Changed In An Unknown Way

Changes Are Afoot

One of the most interesting questions in all of sports is always the concept of the next go round, of succession planning, of what happens. I’m a Packers fan who lived through the Favre-Rodgers era of the NFL, I know all too well about things that seem implausible – the Packers ever letting Favre play for another team for some untested kid – suddenly being the reality. For years, that conversation was around – when will the Packers pull the plug on Favre’s “will he or won’t he” bullshit – because we’re all addicted to what ifs and hypotheticals.

In the same way, F1 fans are addicted to the speculation, especially when it comes to Mercedes. For years it was “when is George Russell getting a Merc seat?”, and now that he’s settled in well it’s moved on to “who replaces Lewis Hamilton when he retires?”, and a lot of the speculation ends up focused on a basic fact.

There are four top, young drivers at this point in the sport, in no particular order – George, Max Verstappen, Charles Leclerc, and Lando Norris. All four of those profile to be #1 Drivers in a team, but as of right now there are 3 top teams and therefore, only 3 seats that could profile as #1s. Max is RedBull, and there’s no realistic prospect he would ever change teams, so he’s off the board, and George will take over the #1 slot when Lewis retires, so that leaves Charles and Lando. If Norris stays at McLaren, he won’t win, and he is oft-rumoured to move to a bigger club at some point, while the Leclerc leaving Ferrari rumours only intensify every time there’s a Ferrari disasterclass of either reliability or strategy.

What makes this all interesting is that one of those two are almost assuredly going to replace Lewis when the seat comes up, but everyone wants to invent fancy reasons why they won’t. The problem with that is that a lot of the same people now saying that George is a future #1 and he won’t want another star teammate are the same people who said there was no way Toto Wolff and Mercedes would ever put George and Lewis in a team together.

And now, here we are.

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The reason that so many were convinced that Lewis and George would never be in a team together was actually very logical – the last time Lewis had had a truly quick teammate, well, 2014-16 happened, with Lewis and Nico Rosberg almost killing each other on track repeatedly. After that, the more … pliant feels like an insult, but I kinda mean it as one, so pliant Valtteri Bottas was the perfect teammate for Lewis – close enough to win the Constructors and never close enough to challenge for consistent wins. Risking another Rosberg situation was a risk that too many thought the history wouldn’t justify. And then they just went and did the thing.

This is not an argument that Democrats will win the House – as of right now, even with the current environment, I have them a handful of seats short. But let’s be very clear about this – if the environment doesn’t move, the House is in play, and a whole lot of people will be scrambling to realize this. But it is an argument that people are stuck in a mindset about this year, and this House map, that isn’t correct.

I’m writing this before the New York 19th special tomorrow night for a reason, because New York will overinform the narrative regardless of outcome. If the GOP flip it, then the talk – margin or not, because the commentariat is biased towards outcomes and not swing – will be about the red wave being back on, and if Democrats win it, then you’ll see wild changes in people’s expectations for the Fall – even though the predictive difference between a Republican win of 500 votes and a Democratic one of the same size is literally zero.

In this case, we’re seeing a situation where the math for an election right now is really favourable for Democrats – be it the Generic Ballot, the fact that Biden’s net approval is up over 5% in the last month, and all the fact that even fucking Trafalgar can’t find swings to the GOP from 2020 in either Pennsylvania or Ohio. It’s been an objectively very good run for Democrats, and the result tomorrow night – short of a large Molinaro win which is not the expectation – is likely to conform to that.

What’s much more interesting is that if this is right, Democrats will, definitionally, have to win some seats currently viewed as uncompetitive for them, and that’s where the interest is. In the same way as we have had to reassess the terms of the Senate map, and in the same way the blithe “there’s no way they’ll put Leclerc and George in a team together” comments are horseshit, so is the confidence in the overall tenure of House ratings that have been mostly unchanged since June.

At some point, if the environment is fundamentally changed from the spring – and it is, whether it lasts or not, currently fundamentally different – then there has to be a broader reassessment about the nature of the House map. Democrats have a band of three seats, with incumbents with big money advantages in them, in Washington 8, Minnesota 2, and Virginia 7 that all share a rough partisanship – Biden +7, give or take a few tenths. Those seats aren’t going red if the year’s even, not even close.

A political map reoriented to abortion will see places like Michigan 7 and Virginia 2 become more competitive – seats with high numbers of R-voting socially liberal whites which have sprinted left in the last decade – and probably limit Democratic chances of holding Texas 28 and Maine 2, places where the electorates will be less socially liberal. In Pennsylvania 8, abortion raising in salience is a big hit to Matt Cartwright’s chances compared to a neutral environment created from low inflation and economic contentment – but of course, he’d rather a neutral environment because of abortion than the R+4 we were trending towards.

Ask me right now and Democrats would win at least 210 seats if the House elections were today. If the environment moves back, as some think is likely, that number will fall. They’re still House underdogs, but if the election was tomorrow, they’re a slight one. Given the chances of their stock falling in the fall, they’re a substantial one for November.

But a lot of the takes that Democrats can’t win the House read a lot like the litany of “Mercedes would never put George and Lewis in a team together” takes – and there is a chance they end the same way.