Close Calls… And 2020 Opportunities For Progressives

In 2020, Trump will force voters to pick a torch again

Is it too soon to start thinking about the 2020 congressional cycle? Not for the Blue America team. We’re even starting to hope who our two first candidates will be to flip red seats blue. One district’s on Long Island-- yeah, we’re looking’ at you, Peter King-- and the other is deep in the heart of Tejas.

Now is the beginning of recruitment time for us. We’re looking for solid, proven progressives who want to run and have the capacity to do two things:

1- run a grueling grassroots campaign
2- be a kick-ass member of Congress

What we’re doing right now is identifying districts to begin the process. The first wave are the districts that Democrats came very close in this cycle. Some of them were districts the DCCC just missed entirely-- for one reason or another, ranging from incompetence to venality-- like TX-10, CA-50, NY-27, IA-04 and NY-02). Others were districts with woefully weak candidates, especially Blue Dogs like in KS-02 and PA-16, seats where Paul Davis’ and Ron DiNicola’s Republican-lite approaches failed to ignite any grassroots enthusiasm. Others were districts with good enough first time candidates running good enough campaigns and who built a strong foundation for a 2020 re-match, like Kara Eastman did in NE-02 and Dana Balter did in NY-24.

So, try to imagine that Trump will stay the same between now and 2020 as he’s been since the mid-1940s when he was born, a malignant narcissistic sociopath and as entitled racist shit. That would make for an even bigger wave-- at least in theory-- than we had this cycle. Much of the low-hanging fruit, though, is now off the table, those red suburban seats that Hillary won in 2016, for example, like FL-27 with an R+5 PVI and where Hillary beat Trump by TWENTY points. There aren’t many quite like that left. But 2018 uncovered new opportunities election pundits hadn’t seen coming, like the aforementioned TX-10 and like GA-07. But let me give you a back-of-the-envelope sketch of the earliest map we’re looking at at Blue America. This is the first round of districts where we want to find-- or have already found-- candidates. The percentage is the winning GOP score from last week:

• CA-21 (Central Valley)- 51.0%
• CA-50 (eastern San Diego County)- 52.8%

• GA-07 (Gwinnett suburbs northeast of Atlanta)- 50.2%

• IL-13 (downstate from St. Louis suburbs to Champaign, Springfield and Bloomington)- 50.5%

• IA-04 (northern and western rural Iowa)- 50.4%

• KS-02 (eastern Kansas minus Kansas City)- 48.1%

• KY-06 (Lexington)- 51.0%

• MI-06 (southwest Michigan)- 50.2%

• MN-01 (southern Minnesota)- 50.2%
• MN-08 (northeast Minnesota)- 50.7%

• MO-02 (St. Louis suburbs)- 51.3%

• MT (the whole state)- 51.1%

• NE-02 (Omaha Metro)- 51.6%

• NY-24 (Syracuse)- 53.1%
• NY-27 (Buffalo to Rochester suburbs and exurbs)- 49.5%

• NC-09 (southern tier from Fayetteville to Charlotte)- 49.4%

• OH-01 (Cincinnati + Warren County)- 51.8%
• OH-12 (central Ohio including part of Columbus)- 51.6%

• PA-01 (Bucks County)- 51.3%
• PA-10 (Dauphin, York and Cumberland counties)- 51.4%
• PA-16 (northeast Pennsylvania including Erie and Butler counties)- 51.5%

• TX-10 (northern Austin to Houston exurbs)- 50.9%
• TX-21 (Austin to San Antonio corridor)- 50.3%
• TX-23 (Rio Grande Valley from San Antonio to El Paso)- 49.2%
• TX-24 (Dallas and Tarrant counties)- 50.7%
• TX-31 (Williamson and Bell counties)- 50.6%

• WA-03 (sw Washington, Portland suburbs)- 52.9%

These were, basically, districts left on the table. Ironically, one of the first candidates we’re looking at isn’t even from one of these districts. New York state Assemblywoman Christine Pellegrino won a special election in 2017 for the 9th district in Nassau County. It’s the most Republican area of NY-02, Peter King’s Nassau-Suffolk South Shore district, still being “protected” by Steve Israel. Pellegrino, one of the best legislators in Albany beat Republican opponent 52-31% in the 2017 special but was defeated by another Republican last week. She’s probably still the best bet to take on King and retire him in 2020. Now all we have to do is try to talk her into it.