]he day after Saccone lost by a razor-thin margin against Lamb, a square-jawed Marine veteran who was careful not to make anti-Trumpism the central tenet of his campaign, Trump’s Twitter feed was empty of any mentions of the race. The president did return to one familiar self-congratulatory mode: He argued at the Hawley fundraiser that his last-minute rally for Saccone on Saturday in Moon Township had been an overall success, saying that it boosted the candidate’s vote total.

“We had an interesting time because we lifted [Saccone] seven points up. That’s a lot,” Trump said. “And I was up 22 points, and we lifted seven, and seven normally would be enough, but we’ll see how it all comes out. It’s, like, virtually a tie.” (It was not exactly clear what Trump was basing his conclusion of a seven-point boost on.)

He also attempted to downplay the race’s significance. “It’s actually interesting, because it’s only a congressman for five months,” Trump said, referring to the fact that the district will likely be redrawn ahead of the midterm elections in November"... Trump may have attributed Lamb’s success to the seemingly conservative message in his campaign, but he also cautioned that Lamb’s party affiliation would take priority in Washington, despite his pledge not to back Pelosi for speaker. “The bottom line is when he votes, he’s going to vote with Nancy Pelosi. And he’s gonna vote with Schumer,” Trump said. “And that’s what’s gonna happen, and there’s nothing he can do about it. So it doesn’t matter what he feels, it doesn’t matter.”

Speaking of which... this morning Mike Allen started the day with a warning that Pelosi could be in trouble after the Democratic wave sweeps her party back into power in November. He wrote that "Top Democrats" tell him that "if they take back the House in November, a restoration of Speaker Nancy Pelosi is no longer guaranteed."

• In fact, some well-wired House Democrats predict she will be forced aside after the election and replaced by a younger, less divisive Dem.
• Conor Lamb, 33, won his U.S. House race in Pennsylvania this week after saying he wouldn't vote for her for leader-- a new template for moderates.
• Pelosi has hung in through the minority, and remains the party's most consistent fundraiser. As for whether she'll return as Speaker, she has just said that it's up to the members. (Her allies note that she has never lost a leadership vote.)
• But others have their eye on the gavel, and many members want a younger, newer face. Her No. 2 and longtime rival, House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, 78, covets the job but is three months older than she is.
• Pelosi is more likely to be the bridge to a younger generation. A possible successor, who works the caucus behind the scenes, is Rep. Joe Crowley of Queens, N.Y., who turns 56 tomorrow.
• Another possible candidate who's getting buzz: Rep. Adam Schiff, a fellow Californian who has a sky-high profile as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, investigating Russia's role in 2016.

One Democratic source told me that Pelosi hears footsteps: “She used to be retributional. Now she’s more inclusive.”

• Pelosi allies see some of the criticism as sexist, and say she has always been inclusive of all parts of the caucus' diversity, including newer members.
• Pelosi told the Congressional Progressive Caucus at a retreat in Baltimore last week: "Every morning, I don a suit of armor, eat nails for breakfast, and go fight inequality."
• President Trump plans to invoke her frequently in midterm speeches, and Republicans already use her image to raise funds. And in campaigns this fall, many Dems challengers will be put on the spot about whether they'd vote for her as Speaker.

One scenario, from a Pelosi ally:

• "She could win the caucus vote [for Speaker] easily but lose the floor vote."
• "[I]f Dems win the majority by, say, a 10-vote majority, and 15 newly elected Dems have committed not to vote for her [like Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania] for leader of the party, ... she could lose the floor vote for Speaker. That would give the House to the head of the Republicans."
• "She would never let that happen, and she would bow out to someone else."
• "[S]he’s the best vote counter this generation has ever seen. So she’ll know this scenario well in advance, and will figure out a way out that will preserve her legacy."

Be smart: If there's a post-election coup against Pelosi, Crowley is the likely winner because Schiff and the others would scramble the field and Joe is acceptable to all factions.

• One knowing Dem says: "My guess is Crowley is the next Dem Speaker/Leader. He’s the fresh face that the majority of the caucus yearns for ... He’s a spring chicken by congressional standards, at 55 years old."

Crowley is the most corrupt Democrat in the House. The Queens County Democrat boss who was handed his seat and never fought a real election in his entire life and the "former" head of the New Dems, is the bagman who launders Wall Street's money into the Democratic House Caucus. He's "acceptable to all factions" because he pays off all factions. Pelosi's corpse would make a better Speaker than Crowley. The thought of Crowley as Speaker is so disgusting that I'm going to go to the bathroom and vomit now. Crowley is even worse than this:

When Should Pelosi Retire?

The DCCC's and Pelosi's Blue Dog in Chicago, Dan Lipinski, faces the voters in a week, on March 20th. The DCCC and Pelosi are supporting someone who is anti-Choice, anti-LGBTQ, anti-immigrant, anti-healthcare, someone who votes with Trump more frequently than almost any other Democrat. Does the Pelosi Party even mean anything any more. How many they throw core constituencies under the bus like this? Where would they draw the line? If Lipinksi was anti-Semitic? Anti-Catholic? Anti-Wall Street? IL-03 is a safe blue seat-- Hillary beat Trump 55.2% to 39.9% there and the PVI is D+6. This year the GOP line went to an actual Nazi and not even the Illinois Republican Party is supporting their own candidate! So why are the DCCC and Pelosi trying to block a progressive like Marie Newman from unseating Lipinski?

Lynn Sweet, Illinois' savviest political reporter, wrote this week in the Sun-Times that Chicago mega-donors are financing Lipinski through No Labels, a shady right-wing outfit that backed Trump in 2016. Pelosi is addicted to money. She can't help herself. It's horrifying to watch and she's sold the Democratic Party out to plutocrats. No Labels has created a network of black money SuperPACs and one, "United for Progress Inc.," wrote Sweet, "has spent $740,334 as of Sunday to bolster Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., in his March 20 Illinois Democratic primary battle with Marie Newman in the 3rd Congressional District... United for Progress, Inc., is playing political hardball, attacking Newman in the commercials and direct mail pieces it paid for... Lipinski is part of a No Labels offshoot, the congressional "Problem Solvers Caucus," which is a refuge for right-wing Democrats who vehemently oppose a progressive agenda.

Walter Shapiro didn't beat around the bush in his latest Guardian column, Why it's time for Democrats to ditch Nancy Pelosi. Yesterday's contest in PA-18, he points out was largely a chance to look at who is more toxic politically, Trump (+ Ryan) or Pelosi. The thoroughly mediocre Blue Dog the Dems chose as their standard bearer was squawking right up to the end, "My opponent wants you to believe that the biggest issue in this campaign is Nancy Pelosi. It’s all a big lie. I’ve already said… that I don’t support Nancy Pelosi." Saccone clung to Trump like a life raft.

As the House Democratic leader since 2005, Pelosi is unpopular (her approval rating was 29% in a national Quinnipiac University poll in February) and extremely well known (83% of voters in the Quinnipiac survey knew who she was). That twofer of familiarity and voter fatigue is why the demonization of Pelosi remains a staple of Republican attack ads.

Even when Democrats try to escape Pelosi, as Lamb has done in his campaign, partisan politics grants limited wriggle room. As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette put it in a snippy editorial endorsing the Republican, Rick Saccone, in the congressional race: “Mr Lamb … attempted to distance himself from ultra-liberal Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and says he would not vote for her to lead his party. But who would he vote for? An abstention will not win him independence from the Democratic caucus.”

This Pelosi pushback will be repeated across the country in the fall as the Democrats’ road to a House majority follows Trump terrain. But why have Democrats decided that Pelosi’s quest to become the first person in American history to return as House speaker after an eight-year gap is more important than depriving Trump of a rubber-stamp Congress?

