"It was very similar to the climate that we have now," Israel said. "The president gets elected, re-elected, in 1996. The Republicans in the House of Representatives make a decision to do everything they can to bring him down. ... They launched 35 separate, partisan, witch-hunt investigations -- and the Democrats won seats in the second midterm election of the Clinton presidency; won five seats."
Democrats need to pick up 17 House seats to regain the control they lost to Republicans in 2010. Israel says there are 52 House seats "in play." The non-partisan Cook Political Report now identifies 37 Democratic-held seats and 30 Republican-held seats as competitive or potentially competitive.
One big target for Democrats: Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, who for a time sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 but only narrowly held on to her House seat in November. She faces a rematch against businessman Jim Graves. Israel said a campaign poll taken last week by the firm PPP for the Graves campaign put him ahead of Bachmann, 47%-45% -- within the margin of error of 4.4 percentage points but a sign of a close contest.
In the interview, Israel adds ""If the economy shows signs of health, then I think we have a much better climate in which to win the House." In addition, Rachel Weiner reports at The Fix that Dems have a 48-40 edge in generic ballot preference, according to the latest WaPo/ABCNews poll.
Right leaning pollster.Gallup just released a poll that reveals more and more Americans are shifting in ideological attitudes, and identifying themselves as ‘liberals’ in regard to social and economic issues. At the same time, fewer Americans are describing themselves as ‘conservatives.’
“The trend suggests that ideological attitudes in the country may be shifting. Social liberalism has grown by six points since 2001 and now attracts half of rank-and-file Democrats and Democratic leaners.”
This new survey shows changes in Americans’ ideology: economic conservatism is at a five-year low, while social liberalism has registered its highest support…
They go on to state the following:
“the percentage of Americans describing their social views as ‘liberal’ or ‘very liberal’ has achieved a new peak of 30% — in line with Gallup’s recent finding that Americans are more accepting on a number of moral issues. Thirty-five percent of Americans say they are conservative or very conservative on social issues and 32% self-identify as socially moderate.”
Another recent study was presented at Vanderbilt University:
What Politicians Believe About Their Constituents: (Asymmetric Misperceptions and Prospects for Constituency Control)
The study shows conservative politicians believe their ‘followers’ are more conservative than they actually are.
“There is a striking conservative bias in politicians’ perceptions, particularly among conservatives: conservative politicians systematically believe their constituents are more conservative than they actually are by more than 20 percentage points on average, and liberal politicians also typically overestimate their constituents’ conservatism by several percentage points.
“Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 89% of Republican self-identifiers nationwide in 2012, while accounting for 70% of independents and 60% of Democrats,” Gallup reports. “On the other hand, relatively few Hispanics and blacks identified as Republicans, while both of these groups represented a significantly higher percentage of independents and Democrats nationwide.”
Gallup adds:
“The ability of the Republican Party to make inroads among nonwhites has been much discussed in recent months, particularly the GOP’s efforts to improve on the 13% allegiance that Gallup data show it obtains from Hispanics.”
So where does this all leave us? It leaves us looking damn good for the 2014 mid-term elections, it does. If Democrats don’t do anything silly, and GOP continues to dig its grave by introducing bills against the reproductive rights of women, opposing healthcare, even the simplest gun safety, and the environment, we should have a clear shot. You’d think Republicans would have learned after 2012 elections. I’m glad they didn’t — and hope they stay ignorant. Many liberals are ready for a Democratic majority in Congress, so we can get the job(s) done.
Director of News & Commentary, Union of Concerned Scientists
Every time journalists cite contrarian scientists or industry-funded think tank spokespeople, they validate them as a trustworthy source. And every time journalists fail to disclose where contrarians get their funding, they fail to explain whose interests they serve.
During the last decade, the Koch Brothers gave nearly $50 million to disparage climate science.
This six-part series, "Unreliable Sources: How the News Media Help the Kochs and ExxonMobil Spread Climate Disinformation," documents that the press routinely cites fossil fuel industry-backed climate contrarian think tanks without reporting their funding sources. For part 1, click here; part 2, click here; part 3, click here; part 4, click here; and part 5, click here. part 6. click here.
