It Didn’t Have to Be This Way
It Didn’t Have to Be This Way
The Kevin McCarthy Show is just the first of many painful reminders that every seat matters — and that Democrats’ primary problem is a general election problem.
C-SPAN has never been more entertaining, but the Kevin McCarthy Show is a preview of something ugly — the feature picture is a debt ceiling standoff, Hunter Biden investigations, a Jan. 6th counter-committee, and the impeachment of senior officials in the Biden administration.
It did not have to be this way.
This week has seen many calls for changes to the gerrymandered system that apparently holds many Republican elected officials hostage to a small, extreme set of primary voters. That is true, and there is important work to be done there. But for Democrats, this is not a primary problem — it’s a general election problem.
Among the beleaguered Republican majority of the 118th Congress are Ken Calvert, Lauren Boebert, and Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Each won in 2022 in a district where Donald Trump received less than 53% of the vote in 2020. Each faced a competitive race in 2022. And if there had been slightly more investments by Democrats and strategic restraint from the far-left, each could have been beaten this fall. Then there are GOP incumbents like Bill Huizenga and Michael Turner, who ran virtually unchallenged despite representing districts where Trump won with just 51% of the vote. And that is before getting to 17 additional GOP elected officials (including disgraced Rep.-elect George Santos) who represent districts where Joe Biden won in 2020.
As the McCarthy Show struggles to make it past its pilot episode, there’s a painful truth we can’t stop thinking about: it didn’t have to be this way.
Every Seat Counts
The most painful thing about watching the new Republican House majority squabble over whether to appoint a right-wing or hard right-wing Speaker is that theirs is even thinner than the Democrats’ most recent “razor thin” majority.
Recall the partisan breakdown of the new Congress. After the 2022 midterms, the GOP holds a 222 to 213 majority — or a margin of just five votes. As we wrote last July, every marginal seat matters:
“Democrats have demonstrated vividly this year that there is a monumental difference between having a slim majority and a sizable one — something Kevin McCarthy may learn in January. Minimizing the number of Republicans it will take to scuttle an extreme action is meaningful, muddying the default binary mindset of a given party winning or losing Congress. These dynamics mean that each individual seat is valuable in the 118th Congress — even in a scenario where Democrats lose the House.”
If Democrats had managed to flip or hold, say, just two more seats, they could be in serious negotiations with the two remaining Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump and moderates like Rep. Don Bacon (who won a district that broke handily for Joe Biden in 2020) to form a coalition majority. This kind of cross-partisan alliance might sound far-fetched in the era of rampant polarization porn, but we saw this work in real-time in state legislatures across the country this week.
In Ohio, Democratic Caucus joined with a cohort of their more reasonable colleagues from across the aisle to elect a moderate speaker in the state House of Representatives, despite a Republican supermajority:
As WelcomePAC-endorsed Ohio state Rep. Rachel Baker put it:
“Finding common ground and working across the aisle in the state legislature is what voters in my district sent me to Columbus to do. I ran on a platform of making decisions that support bipartisan efforts to benefit Ohioans. When we work with the common-sense membership of the GOP, Ohio Democrats can deliver and positively impact lives for Ohioans who’ve entrusted us to these positions of leadership.”
Also in Pennsylvania:
And if Democrats had managed to flip or hold a mere five more seats… they could have avoided such negotiations entirely and Hakeem Jeffries would have simply taken the Speaker’s gavel this week.
Missed Opportunities Abound
Democrats had more than enough opportunities in the midterms to keep the GOP’s new House majority to a margin of just two or three seats — or even make up the difference entirely.
Let’s start with Ken Calvert. The 30-year GOP incumbent from Riverside County, CA drew attention this week for apparently being the only member to introduce himself to George Santos as Tuesday’s vote commenced — only to “bolt” away immediately after:
Calvert topped WelcomePAC’s initial list of flippable-yet-overlooked target districts back in August 2021 and featured prominently in our first “Conceding Democracy” analysis that fall. Not only had Trump won Calvert’s newly drawn CA-41 with just 50% of the vote share in 2020, but in 2022 Calvert faced a charismatic, compelling, and brand-differentiated challenger with a serious capacity to fundraise.
Next, consider Lauren Boebert, who has dominated the airwaves as a vocal McCarthy opponent. Not only is the CO-03 incumbent one of the most widely-despised MAGA torchbearers in the nation, but she’s one of the most vulnerable, too. Donald Trump only won Boebert’s newly-drawn district with 52.9% of the vote in 2020, landing it at the top of our list of Democratic pickup opportunities in our second Conceding Democracy report in Q1 2022. Throw in the fact that Boebert’s opponent, a local businessman named Adam Frisch, ran an aggressively centrist and brand-differentiated campaign focused on welcoming in disaffected Republicans and independents, and the race looked like a ripe opportunity for putting democracy on offense.
CA-41 and CO-03 were WelcomePAC and The Welcome Party’s two core district investments of the 2022 cycle. Despite minimal support from the DCCC or other party committees, Rollins gave Calvert the most competitive challenge in more than a decade, coming up just a few points short of the longtime incumbent. Frisch, meanwhile, came within just 546 votes of defeating Boebert — all without a prayer from the pundits or a dime from the national Democratic committees.
Democratic data wonk David Shor has Frisch and Rollins notching the second and third-highest overperformances (respectively) in red districts this cycle. With just a little more investment on the part of top party committees, Democrats could have flipped them.
Next, look at Lori Chavez-DeRemer. We covered the saga in OR-05 in our last Substack of 2022, in which a progressive challenger backed by high-profile far-left activists and groups successfully primaried a moderate Democratic incumbent in a district that broke solidly for Biden in 2020 — and then lost the general election.
Finally, look at Bill Huizenga and Michael Turner. The GOP incumbents in MI-04 and OH-10 represent districts where Trump won with 51% or less of the vote, making them top targets in our third, fourth, and fifth Conceding Democracy reports. They are beatable. Yet there was little investment by Democrats in mounting a serious challenge to either candidate this cycle (neither’s Democratic challenger raised more than $40,000 across the entire 2022 cycle). As we put it in a Boston Globe deep-dive into Democrats’ inability to mount such challenges, “what the hell are we doing?”
Don’t Forget How Much Every Marginal Seat is Worth
This week’s Kevin McCarthy Show is only the first in what will unfortunately be a string of painful reminders that things just didn’t have to be this way. Between CA-41, CO-03, OR-05, MI-04, OH-10, or any of the additional 17 Biden districts where Republicans won in 2022, it is clear that Democrats could have held the GOP to an even thinner margin — or just held onto the House outright.
In addition to recognizing what could have been, we must acknowledge what is clearly true. As we have written before, the value of each marginal House seat is obscenely high — even though today’s ultra-inefficient political marketplace is often remiss to treat them that way (it’s predictably bonkers, after all).
As practitioners of politics who aim to grow a sustainable governing majority that wins, we cannot afford to forget just how valuable these seats are. It is on us to make sure we play everywhere in 2024 and beyond.