After more than 13 years as the House Democratic leader, Pelosi has written enough feminist history to fill the Capitol dome. Any doubts about her stamina as she nears her 78th birthday were dispelled last month as she held the House floor for more than eight hours in support the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers. And she has been a prolific fundraiser for the party, although this year Democrats in tight races probably will spend more money on campaign commercials distancing themselves from Pelosi.

In normal times, the temptation would be to give Pelosi her last-hurrah campaign to win back the speaker’s gavel that she lost in the 2010 Democratic collapse. But for any Rip Van Winkles out there, we live in an era defined by a human temper tantrum in the Oval Office and a Republican Congress torn between paralytic fear of Trump and a partisan urge for sycophancy.

A strong case can be made that the congressional elections this year are the most important off-year contests since at least 1946-- the year when the Republicans took control of Congress for the first time since the Depression and brought a generation of virulent anti-communists like Joseph McCarthy to power.

For all the glib talk of a “blue wave,” there is a sizable risk that the Democrats could fall a few seats short of the 24 they need to win back the House. Even with, say, a three-seat majority, the Republicans would select all the committee chairmen and thwart any investigation into the misdeeds of the Trump administration.

That is why the moment is at hand for Pelosi to cap her congressional career by announcing-- for the good of the nation and her party-- that she will step down as Democratic leader.

Shapiro is WRONG-- dead wrong-- when he asserts that "It doesn’t matter if Pelosi is succeeded by the 78-year-old House minority whip Steny Hoyer (who has been waiting to take over almost as long as Prince Charles) or anyone else in the caucus. Replacing Pelosi with a little-known Democrat (regardless of gender or race) would deprive the Republicans of an easy target in campaign ads." Politics isn't just about winning elections. Politics is also about governing. Steny Hoyer is a creature of K Street, the world of lobbyists and corruption. A member of Congress once told me if Hoyer ever became Speaker, every bill would go to K Street and nothing remotely good could ever be achieved. And the more likely-- and even worse-- successor is Joe Crowley, a congressman wholly owned by Wall Street, who runs the New Dem caucus, the Republican wing of the Democratic Party and who defines DC corruption. Shapiro may think that doesn't matter; it does. Because what the Republicans lose in November they can take back in 2022... with a vengeance. Let's think about the long-term, not just a few quarters ahead which has always been a formula for businesses failing. I'm all for Pelosi stepping down-- although Paul Ryan is even less liked by the voters than she is (the DCCC is too lame to exploit that)-- but the House Democrats need to find a leader they can be proud of, as they once were-- and rightfully so-- of Pelosi. A Ted Lieu, a Barbara Lee, Ro Khanna, Pramila Jayapal, Mark Pocan... someone who represents the hopeful Democratic Party future, not its grubby past.

If Lamb Wins Tomorrow, The DC Dems Will Walk Away With The Wrong Lesson... As Usual

Tomorrow is election day in PA-18-- an election in a dismal district that will cease to exist immediately after the votes are counted. Whomever wins-- a shit Democrat (Conor Lamb) or a shit Republican (Rick Saccone)-- will have to run in a different district in November... and PA-18 is divided between a really red district for Saccone and a competitive district leaning blue either for Lamb or, hopefully, a better Democrat. Lamb is a Blue Dog who defines what it means to be a political coward. There's no enthusiasm for him and if he wins it will be only because voters hate Trump and want to let him know. I've been writing about that for weeks. Turns out, Republicans are as unhappy with Saccone as Democrats are with Lamb. Even Trumpanzee realizes how bad Saccone sucks. Trump thinks Saccone is is a terrible, "weak" candidate and Republican leaders have been bellyaching ever since it looked that Saccone could lose that "Lamb is a far superior candidate to Saccone and running a far better campaign. Lamb is running effectively as Republican Lite. He's pro-gun and says he personally opposes to abortion (though he supports abortion rights). The thing that most irks senior Republicans involved in the race: Saccone has been a lousy fundraiser. Lamb has outraised Saccone by a staggering margin-- nearly 500 percent... Should Saccone lose, Republicans will be quick to describe his loss as meaningless and will argue it's not a bellwether for November's elections. They'll say he was a terrible candidate and that his loss should be a wake-up call to other Republican candidates who may be getting lazy about their fundraising."

This weekend, an editorial in the Washington Observer-Reporter bemoaned the lack of bipartisanship and saw that GOP-liteness in Lamb and endorsed him.

[E]ither candidate would probably be able and competent when it comes to representing the 18th Congressional District. But we believe one of the two candidates would be better positioned to be the kind of moderate, conciliatory figure that is needed in this tempestuous moment in our political life, and that is Conor Lamb.

And they like him for the very reasons most Democrats are unenthusiastic: he "has refrained from full-frontal attacks on Trump" and he backs fracking. Across the state, the Philadelphia Inquirer offers a more in-depth look at Lamb's shortcomings from a columnist who used to live in PA-18 and write for the same Washington Observer-Reporter, Will Bunch. He referred to Trump's imbecilic foray into the district Saturday as "a desperate, 11th-hour bid to prop up sagging GOP congressional candidate Rick Saccone and described Trump's speech as "racist and misogynistic, autocratic bordering on fascism," a "freestyle egomaniacal monologue."

He worked there in the early '80s and he remembers "trying to figure out why schools were closed and public officials all vanished on December 1 (it was the first day of deer season!)."

Some 35 years of additional oxidation later, it’s a place seemingly tailor-made for a candidate like Lamb-- smart, good-looking and with an impeccable resume that includes stints as an attorney for the Marines and a federal prosecutor. Handpicked for the special election by local Democratic bosses, which meant he didn’t have to face a primary electorate that has been moving left, even in the Rust Belt, Lamb seems to bring everything you’d want in Deer Hunter country.

Except enthusiasm.

I was struck reading my colleague Jonathan Tamari’s recent reporting from the district, where Democratic and middle-of-the-road voters seem truly energized… about sending Trump a one-fingered salute. Conor Lamb? Meh. Wrote Tamari: “Outside Lamb’s rally with Biden at Robert Morris University, several Democrats said they wished Lamb was closer to their views on guns, abortion, and wealth disparity. But even those who described themselves as liberal still wore Lamb campaign pins, saying he gave them the best shot to win here-- and send a message to Trump.” Typical was voter Evelyn Harris, who told the Inquirer reporter that Lamb is “not as far left as I’d like.”

These are the voters who deliver special elections, and they may do so on Tuesday because of antipathy for Trump, not because of any love for Lamb. And there’s a lot for the Democratic base and voters on the left not to like about their special-election candidate. Although ostensibly pro-union, Lamb won’t support a $15 living wage. His attacks on fellow Democrat House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi are more than a tad awkward in this season of #MeToo politics. But then, Lamb goes out of his way to not mention that he’s a Democrat, or discuss any policy at all other than he’s for “working people.”

While there’s no dispute that Western Pennsylvania leans right on guns, Lamb’s passion for weaponry-- he filmed a campaign spot firing an AR-15-- is shameful in a political moment dominated by the Parkland massacre. Hours after a teen gunman mowed down 17 people in the corridors of that Florida high school, Lamb (who mildly supports stronger background checks and thus sits a tad left of his fellow gun zealot Saccone) said, “I believe we have a pretty good law on the books.” Since Parkland, Florida’s NRA-backed Gov. Rick Scott has shown more gumption on guns than Lamb. Let that sink in. Sometimes firing an assault rifle for the camera isn’t a mark of political courage but cowardice.

That said, the Tea Party-backed Saccone, a Trump acolyte, would be measurably worse than Lamb. Still, one senses-- given rising rage toward Trump, his abusive governing style and his trail of broken promises-- that Democrats would vote for Being There‘s slow-witted Chauncey Gardiner if they believed it would deliver a blow to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The numbers bear that out. In a slew of special elections since the start of 2017, Democrats have shown the greatest gains in areas that went for Trump-- regardless of the candidate.

