Stopping Trump By Winning Back The House In 2018-- One Of The Possible Paths

How many suburban congressman besides Issa will live to regret backing Trump?

I have a part-time job-- congressional recruiting. It's voluntary and it's GRUELING. In between the time I wrote "congressional" and "recruiting" in the last sentence, I had a 30 minute conversation with a top recruit for a swing district. He's run before. He hates the DCCC. Everyone I talk to hates the DCCC. The DCCC screwed him over. He's already a pretty high-ranking state-level elected official and who didn't enjoy being consistently lied to and rat-fucked by Steve Israel and Kelly Ward and treated like a novice by the unaccomplished moron-children they assigned to deal with candidates. He has a family and a life and to go through another experience with the DCCC wouldn't be worth another run for Congress. Almost everyone who has ever experienced the DCCC feels the same way. I hear it all day long-- every day and from every part of the country. Madonna should forget about blowing up and the White House and imagine blowing up the DCCC instead. Unless today is the first day you're reading DWT, you know I'm the last person to be an effective defender of the DCCC. In fact, no one detests them more than I do.

That said, Israel and Kelly Ward are gone. That's a big deal-- but not nirvana. According to people I trust, this new executive director is supposed to be pretty good. We'll see. Rotgut Blue Dog (and Rahm Emanuel protégée) Cheri Bustos had a dominant voice on the recruiting committee last cycle and many people blame her-- and rightfully so-- for how horribly the Democrats did. This year, I'm hearing that people let her yammer on and try to ignore her determined stupidity and let others on the recruitment committee take the lead. That's also a big deal.

This week I was turned down by two superb prospective candidates who refuse to do anything with the DCCC until they've proven themselves to be free of the poison Steve Israel wrecked the place with. But I found another one who's more open to running. He'd be great and the Republican who represents the blue-leaning district could be a real victim of the toxic combination of Trump and Ryan.

But what I want us to look at today are the red-held seats where Hillary out-performed Obama (or even did about as well as Obama) and where the DCCC has been ineffective-- or nonexistent. A good example would be FL-27 (Miami), where Debbie Wasserman Schultz has worked for a decade to protect her corrupt Republican crony Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. In 2012 Obama beat Romney in FL-27 53.0% to 46.3%, a pretty strong performance. But Wasserman Schultz and Ros-Lehtinen worked together to make sure there would be no plausible Democratic opponent-- and Ros-Lehtinen coasted to reelection. This past cycle, Hillary did even better, beating Trump in the district 58.6% to 38.9%. Again, Ros-Lehtinen had a joke to run against instead of a real candidate. But even running against a nothing candidate with no DCCCC suppory-- and who spent just $869,383 to Ros-Lehtinen's $3,328,739-- she only managed to win with 54.9%. Against a credible, well-supported candidate... we could see Ros-Lehtinen go work for her old amigo Lincoln Diaz-Balart's campaign for President of Cuba.

These are the districts that need to be seriously looked at for 2018 targeting:

• AZ-02, Martha McSally's district, which Hillary won-- 49.6% to 44.7%, beating Obama's 2012 performance (48.4% to 49.9%) The Democrats had a weak candidate-- a New Dem-- who the DCCC didn't support and who raised just $1,571,901 to McSally's $8,261,616. McSally out-performed Trump massively. She won with 56.7% (compared to Trump's 44.7% loss).

The only other seat in Arizona worth looking at is David Schweikert's Scottsdale/ParadiseValley district-- although that would be a real long-shot and could only be won as part of a massive anti-Trump/anti-Ryan tsunami. Hillary lost 52.4- 42.4% but she did a lot better than Obama's 38.8% total in 2012. Schweikert hasn't had a viable opponent. Moving along to California, there are excellent opportunities for Democratic pickups. Trump and Republican polices are widely hated and 2018 should be golden for Democrats in the Golden State.

