Sunday Strategy: How Dems Can Give Themselves The Best 2022 Chance

How To Maximize A Small Chance Of Victory

(I hate this self-promotion as much as you hate reading it, but - I wrote a book! I’d be honoured if you’d give it a shot.)

One of the fun things about being a Canadian who stayed at home for school is that the world of fraternities is a totally foreign concept to me. Like, I know there were some on my school’s campus, but I never knew anyone who pledged, I never went to any party there, I never had anything to do with them. Of course, writing a book that relies on that world is a choice, and it’s one that’s been fun, in its own way, as I get to put a character that is in many ways like me in a world I never lived in.

One of the terms you learn in understanding that world is that of the suicide rush - a freshman who only gives himself one out, one house. It’s a high risk strategy, and it’s one that can work - if you get in the house you’re suicide rushing. If you don’t, much like the name implies, you’re shit out of luck. And, hilariously, it’s the best way to think of the best way for Democrats to win the House in 2022.

…

Let’s get one thing very clear here - I think Democrats have a very low percentage chance to win the House right now. I do not expect them to win the House. I think the GOP are clear, sizable, indisputable favourites to win it. I said on Twitter it was 5% in the Virginia aftermath, and while I might have been overly glum, I’m not at 15% yet. They’re got, probably, like a 1/8th chance, or 12.5%, something in that range. With that predictive belief in mind, there is a separate and distinct question of what Democrats can do to optimise their chances, and there, this conversation gets interesting.

Now, if this ABC/WaPo Generic Ballot poll out today -  GOP +10% - is even remotely accurate, then there’s nothing to save and the wave will just wipe out everything before it. Like, if that poll, or anything even remotely close to it, were to happen, then the only interesting questions in US elections become whether or not Republicans can get close to beating Tammy Duckworth, which isn’t worth contemplating at this point. (If the polls stay this bad in 9 months, we can reassess.)

The way Democrats can optimise their House chances is actually pretty simple - they need to figure out their path to 225 seats, and suicide rush the 10-15 most vulnerable seats. After redistricting, it’s pretty likely that there will be ~200 Safe or Safe-side-of-Likely Dem seats, and ~200 GOP seats of the same nature. The throughline of 2021 in terms of redistricting has been the elimination of swing seats, with each party entrenching their own seats at the sake of competitiveness (see Texas drawing a new Democratic sink in Austin and massively shoring up Allred and Fletcher). In a neutral, or even slight wave year, both parties have sizable floors in a way they didn’t even as of 2020, as lines that were drawn a decade ago under different coalitions are adjusted to reflect the realignment. And because of it, we know where the House will be decided - or, at least, we will once the new maps are all formalized.

The new Colorado 8th, to pick but the most notable example, is the kind of seat that Democrats should be mostly ignoring. It’s a Biden+5 district with a leftward trend, and in all likelihood will be more Democratic than that in 2024, even if Biden (or Harris or whoever) does worse nationally. If we lose it in 2022 - which is definitely not impossible - we will win it in 2024 with relative ease, in the same way that (disregarding the polling miss which fucked up all of our expectations) Max Rose or Joe Cunningham or Kendra Horn losing in 2020 made a lot of sense. Like, had we known Biden won by 4.5%, and we had to figure out the House map, I can’t think of a single person who would have had those seats staying blue. Prioritizing seats 195-205 on the pendulum is a disaster, because if we lose them, we’re fucked anyways.

If the dam breaks, it sucks, yes, but being in the minority sucks either way, and it’s not like there’s a substantive difference in having 204 members and 198. All else being equal, having 204 is better, but if we are decreasing effort, energy, and resources to win seats 210-225 on these kinds of “could lose if it gets bad enough” seats, we are costing ourselves hugely in potential majority makers. Are the chances the House is close enough for these sorts of things to matter low? Sure, but so is winning a poker tournament, or even making a final table, but you still should play optimal poker every time you’re at the table. Hell, two House seats in 2020 came down to results so close as to warrant additional scrutiny, and at least one more came down to a few hundreds of votes. Do you think Democratic lives right now would be easier if they spent the million dollars they burned in Brian Fitzpatrick’s R+13 race on New York 22, Iowa 2, and California 25, and won some or all of those?

I will redo this column as soon as we have the full maps with the explicit list of where Dems should and shouldn’t spend money, but from the states we have now, we can make some calls. None of the Oregon seats or the Colorado’s deserve any money, the only place Texas Democrats should spend is in the Texas 15th (which, yes, they’re underdogs to hold, but might be able to in a midterm), and there’s no case for any offensive money in any GOP held seat so far - and yes, that includes trying to beat Lauren Boebert, as odious as she is.

Give Jared Golden as much support as he needs, and when we get the eventual Virginia maps defend Luria and Spanberger vigorously - but if Jenn Wexton looks to be in trouble, don’t shed a tear or send a dollar. If that kind of seat - and while we don’t know the exact lines, her being in anything less than a Biden +10 would be shocking - is in play, the majority’s gone anyways, but what 2020 showed is that both parties should play a strategy based around the majority-deciding seats, because Democratic focus on stretch targets left them vulnerable when the polls were wrong, and the GOP having no idea where to target their shit cost them the majority.

Suicide rushing 10 or 15 seats is a high risk move, for the simple reason that if Democrats have the kind of bad night that is increasingly in play, they’re going to have a very bad night. That said, any lucid strategy here has to start from the premise that the tactical decisions we make will matter, and therefore, leaving a lot of members and candidates high and dry needs to be the priority. Any effort at winning Trump seats, or even Biden-won GOP seats with popular incumbents, needs to be viewed with deep skepticism, in the way that efforts to beat Boebert or Bob Goode in 2020, or Steve King in 2018, never were subject to. The path to a Democratic majority next year is almost assuredly going to be very narrow, and whatever you think that true chance is - be it 5% or 35%, or anything else, really - the best way for Democrats to optimize that chance is to suicide rush the majority makers.

Will it work? Who the fuck knows. But it’s pretty much the only path Democrats have.