2020. Gary Herbert is not running for reelection. It's a wide open field at this point and he would not be a leader. Mitt Romney's son could even be running.
I know it's early to speculate so, but we are now up to nine Republicans who are announcing they will not run for the House in 2018, compared to just four Democrats. The math of this is still simple: if 24 more Republicans than Democrats announce their retirement, the Democrats will retake the House of Representatives.
So Justice Democrats has a primary challenger for Manchin. "A Mullens, West Virginia native, Paula Jean Swearengin’s coal mining roots run deep. She’s a coal miner’s daughter and a coal miner's granddaughter. As a child, she felt a deep sense of pride in the state’s dominant industry. West Virginia’s coal powered the nation through the Industrial Revolution and kept our factories running through World War II. America was built by West Virginia coal - built by families like Paula Jean’s. Yet, like so many from Appalachia, her family paid a steep price for coal: She lost her grandfather to black lung. Her uncles have since been diagnosed with the disease. The beautiful streams and rivers she loved growing up have become toxic as runoff from the mines leached into the region’s groundwater. As for Paula Jean? She grew up believing she was a redhead. Then she found out her naturally brown hair had been stained all her young life by the orange water in which she showered. When her stepfather lost his job at the mine, the family moved to North Carolina and tried to find a new line of work. She returned to her home state soon after high school to take care of her ailing grandfather. Coming back to coal country, Paula Jean saw entire communities left in the dust when a mine shut down, small businesses drying up, miners and their children struggling with diseases brought on by the industry, and a whole generation struggling to find reliable, safe jobs that would put enough food on the table. As a single mom of four boys, she vowed to do something about it. And so she did. She phoned legislators. She met with representatives. She spoke out. She fought for families and for workers. She called out Senator Joe Manchin. She met Bernie Sanders. And now, she’s calling for an end to the treatment of West Virginians as collateral damage and the start of good education, sustainable jobs, and a safe environment."
I don't have any problem with that. That district is rated as +29 Democrat. Since a Republican would never be a viable choice in a district like that, a primary is the best way to give the people choices.
Great news for Democrats. We know that Trump's overall approval numbers are down to 39% from a high of 45% in March. But check this out : http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article151292922.html Apparently the drop is most pronounced in swing counties ... He's been the most resilient in counties where he won by more than 10 points, which are not very relevant for what Dems should be targeting in 2018. So Trump is only polling at 34% today in the counties he won by small margins. This is the pathway for Dems to retake the house. There's not that many stereotypically liberal urban districts available. To win you need to reclaim the suburbs that surround the bigger cosmopolitan cities. Districts where college grads and young professionals are well represented. Districts where you have clusters of university students. Districts where you have at least 20% minority vote. There's about 5 of these districts in the NYC suburbs + Northern New Jersey. There's about 3 on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Two outside Twin Cities. Two in South Florida. One outside Chicago, Denver, Seattle, Des Moines, Kansas City etc ...
https://politicalwire.com/2017/05/22/ossoff-opens-lead-georgias-6th/ A 7-point lead is consistent with an 8.5% swing for the Democrats in open-seat races as compared to seven months ago. Such a lead would jeopardize approximately 60 Republican-held districts.
867211427903414273 is not a valid tweet id Because they're legislative races, they're under the radar. If Ossoff and/or Quist win, I wonder how that will affect relations between Trump and the House, and Trump and the Senate. (I would be surprised if the reaction is the same in both houses.)
If Quist wins, impeachment articles are not out of the question so they can remove the tumor. Quist has no business being in Congress, and any Democrat would vouch for that.
You guys remember how I keep saying the Republican Party is literally dying off? Their base - rural voters - are literally dying off. They are running out of people to put in safe Republican congressional districts. If Democrats can win back a bunch of state legislatures in 2018 and 2020 (and history says they will), they will be able to marginalize the GOP in the 2020 redistricting rounds to the same extent that the GOP did back in 2010.