• CA-10, Jeff Denham's Central Valley (Modesto, Manteca, Tracy) seat is a minority white district. Hillary did slightly worse than Obama there but still beat Trump 48.5-45.5%. Obama had beaten Romney 50.6-47.0%. The DCCC backed Michael Eggman. Denham spent $4,174,467 to Engman's $1,551,905. The DCCC & Pelosi's House Majority PAC put in just over $3.8 million to Ryan's Congressional Leadership Fund's $3.3 million. Denham beat Eggman by around 10,000 votes-- 52.4% to 47.6%. It was a better performance than Engman's 44% in 2014 but the DCCC is talking about running his sister, Susan, an Assemblywoman, in 2018 instead.

• CA-21, David Valadao's Central Valley district is south of Denham's and is over 72% Latino. (Chew that over in your mind.) Obama beat Romney 54.6% to 43.5% and Hillary did even better-- besting Trump 55.2% to 39.7%. Emilio Huerta, Dolores Huerta's son ran, but got off to a bumpy start without much DCCC help when it was needed. Valadao beat him by around 11,000 votes (58-42%) in one of the lowest turn districts in California. And Valadao spent $2,765,981 to Emilio's $630,389.

• CA-25, Buck McKeon's old district in northeastern L.A. County (Santa Clarita and the Antelope Valley) and Ventura (Simi Valley), is now represented by out-of-his-depth teabagger Steve Knight, a bad fit for a blue district. Romney beat Obama there 49.7-47.8% but Hillary beat Trump 50.3-43.6%. The DCCC recruited an especially unelectable piece of crap candidate from outside the district and wrecked any chance for the Democrats to win. Knight was reelected by almost 50,000 votes-- 50-40%, a landslide in a blue district. Thanks DCCC. It's a perfect example about why local Democrats hate them so much. (And Bustos tried to re-recruit him for 2018, something that went over badly on every level.)

• CA-39, Ed Royce's 32% white northern Orange County district is an odd place for a racist asshole like Royce... but the DCCC never backs Democrats against him. This year Hillary kicked ass there. Where Romney beat Obama 50.8- 47.1%, she beat Trump 51.5% to 42.9%. The DCCC refused to get behind Brett Murdock who was outspent $3,536,482 to $76,014 but still managed to take 42.3% of the vote against Royce, whose days are clearly numbered.

• CA-45, Mimi Walters central Orange County (Irvine) district is another one the DCCC reflexively ignored. Hillary outperformed Obama (who lost to Romney with 43.0%) and beat Trump 49.8-44.4%. Walters was comfortably reelected by 50,000 votes (59-41%), the DCCC completely ignoring Ron Varasteh, her opponent, who was outspent $1,643,696 to $42,761.

• CA-48, Dana Rohrabacher's Huntington Beach/Costa Mesa district, wasn't Trump territory either. Romney beat Obama there, 54.7-43.0%. Hillary took the district 47.9% to 46.2%. Again, the Democratic candidate, Sue Savary, was ignored by the DCCC and drastically outspent-- $609,952 by Rohrabacher to her $91,293. He beat her 58.5- 41.5%.

• CA-49, Darrell Issa's seat in northern San Diego/southern Orange County, was one of the tightest in the country. Doug Applegate nearly beat him-- just 6,000 votes separating them (51-49%), despite Issa outspending him $6,169,077 to $1,633,251. The DCCC jumped into the race way too late but did spend around $3.5 million eventually. Romney had beaten Obama there 52.4% to 45.7% but Hillary trounced Trump 50.7-43.2% in the highly educated middle class, mostly suburban district. Good news: Applegate is running again. (You can contribute to his campaign here.)

• CO-06 is a suburban Denver district Democrats should win. Obama beat Romney 51.6% to 46.5% and, though Hillary didn't do as well, she still beat Trump 50.2% to 41.3%. The DCCC got behind a very strong candidate, Morgan Carroll, who pretty much kept up in the spending area but the NRCC and Ryan's PAC spent spent $6.3 million to the DCCC's and Pelosi's PAC's $5.0 million. Coffman won 51.3% to 42.4%.

