Paul Ryan’s exit a ‘blue wave’ ripple
Democrats must gain 23 seats to control House of Representatives
WASHINGTON— A recordnumber of Democratic women are running for the U.S. House of Representatives. In related news, a record number of Republican incumbents are running far, far away.
More Republicans have decided to retire from the House after this year than in any election cycle dating to at least1930. The historic exodus has raised Democrats’ hopes of a November “wave” election in which they could regain control of the House and maybe even the Senate, though the latter is much less likely.
The 39-person list of retirees now includes the most powerful House Republican. Speaker Paul Ryan announced his departure on Wednesday.
Ryan said he wanted to spend more time with his children. Democrats crowed that they knew the real reason: Ryan, they said, doesn’t want to preside over a party relegated to the minority.
“There’s no doubt that the wave of Republican retirements is a result of the wave that they, and we, think is going to come,” said Mike Mikus, a Pennsylvania Democratic strategist. “I think that Paul Ryan’s decision not to seek reelection is the big tell of where things are headed in the fall. Granted, there’s still plenty of time between now and the election. But I think Democrats have every reason to be optimistic right now.”
It is not only Democratic operatives who are speaking this way. Last week, when a Democrat won a race for an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court for the first time in 23 years, the state’s Republican governor, Scott Walker, issued a Twitter call to arms to conservatives: “Tonight’s results show we are at risk of a #BlueWave in WI.”
And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told a Kentucky publication last week: “We know the wind is going to be in our face. We don’t know whether it’s going to be a Category 3, 4 or 5.”
The chief reason for the brewing storm is the intensity of public opposition to President Donald Trump.
A president’s party almost always loses congressional seats in midterm elections. Barack Obama’s Democrats lost 63 seats in his first midterm — and Obama’s approval rating was 46 per cent in Gallup polling just before that disaster, Florida Democratic strategist Steve Schale pointed out, while Trump averages about 42-percent approval.
Though a lot could change by November, Schale said, other things Republicans are trying to emphasize will “mean pretty much nothing” if Trump’s approval is still so low at voting time.
Democrats, of course, were also confident heading into their failure of a 2016 election, and there are obvious reasons for caution this time.
Trump’s approval rating has crawled upward from the dreadful high-30s level of late 2017. In polls of the “generic ballot,” in which respondents are asked which party they plan to support in the midterms, the Democratic advantage has fallen from about 13 points in January to about seven points this week. And it is possible there will be an unexpected event to galvanize Republican voters, like a supreme court vacancy.
“I hate this phrase ‘the blue wave.’ Because it sort of implies something’s going to happen just by force of nature alone,” Schale said.
Strategists from both parties agree that the results of special elections in 2017 and 2018 have been overwhelmingly good for Democrats, far better than the generic ballot polling would suggest. In perhaps the most ominous sign for Republicans, Democrat Conor Lamb won a special House election in a Pennsylvania district Trump had won by 20 points.
The Trump-loathing Democratic base has been far more motivated to vote than the Republican base.
There appears to be a particular surge in intensity among Democratic women.
“Forty-plus per cent approval and a single-digit generic ballot margin wouldn’t normally yield double-digit swings in districts across the country, and yet that’s what we’ve seen repeatedly over the past year,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist and lobbyist at Bracewell LLP. “Ultimately, the outcome will be a function of whether the current asymmetry persists.”
Presidential elections are decided by a smattering of wellknown swing states. The midterm map is much broader. Democrats are targeting seven Republican-won California seats in which Clinton beat Trump. Also on their wish list are seats Republicans won in New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Washington state and Virginia, all carried comfortably by Clinton.
To win the House, Democrats need to gain 23 of the 435 seats up for grabs in November. To win back the Senate, Democrats need to gain two seats — a difficult proposition considering that they are defending 26 of the 35 seats up for grabs this year, while Republicans are defending just nine.
Ten of those Democratic-held seats, moreover, are in states Trump won.
The Trump-loathing Democratic base has been far more motivated to vote than the Republican base