Sunday, November 15, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SMP has already spent more than $2 million in Maine, including nearly $500,000 to promote House Speaker Sara Gideon in the Democratic primary. Some of the group’s advertising against Republican Senator Susan Collins was also designed to boost Gideon.
The final polls and final predictions showed Sara Gideon, Theresa Greenfield and Cal Cunningham beating, respectively, Collins, Ernst and Tillis. Instead the 3 Republicans are returning to the Senate. Gideon's share of the vote was a pathetic 42.7%, Greenfield's was 45.2% and Tillis' was 47.0%. The DSCC and Schumer's PAC spent ungodly amounts, as did the Democratic candidates.
In North Carolina, Cunningham raised $46,795,495 to Tillis' $21,474,728. The DSCC spent $24,542,003 and Schumer's PAC spent $35,838,924.

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

In Iowa, Greenfield raised $47,004,937 to Ernst's $23,536,707. The DSCC spent $27,899,050 and Schumer's PAC spent $41,225,046.
Both the DSCC and the DCCC have decided to blame progressives for their cataclysmic losses, even though every single incumbent who lost was a conservative and every single progressive-- including progressives in tough districts like Matt Cartwright, Dan Kildee, Andy Levin, Peter DeFazio and Jahana Hayes-- won.

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

In answer to Grim's question, Mike pointed out that being conservative didn't help Kulkarni and even though he campaigned loudly on Medicare for All, the Green New Deal and racial justice, Mike outperformed him by every possible metric.
[W]hat I would have liked to have tested is if we had an entire progressive ticket. You know, it could be that the most consequential decisions about my campaign were made March 3, Super Tuesday, when we decided that Bernie Sanders wasn’t gonna be the presidential nominee and, in Texas, we decided that Christina Tzintzún Ramirez wasn’t going to be our Senate nominee.

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

And so we’re caught in between. You know, half the Democratic Party is still taking the corporate PAC money, moderating the message, saying: OK, we’re only going to talk about this extremely narrow issue, you know, protecting pre-existing conditions or negotiating prescription drug prices downwards, whereas like people don’t have AC and it’s 100 degrees every day, they don’t have gas in the car, they’re making $10 an hour and getting 20 hours a week. I mean, they are struggling to survive. They’re completely cynical about democracy as something that’s even real in the world. And we’re not speaking clearly to them about why it matters to vote.
Today, the Washington Post reported that "The parts of America that have seen strong job, population and economic growth in the past four years voted for Joe Biden, economic researchers found. In contrast, President Trump garnered his highest vote shares in counties that had some of the most sluggish job, population and economic growth during his term. Trump fared well among voters who said the economy was their top concern, and he even won votes in places that didn’t fare particularly well under his presidency. This is perhaps a continuation of the 2016 election, when Trump won a huge share of places that had struggled under President Barack Obama. Democrats tended to view the 2020 election more as a referendum on Trump, especially his response to the pandemic." It's worth hitting that Intercept link above and reading Ryan's whole interview with Siegel. But now I want to leave you with a quirky but apocryphal story by Richard Cooke in yesterday's Daily Beast: I Covered Congressional Races in Florida in 2018, and Boy Do I Know Why Trump Won the State in 2020. "One party’s aides were courteous and organized," he wrote. "The other’s could barely tell me when the candidate was speaking next. Wanna take a guess?" He covered FL-26 and FL-27 in 2018, when Debbie Mucarsel-Powell and Donna Shalala both flipped those very blue (but Republican-held) districts blue. This year, both flipped back to red.
Situated in and near Miami, these districts make up some of the most volatile and interesting political territory in the United States. FL-27 had voted heavily for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but the House seat had been held by a socially liberal Republican, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, for 30 years. Ros-Lehtinen was retiring, and on paper the district seemed a natural Dem pick-up. The districts also overlapped with Miami-Dade, the most populous county in Florida, whose turnout would be critical in deciding a narrow gubernatorial race.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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Sunday, November 08, 2020

DCCC And DSCC Forced Their Candidates To Sit On The Phone Raising Millions Of Dollars All Day-- And They Lost Anyway

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I'm always complaining that the DCCC and DSCC are predisposed to oppose progressives. They recruit conservative Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party and when a progressive manages to win a primary, the two committees rarely offer them any support. But there's another context besides ideology at work here. Both the DSCC and the DCCC insist on candidates who will spend most of their energy on fund-raising-- dialing for dollars-- rather than on persuading voters by doing actual campaigning. This has been catastrophic for the Democratic Party. It winds up selecting really shitty candidates who don't know how to help voters understand issues and understand the inherent dishonestly of Republican attacks. And... the money doesn't make nearly as much difference as that ability to persuade does.

