Will Gerrymandering Backfire for Republicans in 2018?

For more than a half dozen years Republicans have held on to a majority in Congress and in many state legislatures through gerrymandering that carefully drew districts to ensure Republican majorities.  But often, to maximize the number of districts with Republican majorities, the actual party majority in favor of Republicans was slim: 52 to 55% in numerous districts.   In normal years, this thin majority was enough to allow Republicans to skate to easy victories.  So far, 2018 is proving to NOT fall into the "normal year" category (neither did Virginia's 2017 election that saw 15 Republicans in the House of Delegates go down to defeat).   As a story in Politico notes, Republicans may now be poised to lose a number of their thin majority districts as Democrats are energized and out to take revenge on Trump and the larger GOP.  Here are story highlights:

Republicans redrew congressional districts across the country in 2010 in an attempt to consign Democrats to a semi-permanent House minority.

But in 2018, the long-successful GOP insurance policy is at risk of backfiring in a big way — not only carving a path for a takeover, but possibly allowing for bigger Democratic gains.

In many states, Republicans maximized gains in the House by spreading GOP voters across as many districts as possible. Typically, that left Democrats with around 40 to 45 percent of the vote in those districts, making them difficult under normal circumstances for the minority party to contest.

But this election year is anything but normal. Many of the once-secure 55-45 Republican districts are very much in play, even in states that have not had competitive congressional races since 2012, the year new maps were installed. And North Carolina and Ohio — where Democrats chose nominees in primaries on Tuesday — are turning into the prime examples.

[A] half-dozen Republican districts that could become fierce battlegrounds this fall, including the fast-changing suburbs of Cincinnati, Charlotte, Columbus and Raleigh. President Donald Trump won less than 55 percent of the vote in each of the seats in 2016 — and some of the Republican incumbents have been caught by surprise by the ferocity of their competition. . . . . “because of the way the maps have been drawn and the environment that Republicans are facing, you have a whole bunch of Republicans who have never been in a competitive race in their life, who are running [in one] right now.” “In a normal year, you're safe in these seats, but in a time like this, Democrats are within striking distance,” Jackson continued. “This is when gerrymandering backfires.” Pittenger’s district [in North Carolina] could end up being the biggest gerrymandering backfire of 2018. The Republican lost his primary Tuesday night to Mark Harris, a conservative pastor who cast the three-term congressman as a part of the “Washington swamp,” effectively tapping into the anti-establishment anger driving the GOP base in a seat where Trump, Mitt Romney and John McCain all got between 53 percent and 56 percent of the vote in recent presidential elections.

But Harris, who lagged behind Pittenger in fundraising, now faces Democrat Dan McCready, a veteran and businessman who has vowed not to support House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for speaker and banked more than $1.2 million in cash on hand in preparation for November. Harris’ campaign had $70,000, according to his pre-primary FEC filing.

Trump won North Carolina’s 9th District, which stretches from the Charlotte suburbs to Fayetteville, with 53.5 percent of the vote in 2016. But the area is stocked with suburban, college-educated voters — a cohort that trended away from Republicans over the past year.

[I]ncumbents in safely drawn seats can also be out of practice. “You win every two years, and you put it on cruise control, then before you know it, you’re in an environment you’re not ready for,” said Chip Gerhardt, a Republican consultant in Ohio.

Let's hope the story proves right and many Republicans to their surprise go down to defeat. 

Republicans Fear Democrats Could Win Big in 2018

Back when I was a GOP activist years ago, the theme was that the purpose of the Party was to win elections and grow the base of support for the Party and its candidates.  Now, it increasingly appears that the only concern is to appease the most toxic and vile elements of the GOP base and to lie to everyone else about the foul nature of the base and the party agenda.  There seems to be little thought about building a long term sustainable base, hence the almost deliberate effort to alienate Millennials and as the pandering to aging Christian extremists and white supremacists continues to ramp up.  Now, some Republicans seem to be waking up to the reality that 2018 may be the year that the Republican Party and its short sighted leadership  reap the harvest of their misogyny.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the growing fear - which I must admit I savor since it is so deserved - that is taking hold among Republicans.  Here are highlights:

A raft of retirements, difficulty recruiting candidates and President Trump’s continuing pattern of throwing his party off message have prompted new alarm among Republicans that they could be facing a Democratic electoral wave in November.

The concern has grown so acute that Trump received what one congressional aide described as a “sobering” slide presentation about the difficult midterm landscape at Camp David last weekend, leading the president to pledge a robust schedule of fundraising and campaign travel in the coming months, White House officials said.

But the trends have continued, and perhaps worsened, since that briefing, with two more prominent Republican House members announcing plans to retire from vulnerable seats and a would-be recruit begging off a Senate challenge to Democrat Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota despite pressure from Trump to run.

And by the end of the week, many Republicans were scrambling to distance themselves from the president after he spoke of “shithole countries” during an Oval Office meeting . . . . Rep. Mia Love (R-Utah), a rising star in the party who faces a strong Democratic challenge this year, quickly denounced Trump for apparently denigrating Haiti, the birthplace of both her parents. . . .

In the Camp David presentation, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) described scenarios to the president ranging from a bloodbath where Republicans lost the House “and lost it big,” in the words of one official, to an outcome in which they keep control while losing some seats.

