Democrats Need to Run the [Northam and] Lamb Strategy Over and Over

With progressives energized and basically anyone other than white supremacists, Christian extremists and greed driven vulture capitalists coming to the conclusion that Trump/Pence and the larger Republican Party are a cancer on the nation, Democrats have a golden opportunity to win in a wave come November, 2018.  To do so, they need to run good candidates, run organized and interlinked ground games to get voters to the polls and avoid going to far to the left.  Sadly, many liberal activists do not grasp the reality that winning and defeating Republicans, not electing the most ideologically pure candidate, is the goal.  Ralph Northam in Virginia and Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania show the strategy that Democrats need to replicate over and over again.   Whether or not far left liberals will get their heads out of the asses is the big question.  A piece in New York Magazine lays out what Democrats ought to do.  Here are article highlights:

Democrats need to win two dozen Republican seats to gain a House majority. Approximately 118 districts have more Democratic-leaning electorates than the 18th district of Pennsylvania, which voted for Donald Trump by nearly 20 points, and which Democrat Conor Lamb turned into a competitive race. Several days before the election, Republicans were already spreading the word that the discouraging outcome would be the idiosyncratic result of the unusual candidates on the ballot.

Republican candidate Rick Saccone was not an especially weak nominee, having won several races in competitive environments before. . . . . It is also true that Conor Lamb was an especially strong candidate: Young and lacking a voting record to be picked apart, with a background as a Marine, Lamb cut a favorable profile in comparison with the lifelong politician he faced.

And there are a lot of Conor Lambs out there. Very early in the election cycle, Democrats recruited candidates with nontraditional backgrounds, especially in the military, who would appeal to voters in red districts.  “A rough profile of [Democrats’] ideal candidate has started to emerge: veterans, preferably with small business experience too,” reported Politico last April. . . . . The next month, Axios reported that Republicans were already worried about “Democrats recruiting unusually high-quality House candidates for the 2018 midterms.”

Recruiting veterans is an effective strategy for overcoming the Republican tilt of the House map, which requires Democrats to contest deeply conservative territory in an attempt to gain a majority. Republicans have used ethnonationalist themes for decades to sell voters on an unpopular economic agenda: Election messaging is all American flags, crime, and being tough on terrorism, while the policy agenda is about lax business regulation and regressive tax-cutting. 

This disconnect between politics and policy is Republicans’ weakest point. Their strategy can be hacked. . . . . A candidate with a compelling biography — especially those with a military background — can disarm these attacks pretty easily. It is not a panacea, but a major advantage nonetheless.

[O]ne of the ways in which Democrats benefitted from the massive counter-mobilization that formed immediately after the 2016 election is an unusually high number of people willing to rearrange their lives around the goal of saving their country from an unfit president. In many cases, the possibly corny and self-serving narrative of the “military veteran called to serve their country once again” actually applies. Democrats have more or less unanimously regarded a Trump presidency and a pliant Republican Congress as a national emergency.

The unusual success Lamb showed in running a competitive race in Trump country is not a total fluke, but rather proof of concept for a strategy that could replicate itself across the country.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both sought to block Northam's nomination - a fact that means I will NEVER vote for either of them if the opportunity arises - in favor of a false leftist.  Had they succeeded, a Republican would now likely be in the Governor's mansion in Richmond. Had similar urges prevailed in Pennsylvania's 18th District, a Republican would have won there as well.  Democrats need to embrace this reality and back candidates accordingly.

Absentee Ballots May Cement Democrat Upset in Pennsylvania

At times I have to think Republicans are living in a bubble or alternate universe - just like the Christofascists who make up a key element of their party's base.  They ignore reliable and mostly fact based news outlets preferring propaganda TV on Fox News and similar outlets that tell them only what they want to hear and play up to their worse prejudices, even fanning hatred at times.  They also continue to ignore the reality that less than 30% of registered voters supported Trump in 2016.  A huge portion of voters stayed home seemingly disliking both main party candidates.  That they stayed home in November, 2016, doesn't mean they will always stay home on election day or that they aren't finding the Trump//Pence regime to be nothing short of repulsive.  Republicans in Congress and down the ballot may be willing to sell their souls for short term gain, but it increasingly appears that the majority of Americans have not thrown away concern for decency and/or a longing for proper behavior by the occupant of the White House.  Thus, at the moment, Conor Lamb, a Democrat remains in the lead in Pennsylvania's 18th District where Trump won by 20 points in 2016.  Lamb's lead may well be cemented by absentee ballots which skew towards Democrat leaning Alleghany County.   A column in the New York Times underscores why Republicans ought to be very worried even if their candidate some how squeaks out a win.  Here are highlights:

It’s hard to imagine a candidate with friendlier looks, a more harmless demeanor and a gentler-sounding surname than Conor Lamb.