The thing is, a Lamb victory on Tuesday might give Democrats exactly the wrong lesson-- that all they need to do is fire a few rounds from their semi-automatic and mansplain Pelosi and they can buy a one-way ticket to Reagan National-- going into the wider 2018 midterms. What has really explained the rising fortunes of Democrats, including special-election wins in red states and gains in places like Virginia? A new study by two top political scientists has found one giant X-factor-- the surge in energy from mostly suburban women, especially in the 30-70 age bracket.

“The new upsurge is not centered in the progressive urban enclaves where most national pundits live; nor is it to be found among the grizzled men in coal country diners where journalists escape to get out of the bubble,” write Lara Putnam and Theda Skocpol in the journal Democracy. “Neither of those poles looks much like most of America anyway. About half the country lives in the suburbs, twice the number who live in either fully urban or rural settings. More than half of Americans are also women-- and of those, half are in their thirties to sixties. It is in this Middle America, and among these Middle Americans, that political developments since the November 2016 election have moved fastest and farthest.”

Putnam, who teaches not far from PA-18 at the University of Pittsburgh, adds that she “has come to believe there is an epochal ‘generation’ in the making: a cohort of Americans for whom life-cycle stage and personal trajectory collided with public events-- the election of Donald Trump; the Women’s Marches and calls to action that followed-- in ways that changed life after life in very similar, and very consequential, directions.” Needless to say, Conor Lamb, his AR-15, or other Democrats who wish to imitate him don’t do a lot to move these voters. This isn’t the only way forward; another new study published in the Times last weekend urged the Democrats to push to regain a few million young and mostly nonwhite Obama voters who failed to show up at the pols in 2016; that wouldn’t mean so much in predominantly white PA-18, but it could sway key Senate races from Texas to Ohio. That, and tapping into the energy of angry, anti-Trump women. Playing for the God, guns and gold crowd that went ga-ga for Trump in 2016 seems a much lower priority-- especially when it might drive away the first two groups.

But if the past is prologue, Beltway Democrats are going to get the wrong message from whatever happens on Tuesday. The worst plan for moving past the Trump nightmare would surely be to lead a flock of “Lambs” into November, some of whom will surely be slaughtered at the polls.

The brand new Monmouth poll-- certainly the last poll we'll see before the exit polls tomorrow-- came out this morning. Looks like pretty bad news for Saccone and the Republicans; maybe Trump's rally over the weekend made their position even worse. They're already calling it "a Democratic district." The PVI is R+11. and the DCCC has been funding Lamb's campaign stealthily.

Even Establishment Stooges Are Sensing A Wave. By The First Wednesday In November They'll Be Certain

As we noted on Tuesday, the PA-18 special election 4 days from now, should be easy-peasy for the GOP. But they're on track to spend 40 times more money on this race than the Democrats! The PVI is R+11 and it's a district where McCain beat Obama 55-44%, Romney beat Obama 58-41% and then Trump eviscerated Clinton 58.1% to 38.5%. On top of that, the Democrats have a terrible candidate-- Conor Lamb a bland, wishy-washy Blue Dog who flies in the face of the energy that is motivating Democratic enthusiasm. He's worse than Ossoff-- but in a much redder district. And yet... polls show a tie, a toss-up, with Republican officials in DC peeing in their pants.

Yesterday Chuck Todd started the day by writing how Señor Trumpanzee has managed to turn the PA-18 special election into a major referendum on himself, exactly what Democrats were hoping for... and the only way to win a blood-red district like this with a crap candidate like Lamb. "[I]f there’s reason to pay attention to the outcome on Tuesday," Todd wrote, "it’s this: Trump has put his office’s prestige on the line. In addition to the president holding a rally with Saccone on Saturday, the Washington Post suggested last week that Trump’s move on tariffs is aimed at the voters in PA-18. 'In recent weeks, he has been told by associates that voters in places such as Pennsylvania’s 18th District are looking for more to be done by the administration, according to two people familiar with the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations,' the Post wrote. 'The president has noted that the Republican in the race is struggling in a district where he won by a large margin, those people said.' So the race-- despite the new map and already-evident political winds-- matters because it matters to President Trump. A win, therefore, would allow Trump to crow that the GOP can still win in Trump Country. But a loss would be devastating for him: After all the money, the campaigning and the tariff timing, to have a Republican lose in a district Trump carried by 20 points would suggest there’s not more the president can do to help GOP candidates, even in Trump Country. In sum, Tuesday’s PA-18 is a perfect microcosm of much of the Trump Era: So much attention and such high stakes on something that didn’t have to be this big-- and in large part because Trump made it so."

As Alex Isenstadt reported this week in Politico, in anticipation of a possible loss, the NRCC is already starting to trash Rick Saccone. Yep, their candidate is as mediocre and lame as Connor Lamb. The NRCC bitching is all about what a bad fundraiser he is. They're pissed off that as of the Feb 21 FEC reporting deadline, Saccone had only raised $916,392 to Lamb's $3,869,247. Because of Trump's hysteria-- as well as Paul Ryan's-- the GOP has had to open their purses is the biggest possible way-- over $10,000,000 in independent expenses to bail out Saccone.

Meanwhile you have Pennsylvania's Republican U.S. senator, Pat Toomey, bad-mouthing Trump's trade war strategy. Toomey: "I think the tariffs are a big mistake. I think the policy is very, very counter productive. It makes no sense. If there is a problem with steel, a problem that needs to be addressed, it’s Chinese over capacity. The Chinese, in an attempt to accelerate their industrialization in decades past, they built massive capacity to make steel and that’s true, that’s a fact. We can have a good debate, about what American policy should be about that fact. Here’ s the reality, because of perceived violations of trading norms, we’ve already punished the Chinese in the past and today, American imports from China are trivial. They only provide 2 percent of the steel we import... We manufacture 75 to 80 percent of all the steel we consume domestically. Our biggest imported source is, for this modest amount that we do import, is Canada. By the way, Canada buys from us as much steel as they sell to us, we just happen to have an almost equal balance of in trade of steel with Canada. So what we’re doing is were slapping a tariff on Canadian steel, which makes no sense at all, they don’t impose that kind of tariff on our steel but we’re doing that. China is completely unaffected because we already don’t buy steel from China." He completely undercut Trumpanzee's foolish reasons to start a trade war (and help Saccone). "Since we signed NAFTA, Pennsylvania’s exports to Mexico are up 500 percent. I mean it just totally opened up Mexico to all kinds of chemicals and manufactured goods, transportation equipment, the things that we sell to Mexico, that we export generally from Pennsylvania have gone through the roof. The exports that we sell to the Canadian and Mexican companies add up to more than we export to the next 10 Countries. They’re number one and two."

What a mess! And that's Trump, Trump, who is leading the GOP into a massive oncoming tsunami, an unprecendent electoral disaster, that they absolutely deserve for enabling his every unhinged circus performance since he became their nominee. This week Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball didn't just move PA-18 from "leans Republican" to "toss up," he moved 25 districts across the country in favor of Democrats-- and not one in favor of the GOP! This is the shape of the GOP catastrophe in the making. [Keep in mind Sabato is a sad-sack establishment idiot and his prognosticating months behind reality. His comments are generally worthless, other than to indicate what the DC establishment is thinking. Example: his critique of Randy Bryce's campaign is not based on reality in any way shape or form. Bryce's campaign is-- by far-- the best run in the country, the envy of every single campaign on both sides of the aisle, but Sabato is parroting DCCC/Hoyer wishful thinking and envy.]

