It doesn’t seem like it to me...
Last year, in CA, the 49th Congressional District had the closest race of 2016. Doug Applegate, a Democrat running for the first time, lost to Darrell Issa by only 1,621 votes. That’s out of 310,000. That is amazing. Absolutely amazing!
In political numbers, that means about ½ a point. The closest anyone has ever come to Issa in the past has been 17-20 points behind. I’m proud to say that Daily Kos had a hand in that too, the Elections team endorsed Applegate in 2016! Hopefully we will again this year, you can DONATE HERE, Applegate announced that he would run again pretty much the day after the election.
So wouldn’t the logical thing be for the Democratic Party (and any other Democrat with a lick of sense) to throw their full weight and support behind Doug Applegate? Turns out logic has nothing to do with politics. Establishment Democrats are running some unknown guy against Issa and Applegate.
Now, pay close attention to that, I said they are running another Dem against Issa and Applegate. What is very important to understand is that there is no Democratic primary in CA; there is a Jungle Primary. All the candidates, Dems, Repubs, Libertarians, Green Party, etc., all run against each other and the top two run in the primary in November.
Could be two Dems, could be one from the American Independent Party and one from the Freedom and Peace Party, who knows? What I do know is that when you have a candidate as good as Doug Applegate, who loses by a razor thin margin, you don’t run another Dem against him!
I seriously don’t know what people are thinking. I had someone argue with me a few weeks ago that it didn't matter anyway, no Democrat could beat Issa unless he was Military.
Oh, maybe I wasn’t specific enough, that’s Colonel Doug Applegate, a retired Marine Colonel, running in a district that contains Camp Pendleton, a Marine base — full of voting Marines. And the thing about Marines is, they vote for other Marines.
It’s not just that he’s a Marine that makes him so electable either; he’s right on all the issues. How on earth could the Democratic Party get it so wrong?
Again, it beats me, but we can make it right. We can donate to Doug Applegate, we can write diaries about him, send email blasts to all our friends about him and tell them to forward to their friends. We are going to hit a lot of people in the 49th eventually.
Anyone living in the district can get out and work for him. Start by registering voters, so we have more Dem’s to vote for him in the first place, then go out in the community to support him.
California CD 49 - Colonel Doug Applegate
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