Dear Democrats- Shut Up and Win Elections

Things are pretty bad right now in this country, politically. The guy who got less votes is going to be President. The Democratic Party is wandering in the wilderness, trying to figure out it's direction. Wild fears about Donald Trump possibly giving the country away to China and other terrible possible outcomes are floating around pretty freely. Long-tenured programs like Social Security and Medicare are on the chopping block, even though the President-elect didn't run on that.

Lots of Democrats have spent lots of energy since the election on stupid thing. "Maybe we can get him impeached over conflicts of interest," some said. Others tried to stop the electoral college. Others are shrieking about being taken over by Russia. There is a more productive way forward though.

The 2018 midterms will come around quickly, and they’ll offer Democrats an opportunity to flip the House by winning a net of 24 seats, a not-insurmountable number even given that there are fewer competitive districts than there used to be. (The Senate might be harder to flip, because so many of the seats in play are already held by Democrats.) Most voters went to the polls last month expecting Clinton to win, which may have affected how they filled out the rest of their ballots — some voters may have backed Republicans for Congress and for state and local offices in an effort to put a check on Clinton in the White House. This situation is fairly unusual — normally voters do a pretty good job of predicting who the president will be — and it potentially creates opportunities for Democrats to win support from voters who will now be doubly eager to counterbalance Trump, even beyond the midterm backlash that a new president usually faces.

Meanwhile, Democrats have been decimated in elections for governor and state legislature since 2010 and need to rebuild their ranks in order to give the party a deeper roster of presidential and Senate candidates in future years and to position the party for redistricting, which will take place after the 2020 election cycle.

Even as soon as early next year, the mere threat of competitive elections in 2018 could be enough to deter Republicans in moderate states and districts from reflexively supporting Trump. Politics can change fast. Barack Obama came into office in 2009 with much wider Congressional majorities and a much clearer popular mandate than Trump. And yet, within a year of Obama’s inauguration, his approval rating was plummeting and a Republican was elected to replace Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts.

For Democrats to find success in 2018 will probably require them to compete in a lot of places. That’s because it’s not clear whether the shift in demographic voting patterns that took place between 2012 and 2016 will accelerate or reverse itself. In states such as Pennsylvania and Michigan, there are a fair number of people who voted for Obama in 2012 but Trump in 2016, and they might be inclined to give Democrats another chance if they feel that Trump isn’t upholding his promises. It’s also possible, however, that Democrats will be competitive in wealthy suburban districts in Sun Belt states such as Texas, Georgia and Arizona that were once reliably red. Democrats were woefully unprepared for some of these opportunities last month. For instance, they didn’t even field a House candidate in Texas’s 32nd Congressional District in suburban Dallas, even though it Clinton carried the district in a major reversal from 2012.

And sometimes, midterm election cycles offer opportunities in states and districts that few people foresaw ahead of time. The last two times the House flipped, it was precipitated by the opposition party preparing early for the races and recruiting and financing competent candidates in a wide range of districts. Democrats did so in 2006 under Howard Dean’s “50-state strategy,” while in 2010 Republicans were able to compete all over the map in part because they moved faster than Democrats to set up super PACs that had been made legal under the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.

Some of the most important opportunities can escape the attention of the national media. Special elections, such as the one that will likely take place for Montana’s at-large House seat, offer chances to pick up seats and to test out new messages. Battles over voting rights take place in the shadows but can have implications that resonate for years.

Ten years ago, Democrats organized around a mid-term election against a President they despised, and they managed to win Congress. They won races in Western Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, and Florida. They won far outside of their base regions. They flipped Virginia's U.S. Senate seat, which set off a ten year pathway to Virginia now being viewed as a blue state.

The Democratic Party of ten years ago was less interested in protest movements and whining, and more interested in winning elections. The tent was bigger, the coalition broader, and yet the message was more cohesive. The Democratic Party should stop hoping for a Hail Mary, stop engaging itself in a pity session, and start preparing for the road ahead. U.S. House races in Georgia, Montana, and South Carolina, at least, lie ahead of the party. It would be wise to at least prepare to compete in them.