Democrats aren’t counting on a blue wave to carry them in this year’s midterm elections. Nothing is preordained in politics, as the 2016 cycle made painfully clear, so this time, they’re reading from an old playbook: Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy.

Widely panned for the plan at the time, the former Democratic National Committee chairman confounded critics when in 2006, Democrats took control of the House and Senate for the first time in more than a decade.

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