GOP Faces Challengers In 226 House Seats While Struggling To Raise Cash For Midterms

@EricBoehlert
GOP Faces Challengers In 226 House Seats While Struggling To Raise Cash For Midterms

Reprinted with permission from Shareblue.com

 

Passing a Republican tax bill late last year has done nothing to improve the GOP’s chances in the upcoming midterm elections. Meanwhile, Democrats continue to raise way more money than their opponents, as the party expands the map of competitive races in the House to 101 contests.

The bipartisan Cook Political Report just updated the status of 21 House races and moved the needle in all 21 races in the direction of Democrats.

“Despite the myriad advantages of incumbency and control of Congress, there are more House members with less cash on hand than their Democratic challengers than the quarter before,” Politico reports.

Indeed, more than 40 House Republican incumbents were outraised in the final quarter of 2017 by their Democratic opponents.

Context: In 2006, Republicans lost 31 seats in the House. If Republicans lose 24 seats this November, Democrat will regain control of the chamber.

Feeling emboldened, Democratic strategists will announce this week they are expanding their map of battleground districts to 101. It’s the party’s most ambitious campaign blueprint in a decade.

That’s one reason so many Republicans are opting out this cycle — they just don’t see a way to compete with Democrats. A record number have already announced they will not seek re-election this year.

Note that the GOP is having trouble not only recruiting strong candidates in some districts, but recruiting sane candidates in some districts. In Illinois, an avowed Nazi and white supremacist stands poised to become a GOP congressional nominee simply because he’s the only Republican willing to run.

Meanwhile, “Democrats are now fielding candidates in all but 12 of the 238 districts held by Republicans,” NBC reports, “including in places like Alabama, where Democrats are competing in every single district for the first time in years.”

Election experts continue to see the pendulum swing toward Democrats.

In announcing its new race ratings, the Cook Political Report noted, “If anything, that still understates Democrats’ potential in individual races.”

 

Advertising

Start your day with National Memo Newsletter

Know first.

The opinions that matter. Delivered to your inbox every morning

Moms For Libertine! And Why We Will Never Run Out Of Pious Frauds

Bridget Ziegler

It’s gotten to where it’s almost axiomatic in American politics: Show me somebody who gets TV face-time railing against others’ sexual sins, and I’ll show you somebody hiding naughty secrets. The latest example is an amusing scandal involving “Moms for Liberty,” the Florida-based right-wing organization that made its name by publicizing what this column described as “queers under the bed and the preposterous idea that the nation’s public-school librarians and grade-school teachers are plotting the sexual subversion of small children.”

Keep reading...Show less
Donald Trump
Photo by The White House

The latest ad from The Lincoln Project is titled “Feeble,” and it strings together a collection of Donald Trump’s “greatest hits” when it comes to stumbling over words, lurching around the podium, and repeatedly forgetting that Barack Obama is no longer president. While showcasing Trump’s two-handed efforts to sip from a water bottle and his running into the backdrop of a rally stage, the narrator asks questions like “Are you sure you don’t have dementia?” She also whispers that “[i]t runs in the family.”

Keep reading...Show less
{{ post.roar_specific_data.api_data.analytics }}