Tonight's installment of the
Fighting Dems features
Patrick Murphy. Murphy is running in the PA-08 CD, which became famous last year when Ginny Schrader became an online sensation.
This year, Murphy will take on freshman Republican Mike Fitzpatrick in a very moderate district. In fact, we already have encouraging polling on this race:
For starters, Democrats leads the generic ballot test there by four points (40-36), whereas in last year's benchmark poll by the Schrader campaign, the generic ballot lead was only one point (42-41). Further, with extremely low name ID, Murphy starts within 11 points of Fitzpatrick (46-35), which is somewhat closer than where Schrader started (down 16 points, 46-30). Overall, that could mean a slight bump of three or four points for the next Democratic nominee in the district, unless the difference is just statistical noise. Of course, since the district has been trending blue for a while now, I don't think that it is entirely statistical noise. This district is definitely winnable.
The segment will run at around 9:20 p.m. ET, though your local Air America affiliates may have it at different times.
The Fighting Dems series is meant to highlight men and women who worn the uniform and have chosen to run on the Democratic ticket. Turns out there's a heck of a lot more on our side than theirs. We are currently featuring Iraq War vets.
Previous Fighting Dems:
Paul Hackett (OH-Sen)
Bryan Lentz (PA-07)
David Ashe (VA-02)
You can get streams of these segments on Air America's Fighting Dems site.