Progressive challengers-- especially in races against well-heeled incumbents who can write themselves big checks or appeal to corporate SuperPACs-- have two new handicaps: grassroots funds from small donors have largely dried up because of financial uncertainty and grassroots campaign strategies have been upended by pandemic best practices.
You know what's come to a grinding halt? Fundraising for grassroots congressional candidates. Coronavirus fear and the stock market collapse seem to have hit most campaigns across America. I've been hearing from candidates that their call time efforts are yielding less than half of what they were raising last month and that their e-mail programs are doing even worse."It is super slow," one progressive candidate up against a well-heeled conservative told me this morning.
On Tuesday, the primary in Illinois' third congressional showed the failure of Cheri Bustos' toxic plan to defeat progressive challenges to Blue Dog incumbents who are out of sync with their constituents. Anti-Choice, anti-healthcare, homophobic, anti-immigrant conservative Blue Dog/New Dem Dan Lipinski was beaten by progressive candidate Marie Newman.
CNN's Chris Cillizza doesn't mention in this video that the Democrats are more likely to lose more seats than they pick up. Instead he says Republicans don't have enough money to win back a majority and that ether aren't enough opportunities. First off more Republicans have announced retirements (or are otherwise leaving) than Democrats-- 31 to 11. Open seats are usually the easiest to win, although many of the Republicans who are retiring are in deep red, gerrymandered districts. Here's the GOP House count with the PVIs (and the 2016 Trump presidential scores).
Yesterday, the Dow Jones closed down 12.94%. The worst day in 1929-- the harbinger of the Great Depression (which is different from a recession)-- was 12.82%.
-by Rachel VenturaI am sure that it was a gut punch for Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg to get the call from the corner office of the DNC encouraging them to drop out before Super Tuesday. I am sure that both still think that they are the strongest candidate for the general election, but they sucked it up and did it anyway.
As of the last FEC filing deadline in the TX-10 3-way primary-- February 12-- about $2 million had been spent by the Democrats' campaigns.
In December we looked at Republican congressional candidate Pierce Bush, the grandson of George H.W. Bush who was planning to run against freshman Democratic backbencher Lizzie Fletcher in gramps' old Houston seat, but switched districts when Republican Pete Olson announced he was retiring (TX-22).
You may remember our old Oklahoma friend, Tom Guild, from the yeoman's work he did in the past to flip the Oklahoma City congressional district blue. He tilled that field assiduously for years, while the DCCC laughed and ignored him.
