{"id":1425,"date":"2004-03-18T12:27:14","date_gmt":"2004-03-18T17:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/1425.html"},"modified":"2004-03-18T12:27:14","modified_gmt":"2004-03-18T17:27:14","slug":"do-the-dems-have-a-realistic-shot-at-winning-back-the-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/do-the-dems-have-a-realistic-shot-at-winning-back-the-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Do the Dems have a realistic shot at winning back the House?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, I wrote about the battle for control of the Senate and how the Dems’ chances have improved in recent months. But that’s the Senate; how does the House look? No matter how predisposed one is to optimism, seeing a scenario in which we’ll get the House back is difficult, but not impossible.<\/p>\n

There are a couple of factors that tilt our way — Republicans currently have 16 open seats to defend compared to 10 Dem seats — but an already daunting task was made more challenging when Tom DeLay pushed through his outrageous re-redistricting scheme<\/a> in Texas, giving the GOP congressional delegation a jump on six additional seats.<\/p>\n

The current House breakdown, taking into consideration Ben Chandler’s special election victory in Kentucky last month, is 228 Republicans, 205 Dems, 1 Independent (who votes with the Dems), and one vacancy.<\/p>\n

These numbers, compounded by the Texas fiasco, means the Dems will need a net gain this year of about 20 seats to win back the House majority. To state the obvious, that’s a lot of seats and it’s going to take a lot of work to make this happen.<\/p>\n

To its credit, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has a plan. From yesterday’s Roll Call<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In a memo being circulated to his colleagues today, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Robert Matsui (Calif.) lays out a race-by-race blueprint that he argues will return his party to the majority in November.<\/p>\n

The memo outlines what House Democrats have dubbed the “Campaign for a New Majority,” which debuted Tuesday night with a fundraiser feting Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt (Mo.) that raised roughly $2 million for the DCCC.<\/p>\n

Matsui’s missive previews the prevailing national message Democrats hope to use in their targeted races as well as offers the first extensive look at the party’s much-ballyhooed efforts to widen the House playing field.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n


\nBut does Matsui see the number of seats we need? He says he does.<\/p>\n

As for Democratic promises to broaden the number of districts in play and take the fight to the GOP this year, Matsui said that the DCCC has “30 strong candidates” in 27 Republican-held districts.<\/p>\n

“As part of our effort to expand the playing field, we have been successful in recruiting candidates in Illinois’ 8th, Missouri’s 6th and Nebraska’s 1st and 2nd districts,” he added.<\/p>\n

Each of these seats has shown a willingness to support Democrats at times in statewide contests, but they have not been seriously targeted in the past several cycles.<\/p>\n

Matsui also touts Democrats’ chances in other seats not targeted in recent cycles, like Kansas’ 2nd district, Connecticut’s 4th district and Indiana’s 2nd district.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The reality is no one expects the Dems to be able to win the House back this year. But no one expected the GOP to win a majority in 1994 and no one expected the Dems to buck history and gain seats in the mid-term elections of 1998.<\/p>\n

We already surprised observers by winning in Kentucky in February and we’re poised to win another special election in South Dakota in June. The last time a party won picked up two House seats in special elections was the GOP in ’94 — on route to winning a House majority. Can history repeat itself?<\/p>\n

“We have laid the groundwork for victory and we will be successful in our Campaign for a New Majority,” Matsui writes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I sure hope so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, I wrote about the battle for control of the Senate and how the Dems’ chances have improved in recent months. But that’s the Senate; how does the House look? No matter how predisposed one is to optimism, seeing a scenario in which we’ll get the House back is difficult, but not impossible. There are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}