"Democrats have been consistently overperforming Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential performance in special elections held since Donald Trump’s election," wrote Sabato... Democrats have been running on average 13 points ahead of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 margin in the nearly 90 races held so far featuring a Democrat and a Republican. That speaks to the overall political environment, which clearly favors Democrats right now."

We’re moving Reps. Ami Bera (D, CA-7), Tom O’Halleran (D, AZ-1), and Stephanie Murphy (D, FL-7) from Leans Democratic to Likely Democratic, and we’re moving Reps. Dave Loebsack (D, IA-2), Ann Kuster (D, NH-2), Sean Patrick Maloney (D, NY-18), Tom Suozzi (D, NY-3), and Ron Kind (D, WI-3) from Likely Democratic to Safe Democratic. If a Democrat was in the White House, many or all of these members would be Republican targets. Republicans still hope to push many of them this fall, but we’re just skeptical of their ability to do so given history and the overall environment. Of all of these changes, Bera is probably the closest call-- he barely won in both 2014 and 2016, and he has had to deal with the fallout of a campaign finance scandal that sent his father to prison. But memories of that scandal are likely fading, and he benefits, just like every other Democrat, from Trump being in the White House. A possible exception may be if first-term Rep. Ruben Kihuen (D, NV-4) decides to run for a second term after retiring earlier this cycle because of sexual harassment accusations. The Nevada Independent reported Wednesday that Kihuen might be reconsidering. We currently list his open seat as Leans Democratic.

...In addition to the new PA-17 and the soon-to-be defunct old PA-18, we have three additional Republican Toss-ups to add to a growing list of 50-50 races: Reps. Rod Blum (R, IA-1), Mike Bost (R, IL-12), and Erik Paulsen (R, MN-3). The first two, Blum and Bost, represent working-class districts with down-ballot Democratic strength that swung to Trump in 2016. Both should face strong opponents and the prospect of a Democratic snapback later this year. Brendan Kelly (D), a local state’s attorney, is set to challenge Bost, while Blum awaits the winner of a contested Democratic primary. Meanwhile, Paulsen represents a more affluent district in the Twin Cities suburbs where Trump underperformed in 2018. Paulsen is likely to face Dean Phillips (D), a member of a powerful Minnesota business family. The moves here are not related to a specific new development, but rather represent a fresh assessment of these races that takes into account what we believe is a challenging environment for Republicans in districts that both moved toward and away from Trump in 2016 relative to their previous presidential voting.

The same applies to several other Republicans who are also moving to more competitive categories this week: Reps. Mike Bishop (R, MI-8), Ted Budd (R, NC-13), Robert Pittenger (R, NC-9), Lee Zeldin (R, NY-1), Steve Chabot (R, OH-1), and Pete Sessions (R, TX-32) all move from Likely Republican to Leans Republican. These incumbents seem likely to face credible challengers, and Democrats have had success in some of this territory in the recent past. Zeldin in particular stands out as someone who may be a key Democratic target if only because his Suffolk County seat has been perennially competitive. Sessions, a former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, is a very formidable longtime incumbent, but Tuesday’s Texas primary did demonstrate an urban/suburban Democratic energy in terms of significantly improved turnout from the most recent comparable election (the 2014 midterm). That may not be enough to change the statewide dynamic, where Republicans have long ruled the roost, but members like Sessions and another longtime Texas Republican, Rep. John Culberson (R, TX-7), may be endangered in districts narrowly carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016. The Democratic primaries to face both Texas incumbents are going to runoffs: Former NFL player Colin Allred (D) more than doubled the vote of his closest competitor for the right to face Sessions and is likely a big favorite in the May 22 runoff, while attorney Lizzie Pannill Fletcher (D) and activist Laura Moser (D) will battle to face Culberson. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee clearly prefers Fletcher, and the committee intervened (some would say ham-handedly) against Moser a couple of weeks ago. Moser ended up getting about 24% of the primary vote, second to Fletcher’s 29%, but Moser’s level of support grew from 22% in the early voting to 26% of the Election Day vote, perhaps suggesting the DCCC brouhaha actually helped her improve her standing in the latter stages of the race.

Meanwhile, Reps. Vern Buchanan (R, FL-16), Jack Bergman (R, MI-1), Fred Upton (R, MI-6), Tim Walberg (R, MI-7), and Steve Russell (R, OK-5) move from Safe Republican to Likely Republican. Russell in particular may seem like a curious addition, but Democrats have had some of their best special election performances in Oklahoma so far this cycle, and the Oklahoma City-based district shifted from 59%-41% for Mitt Romney in 2012 to 53%-40% Trump in 2016, perhaps indicating some anti-Trump sentiment that could contribute to a Democratic opening in a good year. Noah Rudnick, a sharp young analyst, recently published a long piece looking at OK-5 and questioning why House handicappers were ignoring it. We were sufficiently intrigued to include it in our ratings. The other four Safe to Likely Republican districts mentioned, three in Michigan and one in Florida, are also deep sleeper Democratic targets.

One final change of note: We’re moving Speaker Paul Ryan (R, WI-1) from Safe Republican to Likely Republican, too, for a variety of reasons.

The first is that Ryan’s district is actually competitive, on paper at least: Barack Obama narrowly won it in 2008, Mitt Romney (with Ryan as his VP nominee) carried it by four points in 2012, and Trump won it by 10 in 2016. So the district seems to be trending Republican — but, remember, we’re in an electoral period where Democrats are making districts Trump won by 20 points into Toss-ups, like PA-18.

Still, Ryan has been untouchable, never winning less than 55% in his 10 victories dating back to 1998. Ironworker Randy Bryce (D), one of Ryan’s potential general election challengers, has become a minor celebrity on the left, and he raised more than $1 million in the last quarter, a lot of money for a House candidate (though he burned through almost all of what he raised last quarter, which calls into question how he is running his campaign). Still, in a big wave environment, it’s not impossible that Ryan could be vulnerable, particularly because voters don’t seem to reward senior leaders the way they used to (it’s probably not a coincidence that Ryan’s weakest general election performance in the House came in 2012, when he was also on the ballot as the vice presidential candidate and thus a highly nationalized figure).

However, the main reason we’re including Ryan’s district on the list is to account for the possibility that he may not even be running in the fall. A few months ago, some well-connected congressional reporters, Politico’s Tim Alberta and Rachael Bade and Huffington Post’s Matt Fuller, suggested Ryan was not long for the House, and in late January, Ryan was non-committal about running for reelection, and Wisconsin’s filing deadline is not until June 1. Could Ryan decide not to run? Or might he run this year and then resign after winning reelection, perhaps necessitating a special election in 2019? It’s hard to say, but Ryan may keep us all guessing for awhile, because if he retires he could prompt even more of his colleagues to also retire. Ryan is also a vital (and very strong) fundraiser for his caucus, and he might not raise as much if donors explicitly knew he was heading for the exits.

So what that chart-- which Sabato comes up with by talking to the clueless imbeciles at the DCCC-- tells us is that Republican incumbents Vern Buchanan, Rod Blum (IA), Mike Best (IL), Jack Bergman (MI), Mike Bishop (MI), Fred Upton (MI), Tim Walberg (MI), Erik Paulsen (MN), Ted Budd (NC), Bob Pittenger (NC), Lee Zeldin (NY), Steve Chabot (OH), Steve Russell (OK), Keith Rothfus (PA), Pete Sessions (TX) and Paul Ryan have joined the ranks of the vulnerable.

