Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Everything And Nothing

What appears to be a Democratic pick-up in PA-18 is both meaningless and an earthquake.  It's meaningless, because the district isn't going to be around much longer.  It's being redistricted away.

But as a demonstration of Republican weakness, it's very significant.  The district has a heavy Republican lean, but Connor Lamb was a very adept candidate.  He was also a candidate who didn't benefit much from external spending.  Saccone required massive outside spending.  Interestingly, it was Republicans who tried to "nationalize" the race by bringing up immigration and Nancy Pelosi.  It didn't work. 

Democrats will have a roster of interesting candidates, and the Republicans will not be able to flood every district with money, the way they did the past few weeks in Pennsylvania.  Democrats are able to mobilize anti-Trump sentiment without ever having to mention Trump. 

The odds of Democrats not flipping the House seem vanishingly small at this point.

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