• FL-25, FL-26, FL-27- The 3 Republican-held districts in Miami-Dade. Hillary won FL-26 (Carlos Curbelo) and FL-27 (Ros-Lehtinen) definitively and narrowly lost the redder FL-25 (Mario Diaz-Balart), out-performing Obama's 2012 scores in each. The DCCC ignored FL-25 and FL-27 and ran a ghastly campaign for a terrible, completely unelectable and notoriously corrupt candidate in FL-26. What a mess!

• GA-06 the Tom Price district in the suburbs north of Atlanta where a special election will soon determine if anti-Trump sentiment is growing or subsiding in a traditionally very red district that veered sharply towards Hillary in November. These well-off, well-educated suburbanites don't like Trump. They gave Romney a 60.8-37.5% victory over Obama. Four years later, the swing was mind boggling. without ever campaigning there or spending any money there, Hillary nearly won the district. Trump took it narrowly-- 48.3% to 46.8%. The primaries for both parties are going to be contentious but the likely Democratic candidate, Jon Ossoff, is just the kind of no-nonsense values-driven candidate who could claim this unlikely district for the Democrats.

• GA-07- Just east of Price's district is an equally red seat held by right-wing nut Bob Woodall, slightly more exurban than suburban. The swing towards Hillary was also strong though not quite as eye-popping as in GA-06. Romney beat Obama there 60.2-38.3% and Trump lost around 9 points from Romney's score to come out ahead of Hillary 51.1% to 44.8%. Woodall has won every race with over 60%-- although last November was his smallest majority (60..5%), despite-- once again-- not having a competitive opponent. The DCCC has entirely ignored both GA-07 and GA-06. Woodall raised $648,604 and his opponent, Rashid Malik didn't raise the $5,000 required for an FEC report.

• IL-06 is Pete Roskam's Chicagoland district (parts of DuPage, Henry, Lake, Cook and Kane counties). It's the only Republican-held district in Illinois where Hillary had a substantially better performance than Obama. He lost the district to Romney 53.3-45.1%. Hillary beat Trump there-- 50.2% to 43.2%. The DCCC has consistently allowed Roskam to slide into reelection without a fight. He hasn't had a fight since his first election in 2006 and generally wins with over 60%. This year he beat Amanda Howland, who got zero support from the DCCC, 59.5% to 40.5%. Roskam spent $3,331,980 on the race to her $98,179.

• KS-03 is the Kansas part of Kansas City (most of the city is in Missouri) and the district includes all of Johnson and Wyandotte counties and part of rural Miami County. The DCCC actually sensed something about the district, which is represented by weak backbencher Kevin Yoder. Hillary won the district, 47.2% to 46.0%. Romney had beaten Obama there 53.8-44.3%. The Democratic candidate against Yoder, Jay Sidie spent $563,363 to Yoder's $4,049,363. The DCCC threw in an additional $1,404,577, while Ryan's Congressional Leadership Fund spent $795,373. But Sidie wasn't a strong enough candidate and Yoder won by around 36,000 votes-- 51.3% to 40.6%. (A Libertarian took 8% of the vote.)

• MI-11 is the Dave Trott district in the Oakland and Wayne county suburbs west and northwest of Detroit. While the DCCC was working hard and wasting money on horrible, unelectable Blue Dog garbage candidates in other parts of the state, they refused to work with progressive doctor Anil Kumar-- Steve Israel is a vicious Islamophobe and he blackballed Kumar-- who did better than any of their sad-sack Blue Dogs. Hillary did terribly in the Republican-held districts in Michigan but less terrible in MI-11. Romney had beaten Obama there 52.3- 46.9% but neither Trump nor Hillary did as well, Trump scraping by with a 49.7-45.3% win. Kumar, who managed to raise enough money to start competitive with Trott, spent $1,109,010 to Trott's $1,337,399. The DCCC and Pelosi's PAC wasted $2.3 million of pathetic Blue Dog and NRA proponent Lon Johnson and lost in MI-01 but would have taken MI-11 if they spent that money on Kumar instead. Trott won with just 52.9%. Hopefully the DCCC will remember in 2018.