All but 3 of the House incumbents who lost (or are in races still too close to call) out-raised their Republican opponents:
CA-21

Rep. T.J. Cox (New Dem)- 48.2%-- $4,798,088
David Valadao (R)- 51.8%-- $3,721,619

CA-39

Rep. Gil Cisneros (New Dem)- 49.5%-- $3,779,013 (self-funded $9,252,762 in 2018 and didn't want to spend his own money again-- only gave his campaign $370,887 this time)
Young Kim (R)- 50.5%-- $5,319,367

CA-48

Rep. Harley Rouda (New Dem)- 49.2%-- $5,426,654 (although the DCCC spent $10 million to try to save his ass)
Michelle Steel (R)- 50.8%-- $5,627,779

FL-26

Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (New Dem)- 48.3%-- $6,178,239
Carlos Gimenez (R)- 51.7%-- $1,946,504

FL-27

Rep. Donna Shalala (D)- 48.6%-- $3,405,420
Maria Salazar (R)- 51.3%-- $3,126,831

IA-01

Rep. Abby Finkenauer (D)- 48.7%-- $5,308,465
Ashley Hinson (R)- 51.3%-- $4,601,403

MN-07

Rep. Collin Peterson (Blue Dog)- 40.1%-- $2,284,742
Michelle Fischbach (R)-53.3%-- $2,205,150

NM-02

Rep Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog)- 46.1%-- $7,509,987
Yvette Herrell (R)- 53.9%-- $2,498,130

NY-11

Rep Max Rose (Blue Dog)- 43.1%-- $8,350,467
Nicole Malliotakis (R)- 57.9%-- $3,052,007

NY-22

Rep. Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog)- 43.4%-- $5,359,636
Claudia Tenney (R)- 54.5%-- $2,053,931

OK-05

Rep. Kendra Horn (Blue Dog)- 47.9%-- $5,465,349
Stephanie Bice (R)- 52.1%-- $3,089,972

SC-01

Rep. Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog)- 49.4%-- $6,278,942
Nancy Mace (R)- 50.6%-- $4,891,696

UT-04

Rep. Ben McAdams (Blue Dog)- 47.8%-- $5,137,258
Burgess Owens (R)- 47.2%-- $4,021,248

VA-07

Rep. Abigail Spanberger (Blue Dog)- 50.6%-- $7,806,646
Nick Freitas (R)- 49.4%-- $3,182,940
Maybe if Max Rose didn't spend so much time on the phone begging rich people for money-- and instead talked to his constituents about programs the Democrats want to implement that would make their lives better, he would still be a congressman after January. Oh, but he can't talk about this things... he opposes them all.


And it was the same thing in the Senate, only worse. Schumer and the DSCC hammer it home several times a week that candidates must be on the phone raising hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's dehumanizing-- part of why none of their candidates seem human. Schumer-selected Democrats lost almost everywhere... but raised bucketfuls of money. In most cases they raised double, triple or quadruple when their Republican opponents raised:
South Carolina

Jamie Harrison (D)- 44.2%-- $107,568,737
Senator Lindsey Graham (R)- 54.5%-- $72,690,495

Iowa

Theresa Greenfield (D)- 45.2%-- $47,004,93
Senator Joni Ernst (R)- 51.8%-- $23,536,707

Maine

Sara Gideon (D)- 42.8%-- $68,577,474
Senator Susan Collins (R)- 50.5%-- $26,511,555

Montana

Steve Bullock (D)- 44.8%-- $42,773,128
Senator Steve Daines (R)- 55.2%-- $27,017,875

Kentucky

Amy McGrath (D)- 38.1%-- $88,098,919
Senator Moscow Mitch (R)- 57.9%-- $55,500,67

Kansas

Barbara Bollier (D/R)- 41.5%-- $24,265,420
Roger Marshall (R)- 53.6%-- $5,926,110

Texas

MJ Hegar (D)- 43.8%-- $24,024,713
John Cornyn (R)- 53.6%-- $30,754,633

Alabama

Senator Doug Jones (D)- 39.7%-- $26,377,442
Tommy Tuberville (R)- 60.1%-- $7,415,639

North Carolina

Cal Cunningham (D)- 47.0%-- $46,795,495
Senator Thom Tillis (R)- 48.7%-- $21,474,728

Arizona

Mark Kelly- 51.3%-- $88,856,406
Senator Martha McSally- 48.7%-- $55,772,809

Colorado

John Hickenlooper (D)- 53.4%-- $39,303,249
Senator Cory Gardner (R)- 44.4%-- $26,063,229
All that financial firepower didn't do it for the Senate candidates. And now the Democrats are going to run the exact same kind of race (2 of them) in Georgia... money, money, money and not much messaging for working families. I guess it took 5 minutes for Schumer to forget that "money did not prove decisive for Democrats in hotly contested Senate races, despite a combined Democratic fundraising advantage over $200 million. Democratic candidates raised a whopping $626 million in 14 highly competitive races, vastly overshadowing Republican collections of $386 million in the same contests."
Goal Thermometer“We just got completely slaughtered on Election Day. There truly was a red surge,” said a Democratic operative who worked closely with the Harrison campaign. “Turnout was just incredible, which isn’t necessarily a good thing for us, in red states.”