It’s hard to imagine a message for the G.O.P. scarier than the one that Lamb, a Democrat, just delivered in a special House election in Pennsylvania’s 18th district, where he led his Republican opponent, Rick Saccone, by less than 1,000 votes in a race that remained too close to call on Wednesday morning.

Lamb declared victory. But even if he somehow ends up losing, Democrats have reason to rejoice and Republicans to tremble. Just 16 months ago, Donald Trump won this district by 20 points, and its promise as the kind of place brimming with the sort of voters who thrill to him was confirmed by his visit there late last week for a rally in support of Saccone. [Trump] The president put what popularity he retains on the line, and flexed his trademark schoolyard humor with the epithet “Lamb the Sham.” This is all that he has to show for it.

Politically and ideologically, Saccone glued himself to Trump, running a campaign whose slogan might as well have been, “I’m With Him.” Outside Republican groups poured millions into the race, some of it for ads that touted the very tax cuts that are supposed to buoy their hopes to hold onto their House majority in the November midterms.

So Lamb’s showing — win, lose or draw — is remarkable, and it’s of a piece with the victory of Doug Jones, a Democrat, in a special election for the U.S. Senate in Alabama and with what happened last November in Virginia, where Democrats prevailed decisively in the gubernatorial race and picked up a large number of seats in the state’s House of Delegates. Clearly, the opposition to Trump is energized and organized. In the upcoming hours and days, you will hear otherwise. Republican leaders will spin like mad. They’ll make the case that what happened in Pennsylvania was peculiar to Pennsylvania and that there are few omens to be seen in it or lessons to be gleaned. They commenced that effort even before the voting in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, spooked by late polls that suggested serious trouble for Saccone, 60. . . . . They bemoaned everything about him down to his mustache. They noted that Lamb, 33, a handsome (and clean-shaven) military veteran, was straight from central casting . . . . “When your message is simply I am for new leadership and cleaning up Washington, and you look like you just walked out of an Orvis catalog, you are going to connect with voters on both sides of the aisle,” wrote Saleno Zito in the Washington Examiner late last week.

[M]any of the Democrats who will vie to unseat Republican incumbents in House races in November won’t be able to follow Lamb’s playbook. To get through their party’s primaries, they’ll have to stake out more progressive ground than he did, and adopt a more combative, fiery tone. That could undercut their chances of replicating his success.

Indeed, Democrats’ euphoria over how he fared on Tuesday will give way to sharp internal tensions and sustained quarreling over which sorts of candidates — soft-spoken or bold, centrist or liberal, eclectic or pure — the party would be wisest, from a pragmatic standpoint, to promote.

But if the Pennsylvania results put Democrats in an awkward position, they leave Republicans in an even worse place. What exactly is their best strategy for the midterms? Sending President Trump into districts that supposedly smile on him isn’t looking like such a hot proposition. The mantra of “tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts” is obviously no panacea.

And with each passing week — each passing day — the Trump administration’s turbulence intensifies and the scandals and scandal-ettes pile up. Yes, it’s a long way from now until November, and much about the national mood and the playing field can change. But in that yawning stretch of time, Trump can also render himself and his enablers even less attractive. I have faith.

To me, Democrats need to cease internal squabbles and avoid the bullshit like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders sought to inject into the Democrat primary in Virginia.  Thankfully, their effort failed and a far better candidate won the primary.  The same thing needs to happen in districts across America where the real goal should be to defeat Republicans everywhere possible.  Democrats also need to take a lesson from Ralph Northam and Conor Lamb's playbook:  the ground game and turn out the vote effort means EVERYTHING. 

Republicans Trash Their Candidate in Pennsylvania Special Election

Democrat candidate Conor Lamb.

Next Tuesday will see a special election in Pennsylvania that, with luck will see the GOP candidate lose and start a trend that will carry through through November, 2018.  What is interesting is that with the election not even yet past, Republicans are trashing their candidate as if setting the stage to throw him under the bus and blame the electoral loss on the individual candidate rather than the toxicity of today's GOP.  One can only hope that the intra-party backbiting and backstabbing continues - indeed, let's hope the phenomenon escalates. True, the Democrats have a telegenic candidate who has raised lots of money.  But the GOP's real problem is that its main message - GOP/Trump tax cuts and opposition to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi - doesn't energize voters.  Worse yet, voters who crossed party lines to vote for Trump are seemingly having a major case of buyer's remorse.  A piece in Politico looks at the drama playing out around next week's special election. Here are highlights:

Shortly after the new year, Rep. Steve Stivers, the House GOP campaign chief, delivered a stern message to Rick Saccone, the party's special election candidate in Pennsylvania.  You need to start pulling your weight, Stivers implored Saccone, the mustachioed 60-year-old state legislator who is carrying the weight of the Republican Party in a crucial contest next week.

