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Teixeira: House Districts in CA Breaking Blue

The following note by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his Facebook page:

California Dreamin’

The LA times has released polls of likely voters in 8 California congressional districts. Josh Marshall highlights the good news for Team Blue:

“Look at this new set of polls from California. The gist is that Republicans are at risk of losing a bunch of suburban seats the party has held for decades. In other words, they’re looking at a possible total wipe out. Democrats universal loathe Devin Nunes. But he’s generally been seen — rightly — to be safe in this cycle. But look at the numbers. He’s at 53 percent versus 45 percent for Andrew Janz. That’s still a pretty solid position to be in. But that’s not safe anymore. Duncan Hunter, under indictment but in an extremely Republican district, is up by only 2 points over Campa-Najjar.

Here are the other numbers.

CA-10
Harder (D) 50%
Denham (R) 45%

CA-25
Hill (D) 50%
Knight (R) 46%

CA-39
Cisneros (D) 49%
Kim (R) 48%

CA-45
Porter (D) 52%
Walters (R) 45%

CA-48
Rouda (D) 48%
Rohrabacher (R) 48%

CA-49
Levin (D) 55%
Harkey (R) 41%

The gist is these are all really bad numbers for Republicans. It’s in the nature of wave elections that most or nearly all of the tight races break against the incumbent party. Republicans could quite plausibly face a total wipeout in California. But shift the climate a bit and some or all could hold on. Notably, these samplings were done from September 16th to 23rd. So before any possible tightening over the last week to ten days.”

It will be interesting to see what things look like if they do another set of these polls in a week or two. But these results are very good. Pickups in California alone could get the Democrats a fair way toward their House takeover goal.

An LA Times article by David Lauter goes into a lot more detail on these results and it’s worth looking at. Among other things, it gives some demographic breakdowns for each district. Here’s a fairly typical result from one of the districts, the 48th, where Democrat Harley Rouda has a very good chance of taking out the truly dreadful Dana Rohrabacher. Note the education split among whites and the strong Latino support for Rouda.

 


Political Strategy Notes

Some highlights from “GOP sees Kavanaugh as boost for Senate, danger for House” by Scott Wong, Lisa Hagen and Mike Lillis: “A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marish survey released Wednesday shows the Democratic advantage has basically vanished. Once a 10-point margin for Democrats in July is now only a 2-point gap between Democrats and Republicans who consider the elections “very important.”…Polling released from Harvard CAPS/Harris on Monday showed that registered Democratic voters are slightly more likely to vote than Republican and independent voters based on the battle over the Kavanaugh nomination, which could provide some comfort to the party. Half of Democratic voters say they’re more likely to vote, compared to 46 percent of GOP voters…But Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC says it has conducted 24,000 interviews in states with Senate races since Thursday that shows the Kavanaugh nomination is not the game changer the GOP claims. The group says it hasn’t moved the needle in horse-race polling in Trump states, arguing that health care is still the top issue…While Trump’s attacks on Ford could excite the [GOP] base, many believe it could do lasting damage with independents and female, suburban voters whose support endangered House Republicans will need if they are to survive in November.”

Lillis, Hagen and Wong also note that “Democrats, meanwhile, have already been energized by what appears to be a backlash against the mercurial president, especially among female voters and candidates, who are running in record numbers this cycle…“The women of America are very energized — and they started to be energized on the 21st of January 2017. It has not dissipated,” Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the Democratic whip, told a small group of reporters in his Capitol office. “And while I believe there’s some energy on the other side as well, I don’t think it matches the energy that was created on our side, which was already at a high level.”…If the Kavanaugh nomination is derailed, Republicans like Freedom Caucus Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) believe the defeat will deflate the base and depress turnout in November. But others argue it could mobilize GOP voters — at least in Senate races.” While some very recent polls do show an uptick in GOP base voter enthusiasm, it’s unlikely that it will exceed the increase in voter enthusiasm among Democrats. Much depends on the wild card that will be played today, the results of the F.B.I.’s Kavanaugh investigation. Don’t be shocked if any GOP base Kavanaugh bump evaporates in the month ahead, as voters begin focusing on issues of concern that can actually be affected by their votes.

In his article, “Brett Kavanaugh Is Patient Zero” Ronald Brownstein writes in The Atlantic: “If Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is truly concerned about preserving the Court’s legitimacy in American life, as he’s often suggested, Brett Kavanaugh has become his worst nightmare…Before the disputed Bush v. Gore decision, which ended the recount in the 2000 presidential election, about half of Americans routinely expressed a great deal of confidence in the Court, according to Gallup polling. That number has fallen to 40 percent or less since the mid-2000s; in the latest Gallup measurement, from June, just one-third of Democrats said they had faith in the Court, compared with about two-fifths of Republicans…After Friday’s Senate Judiciary Committee session, Kavanaugh is facing a renewed FBI investigation into the sexual-assault charges against him from Christine Blasey Ford. But even if that inquiry fails to produce decisive evidence, and Senate Republicans push through his nomination, the tactics Kavanaugh has already employed to preserve his candidacy are bound to stoke Roberts’s greatest fear…if the Senate confirms Kavanaugh, it will present Roberts with a justice whose every decision will be viewed through the lens of the partisan and tribal animosities he inflamed to defend his nomination…In every possible way, he validated the portrait that critics had painted of him as a Republican operative in robes.”

