Giving voters in 425 districts a choice

August 14, 2006

Unfortunately, there isn’t much in the way of agreement between the DNC’s Howard Dean and the DCCC’s Rahm Emanuel, but one thing they both want is to see fewer Republicans elected without competition. Thanks to a lot of hard work, they’ve made tremendous gains this year.

You know the drill; every campaign cycle, dozens of incumbents win re-election because no one wants to take him or her on. The district is considered so “safe,” that the lawmaker won’t even garner token opposition. MyDD ran an interesting item over the weekend noting that the Dems made a goal of not letting that happen in 2006 — and they succeeded.

The best cycle in Dem history was in 2000, when Dems fielded 403 candidates (out of 435 congressional districts). The GOP record was 419 candidates, fielded in — you guessed it — 1994.

This year, 425 Democratic House candidates will appear on the ballot. Some won’t have a lot of money and some will struggle to stay competitive, but it’s still quite an accomplishment. Indeed, this year, Republicans will put up 390 candidates, the second lowest for either party since 1994. The 35-district margin is, Chris Bowers noted, “twice the size of the previous record.”

Good. Voters in every district deserve a choice and it’s very encouraging to see Dems making sure so many people will have one.

389 or 390 with DeLay dropping out?

  • The political Parties are an amalgram. There are the 50-odd (remember DC, P.R., Guam) State Parties, the two (Senate and House) “parliamentary” Parties in Congress and the national “Presidential” Parties.

    Dean’s 50-State strategy is a remedy for the gerrymandering, which tends to undermine competition for Congressional seats. The Mississippi or Oklahoma Democratic Party is free to move as far right as it needs to, to get to 51%; when the State Democratic Party is competitive in regard to control of the State Legislature, as the Democrats are in those two deep Red States, the State Democratic Party also ought to be able to field competitive Congressional candidates, as well.

    Depending on the strategy of making the Northeast into a one-party region, as Rahm Emmanuel seems determined to do, may be expedient in an opportunistic sense, but it is not healthy for the country, which needs a two-party system in every State, as well as nationally. Strengthening the Democrats in every State will not make the Congressional delegations, and the “parliamentary” Parties they form, ideologically coherent, but it may enable them to govern, and it might help to make Congress more responsive to voters and less enthralled to the lobbyists.

  • This year I don’t think anyone ought to fear challenging the incumbents. This should be the ideal moment to take up Newt’s suggestion for a campaign slogan: “Had Enough of the GOP?”

  • And when a “safe” seat has a challenger, the incumbent will spend money to defend that safe seat. He/she could be leading by 40 points, but human nature dectates that they will still spend to defend their seat. Every dime they spend is a dime taken out of the Republican machine for a less safe district thereby improving a Democrat’s chances elsewhere.

  • Excellent point, DanF. I don’t know if Dean was thinking along those lines in particular or not, but it just shows yet another reason why his strategy is so important.

    I respect Rahm Emanuel’s devotion to the cause, but his methods just aren’t what the country needs to get out of the mess it’s in right now. The good news is that both Dean and Emanuel are working toward the same goals, and they each have their own resources to support both streams at once.

    So they can be mad at each other if they want to, but if the end result is the defeat of the Forces of Darkness then it will all be good in the end.

  • DanF just said something I realized the other day.

    If the people like me who live in the “safe red” areas can get their moronic rep paranoid enough to spend money on ads, they will waste some of the money which would otherwise go to other Republicans in the battleground areas. We should be trying to scare the crap out of all the Republicans so that they’ll actively suck cash from their donors, and thereby suck money out of the races Dems might actually win.

    To scare these jerks, we need to write lots of letters to the editor, attend political events, and talk others into doing the same thing. Tell your blue friends WHY this needs to be done, even though the dirtbag will still win. We should nationalize the election even in the safe R districts, because getting people activated also makes them want to donate.

    Counterintuitively, the best targets would actually be big name Republicans with a lot of clout, because they’ll be the most effective at actually getting money from the RNC and the donor base. We can scare them by reminding everyone that their polling numbers are dropping and that soon they’ll be in real danger. (Do the projection to see when they’ll go below 50%)

    I’m thinking posters with the rep’s mug superimposed over a shot of flag-draped coffins. “Does [Pete Sessions] really support the troops?”

    Or better yet, a picture of Pete grinning in front of a graph labeled DEFICIT.

  • I wonder if my district (“safely red”) will be one of the 10 without a counter-candidate. Yet again.

    Besides siphoning money away from the Reps, having a candidate on a ballot is good for reminding the voters that there are, indeed, choices. Other than “you can choose not to vote”. Even if our candidatee loses this time, at least people will get used to seeing there is another side to the coin.

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