Take Back The House In 2018, But Don't Forget The Senate!

As progressives gear up to contest the 2018 midterm Congressional elections, we will hear strategic, tactical, and political arguments for focusing on taking back the House or the Senate as the highest and best use of limited resources: money, volunteers, advertising, etc.. Progressives and other Democrats will want to recapture both chambers, especially after encouraging election wins in Alabama and elsewhere (mostly in state legislatures so far, as in Virginia, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Georgia). Nevertheless, it's fair to expect arguments about where best to put limited resources on the ground.

At the threshold, it's noteworthy that it's too early to judge whether the resources for the midterm campaigns will be limited so that some kind of triage is necessary. The 2017 Virginia state-government results - like the 2010 Tea Party wave - show that Blue voters can and will mobilize, organize, volunteer, and vote in unexpected numbers, as described here. The Jones victory in Alabama shows the same at the Congressional level, in a state with a long history of racist voter-suppression and a recent history of adopting an wholly unnecessary Voter-ID law (which had the unintended result of making it impossible for Republican Alabama government officials to credit any of Roy Moore's groundless allegations of voter-fraud).

Regardless what resources are available, it's at least as important to put a Democratic majority in the Senate as it is to put one in the House. In terms of Constitutional bang-for-the buck, it might even be more important to get a Democratic majority in the Senate.


https://crooksandliars.com/2018/01/take-back-senate-2018