I’ve been watching “Texodus” – the retirement of a bunch of formerly safe seat Texas Republican representatives, and wondering if any of these people have grit. Look, I get Will Hurd – he seems like a relatively decent guy and he’s definitely gonna get stomped. Go with God and collect your wingnut welfare.
But what about Pete Olson from Sugarland? That’s a R+10 district that he won by 14K votes in 2018. Yeah, it’s going to be a tough fight, but it’s winnable, and Pete is only 56. He should have some fight left in him. Similarly, Kenny Marchant is 68 (which is barely middle age in the House), and in a R+9 district north of Dallas. Another winnable fight. They’re both just giving up, and in doing so, they make the probability of flipping their districts a lot higher.
Contrast these two runaways with Nate McMurray, who’s going to take another run at Chris Collins. Even though Collins is under indictment for insider trading, he won his R+11 district by a couple hundred votes against McMurray, whose slogan is “Fight Like Hell”. That was a heartbreaker, and nobody would have blamed McMurray for giving up. Even if Nate wins, he will probably be beat in 2022. (Back when this was NY-26, with a similar electorate, Kathy Hochul won a special election to replace Chris Lee, who had sent some shirtless pics to a woman over Craigslist. She lost to Collins in the next general.)
McMurray is an excellent candidate. He’s young, energetic, smart and determined. In districts all over the US, if we have candidates of his caliber, we’ll flip seats. But he also has a wife and kids. It’s a sacrifice for him to run, twice. We’re lucky to have fighters like him, and he’s a hell of a contrast with the cowards who will neither disown Trump nor put up a fight for their winnable Texas districts.
rikyrah
We need to field a candidate in every one of these districts, and fully fund them.
Betty Cracker
Gerrymandered maps tend to hold for what seems like forever and then collapse all at once. Maybe this will be one of the election cycles where that happens. Some of the elements are in place, including a deeply unpopular, polarizing president and significant demographic shifts.
Achrachno
Let’s not bully any Repubs into running again.
waspuppet
I don’t think these Republicans are running away because they don’t think they can win; it’s because they don’t think they’ll get the majority back, not just in 2020 but for the foreseeable future. Being in the minority in the House is said to suck ass.
daveNYC
56 and 68 might be young for Congress, but they’re not exactly young. If you’re that age and you’re thinking that the Republicans aren’t going to be in the majority anytime soon, then you think about having to spend your days dialing for dollars and campaigning every two years with little to show for it other than a job where you have no power and a paycheck that you either don’t need or can easily get from a cushy K Street gig…
At any rate, I find their actions far more understandable than that of most Senators, who seem to think that part of their job duties include clinging to office until they’re found dead at their desk.
MattF
R pols are blusterers but under the surface crust there’s nothing— not even hot air.
Kent
We need a good candidate here in the WA-3rd Congressional District which is the last remaining Republican District that touches the Pacific Ocean outside of Alaska. It is R+4 and winable with the right candidate. Jaime Herrera Beutler is beatable. She’s been phoning it in. It appears that our last candidate Carolyn Long is going to run again. I’m not sure she is the right candidate being a long-time local poly sci professor who only recently moved across the river from Portland. The right candidate could win this. I have no idea what sort of recruitment efforts are underway.
My sense is that the district is trending blue as the more urban parts of it are growing with population growth from Portland while the red rural areas are stagnant. The district basically covers Vancouver WA across the river from Portland and all the rural areas and smaller towns out to the coast and most of the way up I-5 to near Olympia. The bulk of the population is Clark County which is suburban Portland.
Baud
I wonder what voter turnout is in some of these R+ districts. Based on nothing, my feeling is that we have more upside with typical non-voters than the GOP does, if they can be convinced to come out.
mrmoshpotato
I thought this was going to be about Texas trying to leave the Union again. Disappointed.
[Individual 1] mistermix
@daveNYC:
Watch your mouth – I’m 56 and I still feel pretty damn young.
Goblue72
By 2020, about 6 – 8 million old whites will die who were alive in 2016. And 8 million plus minorities will be of voting age who weren’t in 2016. I like the odds.
