It’s going to be pretty tough to win back control of the House of Representatives. It’s definitely doable, but we don’t have much cushion. We need to win 25 seats and there are probably no more than about 35 Republican-held districts where we have a well-funded and credible candidate who has a real shot at victory. But John Boehner is doing everything he can think of to convince the American people that he’s terrible at his job and needs to be replaced. The latest fiasco is the Farm Bill. This is a bill that normally passes with absolutely no difficulty every five years. And that’s what happened in the Senate, where 16 Republicans joined with the Democrats to pass a bill back in June.
In the House Agriculture Committee, a version of the Farm Bill passed 35-11 in July. That’s the definition of bipartisan. Yet, Speaker Boehner says he doesn’t have the votes to pass the bill so he doesn’t want to have a vote at all. Since the five-year Farm Bill expires on September 30th, it’s kind of important that the House gets something done, so they’re talking about a 3-month or 1-year extension. Farmers are starting to freak out, which is why some Republicans have signed onto something called a ‘discharge petition.’ Basically, if a majority of congresspeople sign it, it forces a vote on the Farm Bill. It is not normal for members of the majority party to sign discharge petitions. It’s an open act of defiance. There’s no risk that a majority will sign the petition and force a vote, but it makes Speaker Boehner look bad.
And why shouldn’t he look bad? This is a Speaker who couldn’t convince his own caucus to pay our bills on time until a credit rating agency downgraded our nation’s AAA credit rating. Now he can’t pass a farm bill that sailed through the Senate and his own Agriculture Committee. You can’t blame the president for this. You can’t blame the Democrats. All the blame lies with the lunatic Republicans in the House. They need to be voted out so that we can have a government that works again. Period.
Pelosi has come out and said that the odds of winning back the House are 50/50, which I think is about right. The polls in a lot of districts are showing closer races than anticipated. Bachmann is only up a couple points and Cantor lead si close to the margin of error. Also, Obama is atrating to broaden his campaign to also target the Republicans in Congress. Thank you Mitt for giving him a little breathing room to do this.
So, if the election were held today, I think the Dems would gain about 18-20 seats. However, the trendline is moving our direction. By November, it could be 25-30 seats.
They never give context. $900 billion over what period of time, and what baseline? Pretty sure Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 was $300 billion over 5 years. Why’s this so much higher?
Umfortunately, I fear money pouring into down ticket races (now that Romney is a cooked goose), voter suppression and redistricting in 2010 will make recapturing the house much more difficult. Enough Teahadists will survive by distancing themselves from Romney and because the SuoerPac money from Rove and the Kochs will be re-targeted to preserve a GOP majority in the House. Hopefully we retain the Senate.
Just throwing that out there.
I fear you are right. In my district Tammy Duckworth is projected to beat Joe Walsh by 9 points. That’s based on pundits not polls. I’ve seen just one yard sign. It’s about one block away and it’s for Joe Walsh. This morning I saw a Joe Walsh ad on ABCTV during the morning news. It was a good ad, all about how Joe Walsh cares about the little guy and wants to stop Washington from wasting your hard earned tax money. During the “stop Washington from wasting” part, the background switched to a photo of an angry Obama shaking his fist. That was a perfect dog whistle to white Suburbanites.
Walsh is running against Obama not Duckworth and it’s a good strategy. He’s smart. Crazy, but smart. Meanwhile, nada from Duckworth. No ads. No mailings (Walsh has had at least four). No yard signs. No canvassing. No radio spots. Nothing. She thinks she can cruise to victory like she thought she could last time she ran and was blown away. Like Kerry thought he could.
Complacency is going to keep the House in Tea Party hands.
Judging from her web site and Facebook page, it looks as if she may be emphasizing social media this time around. It does appear that she is active and engaged. I’ve been getting email updates from her campaign for months over here in Indiana. We’re just now putting up signs over here for our candidates due to local zoning restrictions on the time they can be displayed. The town where I live restricts signs to only 30 days before the election, the county is 60 days.
I have seen more Duckworth signs than Walsh signs. Looking at LTE’s and their comments in the Daily Herald web site would indicate Walsh is in real trouble. Wlash has been such an embarrassment that I don’t think he can do anything to recover.
Plus, his continued Muslim bashing is starting to rub a lot of people the wrong way.
Well, I’m in supposedly the most Democratic precinct in the district (before re-mapping) and I haven’t seen a one. I certainly DO hope she beats Walsh by 9 points. Looking at the past results, Walsh just barely beat Melissa Bean and that was with 2 or 3 percent going to the Green (Bill Scheurer ?).
Maybe the campaign is just starting late. My Obama bumper sticker that I ordered in August just arrived half an hour ago. It was in an oversized package (too big for the box) and my mail carrier kindly took it up and put it on the porch instead of leaving a note and bringing it back. Maybe she noticed the return address.