A Lot Could Happen Between Now And November, But Chances Are Good That They Will All Conspire To Make The GOP Lose Even More Seats

If this guy can win next week, any Democrat can win in November

The special election to replace Tim Murphy in PA-18-- southwest Pennsylvania, including the suburbs south of Pittsburgh-- is a week from today. It's a very red district. McCain beat Obama 55-44%, Romney beat Obama 58-41% and then Trump eviscerated Clinton 58.1% to 38.5%. The PVI is R+11, beyond what a Democrat can win, even in a wave election. And Lamb, a Blue Dog Democrat who sounds as weak and unconvincing as Jon Ossoff and is running a terrible campaign. The election next week will be held under the gerrymandered old boundaries which favor the GOP and the Republicans have spent almost $10 million on a district that should be a freebie, while outside Democratic groups have spent pocket change. (As of the February 21 FEC reporting deadline Lamb had raised $3,869,247 to Saccone's $916,392.) I would have bet that Saccone would win by close to double digits-- and I would have lost the bet. This race is now incredibly tight... neck and neck. How is that possible? Have you heard of Donald J. Trump, the psychopath voters hate?

Mike Allen went so far, yesterday, at Axios as to assert that "top Republicans sound increasingly resigned to losing" the race. I'm dumbstruck. I mean no one is a bigger believer is a Blue Wave than I am and no one predicted it before I did. But in an R+11 district? In a district where Clinton couldn't even score 40%? 20 point swings in a series of basically inconsequential legislative districts is one thing but the GOP giving up a district like PA-18 in the middle of Trump Country and to a truly mediocre and uninspiring candidate... that's something else entirely.

If Lamb wins next week, the race for the exits-- and to K Street jobs-- among GOP congressmen will get really serious. And Paul Ryan will announce by spring that he's retiring from Congress to spend more time teaching his sons how to hunt with bows and arrows. No, I'm not joking. Mike Allen wrote that "It's one of the increasingly bearish signs for the GOP ahead of November's midterms, with mammoth stakes for the West Wing: If Dems take the House and there's a Speaker Pelosi, President Trump faces endless subpoenas and perhaps impeachment proceedings. We had a very clarifying conversation with an analyst who's reliably ahead of the curve, and he agreed to share his findings with Axios. Chris Krueger, managing director of Cowen & Co.'s Washington Research Group, said he sees four "glaring red flags for the House GOP majority":

1- The correlation between the president’s approval number and first-term midterm losses by the president’s party: In the six times that the president’s job approval was under 50%, the average loss was more than 43 seats. The Democrats need 24 to flip the House.

2- CA + PA = half-way there: California is the citadel of the resistance, which has 14 House Republicans. Between retirements, losing state-and-local tax deductions in the tax bill, and Trump’s California disapproval, the Golden State could lose half its GOP delegation. The new Pennsylvania redistricting map-- and similar anti-Trump trend lines-- could cost Rs as many as six seats. These two states get you halfway to a Democratic House.

3- Suburban danger zones: 2018 could make the suburbs great again for the House Democrats. The Democratic victories in last year's Virginia and New Jersey governor's races could well be the canaries in the coal mine. Remember that there are 23 House Republican seats in districts Clinton won-- and most are suburban.

4- Trump Coalition Unique to Trump: This is the biggest wildcard. Just like we saw with Obama voters in the midterms of 2010 and 2014, we suspect the unique coalition that supported the president will not turn out for generic House members of that President’s party. Just as Obama voters didn’t turn out for generic House Democrats, Trump-centric voters won’t come out for generic House Republicans. You do not drain the swamp by reelecting the establishment and the deep state.

If you follow DWT regularly, you may have noticed that last June, when many Beltway prognosticators were poo-pooing the idea of a wave or tepidly admitting the Dems might win a bare 24 seats to win back the majority, we were already talking about progressive Democrats winning in seats like OK-05, a district the DCCC hasn't considered in decades. Trump beat Hillary there 53.2% to 39.8%. That seems like a lot more favorable to the PA-18 race. And OK-05 was Bernie country. It won't be too long before those Beltway prognosticators gradually put GOP incumbent Steve Russell on the endangered species list. The key now-- with these districts the DCCC is ignoring-- is to make sure the nominees are progressives, like Tom Guild in OK-05, not Republican-lite corporate shills, like the DCCC is installing wherever they can. Please consider helping the progressive Democrats by tapping on the ActBlue thermometer on the right and contributing what you canto the candidates who appeal to you. Let's not wind up with a Congress filled with Blue Dogs and New Dems who will all lose their seats in 2022 and stick us with a Republican Congress again.

Who's Going To Win In November?

Meet Democraps Jon Ossoff, Conor Lamb and Andrew Janz

170 members of the American Political Science Association who specialize in presidential history participated in an annual poll that ranked every U.S. president. Trump displaced one-termer James Buchanan-- a pro-slavery Democrat from Pennsylvania-- as the nation's worst president. It was obvious from the second Putin installed him in the White House that he would wind up as the worst president ever... but this fast? In an interview yesterday on C-SPAN, historian Douglas Brinkley said "Trump represents kind of a dark underbelly of America." Richard Florida was less specific but tweeted yesterday that "In many ways, the US no longer qualifies as an advanced nation." The point he's been making since Trump took over is that this will ultimately limit ability America's "ability to attract global talent & improve its economic competitiveness."

The new Quinnipiac poll was released yesterday-- a birthday present for me. "American voters say 53 - 38 percent, including 47 - 36 percent among independent voters, they want the Democratic Party to win control of the U.S. House of Representatives this year. Voters say 54 - 39 percent, including 51 - 38 percent among independent voters, they want the Democrats to win control of the U.S. Senate this year." (That's the generic balloting people have been foolishly fretting about over the last month. That Democratic lead is 15 points. Is that why Florida Republican Tom Rooney announced he's retiring yesterday? Or wa sit because Vern Buchanan's lost a state legislative race last Tuesday to an unknown Democratic women in a district not all that far from Rooney's district? Or is because Rooney is still nauseated by Trump?

Not everybody is (nauseated by Trump). [Before we get back to Richard Florida, let me mention that last night Linda Belcher flipped the reddest district a Democrat has won since Trump got to the White House. Kentucky's state House District 49 (Bullitt County) gave Trump a colossal 72% of the vote in 2016. But yesterday voters helped Linda jturn it blue, winning the support of more than 68% of voters. How's that for a swing-- 86 points?] Now, back to Richard Florida. Last week he wrote a post on his blog, The Geography of Trump's First-Year Job Approval. "Trump’s average first-year approval rating," he noted "sits at a lowly 38 percent-- the worst of any president since Gallup started measuring presidential job approval in 1945. But this overall average belies huge variation in that approval rating across the 50 states, according to a recent Gallup poll based on surveys conducted throughout 2017. Indeed, Trump’s approval rating reaches above 60 percent in West Virginia and above 50 percent in 11 other states, including the Dakotas, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Alabama, and Oklahoma... [T]here is a broad Trump approval belt across the Plains, Appalachia, the Deep South, and parts of the Midwest, and a broad disapproval belt on the coasts and in New England, as well as in states like Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Illinois, and Minnesota... [T]his jagged geography of Trump’s approval rate mirrors the fundamental contours of America’s long-standing political, economic, and cultural divides."

Opinions of the president reflect the fundamental cleavage of class, which has long divided Americans along political as well as economic lines. Trump’s approval is overwhelmingly concentrated in less affluent, less educated, more working-class states. It is positively associated with the share of workers in blue-collar working-class jobs (0.76), and negatively associated with income (-0.72), wages (-0.79), education (measured as the share of adults with a bachelor’s degree and above, -0.86), and the share of workers doing knowledge, professional, or creative work (-0.72).

Contrary to the idea that support for Trump is a function of rising unemployment, there is no statistical association between Trump’s approval rate and a state’s unemployment rate. The conventional wisdom suggests that Trump’s rise was bolstered by those losing out from America’s gaping inequality. However, the data complicates that story. Approval of Trump is actually higher in states with lower levels of income inequality, approval being negatively correlated with the Gini coefficient measure of income inequality (-0.40). On the other hand, states with higher levels of inequality are much more likely to disapprove of Trump, with a positive correlation between income inequality and the share of people who disapprove of Trump (0.38).

