The DCCC is merely wasting money trying to save Kanjorski. It’s time to put the party ahead of one individual. The possibility of picking up three seats or more is being sacrificed in an attempt to save just one vulnerable incumbent.
Kanjorski is to the Democrats what Phil Crane was to the Republicans. An appropriate analogy would be asking a 45 year old to suit up and placing him on the football field to make a touchdown in the final quarter of the game with no timeouts remaining: it simply will not happen.
Time’s Up!! Games Over!!
Pack up the caravan and move spending into races that are developing such as Dent in the neighboring district, Buyer in Indiana, Lungren in CA, or Bartlett in Maryland. Bartlett also has similar factors working against him which are working against Kanjorski: age and tenure. Buyer and Lungren have tenure against them.
Watching Kanjorski’s ads one can not help but feel sorry. Kanjorski appears tired and ready to retire, yet he obviously wants to do it on his own terms. Bartlett also has age working against him as it did for both Crane and Roth in Delaware. Additionally, this is a change election so obviously incumbents with the longest tenure appear to be more endangered than in previous elections (Young, Shays, Kanjorski, Rohrabacher, and Knollenberg).
Democrats have already lost Mahoney’s seat, now it’s time to let Kanjorski battle it out on his own. Obviously voters do not want Barletta and surely he will be a one termer in a district such as this. However, in the event that he is not, then expect him to be redistricted out or into an unfavorable district come 2012 (PA is on track to lose a seat). In a change election it’s simply difficult to ask voters to choose someone who has made erratic mistakes and created his own vulnerabilities, even when he’s a Democrat and would make a more effective representative.
I think Democrats can afford to lose one seat while picking up and consolidating the remaining seats in the Northeast:
– English
– Dent
– Kuhl
– Reynolds Open Seat
– Fossella Open Seat
– Ferguson Open Seat
– Walsh Open Seat
– Bartlett
– Gilchest Open Seat
– Ferguson Open Seat
– Davis Open Seat
Therefore, let’s forfeit one here and pick up 11 others.
And if a domino effect is created, then with luck, Garrett, Gerlach, Murphy (PA), and King are all ripe for the taking. However, these are long shots at best.
The only three seats that appear to create problems for Democrats in the Northeast are:
– Saxton’s Open Seat – The NRCC is spending heavy to get their extreme ideologue across the line.
– Shays – He has shown resiliance and Himes has a very high unknown percentage, even after much spending. This does not bode well since independents who have always been the deciding factor in Shays re-election, will go with Shays over the unknown.
– Wolf – Another incumbent with tenure, yet Feder hasn’t received funding from the DCCC as in 2006.
It’s also imperitive that the DCCC retain the only two vulnerable Democrats in the Northeast: Carney and Shea-Porter.
The NRCC’s recruitment failures allowed many of the 2006 freshman in the Northeast to slide by with very little or weak opposition: Hodes, Courtney, Murphy, Hall, Arcuri, Gillibrand, and Altmire.
Throwing individuals under the bus is never a good thing, yet many other capable candidates are waiting at the next stop for their turn at the wheel.
Hopefully the DCCC gets the message and understands the task at hand.
from Florida, unfortunately, are both going down this cycle.
Everyone on here is going to be in for a big surprise on election night when Kanjorski wins and it’s not even a nailbiter.
Sorry, but while I’m no fan of Kanjorski, I think the the idea of the DCCC pulling out of a close race in a Democratic district (no matter how flawed the incumbent is) to allow Barletta to win this seat is misguided for several reasons.
1. Barletta would become the Tom Tancredo of the new Congress — giving a huge platform for his special brand of anti-immigrant populism. No thanks. It would be wrong to send the message that the DCCC will back down against this kind of candidate. The DCCC needs to make sure our allies in the Latino community, the labour community, and others who have a stake in this race don’t think we’re abandoning them against a racist challenger.
2. This district is prime territory in the battle for Pennsylvania’s electoral votes… cutting loose the Democratic Congressional candidate would weaken important GOTV efforts for the entire ticket, suppress Democratic vote turnout, and potentially hurt Obama if Pennsylvania gets tighter.
3. The race is close, and Kanjorski can win certainly win this. While Barletta opened up a 10 pt lead for a while, the most recent poll in this race shows it closing again, with Kanjorski cutting that lead in half to within 5%: now showing it as 40%-35%. With the economy taking over as the only reason issue in the district (kicking immigration off the plate), the dynamic of the race swings back in favour of the Democrats.
It isn’t be the equivalent of throwing money after an incumbent (like Mahoney) who can’t win. If I was making decisions at the DCCC, I’d prioritize a close incumbent race over longer shot challenger races with remote possibilities for pay-off short of a total wave. (Yes, I think the DCCC should be supporting the challengers against Dent, Bartlett, Wolff, etc… but sinking serious money into those races while bailing on a much closer race in a Democratic district would not be a good decision.)
4. The DCCC isn’t hurting for cash — they’ve got plenty of money to throw into as many races as they want. They are already spending huge for Shea-Porter and Carney, and pumping plenty of cash into all of the close races. Part of the reason they took out the $15 million loan this week was to have enough to play in as many of the emerging races as possible as the environment becomes much more positive for Democratic candidates in unlikely districts. The DCCC is already on the air in more than 50 districts (some for potentially vulnerable incumbents, but the vast majority for challengers). According to yesterday’s Politico report:
I’d love to see Kanjo be re-elected and then retiring next cycle (with a push from Rahm and Van Hollen and Rendell etc), but bailing on a viable incumbent in a close race would be a huge mistake.
and, you never know, Barletta might be more than a one term wonder. I think Kanjorski is going to retire at any rate, in the next few years. The way I see it strongly Democratic leaning Scranton and some of the other strong, Democrat areas on the outer end of his district will get drawn into Carney’s district, (if he wins reelection which looks likely), perhaps turning his district in a Republican leaning district. He’d have a much easier time then. Then just combine the rest of Kanjorski’s district with Dents. At the same time I’d dump one or two of the extroadinarily, ancestrally, conservative rural counties at the edge Carney’s district into neighboring Rep John Peterson’s district, where they use to be. The overall effect would be to give Carney a lot more moderate, and faborable a district. He looks like he’s actually going to slip by this year, which I thought was against all odds when he only managed 54% against Sherwood. But the atmosphere is too harsh for Republicans, even here where polling shows Obama to be doing much better than Kerry, and Republicans lost the recruitment battle. All their top choices declined, state senators, sherriffs, DAs, Federal Prosecutors, all said no. So they had to have a negative, viscious months long primary, (very expensive), and were left with a second tier candidate anyway. This was the best chain of events we could have possibly hoped for, and the only one that could have allowed Carney to win reelection this year.
The DCCC is not gonna pull out and reallocate the money to more likely races. The D-trip is an incumbent protection program first. It is always in large part funded by assessments, ie, contributions from the incumbent Members. It is NOT going to abandon one. Not. And nobody has been more in favor of broadening the battlefront than me.
That said, I agree that Kanjorski is in a terrible spot. I’m a member of long standing in AARP 🙁 but I have to tell you, I saw his ad and he looks older than McSame, older than Sen Robert Byrd looks in the Anne Barth endorsement ad. He’s got the wrong face for a change election.
Barletta got himself famous, and that gave him a good start. On the issues and in a Democratic year he might still lose. But on the face of it, Kanjorski is in deep trouble.