Democrats who had hoped to easily oust the 53-47 Republican Senate majority have instead won a net gain of only one seat so far. They could reach a majority, if they win two Georgia Senate seat runoffs on Jan. 5. Such a result would give them a 50-50 split, if Democrat Joe Biden is declared president and Kamala Harris vice president, allowing her to cast a tie-breaking vote.

Senate Democrats are already calling on supporters to send campaign contributions to Georgia candidate Raphael Warnock. Warnock, far more progressive than any of Schumer's candidates, is one of the only Democrats who was out-raised by his Republican opponent-- although in that case, his opponent, Kelly Loeffler, is both a well-documented crook and a billionaire. She out-raised him by $7 million, although "out-raised" might be the wrong word, since she contributed $23,345,292 out of her personal piggy-bank, so far.


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Monday, July 27, 2020

How Do Crackpot Republicans At The NRSC See The Senate Races Unfolding? -- A Non-Confidential Memo

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lesser evil

All-- not some-- of the public polling show the Republicans losing the Senate in November. The newest Marist poll of Arizona voters, for example, was released yesterday by NBC News. First time candidate, Democrat Mark Kelly, is eviscerating incumbent Republican Martha McSally 53-41%-- in a traditional Republican state that Trump won 1,021,154 (49.5%) to 936,250 (45.4%) in 2016 and where Republican Doug Ducey beat Democrat David Garcia in the 2018 guberatorial election-- in the middle of the "blue wave"-- 1,330,863 (56.0%) to 994,341 (41.8%).

In Michigan, where Republicans said they could knock off unimpressive backbencher Gary Peters, a new poll by SSRS, out yesterday from CNN, their candidate, John James falls flat with 38% to Peters' 54%.

The most current poll from North Carolina, Change Research's battlegrounds survey for CNBC, shows mediocre and unimpressive Democrat, Cal Cunningham, besting equally mediocre and unimpressive Republican Thom Tillis 49-42%.

Even in a state as Trumpist as Montana-- he beat Hillary there 279,240 (56.2%) to 177,709 (35.7%)-- the most recent Senate poll shows Democrat Steve Bullock ousting Republican Steve Daines 46-44%.




On average, Democrats are ahead in Senate battlegrounds Arizona, Maine, North Carolina, Iowa, Montana, Colorado and Michigan and competitive in Georgia and maybe even in Alabama. But on Sunday McConnell's NRSC chairman, Senator Todd Young (IN) and executive director Kevin McLaughlin released a boneheaded memo to the press asserting the GOP still has a pathway to keeping their majority. It wasn't really written for the media. It was written for fat-cat GOP donors, like Stephen Schwartzman of Blackstone who just gave a McConnell-controlled PAC a $10 million check, to persuade them to keep giving. The memo is filled with ridiculous propaganda that challenges the credulity of the authors to anyone other than someone desperately hoping to be convinced. The media recognizes it as fantasy and wishful thinking. Fat-cat GOP donors don't. Enjoy:
With just 100 days until Election Day, conventional wisdom is that the Senate Majority is the Democrats’ to lose.

And judging by any commonly accepted metric-- fundraising, spending, generic ballot, right track/wrong track, etc.-- one can see why.

From 30,000 feet, things look pretty bleak.


But, as Lee Corso says, “Not so fast.”


There are currently eight Senate races that are within the margin of error.
Candidly, considering all that is going on, that is nothing short of a miracle for Republicans.

We are in, arguably, the most unsettled environment since the 1960s. Our country is facing a once in a century global pandemic. Democrats held a partisan impeachment trial and have outspent Republicans by more than $60 million in Senate races-- cycle to date-- and by significant margins in every single targeted race. People have been locked in their houses for months, schools are toying with not opening in the fall and protestors and looters have taken over many of our major American cities.

Yet, despite it all, Republicans have proven remarkably resilient and remain well positioned to hold their Senate majority.

How could that be?


Republicans have one distinct advantage: Democrats.

[This is true... but so is the converse: the Democrats have one distinct advantage: Republicans and this year the Republicans are more fucked up than the Democrats.]

Voters despise the policies championed by today’s Democrat party. Suburban voters in key battleground states loathe the Green New Deal. When asked about specific aspects of the program 78% of voters oppose the Green New Deal, and 62% oppose it strongly.