Approval and disapproval of the president powerfully track America’s widening spatial divide. Approval is concentrated in less urbanized states, while disapproval is concentrated in denser, more urbanized ones. Trump’s approval rate is negatively correlated with two measures of urbanity: the urban share of population (-0.52), and to an even greater extent, the urban share of a state’s total land area (-0.62). (Interestingly, neither Trump’s approval nor his disapproval has any statistical connection to the overall population size of states.) Another dividing line is the car. Approval of the president is positively associated with the share of commuters who drive to work alone (0.45).

...Despite his record low level of overall approval, President Trump retains considerable support in traditionally conservative states in the Plains and Deep South and in parts of the Midwest. Trump’s approval rating is not a break with the past; its geography both reflects and reinforces the basic fault lines of class, geography, race, and culture that have long divided this country. If anything, Trump’s support has deepened America’s persistent red-blue divide.

All of this fits the pattern of Trump’s support as being premised on what Ron Brownstein, my colleague at The Atlantic, has aptly dubbed the “coalition of restoration”-- a geographically concentrated band of working class, white, suburban, and rural support that is bent upon restoring a bygone America.

This political backlash not only signals a more reactionary political agenda, it is also an agenda for economic retreat, undermining key pillars of America’s economic growth and rising living standards. “The much bigger, long-term danger is economic rather than political,” I wrote of the rising tide of conservatism in less prosperous states back in 2011. “American politics is increasingly disconnected from its economic engine. And this deepening political divide has become perhaps the biggest bottleneck on the road to long-run prosperity.”

This is far more the case today.

Not unrelated, the aforementioned Ron Brownstein wrote for CNN yesterday about the places that will decide the 2018 election. He wrote that control of the House will depend on what he calls "red pockets, Romneyland, and blue-collar blues."

Red Pockets

The clearest opportunity for Democrats is the relatively few remaining Republican-held districts in blue metro areas with large populations of college-educated whites, and in many cases substantial minority and youth populations as well. These are places crowded with voters who tilt toward liberal positions on social issues and recoil from Trump's volatile persona, particularly the way he talks about race.

The renewed visibility of gun control issues after the horrific Parkland, Florida, massacre could provide Democrats another lever in these districts, since the Republicans in them have almost universally voted with the National Rifle Association to loosen gun regulations in recent years.

These "red pockets" include the four seats Republicans control in Orange County -- the districts held by Mimi Walters and Dana Rohrabacher and the open seats that will be vacated by Darrell Issa and Ed Royce -- as well as their sole remaining seat in Los Angeles County, held by Steve Knight.

Others that fit this description include the seats in the western Chicago suburbs held by Republican Peter Roskam and in the eastern Denver suburbs held by Mike Coffman; the three suburban Philadelphia seats held by Ryan Costello, Mike Fitzpatrick and Pat Meehan (who has announced he will not seek re-election amid a sex scandal); the northern Virginia seat held by Barbara Comstock; two open seats in New Jersey as well as the one defended by Rep. Leonard Lance; Lee Zeldin's seat in eastern Long Island; the suburban Minneapolis seats now held by Jason Lewis and Erik Paulsen; the Seattle-area seat that Dave Reichert is leaving; as well as the Miami-area seat being vacated by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and the nearby seat held by Rep. Carlos Curbelo.

Though Romney carried many of these seats-- often narrowly-- in 2012, Hillary Clinton won all of those listed above in 2016 except for the seats held by Lewis and Fitzpatrick, which Trump won by eyelash margins. These resemble the places where Democrats showed the most dramatic gains in 2017, for instance in their sweep of legislative seats and the huge margins they generated in the governor's race in northern Virginia.

Compounding the GOP's vulnerability, the new congressional map the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued Monday, after earlier ruling that the current district lines represented an impermissible gerrymander, strengthened the Democrats' hand in all three suburban Philadelphia seats.

For Republicans, the key in these booming districts will be whether the good economy helps them recapture voters recoiling from Trump's personal behavior. One complication is these blue-state upper-middle-class suburbs are among the most likely losers from the GOP tax plan, which limits the deductibility of mortgage interest and state and local taxes. Democrats are highly unlikely to win back the House without maximizing their gains in the red pockets.

Romneyland

The next bucket of seats is demographically similar to the red pockets but politically distinct because they are in metro areas that lean much more reliably toward the GOP.

I call this group of seats Romneyland because they are filled with voters who resemble Romney demographically and ideologically: professionals and corporate middle managers who want a president who will shrink government and even pursue a center-right social agenda, but also exude professionalism and decorum.

Romney won virtually every seat in this category in 2012. In 2016, Trump lost ground relative to Romney in almost all of them, though the residual Republican strength was great enough that he still carried many, albeit often narrowly.

The districts in this bucket include the Omaha-area seat held by Don Bacon; the seats in suburban Houston and outside Dallas held by John Culberson and Pete Sessions, respectively; the two suburban Atlanta seats held by Karen Handel and Rob Woodall; David Young's seat outside Des Moines; the Tucson-area seat Martha McSally is vacating to run for the Senate from Arizona; the Lexington, Kentucky-area seat held by Andy Barr; the seats outside Detroit that Dave Trott is vacating and Mike Bishop is defending; and Kevin Yoder's seat in suburban Kansas City, Kansas.

These seats are not immune from the forces threatening the Republicans in the red pockets: Handel, for instance, only narrowly survived last June's special election in Georgia, though her predecessor Tom Price had carried over 60% of the vote there as recently as 2016.

But as Handel's slim victory over Democrat Jon Ossoff showed, Republicans have more of a cushion in these places than in the red pockets. That's partly because more of the white-collar whites in them are social conservatives than their counterparts in the Democratic-leaning metro areas.

Blue-collar blues

The third key test for Democrats is the districts I call "blue-collar blues." These are the blue-collar, exurban, small town and rural seats in states that generally lean Democratic.

These include Republican seats held by John Faso, John Katko and Claudia Tenney in upstate New York; Mike Bost, Rodney Davis and Randy Hultgren in downstate Illinois; the northeast Iowa seat of Rod Blum; Bruce Poliquin's northern Maine district; and the Central Valley, California, seats of Jeff Denham and David Valadao.

These seats present an especially revealing test for Democrats. Former President Barack Obama carried almost all of them at least once and many of them have elected Democratic House members in the recent past. But House Democrats were routed in these places in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections under Obama, and almost all of these districts turned further toward Trump in 2016.

The 2017 results in Virginia and Alabama showed Democrats almost completely failing to crack the GOP's hold on blue-collar and rural voters. But some Democrats argue that terrain is much tougher for the party in the South than in the Northeastern and Midwestern states where these competitive House seats are concentrated.

Democrats see an opening in polling, such as the 2017 average of Gallup's daily approval ratings for Trump, that shows a significant erosion in his support across the Rust Belt among working-class white women, even as he remains very strong among blue-collar white men. Converting that female disillusionment with Trump into votes for Democratic congressional candidates is likely the key to seriously contesting the "blue-collar blue" seats.

One early test will be March's special election in the heavily blue-collar southwestern Pennsylvania district that Republican Rep. Tim Murphy has vacated: Democrat Conor Lamb, a former Marine, is running competitively against Republican state Rep. Rick Saccone in a district Trump carried by nearly 20 percentage points.