J R in WV
So we’ve had a mini-drought here lately, no rain at all for some weeks. Also had a crew scheduled to come take out a big old hollow beech tree behind the house — tough job because they can’t get to it with a truck.
This morning around 4 am it started thunder and lightning and raining hard – so no tree guys, and probably not tomorrow either, more thunderstorms scheduled.
Joe Falco
I had been hearing rumors that my Congressvarmint, Jody Hice, is thinking of not running again, but I doubt it. I agree with rikryah that we need to field candidates in all these races and fight like hell. Stacey Abrams has been doing her part to push for voting rights and launching a new initiative, Fair Fight 2020, this Saturday in Snellville, Georgia.
Snellville: Where Everybody is Proud to be Somebody
daveNYC
@[Individual 1] mistermix: Young enough that you’d keep doing your job (if you didn’t really like it) even if you had the financial resources to quit? Olson, for example was in the military, started on Gramm’s staff, switched to Cornyn, then got elected in 2008. Dude’s been doing this for 20+ years, might as well get out while the getting is good and enjoy life, you know?
Anonymous At Work
@waspuppet: And being the minority Chair on a Committee apparently counts as “Chair time” under GOP caucus rules, so it will suck ass AND count against your ability to be a real Chair if the GOP ever takes the House back.
chopper
@[Individual 1] mistermix:
whatever you say, methuselah.
debit
@chopper: Oh, burn.
[Individual 1] mistermix
@daveNYC:
Enjoying life is overrated. (That’s a joke, btw) I guess my attitude would be that if I can win 2020, 2022 will be redistricting and who knows what that will bring.
Azelie
One of the things that gives me hope is that in my state we have a lot of good candidates running for the state legislature and senate in tough districts, some of which are winnable under the right circumstances. A lot of this is due to an organization called Emerge that trains women to run for office. Most of them probably won’t win but they’re building name recognition, experience and a donor base. I know a couple of candidates pretty well and they have grit. I’m in a southern state that is horribly gerrymandered at the congressional level (but I repeat myself) but improving the state legislature is a start.
H.E.Wolf
@Kent:
Thank you Kent for highlighting WA-03! I share your dislike of Rep. Herrera Beutler, who as a member of Congress has all-expenses-paid health care coverage for her family – including a special-needs child – and has voted repeatedly to repeal the ACA.
The WA State Democratic Party (I’m not a member, just a low-level volunteer) considers this district a very high priority. There will be multiple Democratic field organizers for the district. Based on the previous 2 cycles, they’ll be 20-somethings with good organizational skills and enormous energy.
I spent the 2018 election cycle deep in the innards of the campaign volunteers’ database, and WA-03 was *lit*. Folks were coming over from safely-blue Portland OR to volunteer in the 3rd. I think there’s an excellent chance it could be a Democratic pick-up in 2020.
I also have hopes for WA-05 (in and around Spokane). Dreaming big, here. :-)
Democratic victory in both districts will depend on voter registration and voter turnout, combined with the Republican aroma in Nov. 2020… which could, by then, be very unpleasant to voters’ noses.
A Ghost To Most
Some of them realize the golden days of the christofascist grift are over. Last one out gets stuck with the tab!
Barbara
@Goblue72: One of my favorite websites. https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/data-highlights/elections-and-presidents/how-groups-voted
It was deep in the weeds of 1992 election data that I realized how generational our electoral results are. As voters who came of age when Roosevelt was president passed on, the “peak voting age” trend became increasingly likely to vote Republican. As of 2016, this wasn’t just true of those who are 65 and older, but those between the ages of 44-64 (though my guess would be that the distribution is skewed towards the older subset). It feels ghoulish, but really, as people die it will be harder for elections to reflect the preferences of generations born immediately after WWII through 1965 — the latter being groups that came of age when Reagan was president.
rikyrah
Flight data places Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet on Arabian Peninsula on the eve of the 2016 election
Epstein’s private jet took a flight from Paris, France to a mysterious destination in the Middle East the night before the 2016 election, and then returned to Paris two days later:
L85NJGT
It’s also a bust up of the extant party system, with ill presidente throwing accelerant on what would have been more moderated shifts over a longer period.
