Agenda to follow. A busy two weeks.

Indivisible Elmwood
Time: Sep 27, 2020 04:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

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I don’t have a cool graph, but here is an updated look at Senate races. Most of the Cash on Hand figures are completely obsolete but it will be end of the month before anything more recent is available.

Besides changing my own bang-for-buck rating, I have changed the Pundit Assessments to match their current predictions. All changes went in our favor.

For an explanation of the re-rankings, see my longer post.

Jeff Carlock of EBAA has done his own calculation of bang for buck in the Senate races, which he has turned into the nifty graph below [filed under: Why didn’t I think of that!]

There’s one important variable that is missing, and not entirely easy to calculate, which is the candidates’ cash on hand, especially after the donation binge that followed RBG’s death.

Today’s NY Times article features Al Gross (AK), as having raised $3MM, doubling his cash on hand, and bringing him over the $8MM he told supporters was all he needed—with six weeks to go. Amy McGrath (who you can see in the chart is the least desirable competitive race for a donation) raked in many more millions out of spite.^{[footnote 1]} You also can’t tell from the chart that Bollier (KS) is far ahead of Marshall in cash, while Greenfield (IA) is not ahead of Ernst in cash, albeit she is in the polls.

I remain skeptical of Jaime Harrison’s chances or value as a contribution, fun as it is to watch Lindsey Graham squirm. In the latest 45-all polling, Harrison is already pulling 95% of Democrats while Lindsey has only 80-some of Republicans. Harrison needs them to skip the Senate race or vote third-party, and Graham will be abasing himself to the max in the confirmation hearings to avoid that. I wonder if it will be his opening or closing statement where he announces that Trump’s farts do, indeed, smell like roses. Harrison raised oodles this week, and more will accrue once the hearings are on TV.

Mike Espy in Mississippi is a better play than Harrison. He is running (again) against Cindy Hyde-Smith. She defeated him in the special election required when Thad Cochrane retired early for health reasons. Espy is now only 5 down in the polls, and should have been put on this chart, but he has a similar issue to Harrison’s: he is maxed out with the state’s large African American population and needs extraordinary good fortune with its whites. Espy’s haul this weekend was a record for him, but was still less than $1MM. I am sure he can use cash better than Harrison, who is reaching saturation.

You can see from the graph that Jon Ossoff (GA) remains an important recipient. The special election in Georgia is rounding into view: The Rev. Raphael Warnock is now ahead of Matt Lieberman in the polls, behind Republican Doug Collins, and close to appointed incumbent Republican Kelly Loeffler. Remember, this is a jungle primary. There is zero chance that either Republican will get 50%, so the point is for Warnock to finish in second place and be ready for the runoff. I don’t know if more money is what Warnock needs to get Matt Lieberman (and two other minor Democrats in single digits) out of the race, or whether some other form of persuasion is necessary. Lieberman was ahead of Warnock early in the race, but his fundraising is weak and almost all Democratic leaders have endorsed Warnock. Maybe this isn’t the year for the Dems to run two white liberal Jews in Georgia?

Incidentally, the other BIPoC Democratic Senate candidates are Adrian Perkins (LA), Marquita Bradshaw (TN), and Nez Perce tribal citizen Paulette Jordan (ID), all of whom will lose big, but who would certainly appreciate a token contribution. (I suppose I should also include Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, but he is an overwhelming favorite.)

I am replacing Gross with Steve Bullock (MT) on our ActBlue page later tonight, not because I am giving up on Gross (I think he is closer to winning than the graph suggests), but because I will take him at his word that he can’t spend more than $8MM, which he has now raised.

^{[note 1]} This left-wing site suggests that McGrath isn’t even a very good candidate, although I doubt anyone could beat McConnell, and has been offered up by the Democratic Establishment because she would have no trouble raising money from out-of-state supporters. (I am not quite sure what the DSCC’s motive would be here: whether to force Mitch to spend in his own backyard so that he can’t redistribute his own funds, or to hope that McGrath would have so much money she could funnel some to the DSCC, or both.)

One reason to feel good about the Presidential race is that House polls show the Democrats in a slightly better position than Biden, who, of course, is still ahead. According to Nate Silver of 538, this is the opposite of 2016, where House races were relatively weak for Democrats. The Democrats’ pickup of six House seats was not impressive. To quantify this, in 2016, Republican House candidates actually received more votes than Democrats. In 2018, that swung nine percentage points to the Blue.

Nathan Gonzales of Inside Elections and Cook Political Report have made some recent prediction changes, most, but not all, in the Democrats’ direction. (Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball is due for update.)

Of Gonzales’ ten Tossups, 7 are Republican-held. The other three are Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (FL-26), Kendra Horn (the big upset winner of OK-5 last cycle), and Max Rose (NY-11: Staten Island and part of Brooklyn). He has no current D seat worse than Tossup.