The Democrats' advantage: in like a lion, out like a Lamb

There he's wrong. Conor Lamb, as we mentioned yesterday, is a truly shit candidate, wrong for the district, wrong for the energy of the day, perfect for the Beltway Democratic establishment and nothing more. Trump-hatred may swing the district towards the Democrats somewhat but Lamb and his campaign are fighting that swing with every move they make. Candidates and campaigns matter. The more garbage candidates like Jon Ossoff and Conor Lamb the DC Democrats nominate, the safer the Republican majority will be. Yesterday, Lamb shot himself in the foot again. This from him... in a district he might have had a chance to win if he had won back the union vote: "I think [$15 an hour] sounds high based on what I’ve been told by many small business owners in our area. I would rather see something that was agreed on by both sides." Republicans already have their candidate. The Democrats desperately need one.

More candidates, for example, like Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA), who happened to mention this to me today: "The Democrats must deserve victory. We should contrast a politics of restoration with a politics of preparing the nation for the future. And we should have candidates run on a bold platform of a $15 minimum wage, Medicare for All, regulating magazine clips and an assault weapons ban, supporting net neutrality, making college debt free as Robert Reich has proposed, and strong antitrust enforcement. These policies have broad support among people and particularly younger voters. We need a clear contrast and to stand for a substantive agenda to win."

I'm not 100% sure what category Austin Frerick's Iowa district would be in, but I asked him to take a look and he sent me a note saying that "Folks in Romneyland to those in the blue-collar blue areas loves our economic concentration message. Who doesn't want fair, free, and competitive markets? Only the robber barons of this era don't like this message. It just takes courage to stand up and say enough is enough and refuse that dirty money." As you can probably guess, he's more like a Ro Khanna candidate than from the confused Ossoff GOP-lite school.


UPDATE: How To Win In A Trump District

David Gill has a prescription: "Even in my district (IL-13), which Trump carried by 5 points, voters will respond to a message from a Democrat that actually addresses their concerns-- that's why I came within 0.3% of victory here in 2012, while all other Democrats have lost here by 50 to 60 times that margin. My message of single-payer healthcare, a $15/hour minimum wage, and tuition-free access to public higher education & trade schools resonates with voters here, whether they consider themselves left, right, or somewhere in between. If I can once again get by the corporate-funded establishment Democrats in the primary, as in 2012, I have little doubt that I can succeed in November."

Pelosi, The Fate Of The Democratic Party... Stuff Like That

When people ask about Republican gains in generic polls I always point to Republican losses in deep red legislative districts in Missouri, Oklahoma, Florida, Wisconsin...-- what Vanity Fair's Abigail Tracy reported as a potential harbinger of the legendary blue wave in the 2018 midterms that could rob of the G.O.P. of its majority in the House—and possibly, the Senate. Get ready for a big reversal of fortune next month. On Trump's electoral toxicity, she wrote that "since he ascended to the Oval Office, Donald Trump has maintained a vice-like grip on the base of the Republican Party. And yet, while Trump’s popularity has largely proven to be non-transferable, his flagging approval rating-- which, despite a recent uptick, is still hovering in the low 40s-- augurs suppressed Republican turnout and heightened energy on the left in the midterms. So Republican candidates are facing an impossible strategic choice, one that is to some degree independent of the president’s approval rating or any economic factor: tack toward Trump, and potentially lose the center, or forgo Trumpian red meat and watch the base stay home."

“What you do when you appeal to that 33 percent is you peel off another 50 percent of the voters who will go, ‘Fuck you, I will crawl over broken glass to vote against you because you are a goddamn Donald Trumper,’” Rick Wilson, a G.O.P. strategist and vocal Never Trumper, told me, adding that without Clinton, Trump “has to stand on his own two feet.” And although Trump won’t be on the ballot in 2018, every Republican candidate this fall will be viewed as a Trump proxy. Meanwhile, Democrats will have the luxury of focusing their energy elsewhere. “They get to do that because they’re out of power. That’s a big advantage to them,” the Republican strategist told me. “They let the national environment take care of it and they run on issues that are local and important.”

...A string of Democratic upsets in conservative strongholds in special elections since the New Year have opened G.O.P. eyes to the challenge. Last month, Democrat Patty Schachtner secured a nine-point victory in a contentious battle for a state Senate seat in Wisconsin’s 10th District, which Mitt Romney and Trump won by 6 points and 17 points, respectively. Trygve Olson, a G.O.P. strategist who previously managed campaigns in the district, warned on Twitter, “A wave is coming . . . This a suburban-rural district. If the G.O.P. is losing WI-10 lookout!” Even Republican Governor Scott Walker took to Twitter to express his concern about the seat flip. “Senate District 10 special election win by a Democrat is a wake up call for Republicans in Wisconsin,” he wrote.

Republicans were similarly rattled by the Democratic performance in two Missouri special election races. Democrat Mike Revis edged out his opponent by three points in Missouri’s 97th District, which Trump won by 28 points and Romney won by 12 points. Strategists have also noted a trio of elections for bellwether seats in Florida-- the state’s 40th Senate District in Miami-Dade, the St. Petersburg’s mayoral race, and Florida’s 72nd House District-- in which Democrats triumphed. “This is beyond a trend. The results are in. Republicans have a real problem in this state,” Tom Eldon, a Democratic pollster who surveyed the race, told Politico.

...While the political environment may seem primed for a blue wave in the fall, anti-Trump sentiment alone won’t be enough to flip the House. And, fortunately for Republicans, Democrats have struggled to coalesce around a party message. “The mood might help get a few points, but you still have to close the deal on things that are important in your own communities,” Schale said in reference to tight Congressional races, drawing on Jon Ossoff’s special congressional election loss in Georgia as evidence of the limits of anti-Trump enthusiasm on the left. “One of the reasons he lost was he was just another guy who happened to be a Democrat. . . . Ossoff, for all the money he raised, is still a young guy who didn’t have a lot of currency in the district and the race turned on national issues. That wasn’t good enough to close the deal.”

The Republicans are literally running millions of dollars of TV ads in southwest Pennsylvania against Conor Lamb. Lamb outraised Saccone $557,551 to $214,675 but that's chump change in this super-nationalized race. Trump's SuperPAC, Ryan's SuperPAC, the NRCC's SuperPAC and a couple of Dark Money neo-fascist operations-- 45 Cmte and Ending Spending-- financed by anti-American billionaires have flooded the airwave with ads trying to persuade PA-18 voters that Conor Lamb, an inept, nearly worthless Ossoff-like candidate is just Nancy Pelosi in a man's suit. The DCCC has already fled the field and not a single ad has run tying Saccone to the even more unpopular Paul Ryan.







Last week, writing for The Atlantic, Russell Berman asked if the GOP's successful demonization of Pelosi will be what prevents the Democrats from taking back the House. "[A] small group of restive Democrats is gunning for Pelosi," he wrote. "They’re maneuvering in public, and recruiting support behind the scenes, to force her departure. They want to set off a generational shift for Democrats that they believe is long overdue. And their efforts-- joined to the familiar attacks from Republicans, who have made them the linchpin of their bid to retain the House-- are calling Pelosi’s political future into question just as she sits on the cusp of regaining power... If Pelosi’s considerable talents and accomplishments are undeniable, so is her enduring unpopularity."

Pelosi has been a favorite piñata for Republicans from the moment she stepped onto the national stage. The formula of tying just about any Democratic congressional candidate to Pelosi’s record, words, or merely an unflattering image of her face may be stale, but that Republicans keep coming back to it election after election is evidence that it’s effective. Pelosi’s Democratic critics quickly blamed Jon Ossoff’s defeat in Georgia on that tried-and-true tactic. “Nancy Pelosi is not the only reason that Ossoff lost. But she certainly is one of the reasons,” Representative Filemon Vela of Texas said at the time.