It’s time to call out a major Republican theme of how politics should be practiced in a democracy: the supposed right to be free from criticism. It may sell wonderfully inside the conservative closed-information loop, but it’s a nasty idea that sorts exceptionally badly with democratic politics.
In 2012, right-wing special interest groups -- backed by some anonymous corporations and mega-rich donors -- spent $650 million trying to influence elections.
Ask a teacher, or a nurse, or a mom on your block -- they don’t have $650 million to spend individually to fight back. But that doesn’t mean we can’t fight back together. That’s what I’m doing with my effort to end the era of Citizens United. And I need your help.
No matter who you are, you have a stake in the decisions that get made in Washington. But unlike a hedge fund manager or a Wall Street CEO, you probably don’t have unlimited corporate cash at your disposal.
That’s why we need to end Citizens United -- so that real people can have a voice in Washington that isn’t lost in the din of special interest spending. We can do this together.
On May 10, ABC News reported what it characterized as a major "exclusive" on the consulate attacks in Benghazi, Libya. Claiming to have "obtained" key administration e-mails, the report appeared to illustrate White House and State Department aides editing out references to terrorism in talking points for political reasons.
The story seemed to vindicate conservatives, who for months had been screaming about a cover-up. But when the e-mails in question were released to the public, they differed substantially from those ABC News "exclusively unearthed" in the scoop. The truth had come out: the reporter, ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl, was quoting not the actual e-mails, but rather summaries of the e-mails provided by a Republican source. Despite repeated on-air claims, ABC News had never "obtained" the e-mails, and the damning "quotes" that triggered the "exclusive" turned out to be misleading.
By representing secondhand summaries from a source as direct transcriptions of the e-mails, Karl and his team broke the rules of journalism and fundamentally misled their audience. Other networks that had reported on the scoop, including CNN and CBS, rushed to air segments correcting their reports. The online editors at ABC News even updated the web version of the story and appended an “Editor’s Note” addressing the sourcing issue.
Amazingly, though, ABC News has never addressed or corrected any of the inaccurate reporting on the air. On the airwaves, the repeated claim that ABC had "exclusively obtained" the administration e-mails and the fundamentally misleading "quotes" from them still stand. In fact, in two on-air reports covering the release of the administration e-mails that debunked the "exclusive," Jonathan Karl erroneously claimed that those e-mails "confirm" ABC News' original story. It is not surprising, then, that the false reporting has stuck--according to ABC’s own poll, a majority of Americans now think that the Obama administration is trying to cover up the facts about Benghazi.
ABC News, above all, is a network news outlet. Its medium is television. After a major substantive error in a flagship story, ABC owes its millions of viewers the truth.
President Obama’s commencement address at Morehouse College in Atlanta certainly has gotten a lot of attention. Quite a few Africans Americans don’t like how he talks to predominantly black audiences. As The Post’s Vanessa Williams reported yesterday, “The personal-responsibility finger-wagging … is getting old” for many. My disagreement with that is well documented. But lost in all the talk about what the president said to the all-male historically black college is how Obama ensured that his finger-wagging message also applied to gay black men.
Now, there was some initial confusion about the reaction to what he said. But if you fast forward to 22:18 on the video of the president’s speech and listen attentively to the audio, you’ll hear something wonderful happen. Obama was extolling the hard work and dedication of one of the graduates who personified his urging to the men to “keep setting an example for what it means to be a man.”
The epic two-year Los Angeles mayor’s race is finally over—even though in the end, the voters didn’t really seem to care. Wendy Greuel has conceded the race to Eric Garcetti, sources told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, making Garcetti the next mayor of America’s second-largest city. Garcetti will replace incumbent Antonio Villaraigosa, the city’s first Latino mayor. Despite the historic potential of both this year’s candidates—Garcetti will be the first Jewish mayor and Greuel would have been the first woman—officials estimate that three out of four L.A. residents did not vote.
Tonight, I am proud to introduce for the first time on The Colbert Report, the Obama Scandal Booth! (wild audience cheering and applause)
Welcome to the Obama Scandal Booth, brought to you by Mazda, and the scandalously sleek redesign of the all-new 2014 Mazda Six. Mazda, it's not your father's Oldsmobile... cuz it's a Mazda.
Now inside this booth are slips of paper, each with the name of a White House scandal — IRS, AP, Benghazi, immortal scorpion soldiers. Oh, it's coming out. And just moments from now, ladies and gentlemen, I will enter the booth and, like my colleagues, grasp wildly at any accusation that floats past. (audience cheering and applause)
Ten seconds! Jimmy, ten seconds on the clock, please. (Stephen enters booth)
: "Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will not try to block immigration reform from reaching the floor, despite complaints from some conservative leaders. McConnell on Tuesday praised the Gang of Eight’s work and said he is 'hopeful' of passing comprehensive immigration reform legislation through the Senate. McConnell indicated he would not block a vote on a motion to proceed to the legislation crafted by four Democrats and four Republicans. 'The status quo is not good; the current situation is not good,' McConnell said about the nation’s immigration system, which his colleagues frequently describe as broken." Read More [The Hill] * WARNING, THE HILL IS FULL OF RIGHT WING THINK TANK EMBEDS
"The likelihood of a knockdown fight over the filibuster this summer increased on Tuesday as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) pulled back a vote on the confirmation of Richard Cordray to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cordray is a contentious nominee because 43 Republicans have demanded changes to the structure of the CFPB before they will approve any nominee to run it. That means Republicans can deny Democrats the 60 votes needed to begin debate on a CFPB nominee. President Barack Obama gave Cordray a recess appointment in January 2012, which Republicans have challenged as illegal, citing a recent court case that invalidated other recess appointments. Reid indicated that he would bring Cordray's nomination to a vote in July, and a Senate Democratic aide said that vote will come at a time when Reid is ready to launch into a broader fight over all of Obama's stalled nominees. The 'plan is to wait until immigration is complete before engaging in total all-out nomination fight,' said the aide." Read More....
The Blow Email is authored by: MICHAEL FALCONE (@michaelpfalcone) Americans, in a new ABC News-Washington Post poll out today, sharply reject special scrutiny of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service, suspect an administration cover-up of the Benghazi incident and express substantial distrust of the federal government more generally, ABC News Pollster GARY LANGER notes. Yet the national survey also finds no backlash against Barack Obama, at least at this point. His job approval rating is stable at 51 percent. Moreover, the partisan gap in views of his performance is its smallest since December 2011, and Obama has majority approval among men for the first time since December 2010. Both may reflect the effects of an improving economy: 56 percent of Americans now say the economy is beginning to recover, up by a dramatic 20 percentage points in the past year and a half, to the most since ABC and the Post first asked the question in late 2009. Additionally, 53 percent now say they're optimistic about the economy's prospects in the year ahead - a majority for the first time in four years. See the full ABC News-Washington Post poll: http://abcn.ws/17WKvON BTW these poll numbers show a uptick in Obama's numbers, yet more propaganda from ABC News
Please Contact ABC and tell them enough is enough and retract their propaganda and for Right Wing Think Tank embed Jonathan Karl. http://abc.go.com/site/contact-us
ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl's statement in response to criticism for the deceptive sourcing in his so-called "exclusive" on administration talking points on the September attacks in Benghazi is fundamentally misleading.
In a statement to CNN, Karl claimed that ABC News "updated our story immediately" when it became clear it was based on misquoted emails from administration officials. But Karl also insisted the story "still entirely stands," and the network has issued no on-air corrections. In fact, in two on-air reports on the release of administration emails that debunked his reporting, Karl said that those emails "confirm" ABC News' original story.
Conservatives have long claimed that the Obama administration edited references to terrorism out of the Benghazi talking points for political reasons. Karl buttressed those allegations with a May 10 report that claimed, based on what appeared to be direct quotes from the emails of White House and State Department aides, that "the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department."
Karl's "exclusive" received widespread coverage even though it was largely a rehash of previously covered debates on who gave input into the talking points. It did not disprove what Gen. David Petraeus, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, testified in November: that the intelligence community signed off on the final draft of the talking points, and that references to terrorist groups in Libya were removed in order to avoid tipping off those groups.
But Karl's story dissolved after CNN's Jake Tapper obtained a key email from a White House aide that differed substantially from how it had been quoted by Karl. The ABC News reporter then acknowledged that he had never seen the actual emails on which he had reported. Rather, a Republican source had read him their own summaries of those emails.
On May 20, CNN's Howard Kurtz reported the following statement from Karl: "Clearly, I regret the email was quoted incorrectly and I regret that it's become a distraction from the story, which still entirely stands. I should have been clearer about the attribution. We updated our story immediately."
This statement merely compounds the dubious practices that in which Karl and ABC News have engaged with regard to this story.
Karl's statements that he "regret[s]" the email obtained by Tapper was "quoted incorrectly" and that he "should have been clearer about the attribution" effectively ignores the central impropriety that led media observers to call his story "sloppy" and "inaccurate": his repeated false claims, both on-air and in his online report, that he had actually "obtained" the emails on which he reported. In so doing, and in providing what he described as direct quotes from those emails, Karl willfully misled his audience. As TPM Media's Josh Marshall wrote:
[T]hat's not a minor point because the impact of his story was based on his having reviewed them himself rather than relying on a second hand account -- having gotten some summary of them from a tendentious source -- a Republican staffer. The fact that Karl put the non-quotes within quotation marks makes it pretty clear that he was led to believe that he was being given verbatim transcriptions. You never put summaries in quotes.
Karl's claim that his story "entirely stands" is laughable. Don't take my word for it: both CNN's Tapper and CBS' Major Garrett have pointed out how Karl's story diverges from reality in the wake of the release of the administration emails on the editing of the talking points.
Karl's statement that "We updated our story immediately" is also risible. ABC News has never addressed or corrected on-air any of its reporting on the story -- including repeated false claims by Karl himself and by Martha Raddatz and Reena Ninan that the network had actually "obtained" the emails.
In fact, in his May 15 report for World News with Diane Sawyer on the White House's release of roughly 100 pages of administration emails on the talking points, Karl claimed that the released emails "confirm ABC News' exclusive report."
Likewise, during his May 16 report for Good Morning America, Karl said the emails "confirm what ABC News first reported."
As for the online version of the story, Karl authored a May 14 blog post explaining that he had never actually seen the emails and had instead been "quoting verbatim a source who reviewed the original documents and shared detailed notes" and providing that source's false explanation for the discrepancy. ABC News has appended that post to the original May 10 story along with the following "editor's note":
Editor's Note: There were differences between ABC News' original reporting on an email by Ben Rhodes, below, and the actual wording of that email which have now been corrected. ABC News should have been more precise in its sourcing of those quotes, attributing them to handwritten copies of the emails taken by a Congressional source. We regret that error. The remainder of the report stands as accurate.
The editor's note does not address the issue of Karl's false suggestion in the article that he had actually obtained the emails in question, other than to say he should have been "more precise" in his sourcing. While the note claims the differences between the actual email's text and the text Karl quoted have been "corrected," the original false quote actually remains unchanged in the story, though Karl's explanation for those discrepancies has been added to the end of the article.
And of course, the claim that "the remainder of the report stands as accurate" is a ridiculous attempt to save face that is frankly insulting to ABC News' viewers.
Top White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer fought back against the week of Republican lies on Meet the Press, telling David Gregory, “We’ve seen this playbook from the Republicans before. What they want to do when they are lacking a positive agenda is they want to drag Washington into a swamp of partisan fishing expeditions, trumped up hearings, and false allegations. We’re not going to let that happen.”
He then proceeded to drop a few fact bombs on the alleged “scandals”.
Transcript from NBC News, with modifications and additions for missing text, my bold:
DAVID GREGORY: You don’t buy the theory there’s a big cloud, scandal over this president.
DAN PFEIFFER: No, I do not. We’ve seen this playbook from the Republicans before. What they want to do when they are lacking a positive agenda is they want to drag Washington into a swamp of partisan fishing expeditions, trumped up hearings, and false allegations. We’re not going to let that happen. The president has business to do for the American people.
DAVID GREGORY: We’re going to hear from Dave Camp (R-MI, Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee)… This is one of the things he said. I want to get your reaction.
DAVE CAMP: Listening to the nightly news, this appears to be an example of cover-ups and it seems like the truth is hidden from the American people just long enough to make it through an election.
DAVID GREGORY: How do you react to that?
DAN PFEIFFER: There’s no evidence to support at that. The first time the White House was aware of this investigation was a few weeks ago when our office was notified it was happening. At that point, we had no idea what the facts were. Congressman Issa has been aware of this investigation since before the election. He didn’t say anything publicly for very good reason. As he said, want to make sure you actually have facts before you raise allegations — when you’re talking about a nonpartisan entity like the IRS.
Snip
DAVID GREGORY: You’re a communications professional as well. You never want a president of the United States coming out and saying I just learned about this from news reports. It doesn’t look like someone is large and in charge–
DAN PFEIFFER: In this situation that’s exactly what you want. You don’t want the President involved in an independent investigation with an agency with an independent stature like the IRS. That would be inappropriate.
The Obama administration appointed a career official to review the IRS procedures, someone who has served under presidents of both parties, because that is exactly what you do when you do not have an agenda to cover something up. The President is staying out of the investigation, as he should.
The facts are that the IRS was not only “targeting” conservatives. In fact, conservatives were only 1/3 of the groups “targeted”. During another one of the Republicans’ wasteful congressional hearings, they got handed their hysteria on a platter of “don’t ask questions you don’t know the answer to”, when they forced acting IRS commissioner Steve Miller to explain to them that conservatives were not targeted. Eric W. Dolan at Raw Storyreported Saturday that Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) stepped in a big puddle of unbecoming fact:
“If the targeting wasn’t targeting, if the targeting wasn’t based on philosophy, how come only conservatives got snagged?” Roskam confidently asked.
“They didn’t, sir,” Miller responded. “Organizations of all walks and all persuasions were pulled in. That’s shown by the fact that only 70 of the 300 organizations were tea party organizations, of the ones that were looked at by TIGTA [Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration].”
Furthermore, Republicans knew about the IRS investigation last year, because they requested it (caution: Jonathan Karl article). They also know why it didn’t “come out” then, and that is because no wrongdoing had been found yet. This is the nature of investigations, something Issa admitted then and now plays confused over. However, you can’t blame Republicans for their most defining characteristic of jumping the gun. They don’t care much for evidence, as proven in these trumped up charges (Benghazi gate, in which they were busted as manufacturing evidence against the Obama administration, should burnish the WMD rep once and for all).
The “scandal” that certain folks knew about the “IRS targeting conservatives”, suggesting yet another coverup, was planted in the press last week by Republican congressional aides, who failed to mention that Congressman Issa also knew about it.
These are the facts, and it’s a sad commentary on our media that the White House had to send out their own representative to point these things out. If they didn’t, the “trifecta” of trumped up scandals would be allowed to continue ala the Clinton years, costing untold amounts of money and halting government for years. But guess what? President Obama is not going to let that happen again.
Democrats have learned a few things from the Clinton years, but Republicans clearly have not. Speaker Boehner was already asked if he was worried about backlash last week. If they aren’t careful, the narrative by next week will resemble something closer to the truth: These scandals are trumped up by Republicans, who have once again lied to the press, Congress, and the public.
The Washington Postreported today that, in the course of a leak investigation of a State Department employee who allegedly provided Fox News’s James Rosen with classified information, the Obama Justice Department not only subpoenaed Rosen’s private e-mails but also said that Rosen was “an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator” in the crime.
Here is the full forty-four-page Justice Department application for the search warrant of Rosen’s Gmail account.
Joy Reid dropped a little Benghazi lying leaker bomb yesterday on the Reid Report blog. A trusted source of hers told her to look at the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. One person who stood out to her was Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), who was onMorning Joeon May 9th, the day before the now debunked Benghazi email bombshell, claiming that there were “glaring omissions” in what was given to the intelligence committee, but that he couldn’t talk about it yet.
Senator Coburn appears to be referencing the email that was edited and shopped by “Republicans on Capitol Hill” to media outlets, and picked up by the gullible rube Jonathan Karl at ABC, as well as repeated by The Weekly Standard and a CBS reporter. This suggests that he saw the edited version of the email that was leaked by Republicans.
