The bell is tolling loudly now-- and the Republicans finally-- albeit too late-- hear it, as their pollsters and operatives tell them that Democrats are turning out more low-frequency and newly registered voters than Republicans are. Marc Caputo and Zach Montellaro report that the early vote lead for Democrats is massive. As of yesterday, 52,718,496 people had already voted 36,518,179 by mail and I16,200,317 in person. "Democrats," they wrote yesterday, "have opened up a yawning gap in early voting over Republicans in six of the most crucial battleground states — but that only begins to tell the story of their advantage heading into Election Day... [T]he turnout disparity with new and less-reliable voters has forced Republican political operatives to take notice." Democrats are ahead of Republicans by 10 points in Florida, 16 points in Arizona, 24 points in Michigan 14 points in North Carolina, a crazy 46 points in Pennsylvania (where a million and a half people have already voted) and 22 points in Wisconsin. Republicans better hope for sunny weather on November 3rd. And this is not just about Biden. Even the DCCC is waking up to the fact that this is going to be the biggest wave since the DCCC's top IE recipient, Harley Rouda, was still a Republican. They're spending real money in districts that Trump won big in 2016, although exclusively on behalf of their conservative candidates with substantial spends being made for right-of-center (like Cheri Bustos herself who is working furiously to re-make the Democratic Party into an even more right-of-center, pro-corporate party) candidates like Dan Feehan (MN), Kathleen Williams (MT) Christina Hale (IN), Hiral Tipirneni (AZ), Jill Schupp (MO), Sri Kulkarni (TX)... each of whom has been endorsed by the Wall Street owned-and-operated New Dems. Even without any help from the DCCC, progressives in similar districts-- like Mike Siegel and Julie Oliver in Texas, Audrey Denny and Liam O'Mara in California, J.D. Scholten in Iowa, Nate McMurray in New York, Jon Hoadley in Michigan and Adam Christensen in Florida-- also have good shots at winning "impossible" districts. You can contribute to their campaigns here. The slowest, most cautious prognostication outfit in the biz, Cook, now rates 17 Republican-held seats as tossups, which is safe to interpret that Democrats will win just about all of them:
• AZ-06- David Schweikert (R+9) • CA-25- Mike Garcia (even, but with a Democratic voter registration advantage) • IL-13- Rodney Davis (R+3) • IN-05 Susan Brooks (open) (R+9) • MI-03 Justin Amash (open) (R+6) • MN-01- Jim Hagedorn (R+5) • MO-02 Ann Wagner (R+8) • NE-02- Donald J Bacon (R+4) • NJ-02- Jeff Van Drew (R+1) • NY-02- Peter King (Open) (R+3) • NY-24- John Katko (D+3) • OH-01- Steve Chabot (R+5) • PA-10 Scott Perry (R+6) • TX-21- Chip Roy (R+10) • TX-22- Pete Olson (Open) (R+10) • TX-24- Kenny Marchant (Open) (R+9) • VA-05- Denver Riggleman (Open) (R+6)
They also identify 15 GOP-held seats to be what they call "lean Republican" and some of these are also very likely to flip blue
• AK-AL- Don Young (R+9) • AR-02- French Hill (R+7) • CA-50- (Vacant) (R+11) • CO-03- (Open) (R+6) • FL-15- (Open) (R+6) • MI-06- Fred Upton (R+4) • MT-AL- (Open) (R+11) • NC-08- Hudson (R+5) • NC-09- Bishop (R+7) • NC-11- (Vacant) (R+9) • NY-01- Lee Zeldin (R+5) • PA-01- Brian Fitzpatrick (R+1) • TX-03- VanTaylor (R+13) • TX-10- Michael McCaul (R+9) • WA-03- Jaime Herrera Beutler (R+4)
So what could go wrong? THe voters could figure out that the DCCC recruited the most putrid roster of candidates in history. But I doubt the voters care. They're just totally driven by animus towards Trump and his enablers. By the way, do you feel inspired by Matthew Grimm's song and video up top?