They reject calls to defund the police. Over 60% of voters in North Carolina and over 70% in Georgia oppose defunding the police. Even in Colorado nearly 60% of voters think Democrats are out to lunch on this issue.

They have no interest in forgiving everyone’s student loan debt and 54% of voters oppose efforts to make college tuition-free.


And they aren’t ready to take a risk on ethically challenged, untested Democrat candidates (we’re looking at you John Hickenlooper, Steve Bullock, Sara Gideon and Mark Kelly) whose mere presence in Washington will enable Chuck Schumer and the Squad [an idea that exists only in the minds of Fox brainwashed Republicans] to realize their dream of turning the United States into a socialist dystopia. [Sounds familiar?]

If I were a Democrat, and the road to the Senate Majority hinged on wins in Kansas, Georgia, Montana, and Iowa, I would not feel too good about it.

But, as my six-year-old daughter says, “you do you, boo.”

SIDE BAR: It’s worth noting that Maine, despite Democrats throwing everything-- including the kitchen sink and multi-million-dollar slush funds at it-- is not among those eight margin races previously referenced. The fact that Susan Collins is leading outside the margin of error is a testament not only to her deep, personal relationship with Mainers, but also to voters’ reluctance to take a flyer on a weak, untested, ethically challenged candidate like Sara Gideon. This race, however, will remain close to the end in spite of Gideon, not because of her.

I’m not going to call Senate Democrats hypocrites, but for a group of folks who claim they want to get money out of politics, they sure do raise and spend a lot of money on politics. Democrats have spent over $180 million in key Senate races, cycle to date. They’ve also reserved another $220 million between now and election day. Allegedly ‘anti-money in politics Democrats’ will end up spending north of a half billion dollars on Senate races alone. Yahtzee!!

Unfortunately for Democrats, they have a fatal flaw, and all the money on earth can’t make up for it. It is the one thing voters crave the most, and Democrats don’t have it. In a word, it’s: authenticity.

Campaign finance reform is a perfect example. Every Democrat candidate is running on it. They each claim to hate dark money. Yet every single one benefits from it...A LOT of it.

The NRSC has been doing all we can to close the money gap, consistently outraising the DSCC and laying down the largest IE buy in committee history. We have started spending earlier and more aggressively than ever, and we enter the final stretch with more lead on the target than the DSCC.

And while Democrat challengers are printing money it seems few, if any, people are paying attention to one, fairly significant, data point: cash on hand. After all, you can raise all the money you want, but if you aren’t banking any of it, what good is it? Anyone who does take the time to look would see that-- with only one quarter of fundraising left-- many Republican Senate candidates actually have a cash-on-hand advantage over their Democrat opponents going into the final 100 days.




For the first 17 months of the cycle, Democrats largely had the airwaves to themselves. That all changed when the NRSC went up in June, and it certainly will not be the case for the next 100 days.

And where we are spending, it is working. [Remember I mentioned "fantasy" above?]

In Arizona, the more voters get to know the real Mark Kelly, the less they like him. We have been informing Arizonans about Kelly’s close, personal, financial relationship with China, and his image has eroded by 12 points in just seven weeks. Additionally, China is the number one issue voters recall about him (38%).

In Colorado, John Hickenlooper’s net favorability rating has plummeted by 20 points since he entered the race. Hickenlooper’s image is now underwater in the Denver suburbs, at 42% favorable and 45% unfavorable, and when you ask what issue or action people most associate with Hickenlooper, far and away the number one answer is “dishonest and corrupt.”

Things are just as bad for Sara Gideon, whose image has also cratered by 20 points and she is now decidedly underwater with independents. Focus group respondents consider her “weak,” “naïve,” and “unprepared,” and Gideon is also struggling with the revelation that she covered up for an alleged sexual predator for her own political gain. A whopping 67% of independents are less likely to vote for Gideon after learning of her cover up, with 54% much less likely. But, hey, at least she rearranged the chairs!

In North Carolina, Thom Tillis has already been outspent by $18 million to date with much more coming. His opponent, Cal Cunningham, started this cycle largely undefined but we are already working our magic to fix that. We’re up with ads hitting Cal for his coziness with the far-left, and we’ve already seen his net favorability drop in a short period of time. This race will not be easy, and Tillis has ground to make up, but Tillis has already shown he’s ready for this fight and his record of leadership is a stark contrast to Cunningham’s habit of hiding in Chuck Schumer’s basement.

Finally, it would appear Iowans aren’t fans of people who evict mom and pop businesses for personal financial gain or support Nancy Pelosi’s death tax. Unfortunately for Theresa Greenfield, she loves both. Iowans have responded in kind and her negatives have gone up 21 points, and it is only July!

Between a favorable map and $200 million spent cycle to date, Democrats have always had a numbers advantage in the battle for the Senate majority.

