A lot of Obamacare opponents are out looking for money this morning. And if you’re inclined, give.
But I would say that if last night’s vote has you fighting mad, find a campaign of a guy or gal who opposed this, call ‘em up, and volunteer. Writing a check or pressing a button to send funds can be satisfying, but there’s a lot of energy out there.
“But Jim, there’s no competitive race where I live.”
For a few folks, yeah. But when I was putting together my Obamacare brackets, I noted that the number of vulnerable Democrats is awfully widely dispersed geographically. I went through the House races and came up with these open seats and plausibly competitive or endangered House Democrats (remember, even if they’ve performed well in the past, this is a Scott Brown electorate):
Carol Shea-Porter, New Hampshire
Paul Hodes’s open seat, New Hampshire
Bill Delahunt’s open seat, Massachusetts
Patrick Kennedy’s open seat, Rhode Island
Michael Arcuri, New York
Scott Murphy, New York
Mike McMahon, New York
Dan Maffei, New York
Tim Bishop, New York
Eric Massa’s open seat, New York
John Adler, New Jersey
Frank Kratovil, Maryland
Mike Castle’s open seat, Delaware
Glenn Nye, Virginia
Rick Boucher, Virginia
Gerry Connolly, Virginia
Tom Perriello, Virginia
Allan Mollohan, West Virginia
Nick Rahall, West Virginia
Lincoln Davis, Tennessee
John Tanner’s open seat, Tennessee
Bart Gordon’s open seat, Tennessee
Jason Altmire, Pennsylvania
Paul Kanjorski, Pennsylvania
Chris Carney, Pennsylvania
Kathy Dahlkemper, Pennsylvania
Joe Sestak’s open seat, Pennsylvania
Patrick Murphy, Pennsylvania
Dina Titus, Nevada
Ann Kirkpatrick, Arizona
Gabby Giffords, Arizona
Harry Mitchell, Arizona
Harry Teague, New Mexico
Martin Heinrich, New Mexico
Kurt Schrader, Oregon
Brian Baird’s open seat, Washington
Jim Matheson, Utah
Betsey Markey, Colorado
Walt Minnick, Idaho
Baron Hill, Indiana
Brad Ellsworth’s open seat, Indiana
Bill Foster, Illinois
Debbie Halvorson, Illinois
Phil Hare, Illinois
Leonard Boswell, Iowa
Steve Kagen, Wisconsin
Ron Kind, Wisconsin
Dave Obey, Wisconsin
John Boccieri, Ohio
Zach Space, Ohio
Charlie Wilson, Ohio
Mary Jo Kilroy, Ohio
Steve Dreihaus, Ohio
Mark Schauer, Michigan
Gary Peters, Michigan
Ike Skelton, Missouri
Earl Pomeroy, North Dakota
Suzanne Kosmas, Florida
Allen Boyd, Florida
Ron Klein, Florida
Chet Edwards, Texas
Mike Ross, Arkansas
Marion Berry’s open seat, Arkansas
Vic Snyder’s open seat, Arkansas
Ben Chandler, Kentucky
John Spratt, South Carolina
Gene Taylor, Mississippi
Travis Childers, Mississippi
Bobby Bright, Alabama
John Barrow, Georgia
Jim Marshall, Georgia
Dan Boren, Oklahoma
Larry Kissell, North Carolina
Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin, South Dakota
Dennis Moore’s open seat, Kansas
Charlie Melancon’s open seat, Louisiana
(This list is not exhaustive. For example, North Carolina’s Heath Shuler won healthily in 2008 and faces underfunded challengers, but maybe his heavily Republican district gets fed up with their guy voting for cap-and-trade and Pelosi.)
Next month, there’s a special election in Florida’s 19th district (Wexler’s old district), as well as special elections in Hawaii’s 1st district and Pennsylvania’s 12th district (Murtha’s old district) in May. That’s more than 80 seats with a shot of a GOP takeover. And this is just the House races; there obviously are a lot of important Senate and gubernatorial races on the ballot, too.
UPDATE: A couple of readers nominate a few more: Jim Himes and Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Jerry McNerney of California, Van Tran looks set to give Loretta Sanchez of California the toughest race of her career . . .