Last week, the DCCC and the Florida Democratic Party decided to give Mario Diaz-Balart, who was born on September 25, 1961, an early birthday present. They gave him what incumbents love most: an opponent-free election cycle. A relatively poor district in the Miami burbs, CA-25 is 76% Latino (mostly Cuban and Venezuelan) and includes Hialeah, Doral and includes much of the Everglades, Henry County and ends in the suburbs east of Naples in Collier County. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has been protecting Diaz-Balart's seat for decades-- and being caught doing it was part of why she was fired from her job at the DCCC (being caught, not doing it).Florida is the ultimate swing state and whoever wins 29 electoral votes there, wins it by a hair. In 2016 Trump beat Hillary 4,605,515 (49.1%) to 4,485745 (47.8%) statewide. FL-25, which has been trending purple, gave Hillary better numbers than Obama. Trump beat her in FL-25 by only 49.7% to 47.9%-- the closest result for either candidate in the state. The PVI is R+4, the closest district in the state, occupied by a Republican.Under conservative moron Cher Bustos, the DCCC is not taking an active role in trying to win new seats this cycle, just protecting incumbents and holding seats for retiring members. They list 13 Red to Blue candidates, although two of them-- Christy Smith (CA-25) and Rita Hart (IA-02)-- are running in Blue districts already. As usually, they're only backing conservative Dems. In IN-05, an open seat, they've endorsed Christina Hale, even though its a competitive primary. The PVI is R+9, so considerably tougher than FL-25. In MN-01 they running Dan Feehan in the first district (PVI is R+5). In MO-02 they're running Jill Schupp (R+8). Eugene DePasquale is their candidate in PA-10 (R+6). In TX-21 and TX-22 they're running , respectively, Wendy Davis and Sri Kulkarni, where both have tough R+10 PVIs. And in WA-03 they're taking on an incumbent with Carolyn Long in an R+4 district, same as FL-25.A competent DCCC-- or state party-- would have found someone to run against Diaz-Balart for several reasons:
• In an anti-red wave year, there's always a chance• It's useful to help develop a candidate for future elections, building a bench• To help other Democrats up and down the ballot
Biden could, literally, lose the election because no one is on the ground turning out the Democratic base. They did the same thing in FL-02 and Neal Dunn, sure a prohibitively red district, but still a district where 96,233 Democrats turned out to vote for an unknown, un-financed Democratic House candidate last cycle. Statewide Florida races get won by far less than 96,000 votes. Are the Democrats that sure that they can just put any turd's name on the ballot against Trump and win? And by the way, Diaz-Balart has raised $1,190,251. Who needs him feeling so completely confident that he gives it to the NRCC or to some of his vulnerable Republican colleagues like Ross Spano or to Republican challengers like one of the 8 clowns running against Matt Cartwright?