At law.com, Karen Sloan reports that “900+ Law Profs Say Kavanaugh Lacks ‘Judicial Temperament,’ in Letter to Senate,” and observes that “The list of signatories is growing by the hour, and organizers plan to send the letter to senators on Thursday. As of Wednesday morning, 907 professors from 154 law schools had signed on…We have differing views about the other qualifications of Judge Kavanaugh,” the letter reads. “But we are united, as professors of law and scholars of judicial institutions, in believing that Judge Kavanaugh did not display the impartiality and judicial temperament requisite to sit on the highest court of our land…A separate group of 660 female law professor are also planning to send their own letter to the the Senate Thursday, arguing that Kavanaugh cannot be impartial and that he was especially condescending toward women senators during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.”

Kavanaugh’s evangelical conservative supporters won’t like it much, but “The nation’s largest group of Christian churches on Wednesday called for the withdrawal of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination for the Supreme Court,” notes Avery Anapole, writing at the Hill. “The National Council of Churches, which represents 38 denominations in the US, wrote in a statement on their website that they believe Kavanaugh has “disqualified himself from this lifetime appointment and must step aside immediately…”Judge Kavanaugh exhibited extreme partisan bias and disrespect towards certain members of the committee and thereby demonstrated that he possesses neither the temperament nor the character essential for a member of the highest court in our nation,” the statement read…The National Council of Churches alleged that Kavanaugh’s testimony included “several misstatements and some outright falsehoods,” including some related to Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a high school party in the 1980s.”

“Several Democratic candidates around the country are conducting shrewd, intelligent campaigns for Congress, focusing on real issues and letting the Trumps fall where they may,” writes Richardf Hermann in “A Democratic midterms strategy” at The Wayne Post. “They realize that they do not need to fulminate incessantly against President Trump’s countless foibles, faults and failures. He does this very ably all by himself. He is the perfect vehicle for keeping his mayhem front and center, reminding voters daily why it is essential to come out and vote against his enablers in November…Trump’s inability to stop tweeting, turn off the TV and actually govern permits Democrats to zero in on issues that matter to voters: a broken and obscenely expensive healthcare system; K-12 education that has fallen behind the rest of the developed world; unaffordable higher education that often does not lead to a decent job; blindness to the massive workplace changes about to hit us from technological innovation; expanding income inequality; collapsing infrastructure; climate change denial; inept disaster response; an unfair tax system that favors the wealthy; unsustainable entitlement programs; an ignored opiod crisis; and disastrous deregulatory initiatives that will sicken and even kill Americans.”

“The United States’ turnout in national elections lags behind other democratic countries with developed economies, ranking 26th out of 32 among peers in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to the Pew Research Center…Perhaps the most significant change has been in who votes. Unlike in the 19th century, voter turnout is now highly correlated with class. More than 80 percent of Americans with college degrees vote compared with about 40 percent of Americans without high school degrees, according to Jonathan Nagler, a political scientist at New York University and co-author of a 2014 book, “Who Votes Now.”…“There is a class skew that is fundamental and very worrying,” said Alexander Keyssar, a historian at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, who wrote “The Right to Vote.” “Parts of society remain tuned out and don’t feel like active citizens. There is this sense of disengagement and powerlessness.” — From “Planning to Vote in the November Election? Why Most Americans Probably Won’t” by Sabrina Tavernise.

In his article, “Ratings Changes: House, Senate, and Governor: Democrats inching closer to magic number in House, poised to net several governorships; Senate battle murky as Kavanaugh effect uncertain” at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Kyle Kondik writes, “We have 11 House ratings changes, all in favor of Democrats…Five gubernatorial ratings changes go in different directions but are generally better for Democrats…while we have the Democrats favored to win three GOP-held governorships already, they could win substantially more than that if the Toss-ups break their way.” Kondik sees a net loss of one senate seat for Dems as a plausible outcome at this politivsl moment.


Political Strategy Notes

From The New York Times editorial, “Hit Pause on Brett Kavanaugh“: “Enough…With a third woman stepping forward with accusations that the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh committed sexual assault as a young man, this destructive stampede of a confirmation, driven so far by partisan calculation, needs to yield at last to common sense: Let qualified investigators — the F.B.I. — do their job. Let them interview the many witnesses whose names are already in the public record, among them Judge Kavanaugh’s close high-school friend Mark Judge, then weigh the credibility of the various claims and write a report for the White House and the Senate Judiciary Committee…To jam Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation through now, without seeking to dispel the darkening cloud over his head, would be to leave the public in doubt about his honesty and character — and to set an even lower standard for taking claims of sexual abuse seriously than the Senate did 27 years ago in considering the accusations against Clarence Thomas by Anita Hill.”

