Will the ground crumble under their feet?

With more and more people crying “let’s go Brandon,” Joe Biden’s poll numbers cratering, and with a Virginia governor’s race (supposedly a bellwether race when Democrats win it) that’s tighter than anyone expected, the Democrats and all their associated special interests are deeply worried about impending doom in the 2022 midterms. They’re so worried, in fact, that I got an intriguing e-mail Saturday from my old foes at Indivisible that started out this way:

Our progressive champions in Congress have fought like hell for us this year. 

For an inclusive recovery that meets the moment. 

For affordable housing. 

For our climate. 

For a path to citizenship.

For lower prescription drug prices.

For affordable childcare.

For a democracy of, by, and for the people. 

How much of it are you willing to give up? How much are you willing to leave unfinished? How many of these things are you willing to let slip away?

Right now, Mitch McConnell and other Trump-loving Republicans are working hard to take it all away and reclaim their congressional majority. And the truth is, unless we start fighting like hell for those members of Congress who fought like hell for us this year, Republicans could win (they only need to win five seats in the House and one in the Senate).

If Republicans are successful, every one of our priorities will be dead on arrival.

Together, we’ve got to start fighting to say we’re not willing to cede any progress. Not one law. Not one priority. Not. One. Inch.

That’s why yesterday, we launched our new electoral program for the 2022 election cycle: Give No Ground. (link added)

“Make sure Republicans don’t get control of Congress next year!”, Indivisible e-mail, October 16, 2021.

In truth, their regressive champions got awful greedy given their lack of a mandate. What they thought was a mandate was really a reaction to a president for whom the media had nothing good to say and whose record should have spoken for itself – but hindsight is always 20-20. Meanwhile, the regressive track record during the Biden regime is really, really detrimental to our interests; hence, the horrible polling. So what will they do?

First off, they got their house organ of CNN to write up a puff piece, which explained that:

The list from Indivisible, a grassroots organization with groups across the country, overlaps in part with the campaign committee’s slate. The beneficiaries of its new “Give No Ground” initiative will receive an initial donation to be followed by bespoke investments, potentially including help with voter mobilization, rapid response messaging and outreach in multiple languages.

“Indivisible launches project to protect Democratic incumbents in 2022,” Gregory Krieg, CNN, October 15, 2021.

“Help with voter mobilization”? Good luck with that.

They plan to spend a minimum of $1 million of dark money (that’s not what they say, but that’s what it surely will be) to prop up seven House incumbents from six states as well as Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia. The list from the House is “Reps. Katie Porter and Mike Levin of California, Lucy McBath of Georgia, Lauren Underwood of Illinois, Andy Kim of New Jersey, Antonio Delgado of New York and Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania.” Except for Cartwright, these representatives came in on the Democrat ripple of 2018, while Cartwright’s district shifted that year due to court-ordered changes in Pennsylvania’s district map. (He was initially elected in 2012.) District changes for this year may make things more difficult for some of these incumbents, but most come from Democrat-dominated states.

It will be interesting to see if the program expands to Maryland once their redistricting is complete. As it stands, the First District (as it’s known at the moment) has longtime Republican Andy Harris seeking a seventh term he once pledged not to seek. (Most likely he’s wishing to be back in the majority again.) While only one Democrat, David Harden, has officially filed against Harris, the odds-on favorite to win that primary is former state legislator and onetime gubernatorial candidate Heather Mizeur, who moved to the Eastern Shore once she lost her race for Maryland’s top spot. She’s been outraising Harris over the last few months but Andy still has plenty of cash on hand, nearly a 2:1 edge. Yet depending on how the district is drawn, there may be additional resources flowing Heather’s way. And yes, she fits right in with those regressives because she checks a lot of their boxes: LGBT female with a very liberal voting record in the Maryland General Assembly over her tenure there.

On the other hand, the situation in Delaware is bad for Republican prospects, as the leading GOP Congressional candidate right now is the one who just lost to incumbent Lisa Blunt Rochester by 17 points 11 months ago. (He did win the votes on Election Day, though – it was the mail-in ballots that provided LBR’s winning margin.) With legislators unable to “run from cover” based on a 4-year term because all 62 seats in the Delaware General Assembly are up in 2022, the question becomes whether anyone will give up a seat for this lottery ticket of a chance.

Worth remembering in all this, though, is that despite Joe Biden’s “victory” in the election last year, he had coattails that were tucked in. A party that was predicted to improve its majority in the House came close to losing it and it took two special elections in the Senate for that majority to be created. (Moreover, for want of about 15,000 votes, David Perdue didn’t get a 50% + 1 majority in his race, which would have made the point moot.) So even if you figure there was an anti-Trump vote in 2020, there’s no Trump on the ballot in 2022. Most of my readers are smart enough to know that Democrats will try to put him there in an attempt to scare independent voters, much as every Republican was a “TEA Party” Republican a decade ago whether we liked them or not.

So here’s hoping that Indivisible wastes all that money. Hey, it will keep a certain class in the Swamp afloat for awhile until they figure out the next grift.