Think that the Democrats will retake the House in ’16? Fine. Name the seats.

You’re going to see a lot of these types of stories in the next year or so: “House Democrats retake the House? It’s a long shot, but they’re getting ready to try.”  At least, if the 2012 and 2014 election cycles are any indication:

Note that not all those articles agreed with the Democrats; but they all at least took the Democrats’ arguments seriously.  Of course, we all know what happened: the GOP lost only eight seats in 2012 – and gained thirteen in 2014.  And that was sufficiently predictable that at the end only the most absolutely hardcore partisans were still telling themselves that the House was going to flip in 2012.

But I digress. The overall point here is that while you are going to hear a good deal about how the Democrats plan to message, and take advantage of their gerrymandered states, and framing, and almost everything else – one thing that’s going to be not talked about much will be which seats are going to flip.  This is not a trivial matter; it doesn’t make a darn bit of difference what the supposed ‘national mood’ is if that mood is not shared in a specific congressional District. If the Democrats don’t tell you what seats they’re going to flip, it probably means that they can’t. Or that they don’t have enough to make a reasonable case.

Case in point: the above Washington Post article. By my count it took the article twenty-nine paragraphs to get to the list of candidates that the Democrats plan to target: “Top targets for Democrats include Reps. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), who holds a Miami-area seat; Will Hurd (R-Tex.), who represents a sprawling district along the U.S.-Mexico border; Bob Dold (R-Ill.), from suburban Chicago; Frank Guinta (R-N.H.), who won in 2010, lost in 2012 and just reclaimed his seat; first-termers Rod Blum (R-Iowa) and Cresent Hardy (R-Nev.); and open seats in New York and Pennsylvania.” Now, these are not unreasonable targets… but they’re not all prime targets. Blum and Hardy I will concede are in trouble, and maybe Hurd; but Curbelo won his race in a corruption scandal and Guinta and Dold are both survivors (I actually don’t know how Dold does it)*. More to the point, if that’s all that the Democrats can point to at this moment then they’re going to get nowhere near the thirty seats that they need to flip the House.

And yes, their partisans have to name all thirty seats. In 2014 we were able to spell out our path to a majority in the Senate; and the fact that we could rattle off the various ways to get to net-plus-six really and truly ended up helping us pull off a spectacular victory on Election Night. Until the Democrats can do the same in the House, there’s no need to take their claims seriously, because those claims simply are not serious.  After all, as the philosopher said: hope is not a plan.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*As for the two open seats: PA-08 is open because Mike Fitzpatrick is honoring a term limits promise and NY-19 is open because Chris Gibson will be retiring in order to run for either governor or Senator in the next few years. This means, in other words, that the eventual Republican candidate will be able to campaign with the current office-holder, not against him. That can be extremely helpful.

6 thoughts on “Think that the Democrats will retake the House in ’16? Fine. Name the seats.”

  1. Scientists working for the government of Oklahoma have been assuming that earthquakes caused by wells likely have some proximity in time and space between the well and the event. This is incorrect.
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    When Oklahomans find out about this in almost exactly two months, they will run every Republican out of town, and lynch everyone with a petroleum engineering degree.
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    So, for one, every seat in Oklahoma will flip. But it won’t be in time to save Pompeii, or keep most of California from sliding into the sea.

  2. Thanks, Moe, for this helpful analysis. It’s encouraging. Now if the House Republicans would just do what we sent them there to do… :-/

  3. Dold hangs on, as I understand it, through a combination of mainstream (for his district) views, good customer service, and the fortune to routinely face Democrat nominees.
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    Expanding slightly .. the district is clearly purple, but so is Dold. Running a “more blue” candidate won’t win it, but running a “more purple” candidate doesn’t attract extra votes. (running a “more red” candidate isn’t something the Dems seem able to do) So .. they resort to attack ads, and Dold wins on turnout.
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    Mew

    1. Yeah, Dems have consistently failed when it comes to beating Republicans by running to their right, All of those Redstate Dems would probably still be in office if 1) they told Obama to ‘f-off’ and 2) in the case of Lundergan Grimes and whoever it was they got to run in Kansas, tacked to the R’s Right.

  4. Utah will switch easily and fully once the social left starts campaigning on polygamy.
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    Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, and Kentucky will go back to being Democratic Party estates when Obama carries out his goal of bringing back gun control and lynching, and drives out the scalawags. This also applies to Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Mississippi.
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    I’m pretty sure that makes more than thirty.
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    As for Texas, when Football is banned on health and safety grounds, it will fall into civil war. Then the drug cartels will be brought in to run the occupation.
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    This last will be canceled out by New York becoming more Republican as government is cleaned up.
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    Epyon would totally beat Turn A.

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