“The Kavanaugh controversy erupted as polls were already showing a threat to GOP candidates this fall, in the form of an intense backlash against Donald Trump that’s fueling unprecedented deficits among college-educated white women and energized turnout among African American women,” writes Ronald Brownstein in The Atlantic. “Democrats have positioned themselves to benefit from that energy by nominating a record number of women in House, Senate, and gubernatorial elections…Even before Ford testifies, nearly three-fifths of college-educated white women opposed Kavanaugh’s confirmation in a recent Fox News poll. And while a plurality of non-college-educated white women backed Kavanaugh in that survey, a strong performance from Ford could strain that conviction. The fierce recoil from Trump among college-educated white women is the single greatest source of Republican vulnerability in House races this year; if the party’s defenses among blue-collar white women also crack, a difficult election night could turn disastrous.”

Perry Bacon, Jr. spotlights “The 7 Senators Who Will Decide Kavanaugh’s Fate” at FiveThirtyEight. The 7 senators include 3 Senate Democrats, Indiana’s Joe Donnelly, North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, along with Republicans Tennessee’s Bob Corker, Arizona’s Jeff Flake, Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski. As Bacon writes, “47 Republicans are safe bets to favor Kavanaugh, and 46 Democrats are safe bets to vote against him. He needs at least 50 votes to be confirmed, so he needs three of the seven swing senators identified above. (A 50-50 vote would put Vice President Mike Pence in position to cast a tiebreaking vote for Kavanaugh.)” After watching Dr. Ford’s heartfelt testimony, it’s hard to imagine any of the 7  undecided senators willing to acccept the consequences of supporting Kavanaugh.

In is post, “New Poll: Kavanaugh, Trump Losing Support of Republican Women,” Ed Kilgore cites a new Morning Consult poll and writes, “there is fresh evidence that another category of voters Republicans will need on November 6 is not reacting with pleasure to the crusade for Kavanaugh: “Public support for Judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat has dropped to its lowest point since President Donald Trump nominated him in July, driven in large part by a sector of the president’s base: Republican women …[Since last week] Kavanaugh’s net support among Republicans — the share who oppose his confirmation subtracted from those who support it — dropped 11 points, with 58 percent now in support of his confirmation and 14 percent opposed. The shift was driven by an 18-point fall in support among Republican women, with 49 percent now in favor and 15 percent in opposition.”

Ruy Teixeira notes on his Facebook page that “A new USC/LA Times poll is out and it has the Democrats up by 14 points in the generic Congressional, which seems too high. But they have a lot of interesting data in their writeup, particularly in terms of shifts since the summer. The graphic below showing shifts among subgroups of women is striking. Note that the biggest shift they show is among white noncollege women, who have moved 10 margin points toward the Democrats.”

At The National Journal, Ally Mutnick writes, “Internal Democratic polling conducted in August and September revealed the party’s candidate leading or trailing by small margins in a dozen seats on the outer edges of the battlefield. And outside money is already starting to flow beyond the 50 or so districts that initially drew major TV ad reservations…“For Republicans, this is a game of Whac-A-Mole,” said John Lapp, a Democratic strategist who served as the DCCC’s executive director in 2006. “With a battleground map this big, they simply can’t be everywhere. There are competitive races in blue, purple, and ruby-red districts popping up every day.”..”Almost nobody should assume that they’re cruising,” Republican pollster Glen Bolger said. “If the president won by 10 points or less, it’s a competitive race.”

“In our polling of battleground districts, President Trump has a minus-12 approval rating among undecided voters, with 34 percent approving and 46 percent disapproving,” notes Nate Cohn at The Upshot. “He has a minus-9 approval rating among decided voters (43-52)…Decided voters want Democrats to take control of Congress by three percentage points, 49-46. Undecided voters are split, 32-32. You’ll note that a lot of our undecided voters are also undecided on these questions…This sort of goes against some conventional wisdom on midterms: Well-known incumbents wrap up a larger proportion of their voters early, while undecided voters who don’t know the challenger but who are skeptical of the incumbent and the incumbent’s party break the other way. If this were true, you would expect the preponderance of the undecided vote to lean somewhat Democratic.”