This actually makes Gonzales more optimistic than I am about TJ Cox (lean D) and Christy Smith (Tossup to defeat Mike Garcia this time). An early September poll had Cox 11 behind, and the bad news is that Valadao had about his same percentage as 2018. Cox has bled support. He needs enormous Biden turnout with no ticket splitting. Smith is also behind in polling. Neither candidate is particularly hurting for money; they just don’t seem to be connecting with voters.

Polling in Iowa is looking good for all three seats we are defending (Finkenauer, Axne, and Hart to replace Loebsack, in descending order of lead). Unfortunately, JD Scholten’s only chance was Republican renomination of bigot Steve King, and the Iowa Republicans retired him in the primary. Scholten is double-digits behind, which is also why Biden is less than 50-50 to take the state. I have no idea if he is related to Hilary Scholten, who is our relatively long-shot (but closer then JD) candidate to replace Republican-turned-Libertarian Justin Amash in MI-03.

The flip side is that both pundits and polls are now giving us real chances in VA-05 (Cameron Webb) and CO-03 (Diane Mitsch Bush), which became competitive only because Republicans nominated extremist nuts. I found no polls of NC-11 in the last month, where callow Republican youth Madison Cawthorn was caught lying about his education, and even whether his ex-girlfriend dumped him before or after he was paralyzed in an automobile accident. (Before.) He was about 5 ahead when these revelations hit.

Darrel Issa is only barely ahead of Ammar Campa-Najjar in CA-50, too.

Bottom line here is: we are probably losing one or two seats, and winning as many as twelve. We start with two locks in NC from redistricting, four in play in Texas (TX-23 with Gina Ortiz Jones is at least Lean D; three tossup seats with D momentum; two more at the edges of possibility), and have more than one viable candidate in PA, OH, and NY. Then there’s a smattering: the only seat in AK, the only one in MT (surprisingly strong poll this week; Republican is a recent arrival to the state), Schupp even in MO-02, etc. We are playing offense all over the map.

Every day that goes by is one more that Trump has been unable to change the election direction: Biden is ahead in polls, in swing state polls, and the Democrats are expanding the Congressional map. We have learned more details about Trump’s plans for martial law and combatting the “insurrection” that would follow an unjustified declaration of victory. My presentation is uploaded here.

We had a good poll (I admit, I am a little skeptical) for Joyce Elliott in Arkansas–02. Her web site. This isn’t a race with up-and-down-the-ballot potential, though.

All types of action items from Indivisible.

Indivisible’s texting schedule (from Judy).

If you want to join in on a letter-writing party Saturday, get in touch with Sally.

Help with texting? Karen volunteers to help, or Judy.

Bill promises some links to phone banks in a separate post.

Keep your spirits up. The thermometer is at almost $25,000.

Topic: Indivisible Elmwood

Agenda: We will talk about various ways to protect voting as well as update about action items.

Time: Sep 13, 2020 04:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

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I have worked as an Election Inspector in several recent elections. I am considering skipping this year because of COVID–19, but I want to encourage those of you with younger family members to have them sign up. This year voting will be over multiple days at consolidated Voting Centers, so the process will be different. Personal Protective Equipment will be supplied.

Crystal Ball issued changed House ratings today, and they had good news and bad news. It’s all against a background that the Democrats as a whole are in excellent shape, with no real likelihood of losing the House.

Changes in the Dem direction included Alaska-AL (Alyse Galvin) to Lean R, Ammar Campa-Najjar, in CA-50 against Issa from Safe to Likely R, likewise Brynne Kennedy against Tom McClintock in CA-04, and also Safe to Likely R in NC-11. That’s where Col. (ret.) Moe Davis is running for an open bright-red seat against Madison Cawthorn, the callow and not-too-bright youth who spoke at the Trump National Convention.

Just as interesting were shifts in the bad direction. These include CA-25, the seat where R Mike Garcia won the special election after Katie Hill’s creep husband forced her to resign with revenge porn. November is a rematch of March with Christy Smith. Crystal Ball now lists this as Lean R. Another candidate who was asking me for money told me that it is an open secret Smith is running her second weak campaign this year. FL-26, where Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is almost the only threatened D incumbent, was downgraded to Toss-Up. (Crystal Ball has big upset 2018 winners TJ Cox CA-21, Joe Cunningham SC-01, and Kendra Horn OK-05 all Lean D.) It isn’t money for either Smith or Mucarsel-Powell. I wish I knew what it is. This will be an interesting test of Rachel Bitecofer’s theory that the hatred of Trump in these districts will overcome the mediocrity of the candidate. She has CA-25 as Likely D, and FL-26 as Solid D.

