Last year, when House Republicans passed their bill that would have repealed the Affordable Care Act—and deprive millions of Americans of health coverage—we were all scared, angry, and desperate to find a way to fight back. But fight back we did.
At the time, we were 18 months away from the 2018 midterms, meaning we didn’t yet know whom Democrats would nominate to take on each of the Republicans who made the mistake of voting for this abomination of a law. But our tireless allies at ActBlue gave us a novel way to capitalize on the moment: Democratic nominee funds.
These funds hold all donations in escrow until each state holds its Democratic primaries; once a winner is declared, that nominee gets all the money raised for their district’s fund in one fell swoop. They allowed us, in other words, to channel our intense feelings into hard cash and bank it until the right moment. And, man, did we ever put the hurt on the GOP.
The moment the final vote was tallied, we pored over the roll call, looking to see which “ayes” were likely to be most vulnerable in 2018. We came up with a list of 24 names—exactly the number of seats that, at that point, Democrats needed to to flip in order to retake the House—and we asked the Daily Kos community to give whatever it could.
Your generosity was extraordinary: You donated $1 million in just a single day after our appeal went up, and by the time the last primaries concluded, you gave $1.8 million in all to defeat this slate.
And defeat it you did. In the image at the top of this post, you’ll see the names and districts of every Republican we targeted. Of these two dozen members, 21 won’t be returning for the 116th Congress. Nineteen sought re-election; we ousted 16 of them. Another five retired; we flipped all five seats. Only three survived, and the message is clear: We’re not done yet.
What we accomplished together this cycle we can do again next cycle. We can’t ever rest on our laurels—the fight always continues, and as we work to take back the Senate and White House, we also need to expand our majority in the House. The reason is simple: Once Democrats are back in charge in D.C., we want to make sure they can pass the most progressive legislation possible. The larger our caucus, the easier that is.
To that end, Daily Kos has identified another dozen Republicans who ought to be very worried about their political futures, because, even though the election is still 23 months off, we're going start raising money for their challengers, beginning right now. The more we give now, the more likely some of these incumbents are to retire, and the better our chances are of recruiting strong candidates. And that will put us on the path toward making 2020 look like 2018.
Please donate $1 now to help defeat each of these 12 Republicans and expand the Democrats’ majority in the House!