Fifty seats? Democrats can possibly win 50 seats in the 2018 midterms; is that pie-in-the sky or a possible reality? Frankly, it doesn’t matter if they cannot win white working class and rural voters, which is exactly what many have been saying for months, but has failed to permeate the walls of the Democratic National Committee. For starters, I’m not complaining about that; the Democrats are divided, leaderless, and having serious fundraising problems. On top of this situation, which is nothing short of disastrous, the party has to decide whether to double down on its urban base or reach out to the millions of Obama voters who defected for Trump. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who represent the bicoastal and urban-based liberal elite, helm the leadership that shuns these voters. The party apparatuses in rural America for the Left have all but collapsed, adding yet another block to the rebuilding project. It’s a big climb. Yet, there are some Democrats, like Iowa, who are trying to figure out what went wrong, especially in counties that voted heavily for Obama, but defected in equal measure to the GOP. NBC News’ Alex Seitz-Wald, who reported on the horrific state the Democratic Party is in at the state-level, wrote with Benjy Sarlin how the Democratic Party could ride a massive wave in 2018, but it requires reaching out to the very people, whom they view as racist, backwards, and not in keeping with the values of the party:
If Democrats are planning to ride an anti-Trump wave to a takeover of the House in 2018, they can’t just rely on seats where voters resisted Donald Trump in 2016. They also face the major task of winning back those rural and blue-collar whites who defected to the president.
That path runs through places like Dubuque County, Iowa, where a 28-year-old Democratic state representative, Abby Finkenauer, is running for Congress against a GOP incumbent, Rep. Rod Blum.
In 2010, a Republican won a county supervisor position for the first time in more than five decades. In 2014, Blum, a businessman, captured an open seat in Congress in another upset, while aligning himself with the Tea Party.
Read more at Townhall.
