It’s a terrible shame that Donald Trump ever became president. On the bright side: the progressive response in 2017 was tremendous. Here’s a couple remarkable charts. The first is the number of House challengers who have raised at least 5K as of the last filing (September 30).
And here’s another: Democrats over-performed Cook PVI by 9 points on average in 2017 special elections.
In six 2017 special elections, Dems have been outperforming their @CookPolitical PVI-suggested share of the vote by an average of 9%: pic.twitter.com/P4qDT7LDGv
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) December 15, 2017
If Democrats beat the Cook PVI by 9 points every district in 2018, they’ll win something like 100 seats. I doubt that will happen but….you never know.
Here’s a fund that’s split between all eventual Democratic nominees in House districts currently held by Republicans. Let’s kick in a little money.
mai naem mobile
Jeezus that stupid recount is not over . Some election official is saying they discounted a vote which hr feels shold have gone.to Yancey the GOP ahole. It’s in court .
Sab
Major Major Major Major
@mai naem mobile: funny how they always locate just the right number of votes.
Starfish
I feel like some of our elected officials are not keeping up with the sentiment of their base. I think that the Democrats should shut down the government over the budget fight that is coming up. Whether they shut it down over not getting a clean DACA bill or not having CHIP reinstated does not matter. They need to be seen as fighting for their constituents.
Gretchen
Note on that Kansas result: Gov. Brownback already ran the tax scam in our state that they took nationwide yesterday. He called it a “real-life experiment”. The experiment was an utter failure. All the neighboring states had better job growth than Kansas. They had to raid the highway and pension funds to keep the lights on, and make enough cuts to school funding that they’re under a court order to find more. Moody’s downgraded our bond rating 3 or 4 times. People here are angry, and voted out the worst of the tea-party state legislators in favor of moderates who promised to raise taxes to fix things. My Congressman, who has run basically unopposed in the past, has 4 people in the Democratic primary ready to take him on. We lost the best one, Andrea Ramsey, last week when the DCCC dropped her when they found out she was accused of sexual harassment by someone she fired. Yesterday’s vote will help get rid of Yoder. We’ve seen this movie before.
sixthdoctor
An economist in Puerto Rico called this bill “Maria part 2”. Is Rubio up in 2018?
cnbc.com/2017/12/19/maria-part-2-puerto-rico-to-take-another-hit-from-tax-bill.html
Thoroughly Pizzled
We have a chance to fix this. Someday we can look back on the Trump-McConnell years as battle scars and not a fatal wound. We have a chance.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Starfish: I’m conflicted about that. Shutting down the government is a bad thing. We’ll hurt a lot of people by doing that. If you think that’s a worthy price to pay for drawing attention to DACA, then so be it. But my guess is that the Republicans won’t bring it back.
Starfish
@Thoroughly Pizzled: What about the health insurance for poor children that has either run out or will run out soon in many states? My state has managed to keep it up until the end of January. Then it is gone.
Betty Cracker
@sixthdoctor: Unfortunately, Lil’ Marco is not up again until 2022.
ETA: And when he is, I hope Florida curb-stomps the prick with extreme prejudice.
opiejeanne
@Starfish: I read yesterday that Collins might tank the budget vote over something about the Hyde amendment. I didn’t have time to read the article and now I can’t find it.
Betty Cracker
@Starfish: I’m coming around to that point of view: Tell the Republicans they don’t get one Democratic vote on the budget without clean DACA and CHIP renewals. Easy for me to say, though: I don’t work for the government or otherwise depend on government sources for income, and I don’t have to hold a somewhat fractious caucus together. So far, I’ve been trusting Pelosi and Schumer to do their jobs. They’re definitely better at the legislating thing than a peanut gallery dweller like myself.
Quantumman
What is happening with the tax bill is legislative violence, akin to corporate violence. They know this will harm people but will do it anyway for the financial gain. A-holes.
Major Major Major Major
@Betty Cracker: I think I saw a headline that they aren’t planning on playing hardball about DACA?
bearcalypse
And we better hope the Dems we elect in the meantime don’t go killing enthusiasm by spouting stupid bipartisanship-ism and Trump’s-misdeeds-are-in-the-past crap.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Major Major Major Major: I clicked on one of those headlines about “many Democrats” being unhappy with Schumer and Pelosi. The only Dem quoted was Luis Guttierez. I did see a group of activists were having a sit-in in Cortez-Mastro’s office. I hope they were also in Dean Heller’s, and Martha McSally’s, and press just didn’t cover it.
Starfish
@bearcalypse: Someone running for the U.S. House of Representatives in my district is doing some “both sides” nonsense, and I am not here for it.
sixthdoctor
@Betty Cracker: Oh well. I’m in Maryland so the only rep voting for this crap was Andy Harris, who won by 40 in 2016…
different-church-lady
Heightening the contradictions works!
