This blog continues the discussion we began with Epic Journey: The 2008 Elections and American Politics (Rowman and Littlefield, 2009).The next book in this series is The Comeback: the 2024 Elections and American Politics (Bloomsbury, 2025).
In 26 years in Congress, Rep. Anna Eshoo has always won reelection by at least 20 points. The Democrat is virtually certain to win big once again in November, buoyed largely by voters in her wealthy Silicon Valley district who do not struggle to pay for their prescription drugs.
So why is a political action committee focused on high drug prices bothering to sink $500,000 into attack ads against her?
The ad blitz from Patients for Affordable Drugs highlights the unorthodox tack the group is taking in the 2018 midterm elections: intervening in races in which there is no hope of altering the outcome.
Of the nine congressional and gubernatorial races in which P4AD has supported or opposed candidates to date, just three or four are competitive, according to STAT’s analysis of election forecasts from the website FiveThirtyEight.
And of the at least $8 million the group has spent in total, as much as $6 million has gone to the races in which the outcome has long been determined.
P4AD, which is funded mainly by the billionaire Houston couple John and Laura Arnold, says that where its money can’t help decide a race, it can still send a message: that politicians running campaigns funded by drug companies will face retribution. But that, too, is a dubious strategy, experts say.
If the goal is to make politicians hesitate before accepting a check, “pharma’s not at the stage of the NRA,” said Bob Blendon, a Harvard professor who studies the politics of health care. “It’s going to be years before somebody runs in this state or that with a major biotech presence [and says] they’re not going to accept [drug industry] funding. I’m not sure it’s a realistic goal.”
Democrats will seek a firsthand look at President Trump’s tax returns if they take control of the House or Senate after next month’s election, according to the key lawmakers who would gain the authority to get the documents.
Rep. Richard Neal (D., Mass.), in line to lead the House Ways and Means Committee if Democrats win that chamber, said he would get the documents, which the president has declined to release voluntarily.
“Yes,” Mr. Neal said when asked if he would request the returns. “We will do that.”
Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) followed Mr. Neal on Wednesday, saying for the first time that he would request the tax returns if he became Finance Committee chairman in January.
Mr. Trump’s tax returns aren’t a big part of Democrats’ midterm campaigns, but they were a significant issue during the 2016 presidential election. House Democrats have repeatedly tried to get Congress to use its existing authority to obtain the returns, failing on more than a dozen votes since his inauguration.
Upon written request from the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives, the chairman of the Committee on Finance of the Senate, or the chairman of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Secretary shall furnish such committee with any return or return information specified in such request, except that any return or return information which can be associated with, or otherwise identify, directly or indirectly, a particular taxpayer shall be furnished to such committee only when sitting in closed executive session unless such taxpayer otherwise consents in writing to such disclosure.
All told, Democratic candidates and their supportive outside groups will have spent $35 million on television advertising between August and the November elections.
That’s a $7 million advantage over the amount Republican candidates and their supporters have dedicated to television time in the same period.
In Southern California, polls conducted by Siena College for The New York Times show Democrats leading in races for seats held by [Mimi] Walters, who is seeking another term, and Darrell Issa (R), who is retiring.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R) is tied with his Democratic rival, while Rep. Steve Knight (R) holds just a 2-point lead over his challenger.
A Monmouth University poll shows former Assemblywoman Young Kim (R) leading philanthropist Gil Cisneros (D), 49 percent to 43 percent, in another Los Angeles-area district.
No reliable public surveys have been taken in districts held by Reps. Jeff Denham (R) and David Valadao (R), both in the Central Valley.
Democratic candidates have reserved more television time than their Republican rivals in all seven races, leaving Republican outside groups to pick up the slack.
Democrats across the state will try to make their congressional races a referendum on Trump, telling voters that a vote against “fill-in-the-Republican” is a chance to vote against the president.
