Mullings An American Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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A Lost Week

Rich Galen

Thursday March 13, 2014

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When I first came to Our Nation's Capital in 1977, Democrats held a 292-143 edge in the U.S. House - an astonishing 149 seat majority.

Over the next nearly four decades I have had to do what the poor writers at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) had to do Tuesday night after the results of the special election in Florida came in.

They had to find a way to write: They got more votes, but we really won.

The election in Florida's 13th District between Republican David Jolly and Democrat Alex Sink was touted by both sides as an early messaging test for November's mid-terms. Jolly beat Sink by 48.5 percent of the vote to Sink's 46.7 percent. The remaining votes went to Libertarian Lucas Overby who got 4.8 percent.

The Washington Post reported that Jolly's win was by "3,400 votes out of 183,000 cast."

The central issue in the race was Obamacare. The Republican, Jolly, called for repeal. The Democrat, as the AP's Dave Espo wrote, took a "fix-it-don't-nix-it approach" to the issue.

Secondarily, moves to reduce Medicare (and Medicare Advantage) budgets were high on the campaigns' agendas.

SIDEBAR

Every person on my Twitter feed has already exhausted the puns on Jolly and Sink: "GOP Jolly over Sinking (!) of Dems in FL," so don't bother.
But, thanks for playing.

END SIDEBAR

The Democratic writers took pains to point out that in spite of this Congressional seat being held by a Republican since right after Juan Ponce de Le�n bumped into Florida in 1513, Ms. Sink came THIS CLOSE to upsetting Mr. Jolly.

They did not say that Barack Obama won in 2012, even if only by one percentage point.

The Ds wrote that ultra conservative OUTSIDE MONEY (read: Koch Brothers) poured into the district ignoring the fact that even with that OUTSIDE MONEY the Democrat outspent the Republican.

In fact of the campaigns themselves (without SuperPACs or National Committee money) the Democrat outspent the Republican by about 3-1.

On the winning side (and I don't have as much experience in this) the job of the comms people at the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is to make this result as broadly applicable to November as possible.

NRCC Chairman Greg Walden (R-Or) was quoted in a press release as saying:

"One of Nancy Pelosi's most prized candidates was ultimately brought down because of her unwavering support for ObamaCare, and that should be a loud warning for other Democrats running coast to coast."

Well, maybe. But Pinellas County is in Florida and in Florida there tend to be a disproportionate percentage of seniors in the population. According to ABC News "about 22 percent of the population in Pinellas County are 65 and older."

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, across the United States that group makes up only 13.3 percent of the total population.

There is no question that both sides were pointing to, and investing heavily in, this race if only for the bragging rights going forward.

According to CNN, DCCC chairman Steve Israel (D-NY) tried to minimize the result saying,

"Special elections are not indicators of the future. They never have been. They never will be."

This was a seat held by the late C.W. "Bill" Young who, according to Wikipedia "was elected to Congress in 1970 from what was then the 8th District and was reelected 20 times," so the calculus doesn't change.

I point that out because this was an R seat that will remain an R seat, so Democrats still need a 17-seat swing to take over control of the House.

In addition to the Florida-13 result, the Ds got another piece of bad news when the highly respected NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll had President Obama's approval rating at an all-time low (for that poll) at 41 percent. What does that mean for candidates? According to NBC.com:

"Forty-eight percent of voters say they're less likely to vote for a candidate who's a solid supporter of the Obama administration, versus 26 percent who say they're more likely to vote for that candidate."

The one thing we do know is that the mid-term elections will be held on November 4, 2014. That clock is inexorably ticking so a week of news, like this one, that causes Democrats running for office to play defense, is a week they will never get back.

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Links to Dave Espo's and CNN's analysis plus a link to the NBC/WSJ poll.

The Mullfoto is of my fine dining experience at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin last week.

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