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Swing Left - Sign Up to Help Elect Progressives in your closest swing districts

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C

cartoon_soldier

Member
This is a new initiative started to help Democrats in 2018 mid-terms.

https://swingleft.org/

https://twitter.com/swingleftorg

Why the House?

The 2018 House elections are the next best chance for progressives to regain power in our government.

There are 52 Swing Districts—places where the last election was won by 15% of the vote or less. We need to win 80% of all Swing Districts to take back the House.

If we win all 17 Democratic-held Swing Districts, we need to flip 24 of the remaining Republican ones. We’ll keep the Swing Left community up to date as these numbers shift.

The 2018 Senate map heavily favors Republicans, making the House a more viable place to focus our efforts.

House races receive less attention, so your dollars, hours, and talents count more.

We’re starting early to unify progressives who promote tolerance, equality, unity and fairness. To out-organize Republicans, we can’t wait.
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This is pretty important, if you want to help fight back against Trump and Republican control of government. It is difficult, but not impossible.
 
T

TheAbsolution

Member
Mcec3ku.jpg
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I live in Atlanta so......
 
C

cartoon_soldier

Member
It's possible due to location and gerrymandering your closest swing districts are pretty far or in another state.

You can still sign up and do phone banking for them if you can't travel to it.
 
W

WaffleTaco

Wants to outlaw technological innovation.
Signed up! Closest to me is actually my own, which I voted for last election. Oh well we can try again in 2018.
 
M

Mortimer Brewster

Member
Actually not a good idea. Since swing districts are by the nature of being swing districts, centrist, running left wing progressives is counterproductive in those districts. But I'm sure the RNC will thank you for making retaining those districts easier for them.
 
N

nomster

Member
Mortimer Brewster said:
Actually not a good idea. Since swing districts are by the nature of being swing districts, centrist, running left wing progressives is counterproductive in those districts. But I'm sure the RNC will thank you for making retaining those districts easier for them.
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Yep, I also live in a swing district and out last two republican reps, and the democrat in between them, have been mostly reasonable centrists that just want what's best for the district. The tea party types who've tried to run always lose. It sucks that these are the types we have to remove in order to push things to the democratic side.
 
Sinfamy

Sinfamy

Member
Mortimer Brewster said:
Actually not a good idea. Since swing districts are by the nature of being swing districts, centrist, running left wing progressives is counterproductive in those districts. But I'm sure the RNC will thank you for making retaining those districts easier for them.
Click to expand...

Why would someone vote for Republican Lite when they can vote for the real deal.
Be a world of difference if you're going to stand for something.
 
C

cartoon_soldier

Member
Mortimer Brewster said:
Actually not a good idea. Since swing districts are by the nature of being swing districts, centrist, running left wing progressives is counterproductive in those districts. But I'm sure the RNC will thank you for making retaining those districts easier for them.
Click to expand...

Not really. Most GOPers running in these swing districts are not centrist at all.
 
S

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
I absolutely reject the idea that a district won by 15% of the vote is a swing district. That's living in denial. Here's an example. They consider the Alaska At-Large district a swing district. Alaska joined the United States in 1959. Don Young was elected to Alaska's at-large in 1972. He has been continuously re-elected since. That is the definition of a district that will not swing. The only reason he's within 15% is because he continually gets right-libertarian third party candidates bleeding 10%. If you removed them, most of their votes would go to him. If Don Young dies, then it's possible this could be something resembling a swing seat (Alaska at the presidential level is not quite competitive, but it's not a shitshow either) -- from visual observation the Kansas 3rd is a similar situation where the only reason it's a <15% gap is a third party candidate siphoning some votes from the right, which is an ephemeral thing. The district itself is heavily Republican in terms of PVI and the incumbent is well-liked and strong.

I guess they figure they can't get the support they need if they say "we're targeting 25 swing districts, which isn't enough to take back the house, but baby steps" but I would be wary of investing resources or human capital into a plan that seems founded on deception or ignorance.
 
M

Mortimer Brewster

Member
cartoon_soldier said:
Not really. Most GOPers running in these swing districts are not centrist at all.
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Then those districts are even more unwinnable. Being competitive everywhere is the right idea but it's going to require a resurrection of the blue dogs to actually win the house consistently. America is still a centre right country.
 
W

WaffleTaco

Wants to outlaw technological innovation.
Stumpokapow said:
I absolutely reject the idea that a district won by 15% of the vote is a swing district. That's living in denial. Here's an example. They consider the Alaska At-Large district a swing district. Alaska joined the United States in 1959. Don Young was elected to Alaska's at-large in 1972. He has been continuously re-elected since. That is the definition of a district that will not swing. The only reason he's within 15% is because he continually gets right-libertarian third party candidates bleeding 10%. If you removed them, most of their votes would go to him. If Don Young dies, then it's possible this could be something resembling a swing seat (Alaska at the presidential level is not quite competitive, but it's not a shitshow either) -- from visual observation the Kansas 3rd is a similar situation where the only reason it's a <15% gap is a third party candidate siphoning some votes from the right, which is an ephemeral thing. The district itself is heavily Republican in terms of PVI and the incumbent is well-liked and strong.

I guess they figure they can't get the support they need if they say "we're targeting 25 swing districts, which isn't enough to take back the house, but baby steps" but I would be wary of investing resources or human capital into a plan that seems founded on deception or ignorance.
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I would say it depends on the district and their history. For example Illinois 12th district was Democratic for 22 years and then a republican won for 2014 and in 2016, he won by 14.6%. I think there is still a chance it could be taken back.