Tim Storey, the elections guru at the National Conference of State Legislatures, “estimates that with a generic-congressional-ballot-test advantage of Democrats up by 6 points, that would likely translate into a gain of close to 500 state legislative seats nationwide for Democrats. Like in the U.S. House, the curve is asymmetric, the chances of over 500 are greater than under 400,” according to Charlie Cook’s article, “A Grim Fall Awaits GOP” at The Cook Political Report. Commenting on Cook’s post, Ruy Teixeira adds, “Democrats certainly have enough of a lead on the national generic to make a 500 seat gain for the party in state legislatures seem, if anything, like a pretty conservative estimate. Data indicate that there could be as many 1,000 Republican state legislative seats where Trump’s approval rating is below 50 percent. That’s a lot of targets.”

Teixeira also notes, “No doubt many have been following the New York Times/Siena polls as they get updated in real time (a gimmick but irresistible nonetheless). Here’s a nugget from Alan Abramowitz that puts the results in a helpful context: “In 22 House districts with completed polls, 21 currently held by Republicans, most with incumbents running, Dem candidates on average lead by 0.5 points. That may be a more meaningful indicator of the state of the midterm race than the individual district results. Being tied in your own districts at this stage of the campaign signals huge problems for the GOP as district polls tend to underestimate swing in a wave election like this one.”


Political Strategy Notes

“No longer playing defense on health care, Democrats and allied groups aired nearly 56,000 TV ads focused on health care between January and July,” writes Alice Miranda Ollstein at Politico. “The Wesleyan Media Project found that in September, health care ads dominated 44 percent of ads supporting Democratic House candidates and 50 percent of those supporting Democrats in Senate races. And in several competitive high-profile races, Democratic candidates are adding personal narratives…Candidates are sending this message in ads, on social media and in face-to-face encounters, and polls show the issue strongly resonates with voters.”

Here’s a good example:

From “The party of men: Kavanaugh fight risks worsening the Trump GOP’s gender problem” by Philip Rucker, Ashley Parker and Robert Costa  at The Washington Post: “Everything about this kind of encapsulates in one moment the problem the Republican Party has with women, ranging from it being male-dominated — with Trump’s Cabinet and the Republican leadership in Congress — to issues of dismissing women who experienced harassment and assault with typical kinds of victim blaming,” Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg said…Current attitudes about Trump have inspired a record number of women to run for office this year as Democrats. In House races, women make up 43 percent of Democratic nominees and 13 percent of Republican nominees, according to Kelly Dittmar, a political science professor at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Many of these female Democratic candidates have shared their #MeToo stories on the campaign trail…strategists in both parties say Trump’s agenda and style — and the fact that the GOP leadership stands mostly in lockstep with him — are undoing years of often painstaking work by party leaders to court more female and minority voters.”

From John McCain’s 2008 campaign’s senior strategist:

In his New York Magazine post, “Lessons From the 2018 Primaries,” Ed Kilgore provides 8 takeaways, including: “5) The “struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party” was oversold. Despite a lot of media talk about ideological clashes between “progressive” and “centrist” primary candidates, there was no clear pattern for who won primaries. Some of the notable “progressive” victories were in safe Democratic House districts (e.g., Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s NY-14 and Ayanna Pressley’s MA-07) where district diversity and generational change were at least as important as ideology. Overall, “establishment” candidates did pretty well; an analysis of all Democratic House primaries by the Brookings Foundation showed 27 percent of “progressives” and 35 percent of “establishment” types winning.”

We are about to find out what would happen if a politician began making public statements about issues that sound the way real people talk. Charles Pierce has the story in his article, “Mazie Hirono Is a Legitimate Badass of the Senate: It’s about time someone in elected office called “bullshit” on this process” at Esquire. Pierce quotes Horono to good effect: ” I just want to say to the men in this country: Just shut up and step up. Do the right thing for a change.”..I would like to have us come together and figure out what is the best way to proceed. Not this seat of the pants stuff, and the latest being a letter from the chairman to the Democrats saying we have done everything we can to contact her—that is such bullshit I can hardly stand it.” Pierce notes also that she wants “judges who are fair and qualified” and ‘”care about individual and civil rights.” And then, without missing a beat, she added, “If that’s considered liberal, as opposed to what I call justice and fairness, as I am wont to say, ‘F*** them!'” It’s about time a U.S. Senator went a little Bullworth, all the more gratifying that it’s a Democratic woman. Don’t be surprised if her approval ratings increase.

Some interesting ad stats from “Despite an Uptick in Digital Spend, Top Senate Races Still Dominated by TV” by Sean J. Miller at Campaigns & Elections: “In 14 competitive Senate races, Democratic campaigns put an average of 15 percent of their pre-Labor Day ad budgets into digital while GOP efforts averaged 6.2 percent, according to the Wesleyan Media Project, which conducted its analysis on ad spending done from May 31-Sept. 3. Though it’s worth noting those percentages include a handful of Senate campaigns that have yet to spend much of anything in earnest…Facebook remains the digital ad platform of choice – at least for Democrats. Of the total spent on digital advertising by the 14 Democratic Senate campaigns, $3,159,700 went to Facebook and $1.495 million went to Google…In total, some $6.1 million went into digital advertising from the 28 Senate campaigns. Compare that to some $45 million spent on TV during the same period.”