An internal poll taken in mid-September for Porter by the Global Strategy Group found her leading Walters, the GOP incumbent, 46 percent to 43 percent. A memo from the pollster said Trump is very unpopular in the Republican-leaning district, with an approval rating of just 39 percent.
“Perhaps even more important,” the memo continued, “Democrats are much more excited to vote, as 79 percent of registered Democrats are either very or somewhat excited, compared to just 57 percent of Republicans.”
Take Dave Brat. At a private fundraiser in early September, the Virginia Republican joked to a roomful of Republicans about how he mimics archconservative House Freedom Caucus founder Jim Jordan on Fox News when discussing the FBI’s Russia investigation. He then encouraged Sebastian Gorka, a controversial former adviser to President Donald Trump, to get involved in Brat's campaign to gin up the base, according to a recording of the private event obtained by POLITICO.
But in TV ads, Brat has touted his work on issues that transcend party lines. One of them features images of puppies playing with children, and a narrator touting the congressman's work “to stop a federal agency from conducting cruel medical research on dogs.”
The two sides of Brat, a member of the Freedom Caucus, highlight the dissonant strategies House Republicans are deploying in their struggle to keep the House. As national Republicans implore endangered members to localize their races and tout bipartisan victories, hard-liners are urging them to embrace the president to get Trump voters to the polls.
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During a recent event with Republican women in Southern California, Republican candidate Diane Harkey described the predicament she's facing in trying to succeed Darrell Issa in a swing district. According to a recording obtained by POLITICO, Harkey said, “We need to get the Trump voters out” and tried to brainstorm ways to do it while also attracting independents.
“In order to hold this election, we're going to have to get Republican voters to vote at least 2 percentage points higher than they normally do in a midterm,” she said. “You know, Trump voters are not really excited to turn out. Hopefully, we can get them to turn out... they'll turn out for the presidential; they won't necessarily turn out for this.”
Harkey proposed that local Republicans make the election about Democrats potentially trying to impeach Trump and roll back the GOP tax cuts.
The House ratings update you’ve been waiting anxiously for is finally here! Again, what distinguishes my forecast from others is that it produced a 42 seat pick up back on July 1. So what we mostly see in this update, and the ones that will follow it, is the solidification of which seats will flip over to the Democrats on November 6th. If you have not already done so, please go back and read the original post of my House forecast, which explains my methodology, which is different than the methods used by my friends over at Crystal Ball, RealClearPolitics,Inside Elections, Cook Political Report, and FiveThirtyEight. It also introduces you to a new theory of voting behavior, which argues that the fate of House Republicans was sealed back on November 9th 2016 when Donald Trump became the unlikely winner of the Electoral College, and thus the presidency. That win cemented a big enthusiasm gap in favor of Democrats at least through 2020 due to something called negative partisanship, which argues that in the polarized era, people’s hatred or fear of the “other party” is a major factor driving partisan turnout in midterms and off-year or special elections. The party locked out of power experiences a turnout surge and produces a wave election that favors their own candidates. In the House this means Democrats are all but guaranteed to take over control of the House and will most likely hold onto most of the “Trump state” Senate seats as well as be competitive in states normally out of reach for them such as Texas senate and Georgia governor, both of which are now being recognized by other outlets as competitive races.
Hundreds of thousands of online donors are pouring gobs of cash into Democratic House campaigns at an accelerating clip — a bulwark against a late-summer advertising assault that Republicans hope could save their majority.
Republicans have long seen their outside-money advantage as a key factor in the battle for the House, with Congressional Leadership Fund pledging to spend a massive $100 million in 2018. The super PAC’s plan is to attack Democrats early and often, and it unleashed a salvo of TV attack ads in 15 districts before Labor Day, seeking to disqualify Democrats before the fall campaign even heated up.
But the gush of online money to Democratic candidates has allowed them to hit the airwaves themselves earlier than ever, blunting the GOP’s game plan. Democrats in nearly 20 districts aired TV ads first to define themselves before facing GOP attacks, according to a review of TV spending totals shared with POLITICO. In another seven districts, CLF went on offense first.
