Players in the political marketplace, like players in the financial marketplace, make their moves with an eye on the future — as best they can discern it. In my most recent Washington Examiner column I looked at Democrats’ prospects for gaining control of at least one house of Congress in the 2018 off-year elections. Their chances for a Senate majority are dismal, I noted, not only because they have many more seats at risk: 10 Democratic seats are in states that voted for Donald Trump (with six of these in states he carried by between 8 and 42 percent) versus only one Republican seat up in a state carried by Hillary Clinton (Nevada, which she carried by 2 percent).
In the House, Democrats need a net gain of 24 seats for a majority — not an impossible number, less than the net gains made by Democrats in 2006 and 2008 and by Republicans in 2010, but still a formidable number in an era that remains, though to a slightly lesser extent, a time of straight-ticket voting. Of the 435 House districts, only 35 voted for the nominee of one party for president and a House member of the other party in 2016. That’s higher than the 26 that did so in 2012, the lowest number since 1920, but not much higher.
Some Democratic strategists are looking at the 23 districts carried by Clinton which also elected Republican House members. Some 15 of these districts have upscale — high education/high income — electorates, while 12 (including some of those 15) have relatively high Hispanic populations; only one, New York 24 (centered on Syracuse) shares neither of these characteristics. There will be a test of this proposition in Georgia’s 6th district in the special election April 18 and runoff (if necessary) June 20 to replace Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. This affluent district, ranging from the north edge of Atlanta’s affluent Buckhead neighborhood into the northern suburbs up above, voted 61 to 37 percent for Mitt Romney in 2012 but only 48.3 to 46.8 percent for Donald Trump in 2016, according to the presidential results by congressional district calculated by the left-wing website Daily Kos (and a hearty thanks to them for a service to the whole political community!).
This was the second largest 2012-16 increase in Democratic presidential percentage — 9.3 percent — of any of the 435 congressional districts; the largest was 9.9 percent in Texas 7. Interestingly, that district is the lineal descendant, much changed in precise boundaries and demographic character, from the Texas 7 won by George H.W. Bush in 1966 and 1968, just as Georgia 6 is the descendant of the Georgia 6 won by Newt Gingrich in 1992, 1994 and 1996. The third largest Democratic gain, 7.9 percent, was in Texas 22, the lineal descendant of the district won by Tom DeLay from 1984 to 2004. Historically these were affluent districts, in states where affluent voters have been voting up through and including 2014 about 70 percent Republican, in contrast to affluent voters in the Northeast, Midwest and West who mostly trended Democratic from the 1980s to the 2010s. Add in increasing numbers of black, Hispanic and Asian voters, and these districts tilted heavily toward Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Will they vote for Democratic House candidates in the Georgia 6 special election this year or in November 2018? That’s unclear. I’m dubious, but uncertain; others take a different view, which could turn out to be right. Democrats, who have put many such districts on their (perhaps unrealistically large) list of 59 target seats, are smart to give it a try, anyway, since they don’t have enough plausible target seats, based on House election results in this decade, to win a House majority if they win, as parties tend to do in favorable years, about half of those they target.
So it makes sense to take chances, as Rahm Emanuel did as chairman of the House Democrats’ campaign committee in the 2006 cycle. It wasn’t apparent early in 2005 what kind of seats would be winnable by Democrats and whether there were enough to win a House majority more than 20 months later. Emanuel recruited candidates with issue profiles and personal backgrounds suited to local terrain and, as George W. Bush’s job approval cratered, enough of them won to give Democrats their majority. Rinse and repeat: The same course was followed in the 2008 cycle and the Democratic majority grew.
Of course the Blue Dogs that Emanuel recruited were almost entirely wiped out in 2010 and succeeding House elections. That’s a pretty clear indication that the left-wing policies of the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders were anathema in a majority of House districts. Democrats who remember that would be wise to resist the impulse of the Democrats who style themselves The Resistance and insist on left-wing nominees everywhere. Will that impulse fade in time? Quite possibly, if the Democrats do badly in Georgia 6. But not likely if they win an upset victory there.
