Worksheet for the 2018 Midterms (More of “The Wave”, but Only Ripples?)

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Here is latest iteration of my “Table 1” for the 2018 primaries. The structure is the same as the last iteration (“‘Worksheet for the 2018 Midterms (First Ripples of “The Wave”?)’. The California primary is coming up shortly on June 5, but fortunately this is not a horse-race series, so I don’t have to write up any predictions! (I will, however, go through the infamous and hysterical California “Top Two” primary system that is causing such agita among the Democrat regulars and consultants (who rammed it through in the first place)). There are no changes to the structure. I have, however, finally completed expanding the table into Tilt Republican and Lean Republican territory, and so all the seats even remotely in play in the current issue of the Inside Elections tipsheet (last updated May 16) are now visible. There are 82, and surely, if the Democrats are to win the 23 seats they need to win to take control of the House, those 23 are in that 82. (These new races do not yet have information in the Challengers column. I have also not yet marked winners, which I will do before a grand retrospective in November).

Herewith the table, which gives us one important result (which is the same as the result two weeks ago, with caveats).

Table 1: Worksheet on House Races, Election 2018 (05-30).

• Bio keys are m, i, l, and o) for Military, Intelligence, Law Enforcement, and Other (except I didn’t find any Others this time[5]). A candidate who worked for the CIA is keyed i. A candidate who worked in Law enforcement and the military is keyed “lm.” “Law Enforcement” is conceived broadly, including not only police but district attorneys.
• Backer keys are BN, EL, IN, JD, OR, and DCCC, Brand New Congress, Emily’s List, Indivisible, Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, and (of course) the DCCC. In addition, there is a DP key, for members of the Democrat Party network, elected and otherwise, and S, for challengers inspired by Sanders.
• Policy keys are M, fM, for Medicare for All, and any of the various bait-and-switch alternatives proposed by think tanks like CAP, or centrists like Merkeley. Some judgement is involved, based on the verbiage. “Single payer” always merits an “M,” for example.

• Bio keys are m, i, l, and o) for Military, Intelligence, Law Enforcement, and Other (except I didn’t find any Others this time[5]). A candidate who worked for the CIA is keyed i. A candidate who worked in Law enforcement and the military is keyed “lm.” “Law Enforcement” is conceived broadly, including not only police but district attorneys.
• Backer keys are BN, EL, IN, JD, OR, and DCCC, Brand New Congress, Emily’s List, Indivisible, Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, and (of course) the DCCC. In addition, there is a DP key, for members of the Democrat Party network, elected and otherwise, and S, for challengers inspired by Sanders.
• Policy keys are M, fM, for Medicare for All, and any of the various bait-and-switch alternatives proposed by think tanks like CAP, or centrists like Merkeley. Some judgement is involved, based on the verbiage. “Single payer” always merits an “M,” for example.

Two weeks ago, I wrote:

Now the important result:

Using the horserace predictions from the handicappers at Inside Elections (May 8), we come up with the following changes from our post of two weeks ago:

Two weeks ago, only one district (MN-07), had changed from Lean-D to Likely-D. Now an additional six have shifted in the same direction (although, oddly, none from Pennsylvania, and none from California). Although only two have shifted from Toss-Up to Tilt-D, all are moving in the same direction. For a Democrat loyalist, as well as anybody who wants to see divided government return to Washington, that’s good news.

Here is the same query today:

If this is a wave, I’ve not seeing it, yet. (You can throw the districts with “–” in the “Previous” column out, for now; they have no previous value because they’re in Republican territory, which I just added; and all but one of them are “Likely-R.”) The five actual changes are all directionally good for Democrats, but combined — do feel free to check my arithmetic here — with the previous table’s five, that means only 10 (of the 23 necessary) districts are moving, and of[1] those:

A lot more Districts need to move to Tilt-D, Lean-D, or Likely-D for anything like a wave to be happening.

Caveats: The Inside Elections ratings are from May 16, so things may have changed, and when things start moving, sometimes they move fast. (“Events, my dear boy. Events.”) But if things have changed, I would have expected the news flow to reflect that in some way; it hasn’t. In particular, Democrat Party messaging is as sloppy and unfocused as ever; that suggests that if indeed the electorate is sending a message, the Democrats aren’t picking it up. Of course, I may be misapprehending the very notion of a wave: I conceptualize it as a mild sort of popular uprising, driven by voters; perhaps the Democratic nomenklatura conceptualizes a wave as something that only happens once the damn primaries are out of the way, and the consultants and strategists can start shoving pallets of cash out of their helicopters into the districts, the push polls and the oppo kick in, and the Bigfoots from the Beltway can start talking to cabdrivers. 159 days is a long time in politics[3].

NOTES

[1] The query for those inclined to improve the shining hour by checking my work:

SELECT 
primary_date as "Primary Date", 
district as "District", 
horserace_prev as "Previous", 
horserace as "Current" 
FROM districts 
WHERE horserace_prev <> horserace 
AND horserace IN ('Tilt-D', 'Lean-D','Likely-D', 'Toss-Up') 
ORDER BY primary_date

[3] I apologize for my counter-suggestibility and skepticism. Let me stress that I don’t have a dog in this fight; since gridlock is our friend, I have no issues with Democrats winning control of the House (though I might have a lot of issues about how they do it, if they do, and what the consequences are).

APPENDIX

I’m putting this video in an appendix because it could be a little disturbing. It’s a record of the Japanese tsunami of 2011 striking a small river town, and it’s nothing like I imagined. The immense power of the sea comes through very clearly, in both the assault and the withdrawal:

If anybody thinks the Democrats have anything like the power of this wave, I’d like to know what they’re smoking. If anything, they’re flotsam and jetsam floating on the surface (along with plenty of other flotsam and jetsam, needless to say).