Burnspbesq
John Carter apparently hasn’t yet figured out how likely TX-31 is to flip in 2020.
Richard Guhl
That incredible electoral genius who squats in the White House is, according to the latest Civiqs state polling, underwater by nine in Texas. Maybe these clowns are seeing similar numbers and have decided the lifeboats look better than the iceberg. @[Individual 1] mistermix:
Kay
This is really outrageous that they are still playing this game with him. They know he will respond with a lie. They solicit lies.
It’s bad enough they repeat the lies he offers, but I suppose they have to do that since every utterance is a lie, but to continue to solicit them with these questions that accept the premise of the lie? Do they work for Donald Trump? He doesn’t repeat lies enough? They have to set up questions that DEMAND he elaborate on the lie?
He doesn’t need a campaign team. He has these people.
Kay
So before the reporters got a chance to ask Donald Trump questions, Donald Trump blanketed the country with a lie about the Clintons. They reported that lie. Then, when he made himself available to repeat the lie, they cooperated by asking a question where the answer MUST BE the same lie, except further embroidered. It’s been almost 4 years. They know he won’t admit the lie. They know he will double down. He knows it too, which is why he made himself available for that question.
By next week this will be “truth”. They’re just outmatched. They’re not up to this. He’s been playing them for 50 years and he’s better at their game than they are.
TenguPhule
Nothing is Sacred Anymore.
There is no bottom.
TenguPhule
There isn’t a facepalm big enough for this.
TenguPhule
Why does the media still bother to ask this man anything?
rikyrah
@TenguPhule:
Absolutely, positively hate these muthaphuckas.
rikyrah
@TenguPhule:
He’s a phucking idiot. Period.
rikyrah
@TenguPhule:
Called changing the rules in the middle of the game.
cain
Out of curiosity, why do we let CNN and MSNBC run our debates? Why are we ceding all this to them? Just switch to the league of women voters, and switch these assholes out. They are going to cover it regardless. Does the DNC get some kind of kickback or something for having these people host it?
sdhays
@cain: They don’t have to broadcast them if they aren’t hosting them. But what else are they going to talk about?
daveNYC
@[Individual 1] mistermix: 2022 would also be the first chance the Republicans would have to take back the house. Three years of nothing but fund raising calls and spanking it while waiting for the Problem Solver caucus to call up looking for some help shivving some Democrats.
J R in WV
@H.E.Wolf:
NO,, if you vote Democratic, if you register Democratic, you ARE a member of the party. This is why Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat, he does none of these things. Being a volunteer on top definitely makes you a member!!!
cain
@sdhays:
Oh they absolutely will. There is an entire apparatus of pundits who want to weigh in on the debates. These people want to be king makers. They’ll just have to find ways to attract viewers to their channel. But these days, just stick it on youtube live and youre done. You don’t need these motherfuckers. No need to be beholden to them at all. Start reaching out for exclusives to orgs like Pro Publica. (and I mean to House candidates) Refuse to play their game.
Raoul
@waspuppet: So I have read. But that has to do with the total bullshit of the completely made up “Hastert Rule”. Back when the GOP gave a shit about governing, they co-authored legislation and passed things (some if which made liberals cry. Oh, hello Blue Dog Dems, why yes I was talking about you.)
Anyway, the money men make bucking the Minority Leader very expensive, so they just sit and twiddle their cellphones, dialing for more cash while accomplishing nothing. It does sound soul-destroying. But it doesn’t have to be like that.
Hitlesswonder
@Kay: I think it isn’t an adversarial game between the media and trump. He’s not better at the game than they are. I think it’s more like he understands the game they want to play and he helps them do it. Truth doesn’t matter, it’s just clicks that make money that matter. That’s why they love inflammatory statements by Trump…and he knows they do. It’s why he can say anything without getting pushback.