Despite that, and an incredibly favorable environment, the race for the Senate majority is still dead even.

That is a testament to the strength of our candidates.

Beating incumbents is hard. In fact, Democrats have only beaten three GOP incumbent Senators in the last three election cycles.

They will need to beat at least that many to win in November.


All in, more than $500 million will be spent on Senate campaigns alone in the next 100 days.

There is a ton of uncertainty right now, but the one thing we can guarantee is that the world will look a heck of a lot different on November 3rd than it does today.

Republicans are well-positioned to defy conventional wisdom and hold our Senate majority.
Goal ThermometerI hope the Republicans lose their Senate majority. I hope McConnell, Gardner, McSally, Ernst, Tillis, Perdue, Collins, Daines, Sullivan, Graham, Loeffler, Cornyn and the rest off them all lose their seats. But there is only one Democrat I'm cheering for because of what she is offering as an alternative. That Democrat is Paula Jean Swearengin who is running to replace Trump enabler Shelley Moore Capito in West Virginia. The DSCC is ignoring that race entirely. Capito has raised $4,443,824, most of it legalistic bribery, while Paula Jean has raised $592,933. There is no outside spending in the race at all. The DSCC and 2 groups it pretends not to control-- End Citizens United and the Senate Majority PAC-- have already spent over $4 million against Susan Collins, over $8 million against Joni Ernst, about $3.7 million against Cory Gardner, almost a million against Martha McSally, and over $1.5 million against Daines. But not even enough for a poll in West Virginia. Speaking to Cathy Kunkel, a House candidate in the state, over the weekend, she noted that Republicans who have spent the last 3 years defining themselves by their support for Trump, as her opponent, Alex Mooney has and as Capito has, may be in for a rude awakening. "Here in West Virginia-- as around the country-- voters are not impressed by Trump's handling of the pandemic," she told me. "Running on Trump's coattails is not the strategy it was 4 years ago." If you want to help a long shot candidate in a state the Democrats are ignoring again, please click on the Blue America 2020 Senate thermometer above and contribute what you can to Paul Jean's campaign.





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Thursday, July 16, 2020

Let's All Shake Hands And Be Friends And Defeat the Real Enemy, Donald Trump And His Enablers-- Ummm... Just A Minute There

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My political enemies are conservatives and reactionaries, and in Trump's case, mentally deranged fascists. The Democratic establishment will never hesitate for a moment to say "All you Bernie (and, to whatever small extent is needed) Elizabeth Warren supporters get on board the Biden for President train now." I'm not going to try to dissuade anyone from doing so-- and I wish people who discovered electoral politics 2 weeks ago would stop frothing at the mouth about me refusing to personally vote for Biden-- but Biden has a long and repulsive record going back 5 decades that has helped me form a hatred for him that's not going away. I know Trump is worse. I don't like racists and Biden only ran on one issue in his first election: racism. I don't like corporatists and he has always tried-- even harder than some Republicans-- to fellate Wall Street and the banksters and to wreck Social Security and Medicare in the name of Austerity... Yeah, yeah, you're heard it all before. But locking arms with a bunch of corrupt status quo Democrats to help elect Status Quo Joe Biden and other establishment candidates is not something I have any intention of doing. As you already know, the lesser of two evils is still evil.


Who's better? Who's worse?



My grandfather, a socialist and a devoted FDR fan, once told me, when I was very young, that there's only one thing in American politics worse than the Democratic Party-- the Republican Party. As I've written many time, Chuck Schumer went to James Madison High School in Brooklyn at the same time I did (a few years after Bernie graduated). He was as much "Little Schucky Schmucky" back then as he is now.



Writing for Too Much Information yesterday, Andrew Perez revealed that Schumer spent $15 million destroying progressive primary candidates. And now they expect us to vote for putrid conservatives like Frackenlooper (Colorado) or somewhat less putrid nothing candidates like Sara Gideon (Maine), Amy McGrath (Kentucky), Jon Ossoff (Georgia), Theresa Greenfield (Iowa), Ben Ray Luján (New Mexico), Barbara Bollier (a Kanas Republican pretending to be a Democrat), Jaime Harrison (South Carolina), and Cal Cunningham (North Carolina). I wouldn't vote for any of them. I vote for someone, not against someone who is worse. "With the help of the party, its major donors, and the Senate Majority PAC (SMP)-- a super PAC funded by labor unions, corporate interests and Wall Street billionaires-- candidates endorsed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee have won contested primaries in four battleground states," wrote Perez.
Colorado was the most emblematic example of the party putting its thumb on the scale against progressives: There, former Gov. John Hickenlooper cruised to a primary victory over former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff. In the final weeks of the race, SMP spent $1 million to boost Hickenlooper, after he spent his failed presidential campaign attacking key tenets of progressives’ legislative agenda, including Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.

