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"House Democrats do not like to discuss the idea of reverse coattails for fear of giving it too much credence and angering the Clinton camp."

By Moe Lane Posted in 2008 — Comments (10) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

An amusing quote from an amusing article:

Vulnerable Democrats See Fates Tied to Clinton
By CARL HULSE

MANHATTAN, Kan. — Nancy Boyda, a Democrat who ran for Congress in this district last year, owed her upset victory partly to the popularity of the Democratic woman at the top of the ticket: Kathleen Sebelius, who won the governor’s seat. Now, with a tough re-election race at hand in 2008, Ms. Boyda faces the prospect that her electoral fate could be tied to another woman: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton is a long way from winning the Democratic presidential nomination, and over the last few weeks has struggled to hang on to the air of inevitability that she has been cultivating all year. But the possibility that she will be the nominee is already generating concern among some Democrats in Republican-leaning states and Congressional districts, who fear that sharing the ticket with her could subject them to attack as too liberal and out of step with the values of their constituents.

Via Nice Deb, taking advantage of AOSHQ's Open Blog thing). See also Gateway Pundit, Human Events, and Fox News.

Read on.

Here's why all of this is relevant. There are three sets of races going on in November, and they operate under different rules and victory conditions. The executive branch race operates on a State-by-State basis: you win overall in each State, you get its Electoral Votes. Get enough EVs and you win the Presidency. Simple enough. The legislative branch has two different sets of races: Senatorial and House. The Senatorial is similar to the Presidential: win overall in your State, you win the Senate seat. The House is much the same, except that you have to win enough votes in your Congressional District in order to win it.

Sorry about the Politics 101, but I needed to run through that to point out something: the Presidential candidate does not need either the Senatorial nor the Congressional candidates to win their elections in order to win his or hers (or vice versa, but that's another issue entirely). For example: the eventual Democratic candidate will almost certain not be winning Kansas' EVs. In terms of her race, the results in Kansas are essentially meaningless: she's better off going to Ohio, where a win will get her the Presidency, all other things being unchanged. Alas for the Democrats in Kansas, if the Presidential candidate is, say, actively disliked in that State, Republicans will come out... and probably vote a Party ticket. Net loss: Democrats.

And then there are the States where the Democrat is going to win. Remember, Presidential elections are done via State results, Congressional by District. If the Democratic candidate wins the overall total, the fact that a few Republican districts turned out higher than normal to oppose her won't be of more than academic interest. It will be of much more than academic interest to the Democrats living in and representing those Republican districts in Congress, however.

Does this mean that we're guaranteed to take the House back? Of course not; we're eleven months out from the election. But we need to remember that Democratic control of the House relies on a slew of freshmen Congressmen from typically-Republican districts... and while there's a lot of rhetoric going around about permanent majorities and long-term trends and GOP dissatisfaction, as a practical matter Democratic Congressional leadership has bent over backwards to keep those seats as safe as they can. Which is another reason why the antiwar movement was in a constant state of being betrayed in 2007*. Rhetoric is all very nice, especially when money is involved, but you can't be foolish about it.

I can understand why progressives would be - and in some cases are - upset by this (which is not the same as feeling sorry for them, or, really, caring all that much); particularly since they can't actually do anything about the Hillary nomination except watch it roll over them like a wave. Then again, if they wanted to effectively oppose their Party's Establishment candidate they should have picked better standard bearers than an empty suit and a faux-populist.

I say this in the nicest possible way, you understand.

Moe

*And on that front: you ain't seen nothing yet.