special elections

In his interview with Vice (above) Trey Gowdy explains why “you won’t see me running for political office again. I’m surprised he’s even sticking it out for the rest of his term. He’s counting down the days--“19 more drives to the airport,” he said. And he admitted that the only goal of today’s Republican Party is to win elections. (I have some sad news for you, Trey-- it’s the only goal of today’s Democratic Party too.)Meanwhile everyone thought far right sex-predator Blake Farenthold was going to stick it out ‘till the end of his term too-- until Friday evening.

We've been talking about a big primary day coming up-- May 8-- and focussing on lively primaries in North Carolina and Indiana, where Democrats have an opportunity to elect valient progressives Dan Canon and Jenny Marshall. May 8th, though, is also primary day in Ohio.

The Wisconsin Republican Party has worked damn hard to gerrymander the state in such a way as to take a 50/50 purple state and produce a state Assembly with 64 Republicans and 35 Democrats and a state Senate with 18 Republicans and 14 Democrats.

Tomorrow is election day in PA-18-- an election in a dismal district that will cease to exist immediately after the votes are counted. Whomever wins-- a shit Democrat (Conor Lamb) or a shit Republican (Rick Saccone)-- will have to run in a different district in November... and PA-18 is divided between a really red district for Saccone and a competitive district leaning blue either for Lamb or, hopefully, a better Democrat. Lamb is a Blue Dog who defines what it means to be a political coward.

As we noted on Tuesday, the PA-18 special election 4 days from now, should be easy-peasy for the GOP. But they're on track to spend 40 times more money on this race than the Democrats! The PVI is R+11 and it's a district where McCain beat Obama 55-44%, Romney beat Obama 58-41% and then Trump eviscerated Clinton 58.1% to 38.5%.

Late Monday Thad Cochran's office announced that the 80 year old Mississippi Republican will resign on April Fools Day, due to rapidly deteriorating health. When Cochran first won his Senate seat in 1978 he was the first Republican to win any statewide seat in the state since Reconstruction. Gov. Phil Bryant will appoint an interim senator and then both seats will be voted on in November.

Kyle Layman, the worst DCCC staffer says the DCCC doesn't care about TX-07 at all and the only reason they savagely attacked Laura Moser was to send a message to Orange Co. Dems that they're going to get the same treatmentMore catastrophic midterm indications for the GOP yesterday as Democrats flipped 2 more Republican state legislative seats-- one in Connecticut and one in New Hampshire.

Trent Franks was a crackpot extremist-- and a pervert. When he got caught in a sex scandal this year, the GOP House leadership forced him to retire immediately. Not many people in Congress were sad to see him go. And his uptight suburban little district in Phoenix's West Valley has been too confused to absorb what happened to their 7-term congressman who never had a serious challenge for reelection. In fact there ws no Democrat running against him in 2016, 2014 or 2012. The district includes Sun City, Surprise, Peoria, Surprise and Litchfield Park and the PVI is R+13.

Which one's the Democrat and which one's the Republican?As you've probably noticed, I think Conor Lamb's campaign is a train wreck.

Friday morning's post, How Many Pro-NRA Candidates Is The DCCC Trying To Sneak Into Congress This Cycle? Way Too Many, dealt with the Blue Dogs and New Dems from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party who: