Demagogue

Democrats need to flip 15 seats in order to gain control of the U.S. House of Representatives this election. Of course, their main targets are House seats in blue states like Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut. But reaching the threshold of 15 requires winning seats elsewhere -- even in red states.

Texas, for example. Did you forget that the former seat of Tom DeLay (Texas-22) is widely expected to be won by a Democrat? DeLay resigned from the seat, and the state GOP was blocked by a court ruling from replacing DeLay's name on the ballot with that of another Republican.

RealClearPolitics.com summarized the election in Texas-22 thusly:

This is the sort of condition we need to have to see a district as conservative as TX 22 go to the Democrats: either the Republican has to be under indictment or there has to be no Republican on the ballot.

... As the saying goes – you can’t beat somebody with nobody. Technically, the Republicans have nobody. But the local GOP has managed to coalesce around their “nominee” – Houston City Councilwoman Shelly Sekula-Gibbs. She is their write-in choice for the seat.

The obvious question: how will enough voters manage to write-in a candidate whose name has six syllables and a hyphen?