[ducks]
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Starfish: I’m not sure. Feels like all of our options here are pretty bad. We are in the grasp of evil.
different-church-lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
When it comes to disarray narratives, one democrat suffices for many.
HeleninEire
@opiejeanne: No she won’t. Especially over the Hyde Amendment. No she won’t.
Starfish
@different-church-lady: People keep saying that Pelosi should resign because she is doing a terrible job. Of course most of those people are Republicans or Bernie dead-enders. I tell them that Pelosi is doing a great job.
oatler.
Let’s see if The Corporation manages to mash the two tribes into bloody civil war. Think of Zeus and Hera pushing counters on the map while exchanging the loving barbs of a long- married couple.
Matt McIrvin
It sure seems like a lot of Internet liberals are convinced nobody is going to turn out to vote for Democrats, even after repeated special and odd-year elections in which people did turn out to an extraordinary degree.
At this point, it seems to me that the only thing that could really stop a Democratic wave in 2018 would be a new war or international crisis that gets people desperate to rally around Daddy. And there are many ways that could happen. But when it comes to electoral gain, that’s a bullet that Trump only gets to fire once.
Another Scott
@opiejeanne: I assume this is the story you’re thinking of – thehill.com/policy/healthcare/365669-abortion-fight-threatens-collins-deal-risks-shutdown
The latest, though, is that the Teabaggers still can’t get their crap together. thehill.com/homenews/house/365776-house-gop-leaders-ditch-government-funding-plan-amid-infighting
So leadery. Much wonk.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Ridnik Chrome
@Quantumman: “Corporate violence” is a term I had never heard before, and a useful one, so thank you for that. Nobody should be surprised that the tax bill passed. Even when they can’t do anything else, Republican administrations always manage to get their tax cuts passed. What’s different this time around is that they went out of their way to make them as shitty as possible for everyone who’s not a one-percenter.
Tazj
This is interesting and really shouldn’t have surprised me.
Chris Hayes RT
Alex Rowell @AlexRowell
Seems worth noting that working-and middle-class families got bigger tax cuts from the 2009 stimulus(*way* bigger for bottom 40%) than the GOP tax bill.
Spanky
@Matt McIrvin: No one is going to rally around this daddy besides the ones already humping his leg.
Aleta
I believe this media noise about Collins receiving a promise and about her attachments to the budget is all about lies to the media — she knew that any “promise” from McConnell means nothing to the House. She’s known that since forever. The only purpose was to give her cover in Maine and nationally. She has a strong media machine that’s furiously paddling to keep the discussion off of her vote and onto her attachment and The Promise, get the blame off of her and all on the House. She’s a player in the Fake News game. Maybe the prize offering is a fake promise of a VP or P run.
Aleta
Cruelty to children and a government shutdown–the Christmas gifts of the Maga.
randy khan
@mai naem mobile:
@Major Major Major Major:
The story is that there’s a ballot with both names bubbled in, but someone is arguing that there is a slash through the Dem’s bubble, so it should be counted as a vote for the Republican and not as a non-vote.
Since the recount was supervised by the court, it seems unlikely to me that the court will change its mind, but I suppose you never know. Interestingly, it doesn’t appear that either the Republican candidate nor the Virginia GOP is supporting this challenge (which doesn’t mean that they didn’t encourage it, just that they’re not saying anything in public so far).
marcopolo
@Another Scott: Yeah, they just put a loophole in their tax bill for real estate owners that will cost $450 billion over the next decade but they can’t find their way to funding $81 billion in disaster release. And the Rs in the House and Senate want to increase funding for the defense budget by $37 billion over what Trump has already asked for yet finding $15 billion to fund health insurance for 9 million kids whose families are economically challenged–that’s too hard.
Fuck all these Republican congress critters. This information is out there and is getting through to the majority of Americans who aren’t addicted to RW news sources. And, honestly, I think it is even getting through to some of them.
Barbara
@Aleta: She already had protests at her office in Portland when she voted yes the first time around. I don’t think anyone is buying it anymore. I think above all, Collins is just a very weak individual.
Major Major Major Major
@randy khan: hey, it’s a stronger case than Lizard People.
Barbara
@randy khan: But a slash could mean the opposite as well. In other words, the intent cannot be determined.