In his post, “Let’s sharpen and embolden the progressive narrative (and the counter-narrative, too),” Egberto Willies offers some insightful observations at Daily Kos: “Resigning ourselves to the belief that there is a large racist component within the Trump voting bloc and this therefore makes them unreachable denies a reality that President Obama disproved twice: Even racists will vote their interest if the narrative is right. It is my humble belief that our impatience, our timid narrative, our proclivity to stay high-minded in all circumstances, and our inability to frame and tailor a narrative at the level of those we need to reach have been the cause of our demise…Our young and upcoming politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Andrew Gillum, as well as activists like Indivisible Houston’s Daniel Cohen and Nisha Randle, are unabashedly promoting progressive narratives. Much of it will fly in the faces of those who are pinning their hopes on the mythical political center, but only when we redefine the narrative, devoid of our past indoctrination, will we get the vote…It is not enough to complain that Trump’s voters are racist. After all, we have our own racists among us. We are not looking for friends and lovers, but we should be attempting to coalesce on common values that will get our people elected. After all, above and beyond economic issues, aren’t our people supportive of racial, criminal, and social justice?”

At cnbc.com, John Harwood writes, “Congressional Republicans are facing a mid-term election wipeout fueled by voter resistance to President Donald Trump, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll…The survey, six weeks before Americans head to the polls, shows Democrats leading Republicans by 52 percent to 40 percent for control of Congress. If it holds, that 12 percentage point margin would suggest a “blue wave” large enough to switch control of not just the House but also the Senate…Democrats have generated wide advantages among key swing groups within the electorate. The poll shows them leading by 31 percentage points among independents, 33 points among moderates and 12 points among white women…Among white college graduates, a group Republicans carried by nine points in 2014 mid-term elections, Republicans now trail by 15 points. Among white women without college degrees, a group Republicans carried by 10 points in 2014, Republicans now trail by five points.”


Teixeira: GOP-Held House Seats Ranked Competitive Increase From 12 to 66 – Since May

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his Facebook page:

That Was Then. This Is Now.

Excellent article by Dante Chinni and Sally Bronston at NBC News running through how big the swings have been this election cycle–and pretty much all in the Democrats’ favor. Nice graphics!

“The 2018 midterm terrain looks a lot different now than it did at the start of the campaigns. Races that many expected to be close, aren’t. Candidates that were assumed to be safe now find themselves in fights. And the Democrats have been the biggest beneficiaries of the changes.

A look at the numbers shows how the field has tilted in the last year-and-a-half.

Start with the most basic measure, the number of House seats that are thought to be competitive. Back in May of 2017, when the Cook Political Report did its first ratings, it looked as if the Democrats and Republicans were starting on relatively even ground, but the numbers look very different today.

Back in May, there were 12 seats held by the Republicans that looked competitive and there were 11 held by Democrats — those were seats that were ranked as “lean” toward their party or were considered even more in danger.

As of mid-September, there are 66 GOP-held seats that look competitive and only four Democratic seats in that category.”

A reminder that things can really change and–unlike 2016–it’s not always bad!


Democratic Chances of Winning a Senate Majority Improving

There is lots of buzz recently about improving Democratic prospects for winning a majority of Senate seats in the midterm elections, and the consensus of the top political analysts is a lot brighter for Democrats than it was even a few months ago.

CNN editor at large Chris Cillizza sees the range of possibilities for Democrats between +/- 3 seats and Kyle Kondik of Sabato’s Crystal Ball has changed his election outcome estimate from “Likely Republican” to “Leans Republican.”

Of the 36 senate seats in play on November 6th, the Cook Political Report rates only 3 of the races as “Solid R,” 2 as “Likely R” and 1 as “Lean R.” The remainder range from “Solid D” (14); “Likely D” (5); “Lean D” (2); and “Toss-up” (8).

At The Princeton Election Consortium, Sam Wang writes,

Senate control is said to be a difficult challenge for Democrats. However, the eventual seat margin will be close, and the number of critical races is small. If we look at current polling margins, a swing of 3 points would be enough to put Democrats on the brink of having 51 seats. So in the Senate, Republicans have a handicap of 3 percentage points favoring them.

I should throw in here that close Senate races tend to break mostly in the same direction on Election Day. Which way they’ll break isn’t known; one way gets Democrats to 51-52 seats, and the other way gets them to 45-46 seats. It appears that Senate control could go either way.

Ruy Teixeira flags an encouraging survey reported in the conservative Weekly Standard, and notes:

Senate models are a bit thin on the ground but David Byler at the Weekly Standard has one that seems solid. Currently, he has Democratic chances of taking the Senate at 41.5 percent, quite an improvement over earlier runs of his model. This reflects continued good poll results for Democratic Senate candidates, including the many, many candidates who have to hold a seat in red states. Of course, a little better than 2 in 5 still means they’re more likely to fall short than not. But given the Senate map this year, an estimate this high is impressive.