At the time of the cash infusion, Hickenlooper was losing ground in the polls and engulfed in scandals: He had just been fined by Colorado’s Independent Ethics Commission for violating state ethics law as governor, the local CBS station uncovered evidence of his gubernatorial office raking in cash from oil companies, and a video circulated showed Hickenlooper comparing his job as a politician to a slave on a slave ship, being whipped by a scheduler.

With the help of SMP and the endorsement of the DSCC, Hickenlooper held off the more progressive Romanoff to win a 17 point primary victory.

SMP is led byformer top staffers at the DSCC. The super PAC has raised a staggering $118 million this cycle, pooling cash from both organized labor and business titans to promote corporate-aligned candidates over more progressive primary challengers.

Working for Working Americans, a super PAC funded by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, has donated $5 million. The Laborers' International Union of North America’s super PAC has given $1.5 million. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers’s political action committee has chipped in $1.3 million. SMP has received also big donations from groups affiliated with labor unions like the Service Employees International Union ($1 million), the National Association of Letter Carriers ($750,000), and Communications Workers of America ($500,000).

Overall, the top donor to SMP so far this cycle has been Democracy PAC-- a super PAC that’s bankrolled by billionaire George Soros and the Fund for Policy Reform, a nonprofit funded by Soros. Democracy PAC has contributed $8.5 million to SMP.

Other donors from the financial industry include: Renaissance Technologies founder and billionaire Jim Simons and his wife Deborah ($5.5 million) and billionaire D. E. Shaw & Co. founder David Shaw ($1 million).

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

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile, the Real Estate Roundtable, a trade group for real estate investors, donated $50,000 to Majority Forward. Schumer and Senate Democrats recently helped Republicans unanimously pass pandemic relief legislation that included a special, little-noticed provision that amounted to $170 billion worth of new tax breaks for wealthy real estate investors.
Goal ThermometerSchumer has also derailed progressives in Maine, North Carolina, New Mexico, Kentucky, Texas, Georgia and Iowa. He and his cronies basically ignored West Virginia-- allowing Paula Jean Swearengin to win the primary and find herself as the only progressive challenging a Trumpist incumbent in the Senate this cycle. The 2020 Blue America Senate thermometer on the right makes it easy to contribute to her campaign. It's either that or an all-Schumer status quo Democratic caucus in the Senate next year-- doing nothing but disappointing people so badly that 2022 will see a replay of 2010, when progressives didn't even bother to vote, giving the Republicans massive wins in both houses of Congress and bringing on a decade of right-wing control.

And one more thing-- a question. Do the Democratic committees, like the DCCC and DSCC get behind progressives in the general election when they manage to win primaries? Sometimes, but rarely. They want progressives to help them after primaries... but they usually refuse to help progressives.

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Monday, May 11, 2020

Democrats Could Wind Up With A Big Senate Majority-- Too Bad Schumer And The DSCC Have It Rigged To Be A Conservative Majority

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The media hasn't been talking about another anti-red wave-- nor even the idiotically-named "blue wave." But, take my word for it, even with the venality and incompetence of the Democratic Party establishment, that is exactly what's headed our way. In fact, in a Washington Post piece Seung Min Kim and Mike DeBonis wrote over the weekend-- Republicans Grow Nervous About Losing The Senate Amid Worries Over Trump's Handling Of The Pandemic-- they quoted a Republican Party official saying that "Everyone's fortunes are tied to the economy. It's going to be a tsunami." A tsunami is the next step after a wave. Republicans should be nervous. It isn't Schumer, the DSCC or any particularly talented Democratic candidates who are killing them. It's Donald J. Trump.

The Post's point is far from what people thought about the Senate races just a few months ago. The Republicans are now the underdogs and they "are increasingly nervous they could lose control of the Senate this fall as a potent combination of a cratering economy, President Donald Trump's controversial handling of the pandemic and rising enthusiasm among Democratic voters dims their electoral prospects. In recent weeks, GOP senators have been forced into a difficult political dance as polling shifts in favor of Democrats: Tout their own response to the coronavirus outbreak without overtly distancing themselves from a president whose management of the crisis is under intense scrutiny but who still holds significant sway with Republican voters. 'It is a bleak picture right now all across the map, to be honest with you,' said one Republican strategist closely involved in Senate races who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss concerns within the party. 'This whole conversation is a referendum on Trump, and that is a bad place for Republicans to be.'"
Republicans have privately become alarmed at the situation in key races where they are counting on GOP incumbents such as Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Thom Tillis of North Carolina to hold the line.

Multiple strategists said they believe GOP candidates will recover once the nation-- and the presidential campaign-- returns to a more normal footing, casting the November elections as a contest between Trump and presumed Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Democratic Senate candidates in the most closely watched races also could be benefiting from a lack of scrutiny and negative ads with the nation's attention consumed by the pandemic.

