Here's today's sign the Washington Post is a Democrat rag. This story is on A-4: "Health-care law may backfire for some on Medicaid: Expansion threatens to oust thousands in states with generous programs." This story is on A-1: "Democrats seek infusion of new faces."
Paul Kane's front-pager passed along the DCCC's new strategy of finding "problem solvers" that...don't know how to solve problems yet. The central character is Kevin Strouse, a former Army Ranger with no set positions on the issues. "Immigration? Tax policy? 'Certainly I have a lot of research to do,' Strouse acknowledged" as he announced a House run in Pennsylvania. This is the Tea Party takedown?
The best way to defeat the conservative, ideologically driven GOP, Democrats say, is to field non-ideological “problem solvers” who can profit from the fed-up-with-partisanship mood of some suburban areas. These districts will offer some of the few competitive House campaigns in the country.
“You pick your strategic high ground and force them to fight on it,” said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), who as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has begun a particularly early effort at traveling the country and working the phones to lure Strouse and others like him into races.
If Kane were a reporter instead of an unpaid press secretary, he'd ask how a "non-ideological problem solver" will be expected to vote for Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Their voting record won't be non-ideological. They'll be expected to be pro-tax hike, pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, and pro-Obamacare. At least Kane noted the conventional wisdom is the Democrats have a tough task:
The independent Rothenberg Political Report rates only 50 total seats as competitive, split evenly between the two sides. Republicans begin the 18-month stretch to Election Day with 209 seats safely in their corner, meaning they need to win just nine of the 50 battleground seats to secure the majority for the entire four-year stretch of Obama’s second term, according to Rothenberg.
The headline inside the paper was "ISO: Uncommonly common Democrats." (It continues on A-4, right next to the Obamacare's-latest-failure story.) There's a large graphic laying out the DCCC's strategies for winning house seats. The Republican congressional committee doesn't appear until paragraph 13, and shortly thereafter, Kane lays out that "GOP-dominated state legislatures" are skewing the House vote, since Obama only won 208 congressional districts, and Romney won 227.
Dear Mr. Kane: please see the Voting Rights Act lobby and the Congressional Black Caucus and ask them if they'd like more whites in their districts to make them more competitive. That distortion is not just a GOP plot.