That sustained cash flow has extended Democrats’ already formidable edge in the fight for control of the House. Democratic House candidates raised more than $35.8 million online in August, according to a POLITICO analysis of Federal Election Commission data from ActBlue, the Democratic online fundraising platform. That’s up nearly sixfold from House Democrats’ online total of $6.2 million in August 2016, during the last election.
The NRCC canceled the ads in recent days, GOP sources confirm, walking away from Yoder in a suburban Kansas City district that President Trump lost by 1 point in 2016. Yoder is facing attorney and former mixed martial arts fighter Sharice Davids in the seat. If she wins, which now looks likely, she’ll become the first Native American woman and only the second openly gay woman ever to be elected to Congress.
He joins Reps. Mike Coffman (R-CO), Mike Bishop (R-MI), Barbara Comstock (R-VA), Rod Blum (R-IA) and Keith Rothfus (R-PA) as incumbents that either the NRCC or the Congressional Leadership Fund, the GOP’s main super-PAC, have been forced to give up on to save their money for more winnable districts.
As Democrats brace for a November wave that threatens their control of the House, party leaders are preparing a brutal triage of their own members in hopes of saving enough seats to keep a slim grip on the majority.
In the next two weeks, Democratic leaders will review new polls and other data that show whether vulnerable incumbents have a path to victory. If not, the party is poised to redirect money to concentrate on trying to protect up to two dozen lawmakers who appear to be in the strongest position to fend off their challengers.
“We are going to have to win these races one by one,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, conceding that the party would ultimately cut loose members who had not gained ground.
With the midterm campaign entering its final two months, Democrats acknowledged that several races could quickly move out of their reach, including re-election bids by Representatives Betsy Markey of Colorado, Tom Perriello of Virginia, Mary Jo Kilroy of Ohio and Frank Kratovil Jr. of Maryland, whose districts were among the 55 Democrats won from Republicans in the last two election cycles.
Representatives John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina, chairman of the Budget Committee, and Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota, who is seeking a 10th term, are among the senior Democrats who have appeared to gain little ground in the summer months in the toxic political environment. A sputtering economy and discontent with Washington have created a high sense of voter unease that has also put control
In Defying the Odds, we discuss the early stages of the 2016 campaign, when many candidates were unknowns. We are now in the early stages of the 2020 race.
Most people in the US don’t know much about Montana, and know even less about its governor. But from one perspective, Bullock’s anonymity is an advantage. Unlike Hillary Clinton, who battled four decades of accumulated narrative about who she was and what she stood for, the ignorance around Bullock allows him to write his own, unexpected, and — at least for the Democrats who saw him in Iowa — impressive story of how effective he’s been as a leader.
So how can a straight white man move forward amid an atmosphere, at least among Democrats, that’s resistant to, or even repelled by, the idea of more straight white men in power? By trying to reach voters, at least in pivotal primary states, the old-fashioned way: one-on-one, on the ground in Iowa, while other candidates are keeping their message national. Bullock is going for that Jimmy Carter, decent dad appeal. He’s the opposite of Trump, who is definitionally not nice, intentionally abrasive, purposefully uneducated. His strategy isn’t to eclipse Trump, but to offer an entirely different narrative — not to make America great again, but to make politics nontoxic, or at least less toxic, again.
If Bullock makes a serious run for president, it’ll be because what his candidacy represents — common civility, decency, and the fight against corruption — outweighs what “white male politician” has come to represent, especially for the women and people of color so crucial to the Democratic voting coalition. In our current cultural moment, that’s a big ask. The only way to do it: by speaking passionately and convincingly to the issues that Democratic voters care about. Bullock’s betting that if he can do that, it doesn’t matter if most people don’t know his name right now. There’s time. They will.
