So we lost the House and kept the Senate, even gaining a seat in the Senate, unless the dreadful Sinema decides to switch parties now that Ruben Gallego has announced that he is running for her seat in 2024. In which case that extra Senate seat will serve us (extra) well, even beyond having given us majorities on committees.
My feeling about the House is that we fight HARD for every House special election, and hope to take back House before 2024, seat by seat by seat. For every seat we gain, that’s one fewer Republican vote the Squeaker can spare in the awful votes that will be coming up. I think we should fight HARD for every state Supreme Court seat that can give the majority to the Dems on the court. And I think we should fight HARD for any State House or State Senate seat in a key state that can either give Dems a majority or keep the Rs from having a super-majority and being able to override a veto from a Democratic governor.
So that’s where I am coming from; it will be interesting to see whether there’s agreement on that in the comments.
On Wisconsin!
We can argue about whether we should fight for every House special election, but there should be no argument about the upcoming 2023 elections in Wisconsin.
There are two critical races that are strategically significant in the battle against the right wing in Wisconsin. Winning both would go a long way to helping Democrats hope to maintain and regain power in Wisconsin.
– an open seat on the state Supreme Court, to replace a retiring conservative Justice
– an open State Senate seat, to replace a retired Republican
It’s kind of amazing, but in this historically Republican district in Wisconsin, voting in the presidential election in 2020 was very close – about 51% / 49% in favor of Trump.
In addition to everything else, both seats are key to having a firewall in place against the worst right wing nonsense in 2024 and beyond.
Teaming Up with Voces de la Frontera
I have been talking with our friends at Voces de la Frontera, and we are going to write postcards for these two races. Lots of details to come in a post in the next day or two, but the short story is that they are sharing addresses with us, and we will be writing postcards to Latino and African American voters in Wisconsin who have a Democratic “partisanship” score of 80-100%. I hope there’s interest because I think we can make a difference in these two hugely important elections.
Read on for some great details about these races from one of our Wisconsin peeps on Balloon Juice, Mousebumples.