Stivers’ warning, described by two people familiar with the discussion, was intended to put the candidate on notice. The national GOP would be helping him out substantially, Stivers said. But if Saccone didn’t start upping his fundraising game and getting his sluggish campaign in order, he could lose a race that should be a gimme for the party.

Tuesday’s special election, which is being held in a district President Donald Trump won by 20 percentage points, has emerged as the latest testing ground of whether Republicans are headed for a midterm bloodbath. A loss would be wholly embarrassing, many Republicans privately acknowledge, given that it would take place in a state that Trump made a cornerstone of his 2016 victory. And the themes that the GOP has highlighted in the special election — namely tax cuts and opposition to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — are the centerpieces of the party’s 2018 campaign plan.

But as election day grows closer, the national GOP is increasingly pinning the blame on Saccone. In interviews with nearly two dozen administration officials, senior House Republicans and top party strategists, Saccone was nearly universally panned as a deeply underwhelming candidate who leaned excessively on the national party to execute a massive, multimillion-dollar rescue effort.

They describe a candidate who largely ignored pleas to raise the money he needed, who blindsided the White House and the national party with his choice of a political strategist, and whose amateur-style social media feed included low-quality videos of him at a local bar and yukking it up with Santa. To make matters worse, Saccone is up against a Democratic rival the party could hardly have engineered had it tried: Conor Lamb, an Ivy League-educated 33-year-old Marine veteran and former federal prosecutor.

Lamb has used a nearly $4 million war chest to cast himself as independent of his party, airing slickly produced TV ads underscoring his aversion to Pelosi and his fondness for shooting machine guns. He has a campaign staff of 16 full-time employees, compared with just four for Saccone. . . . .The Saccone campaign declined to comment.

Many Republicans expect that Saccone will ultimately prevail, thanks largely to the conservative nature of the southwestern Pennsylvania district and the national GOP’s effort. Yet three senior party strategists said they’d reviewed internal polling data in recent days pointing to a narrow Lamb lead, raising alarms. And this week, the Republican National Committee conducted a data analysis finding that just 47 percent of voters in the district viewed Saccone favorably, 3 percentage points lower than Trump.

With Trump set to campaign with Saccone on Saturday evening, some White House officials have questioned whether the president should scrap the trip, fearful that a Saccone loss would be seen as even more of a rebuke to the president. But Trump has told aides in recent days he’s going anyway, convinced that he’ll likely be blamed for a defeat regardless.

Capitol Hill Republicans had hoped for another nominee. But late last year, when Pennsylvania Republicans selected their candidate to run in the race, the two prospects favored by House GOP leaders — state Sens. Guy Reschenthaler and Kim Ward — lost to Saccone.

Short on campaign cash of his own, Saccone has relied almost entirely on the national party and outside groups to wage a media blitz on his behalf. Those involved in the effort have been horrified at the candidate’s few attempts at TV advertising, one of which featured him sitting at a kitchen table next to a coffee mug emblazoned with the American flag.

While Saccone has a compelling biography — like Lamb, he served in the military — the outside groups have found that introducing him to voters, rather than having Saccone do it himself, has proven challenging. The telegenic Lamb, meanwhile, has used his extensive campaign bank account to air a series of commercials highlighting his military service.

Even more troubling for Republicans, because Pennsylvania’s congressional map is being redrawn, the special election district will likely no longer exist by the time of the November election. But with so much attention trained on the race, House GOP leaders determined they had little choice but to spend whatever is needed to pull Saccone over the finish line.

Some Republicans say it’s unfair to pin the blame solely on Saccone. They argue that his struggles reflect the broader challenges the party is facing as the midterms approach.

Particularly concerning, they say, is the fact that the millions of dollars Republicans have spent — much of it highlighting the GOP tax cuts and attempting to tie Lamb to Pelosi — has failed to move the needle.

Others note that Lamb has adroitly cast himself as a conservative figure, allowing him to win over the scores of blue-collar Democrats in an area that has voted Republican in recent elections.

“This is a seat that is certainly more competitive than it ought to be,” said Rep. Charlie Dent, a moderate Pennsylvania Republican. “Democrats are very energized both in Pennsylvania and nationally, and that’s really the issue.”

If they come up short on Tuesday, House GOP leaders say it will reinforce that candidates need to pull their weight in such a toxic environment for the party.

“In a tough political environment, candidate quality matters more than ever. In an anti-GOP year — which this is shaping up to be — the Republican candidates will need to run much stronger campaigns or be prepared for the national party to cut them loose,” said Ken Spain, who served as a senior aide at the NRCC during the GOP’s 2010 House takeover.

After Labor Day, Spain added, there would likely be dozens of seats in play. And the national party, he said, would be “unlikely to prop up weak candidates by doling out millions in political welfare like they did in this race.”

I sincerely hope that Lamb wins the election and sends even more Republicans into panic mode - perhaps causing more incumbents to decide on retiring rather than run the risk of electoral defeat.