A new Cook rating of House seats portends another DCCC failure coming up in 2016 despite the best possible climate for Democratic candidates for House seats. Cook calls 211 seats "solid Republican" while only 169 seats are solidly Democratic. Caveat, Cook is a generally poor source for accurate, timely information. Example: Cook calls CA-25 "solid Republican" despite its being represented by an extremist freshman, Steve Knight, and despite the fact that as of this year CA-25 has, for the first time, a Democratic Party voter edge. Cook also awards Ileana Ros Lehtinen a solid Republican seat (FL-27) despite Obama's 53-47% win over Romney in the demographically shfting district. Cook's analysis mislabels numerous districts from Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Virginia to New York and New Jersey.
Cook lists 19 Democratic seats and 36 Republican-held seats as the most likely to flip. Here's the list of vulnerable Democratic seats:
• NE-02- Brad Ashford (Blue Dog)
• FL-18 [Patrick Murphy, not running]
• AZ-01- Ann Kirkpatrick (New Dem)
• CA-07- Ami Bera (New Dem)
• CA-52- Scott Peters (New Dem)
• FL-02- Gwen Graham (Blue Dog)
• MN-08- Rick Nolan
• AZ-09- Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog)
• CA-16- Jim Costa (Blue Dog)
• CA-24 [Lois Capps, not running]
• CA-26 Julia Brownley
• CA-36- Raul Ruiz
• CT-05- Elizabeth Esty (New Dem)
• IA-02- Dave Loebsack
• MD-06- John Delaney (New Dem)
• MN-07- Collin Peterson (Blue Dog)
• NY-04- Kathleen Rice (New Dem)
• NY-18- Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem)
• NY-25- Louise Slaughter
Please note that of the 19 vulnerable Democratic seats, only 3 are held by Democrats who reliably vote for progressive ideas and values: Louise Slaughter, Dave Loebsack and Rick Nolan. The rest are a rancid collection of ConservaDems, almost all of whom have joined the Blue Dogs and/or the New Dems. All of them will be hysterical as November 2016 approaches and Democratic voters sniff their putrid records and opt not to vote in their races. These 16 are the "Boehner boys" who are always giving the GOP license to call their reactionary agenda "bipartisan." Many of the 16 will be high up on the DCCC's priority list. Contribute to the DCCC and you are contributing to the reelection campaigns of fake Dems who virtually always vote with the GOP when it matters, like Sean Patrick Maloney, Jim Costa, Kyrsten Sinema, Gwen Graham, Brad Ashford, Scott Peters...
If you want to contribute to progressives running for Congress, forget the DCCC. You can contribute on this Blue America page instead.
Labels: 2016 congressional races, Cook Report, DCCC
1 Comments:
OK, so we stay home and Peterson and Delaney and Maloney et al go down in flames. That will have accomplished the disastrous aspects of cleaning debris out of a party you are taking over. But if Roosevelt Democrats get addition by subtracting the neo-liberals, will they bother to accomplish the rest of the takeover, campaign and vote their own people into party power and get rid of the ancient losers - the Pelosis (75) and Hoyers (76) and Clyburns (75) who have visited disaster on the party? Or will they leave them in charge as they did after a similar winnowing in 2014?
Because the Party is running on "brand fumes," the Democratic Party in the House and associated Democratic institutions will likely be up for grabs by the strongest factions. But whatever constitutes a "left" within the Democratic Party will have to step forward and actually grasp the reigns of power.
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