And like an army gift-wrapping its battle plans and air-dropping them over enemy lines, Republicans have told Democrats exactly what’s coming this fall. Their ads against Conor Lamb, the candidate running in the next hotly contested House special election in Pennsylvania in March, have starred Pelosi-- despite the fact that Lamb has vowed not to vote for her. “She’s our secret weapon,” Trump let slip during a speech in Ohio, drawing knowing laughter from the crowd. “I just hope they don’t change her. There are a lot of people that want to run her out.”

Pelosi’s allies see a barely-concealed sexism in the Republican strategy, and they argue that it’s no more or less effective than any effort to demonize a political leader. As far back as 1980, Republicans ran ads targeting then-Speaker Tip O’Neill. Democrats did the same to Newt Gingrich, and they’re likely to try to take aim this fall at Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, who polls show are just as widely reviled as Pelosi, if not more.

To a greater degree than presidential candidates, congressional leaders have their public image defined by their political opponents. Their job is less to inspire than to govern, to translate lofty promises into tough compromises. There are no gauzy ad campaigns on their behalf to counter the attack ads or tout their personal accomplishments; voters outside San Francisco rarely see Pelosi in soft focus, as a mother of five and a grandmother of six. “Maybe she should have launched a more aggressive personal public relations campaign to create an image,” Lawrence said. “But I don’t really think that’s important to her.”

In private, Pelosi tends to shrug off the attacks. She’ll flick at her shoulder as if swatting away a fly. “I’ve never seen her upset by it,” Lawrence told me. “She’s been in this business since she was in sundresses in grammar school. She understands the nature of this business. She’s very unsentimental about the business of politics.”

...There has been an undercurrent of Democratic discontent with Pelosi for years. When the party was in the majority, it generally came from Blue Dogs, who fretted that her liberal image was toxic in their conservative districts. Others chafed at her centralized leadership style. Now, however, the opposition is more generational, coming from a cadre of more vocal members-- Ryan, Moulton, Vela, and Kathleen Rice of New York, among others-- who are younger and in most cases newer to Congress and looking to advance. [Berman was probably unaware that they are also all conservatives from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, esp[ecially Long Island slime-bucket Kathleen Rice, one of the most venal Democrats in Congress.]

In interviews over the last several weeks, they acknowledged Pelosi’s strengths and accomplishments, conceding that she was not wholly to blame for the constant barrage of GOP attacks against her. But, these Democrats say, Pelosi sometimes makes it too easy for Republicans by bungling the party’s message or by making an offhand remark that goes awry. They winced when, during an appearance in November on Meet the Press, she referred to Representative John Conyers as “an icon” while the party was trying to get the long-serving Michigan Democrat to resign following allegations of sexual harassment. Rice said Pelosi’s comments “ceded the moral high ground” and set women and the Democratic Party back “decades.”

More recently, Republicans have mocked Pelosi’s arguably over-the-top rhetoric about their new tax law, which she compared to “Armageddon” in the days before it passed Congress. When Pelosi dismissed as “crumbs” the $1,000-plus bonuses and tax cuts going to the middle class, the GOP quickly put the comment in ads characterizing her as out-of-touch with working people.

 “Great leaders know when it’s time to step aside, and I obviously have been calling for her leadership team to step aside,” Rice told me. “I think it would be advantageous to us if that were made clear before the election.”

Pelosi, she told me, “has her reasons for staying, but at some point, it’s up to the caucus to decide.”

Privately, however, Pelosi’s critics in the caucus are far less diplomatic.

“For us to go into this election with her as our leader is absolute insanity,” one House Democrat told me on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about Pelosi. “No one in their right mind would think this is a good idea. I just think she is putting her own personal interests in front of the caucus’s. And if we don’t win the House back, it is going to be because of her. These districts are hard enough to overcome, and to overcome with an anchor around our neck is political malpractice.”

In an effort to force the issue, this member of Congress is personally advising Democratic candidates to say that they won’t vote for Pelosi as speaker. If enough potential majority-makers rule out supporting her in the crucial first vote on the House floor, she would effectively have no path back to the speaker’s chair.

So far, however, just two Democratic candidates in competitive districts have done so: Lamb in Pennsylvania, and Paul Davis, a former gubernatorial nominee who is running for an open seat in Kansas.

Among more junior House Democrats, there is frustration not only with Pelosi but with the entire senior leadership team, including Hoyer, 78, and Clyburn, 77, who have blocked the paths of younger, ambitious members for more than a decade. Some of them are pushing for the party to join Republicans in adopting term limits for top committee slots, a sore spot for veterans in the Congressional Black Caucus for whom the color-blind seniority system was once the only assured way to accumulate power in Congress.

Pelosi’s allies tend to dismiss her internal critics as a small-but-vocal chorus of attention-seekers. But in the fall, a member of her leadership team broke ranks: Representative Linda Sanchez of California, who as vice chairwoman of the caucus is the fifth-ranking House Democrat. In an appearance on C-SPAN, she called for each of the top three-- Pelosi, Hoyer, and Clyburn-- to transition out. “They are all of the same generation, and, again, their contributions to the Congress and the caucus are substantial,” Sanchez said. “But I think there comes a time when you need to pass that torch. And I think it’s time.”

Then there is the freighted question of who might replace Pelosi whenever she does step aside.

Hoyer, her former rival, has long wanted a shot at the top spot, and he has given no indication of having given up on that goal. He is well-regarded across the caucus and has defeated challengers before, but he’s a year older than Pelosi, more moderate politically, and would be an odd choice for a party that has grown more diverse and moved farther to the left in the last decade. In the event that Pelosi steps down, Democrats close to Hoyer view him as someone with the necessary experience to serve as a bridge to the next generation of party leaders, according to a Democrat familiar with those conversations. Whether the caucus would go along with that kind of transitional plan, however, is unclear.

The top contenders now figure to include Sanchez and Representative Joseph Crowley of New York, a Queens powerbroker who is chairman of the caucus. Both have made no secret of their desire to move up, and Crowley briefly considered challenging Pelosi in 2016. The same goes for Ryan and Moulton, who have also not ruled out long-shot bids for president in 2020. Representative Adam Schiff of California is another possibility, having used his post as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee to become the party’s leading voice on the Russia investigation and a fixture on cable news-- and drawing Trump’s ire in the process. Schiff also owes his newfound prominence almost entirely to Pelosi, who as party leader had sole discretion to elevate him on the committee.

Again, no mention that Crowley is the single most corrupt Democrat in Congress-- the conduit for Wall Street bribes to the caucus-- as well as the former leader of the right-wing New Dems. Adam Schiff, after his district was redrawn to include seriously left-wing parts of L.A. (Hollywood, Silverlake, West Hollywood and Los Feliz) gave up his membership in the Blue Dogs and became a nearly as conservative rotten New Dem. Members who serve with Moulton in committee tell me it's like serving with a Republican.

I've been very critical of Pelosi for a very long time. Is she better than Hoyer, Crowley, Rice, Moulton, Ryan, Schiff? Yes, a million times better. Why is it that the mainstream media always talks about garbage members as possible replacements? Why not Mark Pocan? Why not Ted Lieu? Why not Pramila Jayapal? Why not Ro Khanna? Who feeds these shitbag congressmembers to the media as the only choices if Pelosi retires? Thank God they at least stopped talking about Wasserman Schultz as an heir.

Gaius sometimes reads these posts before they get published. Now and then he suggests fixes to outrageous typos, Today he suggested something more important: "I would ask, why is it that none of the congressmembers named above is putting her or his name 'out there'-- in bold Sanders-like fashion-- as a caucus choice? Of course they won't win. But popular opinion can't coalesce around a hat that's never in the ring, that's always waiting for 'just the right time'? Worse, it makes these progressives seem compliant, or careerist, or frightened. Makes it look from the outside that 'bold progressives' may never think it's the right time to openly challenge for Party leadership. If people ever get that idea, support for them will fall."