Republicans hold the advantage of a historically favorable electoral map . . . . But other indicators are clearly flashing GOP warning signs. Democrats have benefited from significant recruitment advantages — there are at least a half dozen former Army Rangers and Navy SEALs running as Democrats this year, for example — as Republicans struggle to convince incumbents to run for reelection.

At least 29 House seats held by Republicans will be open in November . . . . The president’s own job approval, a traditional harbinger of his party’s midterm performance, is at record lows as he approaches a year in office, according to Gallup. Polls asking which party Americans want to see control Congress in 2019 show a double-digit advantage for Democrats.

“When the wave comes, it’s always underestimated in the polls,” said a conservative political strategist who has met with GOP candidates. “That is the reason that Republicans are ducking for cover.”

“The monthly metrics are bad, from the generic ballot to the Republican retirements to the number of Democratic recruits with money,” said one Republican political consultant . . .  the major metrics point to us losing at least one house of Congress.”

Republicans have struggled to narrow their Senate fields, with big and sometimes-nasty primary fights shaping up in Indiana, Montana and Arizona. The recent announcement that former Phoenix-area sheriff Joe Arpaio would run for the Senate has raised some Republican concerns about holding onto the seat of retiring Sen. Jeff Flake (Ariz.).

Trump continually reminds advisers that he remains popular in a number of states, including West Virginia, Montana and North Dakota, according to aides. But slow fundraising and anemic candidate recruitment have caused tensions between the White House and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, White House advisers said.

White House officials said they expect a full plunge in upcoming weeks into a special House race in Pennsylvania, with trips from Trump, Vice President Pence and Cabinet members. The race has taken on a larger-than-life role in the White House because officials want to stem the tide of the losses they suffered last year in Virginia and Alabama.

And they have begun exploring ways to inject “wedge issues” that could trouble Democrats in more conservative states. Those could include immigration votes, requirements for welfare, sanctuary-city reform and revisions to the guest-worker program.

Despite all that, political handicappers have gradually increased the odds that Democrats will retake the House, where they need to pick up 24 seats to do so. Democrats must net two seats to take control of the Senate, a harder task

Republican strategists said they want to spend the next eight months talking about the economy. . . . But maintaining that message can be a challenge, as the president showed this week when his vulgar comments about some developing countries sparked international outrage.

Ed Gillespie tried using "wedge issues" in the 2017 Virginia gubernatorial race (as did his GOP ticket mates) and it did not end well.  Indeed, it likely increased the Democrat turn out among minorities and Millennials.  Let's hope that effort fails again. 

How High Could That 2018 Democratic Wave Rise?

Eleven months is an eternity in politics, but if current attitudes and perceptions of the Republican continue on track, November, 2018, for some Republicans may fell like a reprise of the Battle of the Little Big Horn - personally, I love the figurative imagery of Paul Ryan in place of Errol Flynn in "They Died with Their Boots On" as the movie ends  -  as a potentially huge Democrat wave sweeps over them.  If the mood that prevailed in Virginia last month continues and Democrats wake up and utilize a coordinated ground game that worked so well for the Virginia Democrat ticket, Paul Ryan, one of the most despicable individuals in Washington after Trump himself, could find himself loosing the House speaker-ship or worse.    A piece in New York Magazine looks at what hopefully will be a nightmare for the GOP.   Here are highlights:

As 2017 approaches its end, Republicans can celebrate a year in power and passage of their unpopular but savory-to-donors tax bill. For Democrats, the happy talk will mostly be about this year being the harbinger of an extremely successful midterm election.

Before it all gets very real, Democrats probably owe themselves the pleasure of fantasizing about how high a 2018 wave they could get if everything goes right. When it comes to House races, forecaster Harry Enten has an interesting way of thinking about the high side of potential Democratic gains, operating from an assumption that the current 12.2 percent Democratic congressional generic ballot advantage holds or actually goes higher:

There are 58 Republicans in seats with a partisan lean of +12 points Republican or less. This includes representatives like House Speaker Paul Ryan and Dave Brat. […]

Now, I’m not saying all or any of these particular Republicans will lose. Most incumbents win — even in wave elections. . . . . What I am saying, though, is that when the generic ballot is showing this large of a lead for one party, the playing field of competitive races also tends to be correspondingly huge. Consider the 2010 election, when Republicans won the national House vote by 7 percentage points. Heading into that election, there were 101 Democrat-held seats with a partisan lean of +7 Democratic or less. Republicans won 65 of them (or 64 percent). If Democrats netted a similar percentage of 58 potentially vulnerable seats, they’d pick up 37 of them, or 13 more than they need to hand the gavel to Nancy Pelosi. And unlike some other calculations, this takes fully into account the GOP’s advantage in individual districts because of redistricting or efficient voter concentration or whatever.

But if it’s the high end of the congressional generic ballot polls that is most accurate — like, say, the 56/38 percent advantage for Democrats in the latest CNN survey — then things could get crazy:

There are an astronomical 103 seats that have a partisan lean of +18 Republican or less. This expanded list includes the highest-ranking woman in the House, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, and the longest-serving House member, Don Young.

That large a Democratic wave may be very unlikely. But the point is that Republicans can’t just intone “redistricting” or “incumbency” and assume their House majority can withstand any conceivable national Democratic advantage. An 18-point Democratic advantage is already conceivable, and a double-digit advantage is now actually likely. So Republicans better hope they are right that the public’s frowns over their precious tax bill turn into smiles before next November. The GOP may need all the help it can get.