But a return to normalcy ahead of the elections is far from a given as the death toll continues to rise and economic data paints a grim picture, meaning the president's handling of the pandemic could be the determining factor not only for his reelection but for Republicans' ability to hold onto the Senate. In short, as goes Trump, so likely goes the Senate majority.

The emerging consensus of several Republican strategists is that GOP incumbents should be able to hang on in states Trump won in 2016 if the president can hang onto those states himself. That list includes North Carolina, Arizona and Iowa, which Democrats are heavily targeting this cycle.

The flip side for Republicans is that states Trump lost in 2016-- such as Colorado and Maine-- could be out of reach. Many GOP strategists have already written off Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), barring a major shift, and some have doubts that Collins will be able to continue her trend of faring far better in elections than Republican presidential candidates she has shared the ballot with.

Republicans currently hold a 53-to-47 seat advantage in the Senate.

"The political environment is not as favorable as it was a few months ago," said another Republican, one of a half dozen officials working on Senate races who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly assess the party's outlook.

Of the 35 Senate seats up for grabs this fall, Republicans are defending 23 of them. Strategists from both parties said the key battles for Republicans remain races in North Carolina, Arizona, Colorado, Maine and, to a lesser extent, Iowa. Republicans are banking on picking up at least one seat now held by a Democrat-- Alabama, where Sen. Doug Jones won a special election in 2017 against a Republican challenger accused of sexual misconduct in the 1970s-- but acknowledge they are playing defense in the vast majority of the marquee races.

Potentially competitive races looming in the second tier of Senate campaigns-- where Republicans are also on the defensive-- could pose an even bigger problem for the GOP if the party is forced to spread resources throughout the country in a difficult political environment.

Both Senate seats are on the ballot in Georgia, a state whose changing demographics are trending in favor of Democrats. In Kansas, Republicans fear that flawed GOP candidate Kris Kobach could again emerge victorious from a primary but lose a statewide race, as he did in the 2018 race for governor.

And Senate Democrats' ability to get popular Montana Gov. Steve Bullock to run against Republican Sen. Steve Daines revived a once-dead race into a closely-watched contest, particularly as Bullock benefits from the wave of political goodwill voters have afforded to state executives during the pandemic.

"It's a good time to be a governor," said Sen. Todd Young (R-IN), who heads Senate Republican's campaign committee, though he vowed Daines would win in November.

A third GOP strategist acknowledged that Colorado, Arizona, Maine and North Carolina had become "incredibly competitive" but said there was little sense yet that Democrats would be able to seriously compete in the next tranche of states that Trump won handily in 2016.

...Republicans warned there are clear obstacles-- none more so than strong Democratic fundraising, and the fear that small-dollar Democratic donors will be more resilient in the economic downturn than high-dollar GOP donors.

Democrats also plan to attack GOP senators for their opposition to the increasingly popular Affordable Care Act, with 2020 marking the first Senate elections where Democrats can target a large swath of Republicans for votes early in the Trump presidency to repeal the health law.

"Democrats have expanded the Senate map and put Mitch McConnell's majority at risk with impressive challengers, record-breaking grass roots fundraising, and a focus on the issues that matter most to voters like defending coverage protections for pre-existing conditions," said Stewart Boss, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
If only! The DSCC has a completely unimpressive roster of challengers, one crap right-of-center, establishment/status quo candidate after another-- John Hickenlooper in Colorado, Sara Gideon in Maine, Cal Cunningham in North Carolina, Jon Ossoff in Georgia, Theresa Greenfield in Iowa, Barbara Bollier (an actual Republican state legislator running as a pretend Democrat) in Kansas, Amy McGrath in Kentucky, lobbyist and party hack Jamie Harrison in South Carolina! They didn't even manage to recruit any candidate to run against Tom Cotton in Arkansas! The only decent candidates they managed to recruit were Mark Kelly in Arizona and Steve Bullock in Montana, neither a Blue America-grade candidate, but each a candidate who won't force voters to hold their noses to mark a ballot for. But it won't even matter in most states. People just want to see the end of Trump's and McConnell's reign of terror and may be willing to vote for any piece of crap to get rid of them.

