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| HHS Secretary Donna Shalala (D-FL) |
Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report has regularly trotted this one out on Twitter (I can't find the link, but you can follow him here) a really staggering problem for Paul Ryan in his quest to hold the House: since 1994, no political party who holds the White House has successfully defended an open seat the opposing party won in the last presidential election. Essentially what that means is that any Republican-held open seat that went for Hillary Clinton has no modern-day precedence for going to the Republicans this fall, and thanks to the ill-timed (for the GOP) retirement of Ryan Costello this past weekend, that number is now at 8 (AZ-2, CA-39/49, FL-27, WA-8, & PA-5/6/7).
This would essentially mean, that if the Democrats were to actually sweep these seats, they would only need to pickup 15 more seats to gain a threadbare majority. That's a really strong first-start, though it's worth noting that not all of these seats are created equally, and a few have some problems. Oddly enough, provided the GOP doesn't follow-through with its planned impeachment of the Democratic State Judges in Pennsylvania (a whole different article, but suffice it to say you also need to be working to elect Democrats to your state legislatures this fall as the Trump agenda doesn't end in DC), the Pennsylvania seats feel the safest for the Democrats right now, as well as the Florida seat. Arizona's a little different in that it's the only seat where the incumbent isn't "retiring" so much as running for higher office, so Martha McSally may be able to help another Republican win her down-ballot race. However, the Democrats have a clear advantage in that seat as well.
What is most likely to stop the Democrats is the top-two voting system of Washington & California. In these three seats, the top two finishers, regardless of party, advance to the general election. As a result, considering both sides have multiple candidates, it's entirely possible that one party will get both of the general election slots, either making a pickup for the Democrats impossible (two R's advancing), or less likely but theoretically possible, guaranteeing a pickup (two D's advancing). This isn't something to mess with-in 2012, Pete Aguilar was widely assumed to be the winner post-redistricing in California's 31st district, but a split of the vote between the Democrats allowed two Republicans to advance to the general, thereby ensuring that they held a seat that President Obama was winning by 17-points. Aguilar went on to win the seat two years later, but in a race where every seat could matter, the Democrats are hoping more people drop out of these three races to ensure they don't accidentally miss out on a pickup.
What I'd Predict at This Point: All 8 go to the Democrats. I'm a little leery about the California seats missing in the Top 2, and the Washington seat is tough because Dino Rossi is probably a better candidate than anyone we assembled for that contest, but if the national mood is similar to right now, it's hard to see the GOP keeping any of these seats.
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| State Sen. Jennifer Wexton (D-VA) |
One of the most striking things about the Virginia General Assembly races last year was how uniformly the "Hillary Districts" rejected longtime incumbents regardless of personal affection back home. Every pickup save one was in a seat that Hillary Clinton won, and as a result I suspect that the path for a Democratic majority will have to run through a number of seats that went for Hillary in 2016, but elected a Republican down-ballot.
Disregarding for a second the 8 seats up-top that are open and are basically must-haves for the Democrats, there are 17 seats that went for Hillary Clinton that have Republican incumbents running. They run the gamut from Carlos Curbelo, who represents a seat that Clinton won by 16 points to Leonard Lance in New Jersey, who represents a seat she won by just over a point, but if you're doing the math, you can see that 17 seats would basically get the Democrats to where they need to go, with a seat or two as insurance.
That being said, the Democrats aren't going to be able to take all of these. There are seats where the Republicans might arguably be running from behind in this environment like MN-3 and VA-10 (though these are incumbents who have proven they can win, so it's too soon to discount any of them), but there's also seats the Democrats have underwhelmed in their recruitment. NY-24, for example, feels largely like a lost-cause even at this juncture unless there's a true wave since the Democrats only have third-tier candidates running. The same could be said for CA-21 and CA-10. And there are incumbents that have proven stubbornly teflon in the past like Rep. Mike Coffman in Colorado-6, a district that will surely flip when he retires but who regularly dispatches top candidates. But they need to be doing better than half to win this, and the more they get here, the easier it will be when they get into less friendly territory.
What I'd Predict at This Point: I'd go with nine wins (PA-1, FL-26, VA-10, MN-3, CA-45/48, TX-23/32, and KS-3), which is just over half. I'm most leery about CA-45 and KS-3 (both of which have strong Republican roots despite recent national trends), and I'd be willing to bet on TX-7 going to the Democrats if they avoid Laura Moser, but that feels about right for me at this point. NY-24 is the toughest, by far, while VA-10 feels the most likely to fall.
