Tag: Democratic Party

DCCC Is Investing Heavily in Montana Race

Buck Banks

$400,000

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is investing an additional $400,000 in Rob Quist’s (D) campaign to fill the Montana congressional seat left vacant when former Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) was sworn in as the interior secretary, the HuffPost reports. “The new donation brings the DCCC’s total investment in Quist to $600,000. On April 20, the DCCC invested $200,000 in the folk singer, which was used to buy political ads for Quist’s campaign. According to Kelly, the additional money will be invested in a program aimed at getting likely independent and Democratic voters to vote by mail, which accounts for approximately 60 percent of Montana’s voters, as well as to buy more TV ads.”

Republicans More Optimistic About Their Party

Buck Banks

79%

Of Republicans say they are very or somewhat optimistic about the future of the Republican Party, according to Pew Research. “In early November, on the eve of the election, 61% of Republicans expressed optimism about their party’s future. … Democrats’ optimism about their party’s future has declined by a comparable margin over the same period – though a majority (61%) continues to be optimistic. Before the election, 77% of Democrats were optimistic about the party’s future, which is almost identical to the share of Republicans who are upbeat about their party’s now.”

Democrats Have 5-to1 Advantage Over GOP in Ground Game

Buck Banks

5 to 1

Number of paid Democratic staffers versus the number of Republicans, according to an NBC News analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. “At the end of August, the most recent date for which data is available, Democrats employed at least 4,200 people working to elect Hillary Clinton, with about 800 at the Clinton campaign, 400 at the Democratic National Committee, and nearly 3,000 on the payrolls of state parties in 13 battleground states, which typically employ a majority of field organizers. … Republicans, meanwhile, employed about 880 people during the same period, with about 130 at the Donald Trump campaign, another 270 at the Republican National Committee, and roughly 480 at the 13 state parties.”

Heaven Knows Dems Can’t Win Without Atheists

Buck Banks

serveimageIn an editorial in the Sunday Miami Herald, Robyn Blumner of the Center for Inquiry laid out a good case for why the Democratic Party needs to stop dissing its atheist supporters:

Atheists make up 3.1 percent of Americans and agnostics another 4 percent, according to Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study and those are people willing to ’fess up to pollsters. Jews are only 1.9 percent of the population; Mormons 1.6 percent.

In other words, there are a lot of us. We are a growing and essential segment of the Democratic Party. About 69 percent identify as Democrats or lean that way, according to Pew. Atheists and agnostics give Democrats the margin of victory in election after election. Include the entirety of the “nones” — the one-in-five Americans who tell pollsters they have no religious affiliation — and we are the Democratic Party’s largest faith demographic.

About 28 percent of Democrats say they have no religious affiliation, compared with 21 percent who say they are Catholic, 16 percent who are evangelicals and 13 percent mainline Protestant.

Read more here.

Poll: Clinton Leads Trump by 31 Percentage Points in California

Jon Ponder

art-cal-flag-dems

In this most unpredictable of all presidential campaign seasons, there is at least one thing that can be counted on to hold true.

California remains a reliable stronghold for the Democratic Party, in general — and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, specifically.

That assumption is based on recent polling in the Golden State, including a well-respected USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll released today.

[…]

Clinton Has Little Traction with Youth Vote

Buck Banks

It is fair to wonder about Clinton’s ability to put the party back together if she does become the nominee. Getting youth turnout is always tricky for Democrats, and Clinton is getting absolutely annihilated with young voters: She lost the youngest group of voters (17-29 in Iowa and 18-29 in New Hampshire) 84%-14% and 83%-16%, respectively. Now, we know that Barack Obama put the party back together fairly easily in 2008, and that if Clinton is the nominee she will be able to use her Republican opponent as a motivational tool. But these are staggeringly lousy numbers for Clinton nonetheless.

— Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball

Republican Lawmaker Says Trump Could Be a ‘Phantom Candidate’ for Democrats

Buck Banks

I think there’s a small possibility that this gentleman is a phantom candidate. Mr. Trump has a close friendship with Bill and Hillary Clinton. They were at his last wedding. He has contributed to the Clintons’ foundation. He has contributed to Mrs. Clinton’s Senate campaigns. All of this is very suspicious.

— Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL), “whose district saw two phony candidates run in a pair of elections before he took office, has taken to Spanish-language media to suggest that Donald Trump’s campaign could be a Democratic scheme to hurt the Republican Party,” the Miami Herald reports.

Is a Third Party Emerging?

Buck Banks

Listen to the early sounds of the 2016 presidential campaign, in which candidates of the left and the right sound almost identical populist, anti-Wall Street, antiestablishment themes, and the idea doesn’t seem so crazy. When you have Republican presidential contenders opposing free-trade agreements, and at least one backing an increase in the minimum wage; when Democratic firebrand Bernie Sanders (technically an independent to begin with) is speaking to overflow crowds; and when left and right come together to halt a prominent national-security program backed by the foreign-policy establishment—well, something is going on.

— Gerald Seib, in the Wall Street Journal (login required).

Who’s the Democrats’ Plan B?

Buck Banks

Stipulate that the former secretary of state is on a different plane from most other Democrats when it comes to experience, endurance and popularity. And yet, as one damaging report after another emerges, it’s got to be asked: How dumb is it for Democrats to count so completely on this one person? What is their Plan B?

— Jill Lawrence, writing in U.S. News & World Report, noting that as Hillary Clinton becomes encumbered by questions of propriety and transparency, who else does the Democratic Party have to offer.