That may have been a bait and switch headline but it’s still technically accurate. Sir Ian McKellen will be officiating the wedding of Sir Patrick Stewart to his partner, Sunny Ozell. He revealed his part in the ceremony during an interview on The Jonathan Ross Show.
Stewart and McKellen are long-time friends. Here is an excerpt from the show:
Sir Ian McKellen: Yes, I'm going to marry Patrick. Well, no. How else do you put that? I am going to officiate at his wedding.
Jonathan Ross: So how come you're legally allowed to do that?
Sir Ian McKellen: Well I don't know, but in Massachusetts, in the middle of America somewhere, you get a friend along, and I read out the words, and Sunny and Patrick will then be married. "I declare you man and wife."
Jonathan Ross: Have you had this experience with this kind of thing? Sir Ian McKellen:I've done it once before with two guys having a civil partnership. I was crying my eyes out.
Jonathan Ross: Here in the U.K.?
Sir Ian McKellen: Oh, I was crying my eyes out. But what do you wear when you officiate at a wedding?
Jonathan Ross: Well what did you go with [last time]?
Sir Ian McKellen: Well last time I went with a white gown, something I bought in India. It was rather fetching. You mustn't upstage the bride.
Charming! The whole interview is worth a watch, though — Matt "The Doctor" Smith and Ian McKellen's budding friendship was on display, and Ross aired McKellen's very first television appearance on the BBC:
Prepare yourself: Every Conservative and religious group will claim to have fallen victim to the IRS.
Cue: "Catholic League president Bill Donohue claims that President Barack Obama‘s IRS targeted the Catholic League — before Obama was even elected President — over anti-Obama speeches and articles he wrote."
Just weeks after Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, I was notified by the IRS that the Catholic League was under investigation for violating the IRS Code on political activities as it relates to 501(c)(3) organizations,” Donohue writes at (of all places!) NewsMax:
The IRS was contacted on June 5, 2008, to launch a probe of the Catholic League, and the letter sent to me was dated Nov. 24, 2008. The June 5 letter was sent to the IRS by lawyers from Catholics United; it was mailed to Director Marsha Ramirez, director of Exempt Organizations Examinations, and to Lois G. Lerner, director of EO Division."
....
"So, the IRS during the 2008 presidential campaign, before the election, under Republican President George W. Bush, and under a Bush-appointed Republican head of the IRS launched an investigation against Donohue’s Catholic League, and notified Donohue before Obama was even inaugurated, but Donohue wants readers to think it was Obama’s doing? Perhaps NewsMax readers are that dumb."
Heritage Action “believes Washington should work for America’s best interest” — according to its website. A political advocacy group of the 501(c)(4) variety, this Heritage Foundation spinoff aims to “hold Congress accountable to conservative principles.”
But how? By making sure Republicans spend their time attacking the president.
Heritage Action’s Chief Executive Officer, Michael Needham, sent a letter to Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on Thursday
celebrating this week’s Benghazi-I.R.S.-A.P. trifecta.
“For this first time, the activities of the Obama administration are receiving a sustained public vetting,” he wrote.
“Recent events have rightly focused the nation’s attention squarely on the actions of the Obama administration. It is incumbent upon the House of Representatives to conduct oversight hearings on those actions, but” — this bit’s important — “it would be imprudent to do anything that shifts the focus from the Obama administration to the ideological differences within the House Republican Conference.”
By “anything” Mr. Needham means legislation “that could expose or highlight major schisms within the conference.” That is, anything that might upset Republicans of the Tea Party persuasion, like the recent Internet sales tax bill or the FARRM Act, which Heritage Action doesn’t like because it contains “nearly $800 billion in food stamp spending” — but which also contains massive cuts to that program.
The best course of action for the G.O.P., in Mr. Needham’s assessment, is to close ranks and discredit the president.
He finished his letter, without apparent irony, by stressing that “as the public’s trust in their government continues to erode, it is incumbent upon those of us who support a smaller, less intrusive government to lead.”
Democrats need to pick up 17 House seats to regain the control they lost to Republicans in 2010. Israel says there are 52 House seats "in play." The non-partisan Cook Political Report now identifies 37 Democratic-held seats and 30 Republican-held seats as competitive or potentially competitive.
