That piece is one guy's idea and he's welcome to have it, but a Democrat won in Alabama. A transwoman won in Virginia. The ground level reality in many places seems to be that people don't really like this administration and the shitty direction they see the country going in and are willing to give someone else a shot.

November 2016 post

WaPo: Senate leader cancels part of August recess, forcing vulnerable Democrats to stay in D.C. instead of campaigning for reelection

Partisan Politics 100

But doesn't that also hurt vulnerable red team players?

We're at the campaign party tonight for our congressional candidate. She's currently leading by about 2k votes with 44% percent reporting. My wife wants to stay until the end...and then it's an hour drive home.

And tomorrow is the first ice cream day of the season.

Pray for me.

Yeah, probably it does.

Remember when Republicans were going to make their tax cut the centerpiece of their strategy for the midterm elections? That plan is no longer operative. The new plan: Bet that President Trump’s race-baiting attacks on Democrats for coddling immigrant gang members, and on football players protesting systemic racism, energize the GOP and Trumpist base just enough to enable Republicans to hold on.

There are multiple reasons why this may get much, much worse, in effect producing a midterm election that is to no small degree a referendum on Trump’s racism and authoritarianism.

Democrats appear to have avoided getting locked out of any House races in California. They also flipped a state Senate district in Missouri in a landslide, swinging it by more than 20 points, suggesting that maybe the tightening generic House ballot*, while certainly a cause for worry, isn’t the only metric that matters.

Meanwhile, this morning, the Washington Examiner’s David Drucker reports that Republicans are increasingly planning to rely on Trump’s culture-war attacks — particularly those involving MS-13 and football players kneeling during the national anthem — to goose the base in the midterms:

Trump’s habit of ignoring the economic message preferred by House and Senate Republicans in favor of the culture war tropes that propelled him to the White House is increasingly seen as an asset.

There are multiple reasons why this may intensify. Republicans have already shown that they don’t think messaging on the tax cut works, having cycled out of it during their loss in Pennsylvania’s 18th District. Trump himself appears persuaded that the race baiting of kneeling football players will work: Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that Trump plans to periodically “revive” these attacks, because he believes doing so “revs up his political base.”

Meanwhile, various circumstances may bring immigration to the fore. Centrist House Republicans are pushing a discharge petition to force a vote to protect the “dreamers,” and GOP leaders are trying to find a compromise that Trump might sign — protecting the dreamers, plus cuts to legal immigration — to avert that outcome. It’s unlikely that Republicans will find this compromise, and if the discharge strategy does force a House vote protecting the dreamers, Trump will insist that Senate Republicans block it. Whatever is to be in this debate, as it comes to a head, Trump’s demagoguery about immigrants will veer headlong into his usual modes of xenophobia and hate.

It’s possible more young people will try to cross the border in the warming weather, which we already know triggers Trump — and more news may emerge about children getting separated from their parents, thanks to Trump’s “zero tolerance” border policies — further polarizing the country on these issues. On these things, GOP candidates may echo Trump to energize his voters.

As Ron Brownstein reported for the Atlantic, Republicans are basically betting their majorities on the idea that such racial and cultural provocations will boost turnout just enough among aging, blue-collar and rural white voters unhappy with the evolution of the country to enable them to prevail.