MT-AL: Rob Quist (D) vs. Greg Gianforte (R) vs. Mark Wicks (L), May 25

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Tim Fox or Greg Gianforte would certainly make this a Tossup as well. Tester is still quite vulnerable. And barring a disastrous Trump presidency, Democrats aren't going to win MT-AL.

Edit: Whoa, now that I think about it... Gianforte running for Senate in 2018 and Fox running for governor in 2020 would kinda make sense.

Gianforte who underperformed Donald Trump by 27 points this year... yeah okay.

That's not how this works. Bullock is a popular incumbent who wasn't going to be beaten by any Republican. Fox MIGHT have done one or two points better, but that's about it. Popular Democratic incumbent governors in Montana don't lose reelection. Gianforte was not a perfect candidate, but he didn't really run a BAD campaign either. Had this been an open seat, Gianforte probably would have won the election.

Also try to find a better Republican candidate.... other than maybe Tim Fox, there really isn't one.

Gianforte lost b/c he ran a piss-poor campaign.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Quist and Curtis are both lefty - Curtis was accused of being a psuedo-commie when she ran for Senate.

It didn't help that she had a video blog in which she mocked gun owners, talked sorta vulgarly about her "pansexuality" (the most white-girl thing I might have heard), and basically acted like an out an out caricature of a SJW.

Bisexual implies you are interested in men and women.
Pansexual implies you are interested in everyone, including people outside the binary.
So?

Serious question: what does pan sexual even mean? Is it just a fancier buzzword for bisexuality or is it honestly something different?

I'm sure someone will bite my head off for saying this, but it really sounds like an inanely PC term for bisexuals that some teenage limousine liberal came up with when they were bored.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

The worst thing about a Quist victory will be the national media interpreting this as a "rejection of the Republican Party" and people here saying that Tester is safe in 2018, etc. Ugh, it's going to be so awful.

I think Tester is in the best position of the 5 Romney state Dems up in 2018.  It's a close call with Manchin, but WV is just so far gone now.  If Tester doesn't win, none of them do IMO.  Sherrod Brown might even be more likely to lose, as he seems eerily similar to Feingold's position in 2010.

Brown's position isn't even remotely close to Feingold's; the Ohio Senate race (assuming Mandel is the Republican nominee) starts off lean D and could conceivably enter solid likely D territory by Election Day.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

The worst thing about a Quist victory will be the national media interpreting this as a "rejection of the Republican Party" and people here saying that Tester is safe in 2018, etc. Ugh, it's going to be so awful.

I think Tester is in the best position of the 5 Romney state Dems up in 2018.  It's a close call with Manchin, but WV is just so far gone now.  If Tester doesn't win, none of them do IMO.  Sherrod Brown might even be more likely to lose, as he seems eerily similar to Feingold's position in 2010.

Brown's position isn't even remotely close to Feingold's; the Ohio Senate race (assuming Mandel is the Republican nominee) starts off lean D and could conceivably enter solid likely D territory by Election Day.

The way Feingold was viewed in 2009 was "Well maybe he could be beaten, but not with this crop of candidates". Then he lost the next year. People saying Brown is okay because Mandel does seem similar.

Brown would've beaten Tiberi and Stivers too, it'd just be closer.  Brown's also a very strong incumbent and far more skilled politician than Feingold.  And then there's the fact that Feingold was running in a huge Republican wave year.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

In other other news, 800k in TV ads have already been spent on the race.

All of them on the GOP side.

God dammit Perez

That would actually be the DCCC's decision rather than Perez's, but thanks for playing

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

God dammit Luján then. I hope Democrats get in this.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of Lujan, but the alternative (Sean Patrick Baloney) would've been infinitely worse, if you can believe it

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I'm guessing that this quote is probably pretty representative of their attitude. Which is deeply disappointing, to say the least.

"None of the five contests pose a threat to the Republicans’ majority in the House. Four of the five seats have been under GOP control, and save for Georgia and to a lesser extent, Montana, they’re all but guaranteed to remain red districts in 2017 and beyond.

“It’s not like we lost these districts by 5 points last time,” one Democratic strategist said of Georgia’s 6th District and Montana’s at-large House seat."

Goddamn this party how can a group that made Obama president be so out of touch with the ground noise

To be fair, I'd be shocked if they don't jump in here by mid-to-late April/early May.  At least Quist seems to be winning so far.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I'm guessing that this quote is probably pretty representative of their attitude. Which is deeply disappointing, to say the least.