Political analyst Stu Rothenberg sees “an almost impossible map” for Democrats.” However he believes that the GOP’s mounting problems indicate that “the Senate could be in play.” Vox’s senate analyst, Dylan Scott says “while Democrats will need a near-perfect November to win back control of the chamber, a fresh assessment of the Senate battlefield reveals that they should have several opportunities to pick up the seats they need.”

All in all, the odds still favor the Republicans to hold a senate majority, but Democrats have some good reasons to invest more resources in competitive senate races.


Political Strategy Notes

Perry Bacon, Jr. and Oliver Roeder explain “Why Democrats Were Willing To Break The Rules On Kavanaugh Day 3″ at FiveThirtyEight. Here’s one key point from Bacon: “…The Booker-Cornyn run-in, and the “confidential” documents fracas in general, is a good example of why so many scholars are worried about the state of American democracy. The Republicans, in this instance and others,1seem to be prioritizing winning over following bipartisan procedures. In turn, this is driving Democrats to violate norms.”

Ed Kilgore’s “On Kavanaugh, It’s All About Collins and Murkowski, Not the Red-State Democrats” at New York Magazine takes a revealing look at Democratic strategy after the appointment of Republican Jon Kyle to fill McCain’s seat, and notes that “the scenario in which Democrats could go after Collins and Murkowski individually as the “deciding vote” has evaporated. They now must flip both Republicans before any of the red-state Democratic senators matter at all. And that means the moment eitherCollins or Murkowski announces for Kavanaugh, it’s game over…The odds of defeating this confirmation have gone down significantly, not only because Kavanaugh got through his interrogation in the Judiciary Committee without any big revelations, but because Republicans can now afford to lose a senator without losing the vote.” Kilgore writes that of the two Republican moderate conservative enators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, Murkowski is more likely to vote against Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Therefore, “…At present the smart Democratic strategy is to focus with the light and heat of a thousand suns on Susan Collins, who will probably announce her decision on Kavanaugh earlier rather than later. Assuming she wants another term in the Senate in 2020, she may be most concerned about heading off a conservative primary challenge from Maine governor Paul LePage (who is term-limited this year) or someone of his abrasively conservative ilk. That’s why the initiative to crowdfund a Democratic opponent for Collins if she votes for Kavanaugh — which has already raised nearly $900,000 — is a smart move.”

From Dylan Scott’s “The 7 most important moments in Obama’s blistering critique of Trump and the GOP,” a couple of salient points from the Democratic Party’s best communicator, which can be tweaked and leveraged in House and Senate campaigns: “Demagogues promise simple fixes to complex problems” — maybe the best one-liner from Obama’s much-buzzed Montana speech. Thoughtful voters know this at the cellular level, and reminding them that today’s Republicans are utterly incapable of creating reforms that incorporate this wisdom can only help brand Dems as the reality-based party. Also, “What happened to the Republican Party?” is a great shorthand way of reminding voters that the current GOP has lost the credibility of its better leaders, like Eisenhower, who understood the good leadership is about bringing people together, not exploiting their differencees. Lastly, the most-quoted line of Obama’s speech, “How hard can that be? Saying that Nazis are bad?” brings home the shame of Trump and his party enablers giving right-wing terrorists a free ride.

In his op-ed, “The Anthem Is a Trap for Democrats: And some of them are walking right into it, to the glee of Republicans,” NYT columnist David Leonhardt makes a credible case that the ‘take a knee’ controversy has no real upside for Democratic candidates. Leonhardt argues, “As Tarini Parti and Henry Gomez of BuzzFeed News reported this week, Republicans have decided to make the protests a big part of their midterm campaign message. “Republican strategists and campaign staff,” Parti and Gomez write, “see opportunities for candidates to make the N.F.L. protests a political liability for Democrats defending seats in states President Donald Trump won in 2016.”…Republicans feel this way partly because they know public opinion cuts against them on a long list of issues: Trump’s performance, the Russia investigation, tax policy, health care, the minimum wage and more. On the national-anthem protests, by contrast, most Americans agree with Republicans…I don’t see a good argument, however, that the issue will help the Democrats in the midterms. On their own, the protests don’t seem big enough to inspire higher voter turnout among left-leaning people who rarely vote in midterms. Yet the issue does seem divisive enough to cause some swing voters to decide that Democrats are out of touch. It’s precisely the kind of issue that can lead white working-class voters to focus on the white part of their identity rather than the working-class part. When that happens, Republicans benefit. When those same voters are thinking about class — about taxes, health care and the like — Democrats benefit.”