• MN-03, Erik Paulson's seat, was the only Republican-held district in Minnesota where Clinton out-performed Obama. Obama beat Romney there 49.6% to 48.8% and Hillary beat Trump 50.8% to 41.4%. Again, the well educated suburbanites west and south of Minneapolis (Edna, Bloomington, Eden Prairie, Minnetonka) couldn't stomach voting for Trump-- but stuck with Paulsen in light of a weak Democratic opponent Terri Bonoff, who lost by around 50,000 votes, 56.9% to 43.1% despite nearly $4 million in independent expenditures from the DCCC.

• NE-02, the Omaha district with the single worst Blue Dog in Congress, "ex"-Republican Brad Ashford, who was defeated in November by Republican Don Bacon. Romney had beaten Obama there, 52.9-45.7% and Hillary did a little better than Obama and Trump did worse than Romney. The final tally there was a Trump win of 48.2% to 46.0%. The Blue Dog incumbent lost by almost 6,000 votes (49.4% to 47.3%) even though he outspent the Republican $2,515,416 to $1,454,019 and even though the DCCC and Pelosi's PAC wasted around $3.4 million, proving once again that if voters want a Republican, they vote for an actual Republican, not a Republican-lite Blue Dog.

• NJ-07 is Leonard Lance's suburban district in northern New Jersey that includes, primarily, chunks of Somerset, Union and Hunterdon counties. While Hillary underperformed Obama in the Republican-held New Jersey blue collar districts (NJ-02, NJ-03, NJ-04), she out-performed Obama in the better-off more suburban districts (NJ-07 and NJ-11). In 2012 Romney won NJ-07 52.5-46.3% but in November Hillary beat Trump 48.6-47.5%, again Trump underperforming Romney much more drastically than Hillary out-peforming Obama. The Democrats didn't run a candidate against Lance though, choosing to giving him a free ride to reelection again. He beat under-financed Berniecrat Peter Jacob by nearly 40,000 votes, 54.2% to 43.0%, after outspending him $1,276,330 to $305,073, while the DCCC looked on without batting an eye.

• NJ-11 was a similar situation. Rodney Frelinghuysen III or IV, treats the district (parts of Morris, Essex, Passaic and Sussex counties) as an hereditary familiar barony. He raised $1,991,920 while his Democratic opponent, Joe Wenzel, raised less than the $5,000 that would have triggered an FEC report. He won 58.2-38.7%, while Hillary out-performed Obama and virtually tied Trump. Romney had beaten Obama 52.4-46.6% in 2012. In November, Hillary had improved on Obama's performance slightly (to 47.9%) while Trump underperformed Romney significantly (48.8%).

• PA-06, PA-07 and PA-08 are the three blue-leaning suburban swing districts that surround Philly on 3 sides. The Democrats should have won all 3 but the DCCC botched up all three races and they are, once again, Republican-held. While Hillary was under-performing Obama in most Pennsylvania red districts, she held her own in these three, spending enormous energy and lots of money in the area. In 2012 Romney beat Obama in PA-06 50.6-48.1% but Hillary was maintaining Obama's numbers (48/2%), Trump was untenable for many Romney voters and only wound up with 47.6%, losing the district to Hillary. Mike Parrish, the worthless conservative Democrat who ran against Ryan Costello did far worse than Hillary and Costello beat him 57.3-42.7%. In PA-07, Pat Meehan's district, Hillary beat Trump 49.3% to 47.0%, primarily because Romney voters refused to vote for Trump. But the DCCC purposeless sabotaged the progressive Democratic candidate, Mary Ellen Balchunis, and Meehan was reelected 57.3% to 42.7%. The DCCC spent all their loot in PA-08, an open seat, that Hillary actually lost (narrowly) to Trump, 448.2-48.0% (an outcome almost identical to Romney's fractional win in 2012.) Steve Santarsiero, the Democrat ic candidate outspent the Brian Fitzpatrick, the GOP candidate, $2,778,029 to $2,009,177 and the DCCC (+ Pelosi'sPAC) spent another $7 million! Fitzpatrick still beat Santartsiero by around 35,000 votes, 54.5% to 45.5%.