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I am going to suggest some changes to our fundraising targets based on the maps below, which show plausible minimal combinations of states to win the Electoral College. The first map shows that if we retake Michigan and Pennsylvania but drop Minnesota (thought to be the Clinton state most likely to flip), we win with Arizona and Nebraska CD-02 (remember that Nebraska and Maine split electoral votes by House district).

In the second map, we win Florida. We don’t have to win any other hotly contested state, unless you count Pennsylvania.

In the third map, we win North Carolina but not Florida. (I don’t think this is particularly likely.) The table underneath shows what we need to add on. Arizona appears in three of the combinations, and NE-02 in one. I’ll discuss the implications below the maps.

States
FL	286
OH	275
GA	273
MI	273
AZ+MN	278
AZ+WI	278
MN+WI	277
AZ+ME-02+NE-02	270

I think at this point we can drop TJ Cox. He is keeping pace with David Valadao on fundraising and the weaknesses of his campaign are unlikely to be fixed with cash. I also suggest dropping Rita Hart (for whom we have collected several thousand dollars) because Iowa is a bonus on these maps, not a key state.

The only competitive House race in Arizona is Hiral Tiperneni in AZ-06, which is rated Tossup/Lean R. She has far outraised the scandal-plagued incumbent Schweikert. She has $1.2M cash on hand and he has $0.2M and his fundraising seems to have slowed now that he has to do it legally. She needs Democratic voters, not money.

However, we do have Coral Evans running for the Arizona House, so we are already making a contribution.

For North Carolina, we should add Patricia Timmons-Goodson in NC-08 (lean R). Besides helping with money, we need Tar Heels to vote Blue up and down the ballot—we have two state legislators on the list and I believe the districts overlap with NC-08. Timmons-Goodson has not done well with fundraising. Cash on hand $0.6M, incumbent has $1.8M.

In Florida, there are not that many contested races, of which the most important is Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (FL-26), an endangered D incumbent. The seat is rated Lean D, and she has much more money than her opponent. I suggest instead we try Alan Cohn in FL-15 (Lean R). The Republican incumbent had some legal trouble and was defeated in an expensive primary, while Cohn also had a tough primary. For money, both of them are basically starting from zero (a little over $100K each). Cohn has called me a few times, and I can ask whether he has a Get Out the Vote plan to get his and Biden’s supporters to the polls, or at least to the mailbox. He lost a race for this seat in 2014, so it isn’t his first rodeo.

And finally, NE-02. Last cycle the DCCC was so miffed that their preferred candidate lost to Bernie supporter Kara Eastman in the primary they didn’t go hard on the seat. She lost by less than 4 anyway. This time the DCCC came to new wisdom, didn’t take sides for the more moderate candidates in the primary, and after she won the primary again put her on the Red to Blue List (ratings are Tossup/Lean R). She also has a J Street endorsement. This district includes Omaha suburbs, just the sort of demographic to sour on Trump. Given that even one electoral vote can matter (see above), I think we should add her, too.

Action Items:

USPS

These are the members of the USPS Board of Governors, who have the power to fire the Postmaster General.

Robert Duncan
CEO Inez Deposit Bank
41 Main St
Inez KY 41224
mduncan@inezdepositbank.com
606 298-3511

Roman Martinez IV
248 Tradewind Dr
Palm Beach Florida 33480
roman@rmiv.com

John Barger
Northern Cross Partners LLC
945 San Marino Ave
San Marino, CA 91108
626-460-6321 or 213-629-8356
barger.jm@gmail.com

Ron Bloom
Brookfield Asset Management
250 Vesey St 15th Fl
212-417-7000 or 212-978-1709
ron.bloom@brookfield.com

Donald Moak
The Moak Group
401 9 St NW Suite 740
Washington, DC 20004
202-838-3800
lee.moak@moakgroup.com

William Zollars
913-696-6100 913-232-8068 415-394-9000
directoraccessmailbox@cigna.com

The story of why Obama didn’t get to fill vacancies on the board. By the way, Balloon Juice is a great blog run by a West Virginia vet who went from moderate Republican to Never W to left-wing Democrat, picking up a great many progressive co-authors (and a shout-out from Paul Krugman!) on the way.

I haven’t written to the Governors, but I did use Resistbot to send letters to Harris, Feinstein, and Lee. Text USPS to 50409.

Flip the West

Send texts with Flip the West on Wednesday, Sep 16, 2020. Are you free to join me? Use this link to sign up.

Political Roundup

My presentation is here. My discussion is that the legitimate election will be won by Biden and the Democrats, and how we can prepare ourselves for the Republicans’ attempt to create Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt in order to steal an illegitimate election, or hold onto power in some other way.