More accurately, they're running out of ways to pack Democratic voters into as few districts as possible. I read somewhere the other day that Ohio is likely going to lose a Congressional seat after the 2020 Census, and the Republicans in the Ohio legislature are very concerned because it'll be just impossible to have that seat be a Democratic one at this point without endangering the safety of the Republican seats. To hell with history. If the Democratic leadership isn't laser-focused on getting out the vote for certain key governor's races and legislative races in 2018, they need to be thrown out immediately. To wit, in Colorado, the governor's election is next year, and the governor's term in four years. The redistricting is done by a committee whose members are chosen by the governor, the majority and minority leaders in both houses of the legislature, and the Chief Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court. The thing is that the majority and minority leaders from the legislature each get to select an equal number of redistricting committee members, so it doesn't really matter from that standpoint who controls the legislature. What matters in redistricting is which party controls the Governor's Mansion. So it's key for the Democrats to hold onto the Governor's Mansion next year when John Hickenlooper is term-limited out of office, and for the Republicans to take it. IMHO It's not quite as important that they retake control of the Colorado Senate, where they're in a very thin 18-17 minority. Every state is different, but the Democrats need to be strategic about which offices are critical to flip and which are critical to hold in 2018 and 2020.
Right now on the Democratic, it's just Ed Perlmutter, who's currently the Congressman from the 7th District, which covers the purple northern and western Denver suburbs, and Cary Kennedy, former State Treasurer, whose announcement went viral for all the wrong reasons. Congressman Jared Polis, who represents Boulder and Fort Collins, is also considering a run, but if it were up to me, I'd go with Perlmutter, simply because he's been representing a pretty purple district in Congress and might be better equipped to win a statewide race in a purple state.
I'm a little bit ambivalent on Polis. He is the epitome of the say-the-right-thing-but-screw-the-little-guy limousine liberals who have taken over Boulder in the last 20 years.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-brief...acker-prepares-to-challenge-paul-ryan-in-2018 Well, meet Paul Ryan's next challenger in 2018. Randy Bryce, a labor union Berniecrat.
Here are some interesting poll results from Paul Ryan's district. https://static1.squarespace.com/sta...3191b70500fb/1494505752443/WI1Results (2).pdf Donald Trump has 49% approval. Ryan has 43% approval. The AHCA has 32% approval while the ACA has 40% approval. 52% of respondents say that would like to vote for someone new.
Just donated money to Mike Hartley, who is running in Indiana's 5th district against incumbent Susan Brooks. Indiana doesn't have any swing districts, but the 5th is probably as close as you're going to get. Brooks won last time with 27%. He caught my eye on Reddit. Lots of existing and aspiring Dems stop by there. But Hartley really stood out. I liked the boldness, clarity of vision and willingness to go out on a limb. I love how he called out climate change deniers a direct threat to our national security. This is exactly the direction I want the party to go in. On NASA : Climate change : Education : Transportation : Drugs :
Here's Rep. Martha McSally (Republican, Arizona) in a candid recording outlining her problems for 2018. This was recorded secretly at a private event she spoke at. https://thinkprogress.org/martha-mcsally-says-trump-circus-hurting-her-c24e6b00752 Oh poor McSally ... So unfair. Except the article later shows that she has a near 100% voting record alignment with Trump. Including the AHCA. So yeah, sorry hun ... you deserve to go down with the ship. Standing up to Trump in private ain't going to cut it. Stand up to him through your Congressional vote. Otherwise you own Trump and deserve everything that's coming.
Voting record and agreeing with all the dumb shit he twits are 2 different things. But I do agree, fvck her, hopefully she does go down with the ship and it is a perfectly reasonable tactic to tie Trump to her neck.
So, ummm, get a load of this quote from Dana Rohrbacher ... https://thinkprogress.org/republica...g-says-maybe-we-should-back-isis-a7e9382dbe1b That's right folks. He's suggesting that we assist ISIS and Sunni terrorist groups to attack Iran. If a Democrat said this, they'd be locked up in chains in Guantanamo by tomorrow. Can you Californians please fix this? I've never heard of the Dems running against him. Wikipedia lists Laura Oatman, Boyd Roberts, Harley Rouda, Eric Rywalski and Tony Zarkades as the Dems running in that district. Any one of them will do. Just make it happen.