If Republicans keep a majority in the US House of Representatives, progressive bills will likely continue to go nowhere. There is a chance for Democrats to take the House (by winning a net gain of 25 seats) and for many of the winning Democrats to be solid progressives — like the 17 endorsed by DailyKos.
Below is a table listing 87 Democrats running for the House that have garnered an endorsement from one or more of 12 progressive organizations: DailyKos, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), Credo, Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), Blue America, Democracy for America (DFA), the League of Conservation Voters, Feminist Majority, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the Progressive Caucus’s Progressive Action PAC, the Council for a Livable World (CLW), and Alternet.
DailyKos Elections currently rates 19 of these races as “Safe Democratic” and 15 as “Safe Republican” leaving 53 of them in active play, with 20 of them ranked as tossups.
Of these 87 races, there are 44 incumbent Republicans and 18 incumbent Democrats, including one pair of incumbents pitted against each other by redistricting (OH-16 Sutter-Renacci). Incumbents (shown in bold) have Progressive Punch scores for 2011-12 (100=Votes Progressive) and DW-Nominate scores (-1=progressive, +1=conservative), where the numbers are available.
If you’d like to play with this table further, you can download a copy of my spreadsheet from Google Docs here. You can contribute to a DailyKos candidate here.
Click table to enlarge.
Incumbents in bold type
DK = DailyKos “Speaker Pelosi Project” (Orange-to-Blue Program) working for 17 Democrats
PCCC = Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) endorsements of 7 Democrats
Cr = Credo SuperPac working against 11 Republican Tea Partiers
PDA = Progressive Democrats of America endorsements of 11 Democrats
BA = Blue America endorsements of 16 Democrats: “tough races” “solid progressives”
DfA = Democracy for America endorsements of 21 Democrats
LCV = League of Conservation Voters Action PAC endorsements of 29 Democrats
FM = Feminist Majority endorsements of 23 Democratic women
HRC = Human Rights Campaign endorsements of 6 Democrats
PA = Progressive Caucus’s Progressive Action PAC endorsements of 26 Democrats
CLW = Council for a Livable World (CLW) endorsements of 36 Democrats
Alt = Alternet: “10 Under-the-Radar Congressional Races to Watch”
Race ratings from DailyKos as of October 12, 2012.
DW-Nominate consevative/progressive rating: David Jarmin, DailyKos
Progressive Punch rating in 2011-12 (as of 10/17/12)
The first edition of this table from September 25, can be found here. This second edition has endorsements in 16 more races from three additional progressive organizations.