• SC-01, disgraced former Governor Mark Sanford's district, isn't an area where the DCCC has any expectations but it's a relatively well-educated suburban district and easily the wealthiest in the state. It's the only district in South Carolina were Hillary out-performed Obama, albeit only slightly. Romney beat Obama 58.3% to 40.2%. Many of his supporters were repulsed by Trump, who only beat Clinton 53.5% to 40.4%. Democrat Dimitri Cherny didn't offer Sanford much of a challenge, raising just $27,562 to Sanford's $741,639. Sanford beat him by about 70,000 votes, 58.6% to 36.9%. I don't see a Democrat winning a seat like this in 2018... but the DCCC should start working the district now with an eye on the future. And that brings us to Texas.

Statewide Hillary out-performed Obama 2012 3,867,816 (43.4%) to 3,294,440 (41%). Where Romney took 57% of the Texas vote, though, Trump only managed 52.6%. But the statewide totals don't tell us much about the districts where Clinton really-- and unexpectedly-- excelled. There are 36 congressional districts in the state, 11 held by Democrats and 25 held by Republicans. Of the Republican-held seats, Hillary out-performed Obama in 17 and under-performed Obama in 6. There was virtually no difference between Obama and Hillary in 2 districts. Generally speaking, the better-off, better-educated suburban districts is where Hillary did so much better than Obama and in the much poorer, more rural districts she under-performed Obama. Her most significant increases over Obama were in these districts:

• TX-02 (Ted Poe-- Houston and northern suburbs), where Trump won 52.4% to 43.1%. Romney won the district 62.9% to 35.6%
• TX-03 (Sam Johnson-- northern Dallas suburbs), where Trump won 54.8% to 40.6%. Romney won the district 59.9% to 38.6%
• TX-07 (John Culberson-- Houston and Harris County suburbs), where Hillary won 48.5% to 47.1%. Romney won the district 62.9% to 35.6%
• TX-10 (Mike McCaul-- Austin-Houston corridor), where Trump won 52.3% to 43.2%. Romney won the district 59.1% to 38.8%
• TX-21 (Lamar Smith-- Austin-San Antonio corridor), where Trump won 52.5% to 42.5%. Romney won the district 59.8% to 37.9%
• TX-22 (Pete Olson-- southern Houston suburbs), where Trump won 52.1% to 44.2%. Romney won the district 62.1% to 36.7%
• TX-23 (Will Hurd-- San Antonio exurbs and west Texas borderlands; 71% Latino), where Hillary won 49.8% to 46.4%. Romney won the district 50.7% to 48.1%
• TX-24 (Kenny Marchant-- Ft. Worth suburbs), where Trump won 50.7% to 44.5%. Romney won the district 60.4% to 38.0%
• TX-32 (Pete Sessions-- northern Dallas and suburbs), where Hillary won 48.5% to 46.6%. Romney won the district 57.0% to 41.5%

The DCCC ignored all these districts except TX-23, where they ran an ultra-conservative sleazy Blue Dog who had already been rejected by the voters, Pete Gallego. They wasted $4.7 on independent expenditures for the worthless Gallego who always voted with Republicans when he was in Congress amassing a terrible voting record and ingratiating himself with crooked lobbyists all over DC. The DCCC should be looking for progressive Democrats to challenge Hurd, John Culberson, Lamar Smith, Mike McCaul, Pete Olson and Ted Poe.

• VA-10 is Barbara Comstock's blue northern Virginia district where Hillary beat Trump 52.2% to 42.2%, outperforming Obama's 49.2% in 2012, where he lost to Romney. Once again, the DCCC picked a crap unelectable candidate, LuAnn Bennett, and wasted over $6 million dollars on her., only to see her do far worse than Clinton, losing to the entirely unaccomplished Comstock by over 20,000 votes, 52.9% to 47.1%. The Democrats need to stop recruiting and wasting money on corrupt conservative candidates. With Israel gone, there's at least a chance , a small chance, this will begin to happen.

