Report: Democrats cede House in 2014, hope to hold Senate

With the 2014 midterm cycle growing increasingly intense each passing day, it appears that many big time Democratic donors have decided that funding House races is no longer a useful place to spend resources. In fact, they’re reportedly not only ceding the House to Republican control, they’re now focusing on the idea of merely saving the US Senate from slipping into GOP hands.

Report from Politico:

With Democrats’ grasp on the Senate increasingly tenuous — and the House all but beyond reach — some top party donors and strategists are moving to do something in the midterm election as painful as it is coldblooded: Admit the House can’t be won and go all in to save the Senate.

Their calculation is uncomplicated. With only so much money to go around in an election year that is tilting the GOP’s way, Democrats need to concentrate resources on preserving the chamber they have now. Losing the Senate, they know, could doom whatever hopes Barack Obama has of salvaging the final years of his presidency.

The triage idea is taking hold in phone conversations among donors and in strategy sessions between party operatives. Even some of the people who have invested the most to get House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi back into the speaker’s chair are moving in that direction.

“There is no question that Democratic donors are shifting towards the Senate in 2014. They will continue to support Nancy, but everyone agrees that the emphasis is going to be on the Senate,” said Joe Cotchett, a prominent San Francisco trial attorney and friend of Pelosi’s who has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic Party candidates and causes. “When you see people like [longtime California Democratic Rep.] George Miller announcing that they are not running again, you know where the money will be going.”

“…[U]nless we have a George Washington Bridge fiasco in the House,” he added, referring to the traffic scandal that has engulfed Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, “control is not going to change.”

This would mark a fairly major change for both parties since this would free up the Republicans from spending resources defending Congressional seats and pour all funding into races where a moderately safe Democratic Senator might be beatable.

Of course, it’s January but this report indicates that the touted success of ObamaCare by many Democratic leaders has not and will not pan out in 2014 to the approval of voters. In fact, with the employer mandate delayed from 2013 to 2014, the ObamaCare melee may have only just begun. Proof may reside in the retirement of twenty-term Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman, a chief architect of ObamaCare.