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| Mayor Jim Gray (D-KY) |
So if my predictions are correct, I'd have the Democrats at this point at +17, which is not bad, but they still would need six seats, and here's where the mountain gets steep, as there just aren't as many options when it comes to open Trump-won seats for the Democrats to perhaps pick off a few districts to pad their winnings.
I would argue of the Trump-won districts that are open, only six of them would be remotely gettable: NJ-2, NJ-11, MI-11, KS-2, NM-2, & OH-16. These six seats all went for Trump by varying margins (New Jersey's 11th went for him by just over a point) to ones he took in a landslide (Kansas-2 being the biggest jump with a +18 for Trump), but all six have either historically been friendly to Democrats down-ballot or the DCCC has trotted out some solid recruits that could score in a wave election.
The best recruit, by far, is State Sen. Jeff van Drew in NJ-2. Locally popular, and someone who regularly won a more conservative seat than he's running for within the district, he's arguably the odds-on favorite should he get through the primary (there's a move to primary him from the left due to his views on gun rights), but he's the odds-on favorite. The other seats are arguably slightly more for the GOP, though it's hard to tell in places like KS-2, where local politicians seem genuinely worried about a Democratic pickup due to Paul Davis's strong campaigning, or somewhere like MI-11, which could be worried that Trump's over-performance in Michigan was a fluke only he could reproduce. Either way, the Democrats likely need 1-2 of these seats to stay on the board for November, and they'll be easier to win than Republicans in Trump-held seats that are running for reelection.
What I'd Predict at This Point: I'm actually pretty sunny here and am going to go with four seats: KS-2, NJ-2, NJ-11, and MI-11. The former because Davis is a really good candidate in a state where Democrats oftentimes can turn GOP infighting to their advantage (Dennis Moore made a career out of it), and the latter three because I think that the 2018 electorate will more resemble the Democrats of 2012, and as a result they'll be much easier pickings, particularly since van Drew, Mikie Sherrill and Tim Greimel (the former Michigan House Minority Leader) are all superb recruits.
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| Mayor Ben McAdams (D-UT) |
That brings us to 21 seats, which is not an insignificant amount of seats, but that ultimately puts Paul Ryan in the position of power at a time when Democrats really need at least one branch of government to keep morale high within the party. As a result, the Democrats are going to need to make a play for at least a few seats that have Republican incumbents in seats that went for Donald Trump.
Theoretically their best bets are going to be on seats that went for Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016. Those incumbents will have to contend with an electorate that has turned the tide away from the Republicans in 2018, perhaps to a level that they're willing to vote for a Democrat at a federal level. Of the twelve seats in this bucket I think are the "most" likely to go to the Democrats, half of the seats (IA-1, IL-12, MN-2, ME-2, NY-1, and NY-19) all went for Obama in 2012, and all have relatively recent Republican incumbents who may not have built up a significant enough base at this point to bust a wave. They can look to try and duplicate the success of Conor Lamb (or Obama six years ago) in their quest to win back a House seat.
The other six incumbents I think are most vulnerable in this category get to that list for a variety of factors. They include incumbents that feel too bombastic for their districts (Claudia Tenney is Michele Bachmann without the advantage of a ruby-red district), or are incumbents who never seemed all-that-popular in their district (Mia Love in UT-4, with a solid recruit for the DCCC in Ben McAdams, is in this bucket). Areas like VA-2 and NE-2 feel ripe for Democrats in a wave election because they're areas that regularly go red, but only by a small margin, and Democrats recruited good candidates in MI-7 (Gretchen Driskell) and KY-6 (Jim Gray, to a lesser extent Amy McGrath), that could be enough to win them seats on-their-own. There's also always the possibility that a scandal erupts or a poor top-of-ticket hurts a candidate out of left field (Devin Nunes & Duncan Hunter both come to mind here), but we'll be able to tell who those people are closer to the election, so I'm assuming they're safe for now.
What I'd Predict at This Point: My gut says that the Democrats would take most of these. I've been slightly cautious in these predictions up until now, but I think that Conor Lamb/Doug Jones, combined with the DCCC doing a gangbusters job here, could contribute to these seats being the most susceptible to a wave if Trump supporters simply don't show up (or if Obama 2012 voters are a much bigger force than we realize). As a result, I'm guessing that the D's take 8 of these, bringing their total up to 29 (they grab IA-1, IL-12, ME-2, MN-2, NE-2, NY-1, NY-19, and NY-22). I could be wrong (ME-2 & NY-19 in particular feel a tad optimistic), but honestly I was more torn about KY-6 than any I called for the D's so far.