"None of the five contests pose a threat to the Republicans’ majority in the House. Four of the five seats have been under GOP control, and save for Georgia and to a lesser extent, Montana, they’re all but guaranteed to remain red districts in 2017 and beyond.

“It’s not like we lost these districts by 5 points last time,” one Democratic strategist said of Georgia’s 6th District and Montana’s at-large House seat."

Goddamn this party how can a group that made Obama president be so out of touch with the ground noise

To be fair, I'd be shocked if they don't jump in here by mid-to-late April/early May.  At least Quist seems to be winning so far.

To be honest, campaigning doesn't matter a lot. If they jump later, it wouldn't be catastrophic at all

All due respect, but you're objectively wrong about this (especially when we're talking about a state like Montana). 

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I'd be really surprised if the DCCC didn't get in here soon as well.

I think you severely underestimate the stupidity of our national party. There were multiple Texas districts that Hillary won where we didn't even field a candidate. If there's anything I have faith in it's they're ability to completely screw up our congressional power.

But Montana is rural so we can never win despite the fact we have the perfect match-up no GA-6 needs all our resources because district trending an suburban an stuff like that 

I mean, there's nothing wrong with investing in GA-6; we should be competing in both districts.  That said, I obviously agree that it is ridiculous to ignore a seat like the open one in MT.  Fortunately, I expect the Democrats to jump in there soon enough, but a strong DCCC would've already had this on their radar.  That said, I can't stress enough how much worse it would've been with Sean Patrick Baloney as chair instead of Lujan.  The former has argued that you can use data metrics to successfully predict how every house seat will vote without fail months before the election and that the DCCC should be more reliant on a #Data is King strategy.  Maloney is a good fit for his district and I don't really mind him or anything, but he'd have been an absolute disaster as DCCC chairman.  

Rahm Emanuel may've been an awful, third-way corporatist with no understanding of why a 50 state strategy is so vital, but the man was also a pretty dam* competent DCCC chair (much as I hate to admit it) who understood that data metrics weren't the only factor that should be considered when deciding where to compete.  I'd have preferred to see Lujan replaced with someone who excelled in the two areas where Emanuel made his greatest contribution to Democratic efforts to take back the House in 2006: candidate recruitment and being ruthlessly aggressive about seizing every opportunity to expand the playing field.  Overall, House Democrats have had absolutely awful candidate recruitment.  It is embarrassing that Jay Sidie (KS-3), LuAnn Bennett (VA-10 where a strong candidate clearly would've won in 2016), Mike Parrish (PA-6), Shaun Brown (VA-2), Michael Wager (OH-14), Michael Eggman (CA-10 where once again, a solid recruit clearly would've won in 2016), Emilio Huerta (CA-21), Scott Fuhrman (FL-27), Joe Garcia (FL-26 although Annette Taddeo wasn't a strong candidate either), etc, etc, etc were the folks we ended up nominating in their respective districts.  

And then you have folks who were either obviously a terrible fit for their districts (ex: Emily Cain) or blew winnable races by running horrible campaigns (ex: Monica Vernon).  The DCCC has also constantly knee-capped their efforts to retake the house by ignoring opportunities to compete in Republican leaning districts and even moderate/Democratic-leaning seats with popular/entrenched incumbents.  Democrats won't win back the House unless they can put a massive number of seats on the board.  Recruiting top-tier candidates such a small number of districts that the Democrats need to essentially run the board to have a shot at a narrow majority is a surefire way to keep the House in Republican hands.

Data can be extremely useful in a whole host of ways, but it isn't the only important thing to look at when deciding where to compete either, especially when there are the potential conditions for a wave election.   One would've hoped the DCCC would have learned this after 2016 (or better still not needed to be taught this lesson in the first place).  That said, the fact that Perez and Ellison (admittedly DNC leaders rather than DCCC folks) seem to be pretty open to a return to a 50 state strategy is cause for cautious optimism and I'm going to reserve judgment for now as I suspect national Democrats are going to get involved here sooner rather than later.

That all being said, I can understand districts like TX-32 not having a candidate in 2016.  There was literally no reason to think Sessions could even theoretically be vulnerable.  It's a very conservative *and* partisan district that probably had PVI of at least R +10 and a weak-to-nonexistent Democratic bench at best.  Furthermore, it has a strong incumbent in House leadership who won his closest election by double-digits and isn't wildly to the right of most of folks in the district who actually vote.  It's a majority-minority district on paper, but that's about it.  I'm still not convinced we can win here even if it were an open seat in a huge Democratic wave, but I do think we should at least try to run wave insurance candidates here (or at least the closest thing we have ) for the next two cycles and see what happens. 

