2010 Could Be Worse For Democrats Than Anyone Imagined

If the right candidates run, it’s possible only 103 House Democrats are safe this November. Michael Barone took the numbers from Massachusetts districts, and extrapolated to all US Congressional districts.

Coakley carries districts where Obama got 65% or more of the vote and runs essentially even in the district where he got 64%, and Scott Brown runs ahead in districts where Obama got less than 64% of the vote.

Let’s extrapolate those numbers to the nation as a whole and assume that a district that voted 64% or more for Obama is safe for Democrats even under the most dire of circumstances. How many such districts are there? Answer, according to this source: 103. The other 332 districts voted 63% or less for Obama. Interestingly, there are more 64%+ Obama districts in the West (36) than in the East (27) and more in the South (21) than in the Midwest (19).

All but two of the 103 Obama 64%+ districts are represented by Democrats. The two exceptions are Louisiana 2, where Republican An Joseph Cao beat Democrat William “Cold Cash” Jefferson in a December 2008 runoff, and Florida 19, whose incumbent Robert Wexler resigned and a special election will be held in April. And, yes, it will be amazing if this heavily Jewish district in Palm Beach and Broward Counties elects a Republican; heavily Jewish Brookline and Newton voted heavily against Scott Brown in Massachusetts.

So that means that 101 of the 256 House Democrats represent 64%+ Obama districts and that 155 House Democrats represent districts which might, according to the Massachusetts metric, be vulnerable in some circumstances to Republican capture. No wonder so many House Democrats refused to vote for the Senate health care bill—enough to prompt Speaker Nancy Pelosi to say publicly that “unease would be a gentle word” to describe their attitude toward doing that. ….

Fred Bauer notes that even in this political environment, it will be extremely difficult for Republicans to take back the House and even harder to take back the Senate. But, if enough play their cards right:

One of the best ways for the GOP to cope with this—and one that Scott Brown realized—is through running decentralized campaigns. The national GOP should let a thousand flowers bloom in all the races across the country. Individual candidates will have to find individual messages that work. One of the electoral benefits of being out of power is that the GOP does not need to defend a comprehensive set of policy choices: there is considerably less incentive for a party line. Instead, Congressional candidates can offer a variety of responses to present problems. The experimental flavor that the GOP so needs right now is aided by political circumstances. ….

There’s another aspect of the Brown campaign that GOP candidates should embrace – good old fashioned hard work. Pound the pavement and meet the voters. What better way to earn someone’s trust than to look him or her in the eye and ask for it?

This entry was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 7:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.