Edit: Although apparently before that 22 year Dem, it was controlled for 30 years by Repubs. So who knows.
 
S

SL128

Member
Mortimer Brewster said:
Actually not a good idea. Since swing districts are by the nature of being swing districts, centrist, running left wing progressives is counterproductive in those districts. But I'm sure the RNC will thank you for making retaining those districts easier for them.
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How is the median voter myth still alive after 2016?
 
S

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
SL128 said:
How is the median voter myth still alive after 2016?
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First, the premise of your post seems to be that Trump obviously has outrageous views, so he must be further from the median voter. But Trump's positions were not cleanly on a traditional size-of-government liberal-conservative axis. Most of the ideological scaling methods can't possibly apply to Trump: The Bonica donor method doesn't work because he didn't have traditional donors; the NOMINATE method, interest group scores, and other legislative output scaling methods don't work because he has no legislative experience; even qualitative analysis of his positions don't work because many of his key issues were orthogonal to the traditional spectrums AND he kept going back and forth on major issues. I don't think it's obvious Trump was further than Hillary from the median voter.

Second, the median voter theorem refers to a majoritarian system; to the extent that the MVT would have predicted a Hillary win, it wasn't wrong.

Third, lots of work has been done extending the MVT with valence dimensions, and to the extent that Trump won through a non-ideological content-free personal appeal to a core audience, it's not the L-R voting dimension, it's the valence dimension that handed him the win.
 
Goro Majima

Goro Majima

Kitty Genovese Member
Mortimer Brewster said:
Then those districts are even more unwinnable. Being competitive everywhere is the right idea but it's going to require a resurrection of the blue dogs to actually win the house consistently. America is still a centre right country.
Click to expand...

This

I'll take the Clinton era "third way" Democrats back over letting the Republicans run the whole show
 
R

Random Painted HIghway

Member
TX 7 John Culberson a swing district, are youbfucking kidding me. We went massively for HRC in 2016 in this county and JC still win by 12+ points. Hah. JC is more likely to lose a primary from the right here than get taken down in the general. Bah.
 
K

kirblar

Member
Mortimer Brewster said:
Then those districts are even more unwinnable. Being competitive everywhere is the right idea but it's going to require a resurrection of the blue dogs to actually win the house consistently. America is still a centre right country.
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It'd be funny to note how people don't realize "50 state" strategy and "hardline ideology" are mutually incompatible if it weren't so horrifying.
 
O

Ogodei

Member
VA-10 and Comstock.

Not far away at all. The core of the district would be 90 minutes away from me, but the border is only about a 25-minute drive.

Edit: even in a good environment for Dems where Trump is flailing about in the upper-20s approval rating in 2018, the Dems are probably still taking a net 3-4 seat loss in the Senate. The polarization is just getting that much stronger, and some red states are getting redder due to shale oil (like North Dakota, which has had high population growth, but pretty much all of it is hard-R oil workers compared to the last time their Senator won reelection).

I'd say the Senate target for 2018 is Heller in Nevada. The Reid machine is scary in its efficiency, and if the state party can wed Heller to Trump in the eyes of the growing latino segment, he'll have a hell of a fight on his hands.
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
BrokenFiction said:
Spending originates in the House. If we get the House, it's over for Trump.
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There is almost certainly going to be another retirement/death on the SC in the next 4 years. That's going to have an impact for decades. Besides, even if spending originates in the house, Dems can still block it if they have the senate.
 
W

whyamihere

Banned
A few things:

- We need more transparency about who created this.

- Some of this shows a little lack of understanding with these districts. Martha Roby didn't really almost lose, she was being punished in her hyperconservative district for unendorsing Trump after PussyGate and saying he should step down.

Stumpokapow said:
I absolutely reject the idea that a district won by 15% of the vote is a swing district. That's living in denial. Here's an example. They consider the Alaska At-Large district a swing district. Alaska joined the United States in 1959. Don Young was elected to Alaska's at-large in 1972. He has been continuously re-elected since. That is the definition of a district that will not swing. The only reason he's within 15% is because he continually gets right-libertarian third party candidates bleeding 10%. If you removed them, most of their votes would go to him. If Don Young dies, then it's possible this could be something resembling a swing seat (Alaska at the presidential level is not quite competitive, but it's not a shitshow either) -- from visual observation the Kansas 3rd is a similar situation where the only reason it's a <15% gap is a third party candidate siphoning some votes from the right, which is an ephemeral thing. The district itself is heavily Republican in terms of PVI and the incumbent is well-liked and strong.

I guess they figure they can't get the support they need if they say "we're targeting 25 swing districts, which isn't enough to take back the house, but baby steps" but I would be wary of investing resources or human capital into a plan that seems founded on deception or ignorance.
Click to expand...

This too.
 
W

W-00

Member
It's a nice idea, but the swing district nearest to me is Nevada's 4th, Democrat controlled. I'm in Washington. The nearest Republican-held "swing" district? Alaska. And Stumpokapow has already illustrated that it isn't exactly a real swing district.
 
S

StarSketch

Banned
This thing is giving me a district in New Jersey. I'm in New York. Is it legal to be messing with other state's representatives??
 
S

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
Random Painted HIghway said:
TX 7 John Culberson a swing district, are youbfucking kidding me. We went massively for HRC in 2016 in this county and JC still win by 12+ points. Hah. JC is more likely to lose a primary from the right here than get taken down in the general. Bah.
Click to expand...

Heh, you could start a "Democrats take back the House by primarying Republicans from the right using lunatic fringe candidates who lose the general" organization, but there is the plausible downside that maybe they don't lose the general and then the House is even more nuts.
 
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