According to 538, 47 Republican-held House seats are more Democratic-leaning than Georgia 6 is.
We Democrats need to pick up only 24 seats to win back the House, so taking Georgia 6 was not a necessity. It just would have been heartening to win a Red, Red seat (which Tom Price won by 23 points in 2016) in Red Georgia.
But let us look at reality. Midterm elections are when opposition parties shine. In the last 20 midterm elections, the president's party has picked up seats only twice: in 2002, when Republicans gained eight right after 9/11, and in 1998, when Democrats gained five thanks to House Republicans' obsession with impeachment.
Trump and his party have particular reason to fear 2018. No first-term president has gone into a midterm this unpopular since Harry Truman lost 55 seats in the House and 12 in the Senate in 1946. How low will Trump approval numbers go? Who knows. What we do know is this. Trump is a historically unpopular president, and Republicans in Congress are pushing for a remarkably unpopular agenda. Almost daily, Trump, his Administration and this Congress display new and unprecedented incompetence and corruption, as we all await a catalog of misdeeds and criminality uncovered by the investigations into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. There are also matters of obstruction of justice and emoluments that are not disappearing and threaten not just Trump but all of the Senior GOP leadership.
The Cook Political Report found that the most vulnerable seats in the current House majority belong to 23 Republican incumbents in districts Hillary Clinton carried, largely clustered in the suburbs of major metropolitan areas like Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Washington. These districts tend to be mainstream in tone and interest. These are tough places for Republicans to win on an agenda which cuts student aid, denies climate change, and eliminates protections for pre-existing conditions. These are not Trump-friendly districts.
Our job is to match our candidates to the districts in which they run. Clinton, not Sanders, Democrats will often be the right choice if we want to win. Write to Tom Perez at the Democratic National Committee and tell him to keep this in mind. Tell him not to listen to those pushing to go Left in the light of the loss in Georgia 6.
This is reality, plus remember. Republicans sent every big gun out to Georgia 6 and an established Republican beat a complete novice by only 3.8%, in a Red, Red District which hasn't elected a Democrat in 40 years
We can do this, and if good sense prevails and we work hard, we will.
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June 21, 2017
This article was sourced from 538 and Bruce Reed and Rahm Emanuel's article of June 20, 2017 in The Atlantic.
