ONLY SEVEN SHOPPING MONTHS ’TIL THE MIDTERMS

Leaning Blue

The midterms are coming! The midterms are coming! That Paul Revere-like warning is beginning to reverberate among Republicans, and well it should.

The entire body of the House of Representatives is up for election this year, the president is still unpopular and the Democrats already are an easy third of the way toward gaining the 24 seats they need for a majority.

Since World War II, the party of the president in power has lost an average of 29 seats in the first mid-term after that president’s election, and if the president had a low approval rating his party lost an average of 44 seats, according to Vital Statistics on Congress and Gallup.

There’s more.

The Associated Press reported last week on a historic electoral breakthrough: “The number of women running for the U.S. House of Representatives set a record Thursday, most of them Democrats motivated by angst over President Donald Trump and policies of the Republican-controlled Congress.”

There’s still more.

The latest Cook Political Report analysis on the 2018 midterms states: “Our latest ratings feature 55 competitive seats (Toss Up or Lean Democratic/Republican), including 50 currently held by Republicans and five held by Democrats…. We continue to view Democrats the slight favorites for House control.”

“Continue” was perhaps a weak verb for that analysis. Cook’s new report found changed ratings for 13 districts, and all 13 moved in the Democrats’ favor.

Think about it. The House of Representatives that we’ll have this time next year will be entirely the result of how we vote in November.