2018 congressional races

The Trump Prophecy is the story of a guy with PTSD, Mark Taylor, who believes he heard God telling him Trump is da man!

The VoteCommonGood bus tour started out on Tuesday night in Bethlehem, PA with a rally for progressive Democrat Sue Wild in a swing district the Democrats are counting on flipping. Not all evangelicals are happy with Trump-- not with his demeanor, not with his policies and not with the way he's been handling his job. Vote Common Good is seeking to introduce evangelical communities across the country to Democratic candidates in the hope of helping to flip the House. Last night they were in Lancaster doing exactly that with Jess King.

L.A. Times this morning: "Republicans are at risk of a wipeout in California’s six most hotly contested congressional races, a new poll shows-- a result that could radically reshape the state’s political map, with major consequences nationally... The Democratic tide threatens to swamp congressional districts in Southern California’s suburbs that Republicans have controlled for decades.

Trump has an historically low approval ranking among likely voters, particularly likely voters in battleground districts. (Who cares what people think of him in New York City or L.A. or in Alabama or Wyoming?) Last week's Quinnipiac poll shows him a heavy albatross around the necks of Republican candidates in swing districts.

Mike Siegel's campaign got some good news and some... well, mixed news, today. The tweet below is the mixed news. Cook Report staffer Dave Wasserman, who gets incredibly more credit as a pundit than he comes close to deserving, mentioned that the very gerrymandered 10th district in Texas-- stretching from north Austin into the far suburbs west of Houston-- is an example of a district that could flip but is also an example of DCCC recruitment failure. The DCCC should be recruiting more top notch candidates like Siegel, not fewer.

In its fulsome endorsement of Ammar Campa-Najjar last week, the San Diego Union Tribune emphasized the contrast between him and the indicted (60 counts) incumbent Drunken Hunter. They pointed out that Ammar "meets the test of being a credible candidate" and that "he is far superior to the troubled incumbent.

Paul Ryan's PAC has unleashed a series of vicious personal smear attacks across the country. The Trump enablers his PAC is defending can't run-on issues because voters hate their anti-healthcare, anti-middle class, pro-millionaire stands. So they're running on personal hate ads. They want to run by claiming Democrats are socialists or that they have tattoos or that they were in punk rock bands as teenagers or were skateboarder. They seem to have special animus towards Democratic candidates who were veterans and served the country on the front lines.

Yesterday was the end of the third quarter. You were probably barraged with hysterical fundraising requests. I sure was. The ones that say "personal" in the subject line cause me to automatically unsubscribe.

Paul Ryan's corporately-funded SuperPAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund has poured $1.8 million into WI-01 to defeat Randy Bryce with a campaign of vicious personal smears-- please help us respond here at IronStache Fund-- but because they are so obsessed with @IronStache and a handful of other progressives they want to keep ou

WV-03-- the southern third of West Virginia-- had two populist landslides in 2016. First Bernie beat Hillary by over 20 points and, in many counties, Bernie got more votes than Trump did on the same day in the GOP primary. Then, in the general, the 3rd was Trump's biggest district in the state. He beat Hillary by a shocking 72.5% to 23.3%. The PVI of West Virginia is R+19. The PVI of WV-03 is R+23. But this cycle a Democratic state senator, Richard Ojeda, is leading in many polls. Huh? Yeah.