It's also important to remember that in many ways, it's still far from clear whether or not 2016 was a massive fluke or a true re-aligning election.  Honestly, we may not even know until the 2020 election cycle is over, but we certainly don't know right now.  The thing about realigning elections though (if that's what 2016 even was) is that they tend to be pretty hard to predict.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

You are assuming that nationalizing races in blood red Trump states makes sense.  The DCCC coming in will allow Gianforte to credibly tie Quist to San Fran Nan and New York Chuck, who I'm sure aren't that popular in Montana.  Whose to say Thompson wouldn't have lost by a larger margin had the KS-04 race been nationalized more?

But then what is the alternative? Democrats abandon candidates in deeply Republican territory out of fear of it backfiring? I'm sure there are instances where it will be plenty valid, but the 'nationalization' excuse doesn't seem that strong to me. It seems like a good excuse to keep doing what the party said it would stop doing.

No.  The Democratic establishment should quietly support the candidate in other ways, by sending in surrogates that don't have ties to the Democratic establishment (like Sanders), and finding other ways to quietly get them resources behind the scenes.  Share the GOTV apparatus, microtargeting data and donor lists, for example.  Don't get into a situation where your Kansas or Montana candidate can be tied to unlikable characters from San Francisco and New York City.

I agree with this point, but I still feel like the national party can do more in these races. I'm happy Perez sent Quist some staffers, but that Kansas race should've been contested more. The fact that the DCCC chair didn't know there was an election going on Montana is absolutely horrifying. That suggests to us that they aren't even thinking about how they can help candidates.

Jim Clyburn isn't the DCCC chair

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Um, you people realize that Bullock ran tons of attack ads against Gianforte in 2016, right? It's not like they have much more stuff to use. This is a big reason why Gianforte is going negative that early and wants to define Quist as soon as possible.

Right now all I'm hearing is "GIANFORTE IS FROM NEW JERSEY!!1!", which is not a winning strategy. Sorry. Their last presidential candidate moved to New York to win a Senate race, but Gianforte moving to Montana 20 years ago is a big deal?

And yeah, I agree that it's the best for Quist not to be associated too much with the national Democratic party.

I tend to agree although I think that some of the 2016 attacks can certainly be recycled effectively (not all of them, but some like Gianforte's awful quote about social security, his views on minimum wage increases, etc; it's not hard to paint him as a Romney-style out-of-touch plutocrat because that's pretty clearly what Gianforte is and he's not great at hiding it imo).  I am also a bit less bullish about this race than I had been a few weeks ago.  Quist can probably still win, but between the unanswered opposition research dumps and the KS-4 results (as has been noted by others, the rural parts of the district showed far less of an anti-Trump backlash than Wichita and the nearby areas), I can understand the rationale for being cautious about spending too much money here (especially given that Montana's a pretty cheap state) even if I don't necessarily agree with the decision.  At the very least, the DCCC was clearly right about GA-6 being an infinitely better opportunity. 

I'd like to see the DCCC put a bit more money here, but I also think we should wait for the actual results before whipping out the pitch-forks.  We also don't know what the DCCC's internal polling is showing. 

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Remember folks, DCCC is just one piece of national democratic campaign action. And everyone else is staying out.

Also worth noting that for Democratic operatives talking to Politico, the Democratic Party is a coalition of the educated, affluent, and moderate.

D-Trip is the cog in the machine that tackles Congressional campaigns. They can offer non-financial assistance, as they did in Georgia, but you don't campaign in Montana statewide like you do in the Atlanta metro. Other orgs failure to get in is unfortunate but ... they operate very differently.

I mean, they have televisions out there. And groups that are airing ads in the GA 6 associated with the national liberal establishment* are not doing so in the MT AL. And when you ask them, they cite Trump's support, and the comparatively uneducated and ""WCW"" nature of Montana's population.



*the fuzzy network of orgs, think tanks, blogs etc with varying degrees of association with the Democratic party

GA-6 is a far better pickup opportunity though.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Democratic internal has Pianoforte up 49/43.

In other words, the DNC was right and atlas (especially the Sanders die-hards) was wrong.