Even though the results trickle down slowly, it does turn out to be a wave. Democrats are on track to win more House seats than they did in the wave of 2006. In the Senate Democrats faced an extremely tough map, having to defend 26 seats (and Republicans defending only 9). That they only lost 2 seats in such an unfavorable setting is indicative of electoral strength, not weakness. Still, anything can happen with the remaining seats in FL and MS. Remember last year in Alabama?

Happy to say that both of the candidates for whom I canvassed (Mike Levin in CA-49 running for Darrell Issa’s seat, and Jacky Rosen running for Senate in Nevada) won.

Given the above numbers I’m really puzzled with the proliferation of post-election articles arguing about Democratic weakness going into 2020. More people voted in these midterms (estimated 113 mln) than did in any midterms in the last 50 years, signaling a strong public engagement and dissatisfaction with status quo. With 47 seats Dems will have to flip 4 seats (assuming Trump wins reelection) and only 3 seats if Trump loses. Republicans will be defending 22 seats, many of them in blue states. Primary targets will be ME (Susan Collins) and CO (Cory Gardner), plus possible pick ups in NC and IA. Totally doable.

A favorite of the ‘Dems in disarray’ genre is ‘Hillary is running again’ trope. I’d like to address this one specifically. Hillary is not going to run. People who write such articles are either acting on their own wishful thinking or simply getting paid to write it. Sure, it would be fun to have Hillary run again so that they can throw mud at her and talk about ‘locking her up.’ The problem with this is that Hillary is not that dumb and/or power-hungry and conniving as the right-wing would like her to be. Hillary haters spent decades making a caricature out of her with such zeal that they ended up believing their own bullshit. They pictured her as power-hungry, thus they concluded that it is impossible for her to let go. But the truth is, Hillary is not stupid and not as power hungry. She’s able to recognize what her name and presence entails in the modern political discourse. She knows that the only contingent out there that genuinely wants her to run is Breitbart and Infowars crowd. She won’t indulge them. Nice try though.