Running up the score in House races could deliver White House to Democrats
Reps. Ron Kind (Wis.) and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) have little in common. Kind is a 12-term veteran of Congress, a leader of the Democratic caucus’s moderate wing. Tlaib is an unabashed liberal in the self-proclaimed “Squad” of young first-term Democrats.
Neither Democrat shows up on anyone’s radar for key battlegrounds next year — but both their districts are critical to the broader outcome in 2020.
That’s one of the key findings of an intensive report by Third Way, a center-left think tank that analyzed all 235 districts held by House Democrats to look at where the fault lines were not just for the House but also the Senate majority and the presidency in next year’s elections.
The result is a portrait of the Democratic coalition, from the rural edge of Kind’s western Wisconsin district to the inner-city neighborhoods of Tlaib’s Detroit-based district, that shows the path to victory at every level of power in Washington.
Kind, for example, sits in a district that flipped from supporting Barack Obama in 2012 to backing Donald Trump in 2016, a year in which Wisconsin narrowly sided with the GOP nominee. And poor turnout in Tlaib’s hometown helped Trump put Michigan in his win column.
Even as Kind, 56, and Tlaib, 43, presumably cruise to reelection next year, the margins they run up might prove decisive to their states’ critical total of 26 electoral votes. They have the potential to help boost, or deflate, the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, a sign of how Democrats need to push to get every vote possible next year.
“Just focusing on one thing is not going to be enough. You need all of it,” David de la Fuente, the author of the Third Way report, said in an interview.
He mapped out which seats are key to victories that will enable Democrats to retain the House majority as well as win back the Senate and the presidency...
There are eight “five-point” Democrats: Reps. Abby Finkenauer (Iowa), Cindy Axne (Iowa), Angie Craig (Minn.), Jared Golden (Maine), Elaine Luria (Va.), Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), Abigail Spanberger (Va.), and Haley Stevens (Mich.).
Golden carries even more value because Maine allocates some of its electoral votes based on performance within congressional districts, allowing Trump to claim an extra vote for winning the northern Maine district despite losing narrowly statewide.
If Golden, a Marine veteran from Iraq and Afghanistan, can win next year by a sizable margin, he could secure the state for the Democratic nominee and also help knock off Sen. Susan Collins (R) in another critical race.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/running-up-the-score-in-house-races-could-deliver-white-house-to-democrats/2019/09/20/2639684a-dbc7-11e9-bfb1-849887369476_story.html
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