Theoretically their best bets are going to be on seats that went for Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016. Those incumbents will have to contend with an electorate that has turned the tide away from the Republicans in 2018, perhaps to a level that they're willing to vote for a Democrat at a federal level. Of the twelve seats in this bucket I think are the "most" likely to go to the Democrats, half of the seats (IA-1, IL-12, MN-2, ME-2, NY-1, and NY-19) all went for Obama in 2012, and all have relatively recent Republican incumbents who may not have built up a significant enough base at this point to bust a wave. They can look to try and duplicate the success of Conor Lamb (or Obama six years ago) in their quest to win back a House seat.
The other six incumbents I think are most vulnerable in this category get to that list for a variety of factors. They include incumbents that feel too bombastic for their districts (Claudia Tenney is Michele Bachmann without the advantage of a ruby-red district), or are incumbents who never seemed all-that-popular in their district (Mia Love in UT-4, with a solid recruit for the DCCC in Ben McAdams, is in this bucket). Areas like VA-2 and NE-2 feel ripe for Democrats in a wave election because they're areas that regularly go red, but only by a small margin, and Democrats recruited good candidates in MI-7 (Gretchen Driskell) and KY-6 (Jim Gray, to a lesser extent Amy McGrath), that could be enough to win them seats on-their-own. There's also always the possibility that a scandal erupts or a poor top-of-ticket hurts a candidate out of left field (Devin Nunes & Duncan Hunter both come to mind here), but we'll be able to tell who those people are closer to the election, so I'm assuming they're safe for now.
What I'd Predict at This Point: My gut says that the Democrats would take most of these. I've been slightly cautious in these predictions up until now, but I think that Conor Lamb/Doug Jones, combined with the DCCC doing a gangbusters job here, could contribute to these seats being the most susceptible to a wave if Trump supporters simply don't show up (or if Obama 2012 voters are a much bigger force than we realize). As a result, I'm guessing that the D's take 8 of these, bringing their total up to 29 (they grab IA-1, IL-12, ME-2, MN-2, NE-2, NY-1, NY-19, and NY-22). I could be wrong (ME-2 & NY-19 in particular feel a tad optimistic), but honestly I was more torn about KY-6 than any I called for the D's so far.
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| Susie Lee (D-NV) |
So, 29? That's the end of the game, isn't it? Speaker Pelosi, let's start impeaching! Hold on there, partner. We still have to hold our incumbent seats. For starters, we automatically lose PA-14, as it was made uninhabitable and newly elected-Rep. Conor Lamb isn't even running here. Now, one could make the argument that were Lamb to win in PA-17, this wouldn't be a loss so much as a hold, and indeed, there's a decent chance that Lamb doesn't lose in November, but I'd make the argument that his incumbent-vs-incumbent race makes him the most vulnerable Democratic House incumbent running for reelection this fall. It's most definitely a risk that our recent move from needing 24 to needing 23 could be short-lived if he can't best Keith Rothfus.
Other than Lamb, I honestly don't think there's a lot of vulnerable incumbents this cycle. In a different year freshmen congressmen like Tom O'Halleran or Charlie Crist might be in a rough position, but this year it doesn't seem like any incumbents running in their current districts are under pressure. That being said, there are five open seats that could be trouble for the Democrats: NV-3/4, MN-1/8, and NH-1. With the exception of NV-4, all of these were carried by Donald Trump in 2016 and have retiring incumbents, in the case of NV-4 an incumbent retiring in disgrace.
None of these five seats are a lost cause, exactly, but it does appear that the Republicans have brought their A-Game (though in NV-3, Danny Tarkanian is famously a close-but-no-cigar candidate that could help Susie Lee). The Minnesota seats, in particular, have very strong GOP candidates in Carla Nelson and Pete Stauber who could pose a challenge for the DFL. I kind of think these retirements happened at the right time for the Democrats, as these members of Congress (save Ruben Kihuen) either wanted a promotion (Tim Walz & Jacky Rosen are both running for higher office), or had incumbents itching to retire, and they'll be able to defend in an easier cycle. That being said, if the year turns close, the DCCC is going to be wishing that more of these incumbents had stayed put.
What I'd Predict at this Point: I think one of the Minnesota seats falls, though I can't quite tell which one. My gut tells me Walz is the Democratic nominee for governor & that Dan Feehan will barely be able to hang on there, so I'll guess MN-8 is the one that disappears. Genuinely a suburban tradeoff where four seats in Minnesota (arguably the most important state on the House map after California & Pennsylvania) change hands is not out-of-the-question. As a result, we end up with +28 for the Democrats-good, but not anything should be sleeping in over.
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