'Reality is setting in' as Democrats brace for a red wave in the House

AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib

Deliver this one straight into my veins, NY Times:

Republicans are pressing their advantage deep into Democratic territory in the closing stretch of the 2022 campaign, competing for an abundance of House seats amid growing signs that voters are poised to punish President Biden’s party even in the bluest parts of America.

Republicans need to win only a handful of seats to take over the House of Representatives, which Democrats now control by a narrow margin of 220-212. But with two weeks until the election, Republicans are looking to run up the score and win a more expansive — and governable —majority by vying for districts in Democratic bastions, including in Rhode Island, which has not sent a Republican to Congress for nearly three decades.

“We thought for a little bit that we could defy gravity, but the reality is setting in,” said Sean McElwee, executive director of Data for Progress, a progressive research and polling firm. With Democrats on the defensive in so many places, Mr. McElwee said the goal should now be to limit the party’s losses so it could conceivably try to take back the House in 2024.

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And that’s not idle talk, it’s a fair description of where Democrats are spending their money in hopes of remaining competitive.

Of the 46 House races that had seen at least $3 million in outside spending through this past weekend, 42 of them were carried by Mr. Biden in 2020, according to data compiled by Rob Pyers, the research director for the California Target Book, which analyzes political races.

Eleven of the districts most flooded with money are seats that Mr. Biden carried by 10 percentage points or more. That is a remarkable number of solidly Democratic seats for Republicans to be contesting.

One of the places Democrats are now trying to limit the damage is in New York where the head of the DCCC is one of the Democrats in trouble.

House Democrats’ campaign arm is spending big to defend its chief, New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, from mounting GOP threats.

The Maloney-run Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee will spend just over $600,000 on air cover for him starting Tuesday as he battles challenger Michael Lawler in a more-competitive-than-expected race…

Many in the party feel they have no choice but to protect Maloney, whose loss as chair of the DCCC would be a massive embarrassment for the party.

Another spot that is a clear indicator that Democrats are playing defense is Rhode Island. I wrote about Allan Fung two weeks ago. FiveThirtyEight is calling that race a dead heat but polls have consistently shown Fung ahead in a district that Biden won by 14 points in 2020. First Lady Jill Biden will be visiting the area tomorrow in an attempt to turn things around.

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The whole story is pretty glorious and was clearly too much to take for some commenters like this guy.

I don’t think it helps the cause of electoral victory for Democrats by trumpeting doom and gloom all over the front page. How about declaring in 72 font all the benefits to society should Democrats prevail over MAGA?

Don’t report the news if it’s bad for Democrats! There’s a lot more copium flowing in the comments but I’ll wrap this up with this comment by someone who actually makes sense.

Instead of repeating the same tired lines about how democratically electing Republicans is somehow the “end of democracy” and the usual condescending attitude toward people who live different lifestyles, have different perspectives, and different worries in their lives, I hope my fellow commenters think for once about why this Red Wave is happening. What does it say about the Democrats if they are losing across the board to Republicans? How toxic is the party brand and platform to repel voters to Republicans? Ponder these and maybe you will arrive at some interesting conclusions.

We’ll know in a couple weeks how this all turned out. But as of now it really doesn’t look like the Dobbs decision is going to save Democrats, not even some of the ones who thought they were safe in blue states. What will it add up to? Here’s Cook Political’s latest guess.

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