Flipping The House From Red To Blue Means Ignoring The Incompetent DCCC

The DCCC strategy-- pray Trump is an albatross for GOP candidates again

Whether Kamala beats Trump or not— and right now it looks pretty good that she will— it is absolutely essential that the Democrats (for all their flaws), flip the House. The Republicans have proven themselves incapable of governing and another 2 years of a puny weakling like MAGA Mike at the helm, regardless of who’s ion the White House, will further damage the country on every front.

The DCCC, unfortunately, has one of the worst crops of candidates I’ve ever seen. In flippable district after flippable district, the Democrat alternative is very nearly as bad as the Republican— yes, that bad. Luckily, there are a few exceptions and the Democrats don’t have that many seats they need to flip to take control. Over the weekend, Paul Kane, devoted his column to the one thing that can save us from the DCCC’s incompetent leadership: House Republicans continue to flail, further endangering their majority. Or, as we noted earlier, their sheer inability to govern. 

MAGA Mike and his pathetic leadership team hasn’t even been able to pass their own bills to keep the government running and without Democratic help— for whatever reason— MM would have lost the vacate the chair vote meant to remove him.

Last week, unable to accomplish anything, he sent the members home for an early August recess—  6 and half week break. “Republicans,” wrote Kane, “have passed five of the 12 bills that fund the federal government, putting them well ahead of last year’s absolutely dysfunctional timeline, when just one bill had been passed at this point. But the House GOP failed to pass two others and decided the rest were too politically tricky to even attempt at this point. Even those bills that did pass contain so many extremely conservative policy riders and spending cuts to important programs that they are dead in the Senate, where a traditional bipartisan process is playing out as expected. All that House Republicans have to show for their work on government funding is creating more political exposure for a couple dozen incumbents that might further endanger their majority.”

While most Americans have focused their attention on the made-for-Hollywood presidential campaign, House Republicans have continued sputtering along in the shadows the past three months in their traditionally chaotic fashion.

…[U]p to 10 of the most vulnerable House Republicans reside in California or in the New York media market. In those places, Trump remains a political anchor while Harris might energize her base out of their Biden-induced slumber— possibly setting the stage for a net gain of at least four seats that would vault Democrats into the House majority next year.

It didn’t have to be this way for House Republicans. Back in the early spring, Johnson allowed passage of a national security bill that included $60 billion for Ukraine. That came right after the passage of two massive packages that included all 12 spending bills at the funding level agreed to last year by Biden and Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

As a result, some of Trump’s loudest House allies tried to force him out in similar fashion to McCarthy. But Trump gave the speaker the support he needed to fend off the challenge (also bolstered by some Democratic votes). Johnson’s path to remaining in power became clear: retain the majority and hope Trump wins the presidency and endorses him for another term.

Trump has never shown much interest in the specificity of agency budgets, other than those dealing with border security. Some of the most conservative native members encouraged the speaker to not even bother trying to approve the 12 spending bills until after the election, hoping for a Republican sweep that would lead to a very conservative budget.

But House GOP leaders have tried to split the difference by sticking to the rigid outline of the Biden-McCarthy deal. They’re ignoring side deals that led to billions more in domestic funding while also allowing some very conservative policy riders [poison pills] to creep into funding legislation.

Democrats accused the speaker of genuflecting, again, to his most conservative wing by engaging in a spending process that would fail. “They knew these bills could never pass. They went through this charade to appease Republican extremists, and now, Speaker Johnson is sending members home despite promising he would not take August recess unless all 12 bills passed,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (CT), the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee.

Republicans defend their dismal showing by blaming Democrats for never providing more than a handful of votes for the bills, leaving them little margin for error. “You eventually hit a wall because, you know, we have a few of our own members that vote against some of these bills,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), who made the call to send lawmakers home early, told The Hill. 

By pushing ahead with these GOP-only bills, Republican leaders have repeatedly forced their most politically vulnerable members to cast votes in the committee and on the House floor that aren’t exactly appealing to centrist voters.

If the DCCC had recruited and nurtured good candidates, instead of the pack of corrupt GOP-lite corporate whotres they are offering the voters, the Democrats would be looking at two dozen House seats instead of 4 or 5. But the DCCC is wedded to the distress and fatally flawed “lesser of two evils” strategy they’re comfortable with— even if it usually fails without a blue wave to bolster their shitty candidates.