Terence Burlij charts “the narrow path to a Democratic senate” at CNN Politics. His scenario: “Democrats still have a narrow path to the Senate majority despite a map that favors Republicans and includes 10 Democratic incumbents running in states President Donald Trump won, five of them by double-digit margins…The list of Democratic targets this cycle has doubled, with a pair of red states — Tennessee and Texas — looking increasingly competitive. With the Senate currently split 51-49 in favor of Republicans, if Democrats were able to win either of those contests — assuming they also flip Arizona and Nevada — it would mean the party could afford to see one of its incumbents defeated and still preserve a path to the majority.”

If you had to pick the most deserving Democratic House candidate outside of your residential district to support, the short list would surely include Lucy McBath, who is running in GA-6. At least one recent poll indicates a statistical tie with her Republican opponent, incumbent Karen Handel. McBath is the mother of Jordan Davis, who was brutally shot and killed while he was in a car that was playing music that was too loud for the shooter in another car. Mcbath, a survivor of breast cancer, is a strong supporter of gun safety measures, a minimum wage increase, reproductive rights for women and other progressive reforms. In April, 2017, Democrat John Ossoff received 48.1 percent of the vote in the GA-6 blanket primary, while Handel received just 19.8 percent. In the June runoff, Handel, supposedly received 51.8 percent of the vote, compared to Ossoff’s 48.2 percent. Contribute to McBath’s ActBlue page right here.

The keystone state may also provide the key to the midterm elections. As Reid J. Epstein reports at The Wall St. Journal, “Of the 63 GOP-held House seats that the Cook Political Report rates as lean Republican, a tossup or likely or lean Democratic, 31 come from six states. Democrats could run the table in battlefield districts in just four states—Pennsylvania, California, Florida and New Jersey—and capture the net 23 seats they need to seize the House majority without taking a single district anywhere else…Nine of Pennsylvania’s 18 House seats could change parties this year, a concentration of competitive races like nowhere else in the country due to the combination of court-ordered redistricting and a broader realignment of suburban voters away from the Republican Party…“The political winds are blowing six swing seats our way,” said Rep. Mike Doyle, a Pittsburgh Democrat who is the dean of the Pennsylvania House delegation. “It would not surprise me if our state flips more seats than any state in the country.”

Some encouraging words for Democrats from Albert R. Hunt at Bloomberg Opinion: “For all the fury over the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, he’s expected to be confirmed on a mostly party-line vote, perhaps by Oct. 1, when the Supreme Court convenes. Politically, the fight probably is a wash or a slight energizer for Democrats…“I’ve never seen a wave reverse or dissipate between midsummer and Election Day,” said Charlie Cook, editor and publisher of the Cook Political Report and a sage of U.S. elections. “They have just remained constant or gotten bigger, like 1994 and 2006.”


Gillum Win in FL Sets Up Marquee Governor’s Race

Most of the media attention will stay focused on the battle for a House of Representatives Majority. But Andrew Gillum’s victory in the Florida Democratic primary sets up what is likely to be the marquee governor’s race. Slide up the sound icon and get acquainted:


Should Dems Use More Social Media Ads?

With all of the bad rap Facebook and Twitter have received in recent months, should Dems use more social media to amplify their messaging? In that regard, Dems should read “Trump Knows Digital Ads Work. Why Don’t Democrats?: The party’s campaigns are ignoring obvious opportunities to engage with voters” a NYT op-ed by Kendall Collins, board member of Tech for Campaigns, which has 7,500 volunteers and played a key role in the 2017 Democratic victories in the Virginia election. Collins writes,

“President Trump may not be up for re-election until 2020, but since May 31, the Trump Make America Great Again Committee — his re-election campaign — has spent $629,500 on advertising on Google platforms alone, making it the top spender on political ads on Google platforms. That’s nearly $200,000 more than the No. 2 spender, One Nation, a right-wing organization focused on influencing Senate elections…The average nonpresidential Democratic campaign spends only 10 percent to 15 percent of its budget on digital channels while pouring 60 percent to 70 percent of its budget into television ads and direct mail. That is shocking, especially because people now spend an average of 5.9 hours online every single day, with 3.3 of those hours on mobile devices…Democrats should take a cue and double down on digital: It empowers them to reach more people with less money, engage in back-and-forth conversations with voters and test what messaging is resonating in real time. It should also prove critical in turning out a younger voting population, which often sits out midterm elections.”

Bottom line is that the influence of social media isn’t fading away, despite its many problems. For Dems, not using it more effectively would be political malpractice.


Political Strategy Notes

More bad news for the GOP, from Kyle Kondik’s update “The House: Ratings Changes in the Aftermath of Another Nail-Biter Special Election: GOP likely holds on in OH-12, but narrow result and other developments Tuesday reinforce positive Democratic trends” at The Crystal Ball: “The Democrats now have 203 seats at least leaning to them, the Republicans have 198 at least leaning to them, and there are 34 Toss-ups. Based on our current ratings, the Democrats no longer have to win a majority of the Toss-ups to win the House — 15 of 34 would now do the trick — although Republicans hope that some of our Leans Democratic seats are rated too bearishly for their side. There is always a chance that something could happen to change the current dynamic, but nothing that happened Tuesday night suggested that the pro-Democratic trend we’ve seen throughout the cycle is eroding. The election is less than three months away now.”