[Two notes: there are plenty of other districts Democrats can win in 2018, districts where Hillary didn't do better than Obama did-- like against Peter King (NY), Paul Ryan (WI), but that isn't the purview of this post. And the mirror image of this post-- about Democrats in districts Trump won-- will be up mañana.] and by the way, you can contribute to the progressive candidates Blue America has endorsed for 2017 and 2018 races by tapping on the thermometer on the right.

Wednesday, Ron Brownstein covered the changing House outlook for The Atlantic and remarked on how Trump and Trumpism are sparking something of a realignment of some white non-urban blue collar areas in a redder direction, while better off, professional suburban areas are continuing to trend towards Democrats. "As the share of voters who split their tickets has steadily declined since the 1970s," he wrote, "each party’s roster of seats in the House increasingly reflects its voting coalition in presidential elections. As a new Atlantic analysis has shown, the Republican House majority now relies predominantly on districts where whites exceed their share of the national population, that are located mostly outside of urban centers, and that contain fewer white college graduates than the national average. Democrats, in turn, rely on an upstairs-downstairs coalition of districts where minorities, college-educated whites, or both exceed their share of the population-- the vast majority of them in metropolitan areas."

The sharply polarized nature of Trump’s appeal-- which has generated magnetic attraction for blue-collar and non-urban whites, broad opposition among minorities, and unusually high resistance among white-collar whites-- has the potential to deepen this sorting process, analysts in both parties agree. The vividly contrasting voting patterns of 2016, with Trump posting big gains over Romney in heavily blue-collar House districts and Clinton improving over Obama in a broad swathe of white-collar districts, may have offered a fast-forward preview of how the House may evolve in coming years. “It was like looking decades in the future, and this is what it looks like,” said GOP strategist Liam Donovan, referring to the 2016 results. “If you just push down the gas and let it rip [on the class resorting], this is what it is going to look like.”

All initial evidence suggests Trump’s presidency-- with its deeply polarizing approaches to immigration, trade, health care, climate, and foreign policy-- will widen, rather than narrow, the fissures that emerged around in his election. That means for 2018 and beyond, each party’s electoral target list may grow increasingly focused on the members caught, in effect, behind enemy lines: the last few Democrats representing heavily blue-collar districts and the larger number of Republicans in mostly white-collar suburban seats.

The House members most immediately at risk in this segmenting process are the roughly three dozen of them representing districts that voted for the other party’s presidential ticket last year. That’s still well below the level of ticket-splitting seen as recently as two decades ago: 109 districts in 1996 and 86 in 2000 supported House members from one party and presidential candidates from the other. But it represents a slight uptick from the 26 split districts in the 2012 presidential race.

...Using the DCCC figures, 18 of the 23 Clinton-district Republicans are in seats where the share of college-educated whites exceeds the national average. Eight of those 18 are in so-called “hi-hi” districts, where both the share of minorities and white college graduates exceeds the national average. Those seats are the backbone of the modern Democratic House caucus: One hundred and eight seats fit that description and Democrats now hold 87 of them.

Clinton’s success in so many Republican-held districts with high white-education levels reflects Trump’s struggle among those voters. In 2016, Republican Representatives like Barbara Comstock in northern Virginia, Patrick Meehan and Ryan Costello outside Philadelphia, Leonard Lance in affluent northwest New Jersey, Martha McSally in Tucson, and Mike Coffman outside Denver successfully distanced themselves from doubts about Trump. Democrats are confident that will grow more difficult once those members are operating in harness with Trump as part of a unified Republican government that will, if history is any guide, vote together on most key issues.

Lance, in an interview, crystallized the strategy many of these Republicans are likely to employ under Trump: stress their willingness to work across party lines, look for opportunities to display independence from the president (Lance quickly criticized Trump’s executive order restricting immigration), and emphasize the economic issues where the views of their well-educated and affluent constituents most closely align with GOP priorities. “We have to reach out to all voters … and point out where our views are consistent with the views of well-educated constituents, and that includes, for example, a tax policy,” he said. “I think it’s important to have tax policies that will further the American economy, and many of the constituents whom I serve are involved in economic activity in New York, or in New Jersey in the pharmaceutical or the medical-device and the telecommunications industries. And these are vital parts of the national economy.”