What We Learned From Tuesday Night's NC-09 Results-- The Democrats Have At Least 22 Seats They Should Win Relatively Easily

Trump's approval rating is sinking in every poll published. He's below 40% and dropping-- and a new poll from the Washington Post and ABC News yesterday shows every plausible Democrat beating him in 2020. He's likely to be a deadly drag on the Republican ticket all down the ballot. His favorable ratings are in the toilet and things are getting worse for him, not better. In almost all cases, worse for Trump, means worse for his congressional enablers.

But, you might say, he just helped Dan Bishop win that special election in NC-09. But did he really? We're talking about a district that was unconstitutionally gerrymandered by the Republicans in the state legislature to result in 10 point plus wins for Republican candidates. Romney and Trump both won the district by around 12 points in 2012 and 2016. Did Trump really help when all Bishop won by-- against an especially bad Democratic candidate-- was a meager 2.1 points, less than 4,000 votes out of 188,000 cast? Trump is so badly underwater among independent voters-- only 36% of independents approval of the job he's doing-- that it will be hard for Republican incumbents and candidates to win in any districts where Republicans don't hold an absolute majority in voter registration. And there aren't that many like that outside of the deep South and the Farm Belt (where Trump has an entirely different set of problems being exacerbated by his trade wars).

Last December, a month after the 2018 midterms, I looked at 50 vulnerable GOP seats. I want to narrow that list down for the sake of this post. Let's look at those districts (which Republicans won with less than 55%) to where Trump did worse than the 12 points he won by in NC-09. In fact, let's eliminate all districts except the ones where Trump won by 10% or less (22 seats)-- so even easier targets for the Democrats.

This list below shows how much the Republican victor won with, and then, in red, the percentage by with Trump beat Hillary:

• CA-22- Devin Nunes- 52.7%-- 9.5 points
• FL-15- Ross Spano- 53.0%-- 10 points
• FL-18- Brian Mast- 54.3%-- 9.2 points
• GA-07- Rob Woodall- 50.1%-- 6.3 points
• IL-13- Rodney Davis- 50.5%-- 5.5 points
• MI-03- Justin Amash- 54.4%-- 9.4 points
• MI-06- Fred Upton- 50.2%-- 9.1 points
• NE-02- Don Bacon- 51.0%-- 2.2 points
• NY-02- Peter King- 53.3%-- 9.1 points
• NY-24- John Katko- 53.1% [Clinton won this district]
• NC-02- George Holding- 51.4%-- 9.6 points
• NC-13- Ted Budd- 51.6%-- 9.4 points
• OH-01- Steve Chabot- 51.8%-- 6.6 points
• PA-01- Brian Fitzpatrick- 51.3% [Clinton won this district]
• PA-10- Scott Perry- 51.4%-- 8.9 points
• TX-02- Dan Crenshaw- 52.9%-- 9.3 points
• TX-10- Michael McCaul- 50.9%-- 9.1 points
• TX-21- Chip Roy- 50.3%-- 10 points
• TX-22- Pete Olson- 51.4%-- 7.9 points
• TX-23- Will Hurd- 49.2% [Clinton won this district]
• TX-24- Kenny Marchant- 50.7%-- 6.2 points
• WA-03- Jaime Herrera Beutler- 52.9%-- 7.4 points

As if Trump weren't already enough of an albatross around the necks of congressional Republicans, yesterday ProPublica reported, in a story about Brad Parscale, Trump's campaign manager, that "since Trump’s election in 2016, critical 'voter scores'-- sophisticated polling-based analytics that the RNC provides to party committees and candidates-- have conspicuously omitted an essential detail for any down-ballot race: how voters in specific states and congressional districts feel about Trump. Republican insiders believe these analytics are being withheld to try and prevent GOP candidates from publicly distancing themselves from the president or leaking unfavorable results that embarrass Trump. 'They don’t want you to know if it isn’t good,' says former RNC chairman Michael Steele, a vocal Trump critic. 'There’s a lot of data they’re sitting on that they’re not sharing.' Steele adds that today, 'the RNC is not an independent actor; the RNC is now a part of the Trump campaign. The question now isn’t, What do you need? The question is, Do you support Donald Trump?'"

Trump should be enough of a drag in these districts so that even the DCCC should be able to win them... unless they try to force toothless Blue Dog candidates down the throats of voters and depress voter turnout among progressives. So far, Blue America has endorsed 6 candidates in these races and is vetting several others. The six candidates so far are Marqus Cole in GA-07, Jon Hoadley in MI-06, Kara Eastman in NE-02, Dana Balter in NY-24, Jason Butler in NC-02 and Mike Siegel in TX-10. You can contribute to all or any of their campaigns by clicking on this link. If you want to see the ideas that Bernie and Elizabeth Warren are talking about enacted into law, we absolutely must have progressive Democrats in Congress. If you leave that to the DCCC, there will be NO FUNDAMENTAL CHANGES, just a reshuffling of the deck chairs on the Titanic, of that you can be sure.