Posted on 11/14/2018 8:35:26 AM PST by yesthatjallen
A blue wave that washed over Republican-held suburbs across the country in last week’s midterm elections has reshaped the nation’s political map.
Deep dissatisfaction with President Trump and an apparent realignment, both political and geographic, among suburban voters helped Democrats reclaim control of the House of Representatives, where the party won more Republican-held seats than in any midterm election since Watergate.
Now, even before the final races have been decided, Democrats are plotting new forays into what has long been seemingly invincible Republican territory.
At the same time, Republicans are eyeing some districts held by Democrats still undergoing their new member orientation.
“We’re going to have to be more focused on protecting our front-line candidates,” said Rep. Denny Heck (D-Wash.), one of several candidates running to become the next chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “So many members coming in from those swing districts, it’s going to be a higher priority.”
The new Congress will include at least 29 Democrats who represent districts Trump won in 2016, pending the final outcomes of uncalled races in Maine and Utah.
At least 37 Democrats won election on Tuesday by less than 10 percentage points, 21 of whom hold districts Trump won.
Only four Republicans — Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Will Hurd (Texas), John Katko (N.Y.) and David Valadao (Calif.) — hold districts that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won in 2016, pending final results in a few other districts.
But a whopping 42 Republicans won their reelection bids by margins of less than 10 percentage points, and 23 of those members won by fewer than 5 points.
Those ranks include battle-tested incumbents Fitzpatrick and Reps. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) and Don Bacon (R-Neb.), all of whom won close elections this year.
It also includes new members, Reps.-elect Mark Harris (R-N.C.), Jim Hagedorn (R-Minn.) and Chip Roy (R-Texas), who claimed open seats in tight races.
And it includes members who survived unexpectedly close races where national Democratic groups did not spend big money. Reps. Kenny Marchant (R-Texas), Michael McCaul (R-Texas), Pete Olson (R-Texas), Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) and Fred Upton (R-Mich.) all won by 5 points or fewer, despite facing underfunded and little-known Democratic challengers.
It is those members, who may not have expected such close races, who some Republicans now worry about.
“The new guys who won, they’re going to be fine,” said Tom Davis, the former Virginia congressman who ran the National Republican Congressional Committee. “It’s the veterans who won these close races in those suburban districts that Trump won.”
Davis pointed to 2008, when Democrats made big gains in a presidential year by beating seemingly entrenched incumbents Reps. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.), Tom Feeney (R-Fla.), Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) and Virgil Goode (R-Va.), all of whom had survived closer-than-expected contests in the Democratic wave of 2006.
Tuesday’s results gave Democrats hope that they have made serious inroads among suburban women with college educations, voters who may have been loath to vote for Clinton in 2016 but who have since soured on Trump.
In the midterm elections, Democrats picked up at least 14, and likely 15, of the 23 Republican-held districts where more than 40 percent of women have a college degree. Democrats won at least four, and likely all five, of the Republican-held districts where more than half of women have a college degree.
Many of the Democratic candidates who took those most highly educated seats were women, like Reps.-elect Lucy McBath (D-Ga.), Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.) and Lizzie Pannill Fletcher (D-Texas).
Though Trump has insisted he is not to blame for the Republican losses in the suburbs, there is ample evidence he was the focal point of voter anger.
Bruce Mehlman, a Republican lobbyist who closely studies election results, pointed to exit poll results that showed a huge number of voters cast ballots either in support of or opposition to Trump, more than those who cast their ballots with George W. Bush or Barack Obama in mind during their midterm elections.
“More people voted to support Trump in this election than voted to support Bush in ’02. That was after 9/11!” Mehlman said. “The Republican top of the ticket is known, baked in and understood. In a midterm, everybody’s running against the president and there isn’t an obvious Democratic foil.”
Trump landed with a particularly hard thud in suburban districts. An analysis of congressional districts by CityLab, overlaid with election results, show Democrats won the suburban battleground that has become the fulcrum of American politics.
In the new Congress, Democrats will hold about 70 percent of all suburban districts across the country, and just 19 percent of rural districts.
The new Democratic majority has also consolidated the party’s hold on coastal states. About 150 of the 230 or so Democrats who will sit in the next Congress come from states on the Pacific or Atlantic coasts.
If Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Calif.) falls behind in late vote counting, the new Congress will include only two Republicans — Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) and Don Young (R-Alaska) — whose districts touch the Pacific.
