Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/10/19/24-seats-to-flip-congress.html
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No worries: Democrats will blow their funding cutting each other to pieces in the primaries, and then the Koch Bros et al. will pour the legal maximum into each Republican candidate while simultaneously funding PACs to place attack ads that portray the prevailing Democrat as an incompetent baby killing socialist.
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Is that fact good because it implies they’re probably going to win against their crusty republican competitors?
I think it’s rather chilling that there is such a close connection between money (especially when you consider where the money stems from) and political success in the US.
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District 5 includes areas just South of a former Confederate capital and sandwiched between rural appalachia and a state that left the Union once. It’s going to cost more than that for it to turn blue. Incidentally Dist. 5 is home to lots of horse ranches, a few vineyards and expensive tracts of coveted Virginia properties (read former plantations). Surely another $92k can be squeezed out of the area. Oh, and Charlottesville too. Fingers crossed.
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Jeez, I do hope they don’t beat the pants of those TGOP’ers, they’re so sensitive ya know.
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Freakonomics touched on this. IIRC their conclusion is that more money isn’t necessarily the CAUSE of winning. It is that people are more willing to back who they think will win.
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Precisely. Why should Republicans waste money when the Democrats will cannibalize each other over such important issues as who has received more fan mail from Bernie Sanders?
Doesn’t gerrymandering mean that it doesn’t really matter?
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Democrats are not, overall, facing too many primaries; in fact, there are places they have a hard time fielding even one candidate. It’s the Tea Party that has been eviscerating dozens incumbents by the dozen, and thank goodness for that.
Also, I’ve heard the billionaires are slamming their wallets shut because of the failure of Trumpcare. That doesn’t mean it’s going to stay that way, but R’s are getting pretty desperate to pass something - anything - on tax cuts for you-know-who.
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That does make this apparently good news problematic. How much of this money is coming from outside sources or national bundlers like ActBlue? All those people aren’t voting in these districts.
Right. My first thought was, “If these are safe republican districts, the republicans probably aren’t bothering to fund-raise, whereas the democrats need to vastly outspend to even have a chance of winning.”
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Yes, it’s better if we just let the party leaders pick who we’ll vote for. Think of all the time and money and effort we’d save if we just got rid of those pesky competitive primaries and gave in to the wisdom of the DNC.
Y’all remember that HRC massively outspent Trump in the Presidential election, no?
Having money beats being broke, but the power of conventional political marketing is fading. The market is saturated and nobody believes the bullshit in the ads.
You can’t fix this by sending some cash and waiting for 2018. Personal involvement is required.
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Oh, please. Don’t trot out that tired straw-man.
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Something is expected for that money.
Neo-liberal democrats doubling down in corporate donations is not a hopeful outlook.
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We were ever given the option? We get to vote for candidates who are pre vetted by money. The soviets had elections too.
Then what alternative do you propose?
Wow- that 5th district, certainly isn’t designed for compactness, is it.
Their attempt to dilute the Charlottesville voters has resulted in a district that splays out from one side of the state to the other, like a giant cartographic middle finger raised in the faces of any voter who thought that their choices might have a chance of determining the election outcome
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She also won the popular vote by 3 M votes. There’s no electoral college in theses races.
Yes, but not in the right places.