These are 33 vulnerable Republican incumbents who have been forced to vote on unpopular bills that won’t play well in their districts. Just a few have good opponents; more have opponents who have no chance of winning whatsoever because of how awful they are:

• David Schweikert (AZ)

• Juan Ciscomani (AZ)

• Kevin Kiley (CA)

• John Duarte (CA)

• David Valadao (CA)

• Mike Garcia (CA)

• Young Kim (CA)

• Ken Calvert (CA)

• Michelle Steel (CA)

• Laurel Lee (FL)

• Maria Salazar (FL)

• Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA)

• Zach Nunn (IA)

• Bill Huizenga (MI)

• John James (MI)

• Ryan Zinke (MT)

• Don Bacon (NE)

• Jeff Van Drew (NJ)

• Tom Kean (NJ)

• Nick LaLota (NY)

• Andrew Garbarino NY)

• Anthony D’Esposito (NY)

• Mike Lawler (NY)

• Marc Molinaro (NY)

• Brandon Williams (NY)

• Mike Turner (OH)

• Lori Chavez DeRemer (OR)

• Brian Fitzpatrick (PA)

• Scott Perry (PA)

• Monica De La Cruz (TX)

• Jen Kiggans (VA)

• Brian Steil (WI)

• Derrick Van Orden (WI)

Kane wrote that “Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ), a freshman whose district narrowly backed Biden over Trump four years ago, received an early lesson last year when he voted in committee for the bill funding the Agriculture Department. It included restrictions against mail delivery of pills related to abortions, a vote that Democrats turned into a quick video ad against him.”

That’s one of the races where there is a credible candidate. Another is in southern California where “Democrats homed in on Rep Ken Calvert (R-CA), a senior member of the committee who is facing a difficult reelection in his suburban district, for voting to strip LGBTQ+ community funding projects out of another bill.” The career-long homophobe, Calvert, suddenly found very gay Palm Springs in his district— and a strong opponent, a gay one to boot.

The more establishment-friendly corner of the House Republican conference often begrudgingly goes along with leadership even if it means supporting bills pushed by far-right Republicans from safe conservative districts.

After final votes Thursday, Rep. Nick LaLota (R-NY), from a Long Island district that leans Republican, told reporters he would center his campaign on bills passed last year that tried to deal with key issues for swing-district voters.

“I’m going to focus my campaign on policy and ensuring that voters know where I stand on the issues that matter the most— about the border, about the economy, public safety, pocketbook issues, inflation,” said LaLota, who faces a well-funded [but unbelievably awful, anti-union GOP-light] opponent, former CNN news personality John Avlon.

He said he was ready to defend cuts to some domestic programs as a down payment toward reducing the nearly $35 trillion national debt.

“There are things that responsible people from Washington need to do, and that should not be a partisan issue. Members of both parties should be able to join in reasonable, responsible spending cuts,” LaLota said.

[Ironically, one of LaLota’s constituents is Stephanie Kelton who has taught the fallacy of the Austerity governance LaLota is pigheadedly extolling.]

Some GOP moderates have rebelled against the spending bills— along with some arch conservatives who make it a habit of voting against almost every funding plan— and that has stalled the appropriations process until the fall, or more likely, until after the November elections.

In trying to placate his hard-line members, Johnson and other GOP leaders are fighting the last war. They continue to act as if their biggest fear is a right-wing coup, as befell McCarthy, when their most immediate concern should simply be protecting their majority.

… But in the past few months, the atmosphere shifted away from the 20 or so most strident conservatives and toward whatever best serves the interests of Trump— who seems to clearly get that last year’s chaos should not be repeated anytime soon.

…Democrats want to make Republicans pay for every vote they’ve cast the past 18 months.

“I think what we should use against them is the fact that they are incompetent,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (MA), the top Democrat on the Rules Committee. “I have served here for a long, long time, and I’ve never seen such incompetence.”

The DCCC is going to do what the DCCC does. There's nothing that can realistically be done about it. However, here are 8 progressive Democrats who could win and flip the House and make it less an appendage of the billionaire class. Please consider contributing what you can to any of their campaigns.

AOC defeated Crowley who's now a lobbyist-- but the DCCC message is still the same