I am in Hoffman Estates, where we have both a Dem IL house and Dem IL Senate members. Walsh mainly won last time because of McHenry County, which isn’t in the district any more. He won by under 300 votes to Bean who didn’t do anything until the last week of October (too little, too late). I expect 9 points may be the closest margin possible.
I hope you are right. I think we are in the same district. Are you referring to Fred Crespo and Mike Noland?
Social media are important for the young, but traditional media are important too for the computerless and those old enough to use a phone for voice calls.
Maybe I was contacted. Just got a poll call (from a human!) but I politely declined to participate. Seems I always get those calls at lunch or supper. Still, I was polite to the human (sounded like a younger man perhaps in his twenties). I reserve profanity for the robocalls.
I’m bombarded every day with emails from countless candidates from around the country, probably because I’ve been a central committee member for so long, but in over 20 years, I’ve only had one Democratic candidate actually come to the door. Again, that’s probably because they all know me. The one I really could have done without was Mitch Daniels, during his first run for governor. I think our opposition here put him up to it as a joke. Still planning a good payback for that. I hope this election may be it.
BTW, we started our phone banking here in June, 2011. The powers far above who guide us in our labors think that 5:30 – 7:30 are the best times to call. I’d argue with that, since I hate answering an unsolicited call when I’m eating too.
The voter suppression laws are getting struck down left and right.
All of that money would have done a lot more good if it was spent on organizing and candidate-defining early. Hoarding it until late in the campaign, so that they can super-super-saturate the air waves instead of merely super-saturating them, was a stupid idea.
As for redistricting, I’ve got three words for you: Tom. Delay’s. District.
What really jumps out at me from this comment, though, is the absence of a prediction that the economy will sink the Democrats. Things must really be looking up.
Republicans prefer to cheat.
To my mind, the key is the choice facing the House Republicans right now: Are you going to raise taxes on income over $250,000, or are you going to raise everybody’s taxes? Of course they don’t have to make the choice before the election, so the are, as Mitt Romney might put it, kicking the ball down the field. But if voters are reminded on a regular basis that their representatives are in fact threatening to raise their taxes for a totally stupid reason, I would think that would give them pause. If anything would.
No, their choice is to lower taxes on incomes above $250K and raise them on lower incomes. See the Republican platform.
True. I’m just talking about the question of extending the tax cuts. At any rate, I would hope that the message that to vote Republican is to vote yourself a tax hike would be effective.
It’s not quite right that the farm bill passes with no difficulty every five years, although usually the House passes it with less problems than the Senate. It is often vetoed, or threatened veto, by the President of either party and extensions are commonplace. The last one was vetoed twice by GWB — twice because a grammatical error in the first bill required passing the bill twice for submission for a second presidential veto before overriding it to become law.
The problem with the current farm bill is that the House Ag committee had an almost complete turn over in the 2010 elections with farm districts electing neophyte tea party Republicans who disdain support for farmers. Lots of farmers even support them. US farm and nutrition policy has always been a classic “iron triangle” between wealthier farmers who get subsidies in exchange for supporting lower income urban consumers who get food stamps and school lunches, all administered by the USDA bureacracy. The tea party takeover of agriculture in the House threatens that coalition, and Beohner knows he can’t bring the House to vote against both farmers and food stamps before the November elections.
When Congress goes from overriding a veto to not being able to place a bill on the president’s desk, something fundamental has changed.
What we have here is the perfect opportunity for the party to demote Romney for unspecified personal reasons and put forward a Ryan-Scott Brown ticket. Ryan gets you the party’s fiscal seriousness and Brown delivers the independent-minded four wheel drive owner who wouldn’t dream of joining cause with the extremists running his party.
And he’s PRO-CHOICE. I heard it at least 5 times today on my softrock station in Worcester.
Of course, they were running a different ad (something about independent thinkers) on my Country Station.
I think NPR was talking about whales…
He may be pro-choice (but if he is, why is he GOP?), but if he wins the first vote he’ll cast in the Senate will be for extreme anti-choice leadership. That, plus all the votes he will cast on stuff like judges – on any close vote his leadership will twist his arm, then let him pretend to vote anti-GOP on the non-close votes so he can improve his legislative record for the folks back home.
The reality is that a vote for Brown is a vote for Mitch McConnell. It’s that simple. The independents in Massachusetts shouldn’t even imagine that any of Brown’s ideas that are outside the GOP mainstream will survive 1 nanosecond in the GOP senate caucus.
And I hope that is the campaign that his opponent is running.
Some people here talked about Dave Zirin’s column last week, and I just can’t say thank you enough for the recommendation. I am not a sports person, but he is terrific.
Boehner sucks at his job. But no one could reasonably manage the Tea Baggers in the House, they’d make any majority leader look inept.
The Tea Party caucus are truly the tail that wags Boehner’s dog. If any of the “other” Republican caucus defies them, they have allies in every member’s district ready to primary them.