At The Princeton  Election Consortium, Sam Wang’s “OH-12 is ominous for GOP in House…and the Senate” notes, “In 46 special elections in 2018, the overall swing from 2016 has averaged 12 points toward Democrats. Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote by a little over 2 percentage points. If this swing were to hold up in November 2018, it would mean a 14-point win in the national House popular vote. I estimate that a 6-point win would be just enough to flip control. A 14-point win is massive, enough for a gain of over 50 seats.”

Frank Bruni urges “Democrats, Do Not Give Up on the Senate: The party’s odds aren’t great, but they look better all the time” in his New York Times column, and argues, “But I wouldn’t give up on it, because a Democratic majority in the Senate means more than one in the House (Supreme Court, anyone?), and there really is a rationale for hope…It starts with the general political climate and Trump’s approval rating, which never crests 45 percent. Sad! Recent polls have shown that in congressional races, voters prefer a generic Democrat to a generic Republican by six to 10 points. That’s wave territory, and Democrats are favored by the historical patterns of midterms…The party needs to pick up two seats. It has more than two states to turn to. For a while now, Jacky Rosen in ever-bluer Nevada has been scaring the bejesus out of the Republican incumbent, Dean Heller. More recently, Kyrsten Sinema in reddish Arizona and Phil Bredesen in redder Tennesseehave emerged as fearsome contenders for seats being vacated by Trump-averse Republicans (Jeff Flake and Bob Corker, respectively).”

Ruy Teixeira writes on his Facebook page, “Why did Democratic support spike in Franklin county in OH-12 last Tuesday? I have a feeling it has a lot to do with the data on the far right hand side of this chart[below]. No wonder smart Republicans like Sean Trende are getting nervous.”
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“The biggest strategic challenge [Democrats] have will come in September and October when they’ve got to make a decision whether some races are now in the safe column and they can divert resources to lean-Republican races,” said former Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), quoted in “Dems eyeing smaller magic number for House majority” by Scott Wong nd Mike Lillis at The Hill. “It’s way too early to make those decisions,” added Israel, who led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) from 2011 to 2014…“Without the redistricting firewall that they built, Republicans would probably lose 60 seats in this kind of cycle,” Israel said. “As a result of the redistricting firewall that they built, they could lose about half of that.”

Some statistics to consider about the contest for Georgia governorship, from Thomas B. Edsall’s column, “The Democratic Party Has Two Futures: Candidates in different states are testing out the electoral power of the left and the center” at The New York Times: “The black share of the Georgia electorate has been growing rapidly. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that the number of African-Americans voting in the May primary grew by 43 percent between 2010 and 2018, while white voters declined 9 percent. In 2017, the state population was 52.8 percent white — on the cusp of turning majority minority.”

Edsall also notes, however, that “In an analysis of Democratic primaries through July 12, Brookings found that establishment candidates had won 88 and progressive candidates had won 64. The results from Tuesday now increase the share won by establishment candidates.”

“Nearly half — 46 percent — of registered voters younger than 30 said they are “absolutely certain to vote,” according to Post-ABC polls averaging across polls in January and April. And more than 6 in 10 millennials ages 22 to 38 said they are “looking forward” to midterm elections in a recent Pew Research Center survey. That number was 46 percent in 2014 and 39 percent in 2010…Relying on young voters — particularly those enrolled in college — may not be the best strategy,” argues Eugene Scott in “There’s optimism college students could deliver in Ohio in the fall. Is that realistic?” at The Fix. “Washington Post polling analyst Emily Guskin did a deep dive on the uptick in voter registration for 18- to 29-year-olds. It has not been as significant as some expected after the politically charged Parkland, Fla., school shooting earlier this year. Many people who register to vote do not show up on Election Day, and young people are by far the least likely age group to cast ballots, especially in midterm elections. The United States Elections Project analyzed U.S. Census Bureau data tracking turnout in midterm elections since 1986 and found that 16 percent of eligible voters ages 18 to 29 turned out to vote in the 2014 midterms. It was the lowest for any election since 1986, though turnout among this age group was never higher than 21 percent in midterms over this period.”

There’s no substitute for in-person engagement for both base mobilization and winning over swing voters. But Democratic campaigns should also take a look at “How RumbleUp is Powering the Republican Texting Revolution: When it comes to campaign technology, Democrats invent, Republicans perfect.” by Thomas Peters at Campaigns & Elections. His article provides a clear picture of how the opposition is planning to reach younger voters in particular, and it shows what some of their text messages look like.