Farenthold & GrimmIn January, Bill Maher promised to try to flip a district. I was hoping he would work his magic on the North Shore of Long Island-- the Gold Coast, home to Princesses Long Island-- and go after Steve Israel.
I can't say I know Keith Ellison well. DWT has been covering him since 2006 when he left the Minnesota House of Representatives to run for Congress. He's a natural leader and was elected co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
On January 15, when Jim Moran announced his retirement after serving 12 terms as the congressman from Virginia's 8th congressional district (Arlington and Fairfax counties, Falls Church and Alexandria), he was giving up a solidly blue seat. The PVI is D+16 and Obama took the district with 68% both in 2008 and 2012. Moran himself was reelected in 2012 with 65%. In other words, whoever wins the Democratic primary on June 10, will be the next congressmember from Virginia.
It's a dirty little secret that Hoyer and his corrupt, conservative allies in the House Democratic caucus forced Nancy Pelosi to appoint Long Island "ex"-Blue Dog and model of Wall Street corruption, Steve Israel as DCCC chairman. We've mentioned a few times how Israel's "strategy" mathematically guarantees that the Republicans can never lose the majority in the House, or at least not while he is DCCC Chair.
Over the weekend, E.J. Dionne suggested in the Washington Post that Democratic Party strategists are blowing the 2014 midterm cycle. "Listlessness is bad politics. Defensiveness is poor strategy. And resignation is never inspiring."
Tuesday is primary day in Illinois and progressive George Gollin's insurgent campaign in IL-13 won two big endorsements yesterday. Early in the morning the biggest local paper, the Champaign News-Gazette came in for him, following the lead of the other two most read newspapers in the district, the Chicago Tribune and Springfield's State Journal-Register.
Watching this ad running in MI-11 (parts of Oakland and Wayne counties west and northwest of Detroit) you'd think the DCCC was getting ready to take back the district. Forget it! The ad is being run by a far right nut group, Freedom's Defense Fund. I'll get back to them in a second. First, the fighting 11th. When Obama ran in 2008, the 11th gave him a big win over McCain: he carried the 11th by 11 points; not a landslide but the kind of victory MI-11 was giving Democrats.
)Earlier this evening David Jolly beat Alex Sink 88,294 (48.43%) to 84,877 (46.56%), with Libertarian Lucas Overby taking 8,799 (4.83%).This morning, PPP reported that the Democrats reclaimed the lead in the generic 2014 congressional ballot, 43-40% after being down below generic Republicans by 2 points in the last survey. "Congressional Democrats have poor approval numbers, at a 35/56 spread, but that puts them far ahead of Congressional Republicans who come in at 23/67.
If you read this blog much, you've probably noticed we sometimes express a bit of antipathy towards ConservaDems, New Dems and Blue Dogs, generally speaking, the Republican wing ofd the Democratic Party. Over the years Blue America has even helped defeat some of the worst of them, particularly Al Wynn (MD), Tim Holden (PA), Chris Carney (PA) and Bobby Bright (AL). We've had John Barrow (GA), Jim Matheson (UT) and others like them in our sites for years. But one long-time conservative Democrat who we never really went after has been Nick Rahall (WV).