Heck said Democrats would face a battle in maintaining their gains two years down the road, but they start off with an edge.
“Our biggest gains were in suburbia, but we competed well in some rural districts,” Heck said. “It’s always less expensive to protect a seat with an incumbent than it is to defeat an incumbent.”
Did Democrats make gains in suburbs and rural communities?
If so why?
There are many questions to be asked.
What messages did they get that determined how they voted?
What 'narratives' did they believe that caused them to vote as they did?
The way I see it, most Republican candidates just flat out suck. They really need to up their game in that area.
Trump is not as popular in the suburbs as he is on FR.com
A majority of the candidate that got washed out sucked or were never trumpers.
Candidates who embraced Trump did better, way better
We have republicans who were publicly against the wall, and they lost. People want the wall, so those people in those races had no reason to vote.
I said, the silver lining to the mid terms house races, we flushed a lot of turds out of our party. 2020 we can run better candidates who will support President Trump
President Trump will be fine, he can still issue executive orders, he can still get conservative judges in, and other appointments.
If the house dems are just going to open 1000’s of investigations over nonsense, the moderates are going to be sick of that nonsense and will be willing to jump ship in 2020.
I say we let the dems shoot themselves in the foot here.
This illustrates one of the oldest rules of politics: It's always much easier to campaign when you're out of power.
Run candidate who don’t hate him in the ‘burbs, I think we would have done better
Also don’t run sucky candidates who can’t campaign their way out of a wet paper beg
A number of these areas where Dems won from Repubs were, IIRC, due to the retiring Repubs who did not like Trump to begin with. Likely not the only thing involved, but still something to be considered.
And when you are in power, you have to do something so you can run on it.
This may be true but it has nothing to do with the election results in most districts.
My GOP incumbent representative was a "never Trumper," and he lost by about 2-3 points.
If a Republican who embraced Trump ran for this seat, he would have lost by at least 30 points.
Exactly. Think of the last two years as an enormous wasted opportunity for the Republican Party. I knew this was going to be a disaster for them as soon as they started passing those same stupid “continuing resolutions” to fund the U.S. government for most of the 2017-2018 term of Congress.
They are using non-citizen votes.
There is nothing stopping them.
it was a massive mistake to let as many republican representatives retire (26) in a midterm cycle.
I suspect a big part of it is millenials, indoctrinated into socialism from elementary school through college, are now having children and moving to the suburbs.
The Republican brand needs to be dug out of the closet beneath all of the liberal appeasement packages and broadly marketed across many platforms. The media, entertainment and academic communities are all full-on socialists and promoting its “advantages” 24/7.
That is what we need to counteract to get younger Americans and immigrants to understand that self-government has never happened anywhere before or anywhere else. If it is destroyed here, the last stand fails and tyranny will prevail worldwide.
Per the CIA World Book, there are a lot of countries listed with a “Republican” form of government, but most of them are outright socialist countries trying to balance between mob rule and tyranny. That is why their citizens are trying to break into our country to achieve prosperity.
They don’t know what self-government and individual sovereignty are. They want the prosperity it generates, but have no clue that is the cause of success. That is the message that we need to get out. These younger folks and immigrants do not know. They must be taught or they will replace our republic with their banana republics, which our youth also revere.
But they didn’t lose as many seats as the Dems did in 2010. The Dems lost 63 seats.
See you make liberal comments.
46, not 26!!
Bingo.
They won more seats than they have in any election cycle going back to the Nixon days.
This was not deep dissatisfaction of President Trump by the majority of the electorate. This was the Deep State moving into high gear, a dry run for unseating Donald J. Trump by “any means possible”, legality or morality be damned.
The dry runs made in a number of close races, which fell to the Democrat due to “special case” ballot counting, ballots that would not have mattered because of an ineligible voter, late submission, or an “overvote” or “blemish”, that should have been ruled invalid, are accepted once the intent of the voter has been “divined”.
“Emergency” late action on “early” voting, as was the case in Maricopa County, Arizona, was a clear indication of fraudulent intent.
The repeated instances of ballot clerk “errors” in both Broward and Palm Beach counties in Florida, which might have been much less obvious had there not been a pattern already established, cast great doubt on the integrity of ANY election held in those precincts, having imported all the very worst of fraud practices from New York City, and applying them for DECADES.
It’s not 46, even if the Rats won every single seat still not called.
At best, it’s 40. It’s most likely 38 or 39.
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