Goal ThermometerNormally I wouldn't want to predict a winner in a state that hasn't even had a primary yet to pick a candidate-- like Iowa, Kentucky and Georgia-- but it may not matter. The DSCC is backing the worst possible contenders in most contested primaries and people are so desperate to get rid of GOP incumbents that it may not make any difference. I'd say that if the anti-Trump wave continues building the way it is right now-- and it's more likely to strengthen than weaken-- Democrats will win these red states' seats in the list below. The Blue America 2020 Senate thermometer is on the right and if you're interested in electing progressive Democrats to the Senate, instead of DSCC garbage, please click on it and contribute what you can.
Alaska
Arizona
Colorado
Georgia (one, possibly both!)
Iowa (this is the one state where the quality of the DSCC candidate might be bad enough to keep incumbent Joni Ernst in her seat)
Kansas
Maine
Montana
North Carolina
This is part of a misleading fundraising e-mail from the DSCC that they sent out on Sunday to persuade people to contribute to their efforts to replace Republicans with crappy conservative Democrats:



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Monday, March 09, 2020

Over The Weekend, Colorado Democrats Told Schumer To Keep His Nose Out Of Their Senate Race

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Colorado Democrats will pick their Senate candidate in a primary on June 30. But the party had caucuses on Saturday, caucuses that were swept by the progressive in the race, Andrew Romanoff. I'll get into Andrew's big win in a moment but first let's take a look at an explanation of what the caucuses were all about aside from a popularity contest free of DSCC interference. Jay Bouchard wrote it up a few days ago for a local newspaper. He explained that at the over 3,000 precinct caucuses, registered Democrats elect committee members who will go to the county, district, and state assemblies to decide which candidates make the ballot. Candidates decide if they want to participate in the caucuses or not. If they don't, they can still get on the ballot by collecting at least 10,500 signatures statewide, including 1,500 from each of the state’s seven congressional districts. If a candidate gets 15% they move on to the county and state assemblies and if they get at least 30% of the vote at the state assembly, they make the June ballot. Candidates can gather signatures and go through the caucus process. However, there is some risk to doing that. If a candidate gathers enough valid signatures but fails to get at least 10 percent of the vote at the state assembly, he or she will not make the ballot. Aside from Romanoff-- Saturday's big winner, the other candidates who opted to participate in the caucuses was Schumer's candidate Frackenlooper, plus Stephany Rose Spaulding, Erik Underwood, and Trish Zornio. Diana Bray, Lorena Garcia, David Goldfisher, and Michelle Ferrigno Warren are only gathering signatures. Both Frackenlooper and Underwood decided to gather signatures and caucus.



No one but Romanoff and Frackenlooper hit the needed 15% to move forward. These were the results, with Alamosa, Hinsdale, Costilla, Yuma, Adams, Larimer and Custer counties still counting. No one showed up for the Cheyenne County caucuses.
Andrew Romanoff- 7,450 (54.70%)
Frackenlooper- 4,166 (30.59%)
Trish Zorino- 894 (6.56%)
Stephany Rose Spaulding- 723 (5.30%)
Erik Underwood- 31 (0.22%)
Frackenlooper lost decisively in all the big blue counties that elect Democrats statewide-- and was especially embarrassed by the walloping he took in Denver, where he served as mayor for two terms:
Arapahoe- Romanoff 56.42%, Frackenlooper 27.54%
Boulder- Romanoff 64.11%, Frackenlooper 20.54%
Denver- Romanoff 60.50%, Frackenlooper 22.30%
Jefferson- Romanoff 61.88%, Frackenlooper 24.64%
As of the December 31 FEC reporting deadline, Frackenlooper had raised $4,882,372 and Romanoff had raised $1,744,993. None of the other 8 Democrats still running had raised any significant money. The two who managed to win delegates, Trish Zornio and Stephany Rose Spaulding are both credible progressives who now should realize that neither has any kind of a path to victory and should team up with Romanoff now to stop the DSCC and Frackenlooper.



Goal ThermometerFrackenlooper, the decidedly anti-progressive candidate told reporters that it didn't matter that he did so badly. "It’s mostly the very progressive part of the party, but you get to hear what their concerns are… I’ll join a long line of successful Democratic primary (winners) who didn’t do well in the caucuses." He was at the Denver caucuses begging voters to back him. They didn't.

Please consider contributing to Romanoff's campaign by clicking on the Blue America 2020 Senate thermometer above. He'll never raise the kind of money the DSCC is directing towards Frackenlooper, but he doesn't have to-- just as long as he has enough to get his progressive message out to Democratic voters.

This morning, Romanoff sent out a message to his supporters, reminding them that "The party bosses and powerbrokers in Washington who are bankrolling Hick’s campaign bragged about 'kicking some serious butt' a few days ago. Now that they ended up on the receiving end, the DC crowd is dismissing their defeat and doubling down on a losing hand. Can they buy the Democratic nomination for a candidate who ducks the press and dodges debates? That’s a risky bet-- especially when the Republicans have all the footage they need to undermine his candidacy. Telling voters you’d hate the job and aren’t cut out for it, as Hick did, is bad enough. Doing so on camera for months on end makes the opposition’s task too easy."

Romanoff is best-equipped to beat Gardner. Frackenlooper is a very risky bet-- and one with no real reason to take.




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