Doug R
@Matt McIrvin: I can’t see a scenario where trump gets even as high numbers as W. He’s already at 32%. It’s like a stock that plummets to 1/10 of its value, it’s never coming back. Even that 32% has softened from strongly support to kinda support.
marcopolo
As for Democratic candidates for Republican held house seats in the St Louis area most have raised far more than $5K. One of the candidates against Ann Wagner (MO-2) has already raised $225K by last September 30th’s filing deadline.
marcopolo
@randy khan: I just, really, how can you screw up voting like this? Butterfly ballots & hanging chads I can understand. But filling in circles next to a candidate’s name. Or filling in a line to complete an — —>. How? The mind boggles. Also too, how do these folks make it to voting age without sticking their finger in a power socket or getting sucked into a wood chipper or something similar?
/rant off
No, I really don’t want to know.
James E. Powell
@Thoroughly Pizzled:
From the day they took back the house in 2010, the Republicans served notice that they would not vote to raise the debt ceiling. Obama had to crawl to them repeatedly to get it passed. Every time the Republicans got something out of the deal. What are the Democrats going to get? CHIP is an obvious hill to die on. You want our votes, take care of the children or go fuck yourselves.
Barbara
@Doug R: The flipside to Trump could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and his supporters wouldn’t care is that Trump could do a lot of positive things (in theory) and a lot of voters would not care. They still won’t support him. The problem with a cult of personality is that people will love you or hate you in spite of what you do.
Barbara
@marcopolo: We migrated from electronic to paper ballots over the last two elections. Just from the ease of completing the ballot, the electronic ballots were better. You touch the name and the computer fills it in. If you make a mistake, you just hit the other guy’s name and the machine changes the choice. You can get another ballot if you really screw up your paper ballot, but the print is smaller, it’s not always clear which marks you are supposed to make, and so on. An elderly person could easily make a mistake. But putting a slash through one of the bubbles after filling out both could mean that you are marking the one you actually meant, or trying to cross out the first mark. It would not be clear.
Mnemosyne
@Matt McIrvin:
Yep. After VA and AL, I will never again listen to a doom-and-gloomer whining that Democrats never show up. When we are motivated, we show the fuck up.
If we do the work and make sure every one of our voters gets to the polls, we will win. But we have to do the work.
Fair Economist
@marcopolo:
The districts in question are R+8 and R+5, so that would seem ambitious, except that the Virginia HoD campaign flipped a lot of districts like that.
Starfish
@marcopolo: Our ballots say to fill them out with a blue or black pen. I was calling voters to see if they had filled out the ballots and sent them in. I ended up talking to some person who was telling me she had filled out her ballot with a Sharpie and asked if that was okay. 🙄
TenguPhule
@James E. Powell:
And so they go with go fuck themselves.
Because, reasons.
/Yes, I’m bitter that the CR is likely to keep going, despite Adam’s analysis of it. Optics are still fucking terrible.
Cermet
@Barbara: Total bullshit; if tRump did many good things both people here and dems in general would praise him but his base would attack him; examples? When he said he’d support the dream act, dems praised him and his base rose up in revolt and he caved. If he supported the dream act, chip, provided money for ACA and really cut taxes on the middle class a lot of dems (majority, in fact) would support him.
Barbara
@Cermet: I disagree, but that’s okay because he isn’t going to do any of those things. There is some subset of people who will not vote for Trump no matter what. These voters are mostly female or Latino or Black, but it transcends party affiliation.
chopper
@opiejeanne:
collins’ll fold. she always does.
chopper
@Matt McIrvin:
and even then, trump ain’t no g-dub. if shit gets real with north korea or iran or something it ain’t gonna give donnie jonnie much of a boost if any at all.
DougJ
@Fair Economist:
Plus 5 is winnable.
catclub
@Mnemosyne: I agree. Then I look at the Congressional map of Alabama. Jones won the state, but won only one congressional district out of seven. That is some serious gerrymandering to overcome. Plus voter ID, plus the Secretary of State is in the southern tradition of southern sheriffs.
KithKanan
@marcopolo: You would be surprised. I somehow managed to vote the wrong way on a one-question yes/no ballot for a mail-in only special election.
It was a referendum and I was doing too many things at once and forgot that voting for it repealed the law in question while voting against it left it in place.
When I went to the county office of elections to ask what to do, they essentially had me do what this one ballot did (cross out the one I didn’t want to vote for and bubble in the other one).
It’s bugged me a bit ever since that I’m not sure which way my vote was counted, but the way I intended to vote won so it worked out in the end.
randy khan
@marcopolo:
Nuts. The court decided that the ballot should have been counted for the R. Now it’s a coin toss (although, oddly enough, the loser of the coin toss can ask for another recount).
Marcopolo
@Barbara: Thanks for this reply. I live w/ an 85 year (my mom) so I should remember things that are “easy” to do become more challenging as we age and our hearing/eyesight/sense of taste/touch declines.
Doug!
Thanks everybody!