Code red for the GOP

Over the past week, Republicans have been comforting themselves with some seemingly improving indicators about their electoral chances this fall. The president’s approval rating ticked up, before falling again. The generic congressional ballot has narrowed. But the GOP’s narrow win in a solid red Arizona district Tuesday ought to throw cold water on that budding optimism.

Democrats are putting seats in play like never before. It’s no accident why. For once, we are taking nothing for granted, turning out in droves, and competing darn near everywhere. Republicans, on the other hand, have impressed with the sheer number of rationalizations they’ve offered as to why the Blue Wave will only amount to a ripple. Having spent much of this year working with candidates in Republican-held congressional districts, I can assure you that Republican fantasies of Democratic self-destruction are just that — fantasies. Let’s review.

{mosads}First fantasy: Democrats will tear each other to shreds in vicious primaries.

There is no question that Democrats have more people vying for offices than ever before. Primaries in difficult (for Democrats) congressional districts — places where Republicans ran unopposed two years ago — now have as many as eight Democrats registered and running. Among Republicans and the more conventional pundits, this implies large numbers of disaffected losers staying home to pout on election day, costing the party otherwise winnable races.

“While doom and gloom for the GOP dominates headlines about the 2018 midterms, there’s a rather brutal civil war brewing among Democrats,” concludes Matt Vespa, another Red State true believer.

Vespa is wrong. The massive number of Democrats running spirited campaigns is a sign of incredible health and engagement for the party, not the rumblings of a wave-destroying “civil war.” Need evidence? Just look at Virginia. Democrats fielded candidates in nearly every Republican held district and many had to wade through challenging primaries. This did not result in division; it resulted in wins.

Competing everywhere is a good thing and Democrats are doing it. The 2016 conceit that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were basically the same is dead and buried, replaced by a solid confidence that any Democrat is better than any Republican, and that voting matters.

Second GOP fantasy: Democrats have moved too far left to win anywhere but New York, California, and wherever there are left-wing indoctrination facilities aka universities.

“They think that the coming Trump backlash means they should go further left,” wrote Joe Cunningham at Red State, “ignoring the damage that the far-left policies of the Obama administration did to their party in 2016.”

The issues often cited as evidence of Democrats’ lurch to the left are health care, college tuition, and legalization of marijuana. Without question, the Democratic Party has moved left on these issues. What the candidates close to the ground understand, that the pundits and Republicans don’t, is that the public, too, has moved to the left. The sudden, tectonic shift that moved gay marriage from the outskirts of respectability to full, middle-class acceptance is happening with other progressive issues.

Medicare for all, which under the impersonally bureaucratic guise of “single payer” polled at 34 percent five years ago, has been rebranded as “Medicare for All” and is now neck-and-neck with the status quo. A recent national poll had 81 percent of respondents in favor of free college tuition. And support for legalization of marijuana has topped 60 percent, with Republican former House Speaker John Boehner officially enlisted as a pot lobbyist.

Third GOP Fantasy: Democrats talk a good game but won’t actually show up to vote.

It’s been challenging for Republicans to maintain this particular fantasy in the wake of overwhelming electoral evidence to the contrary. According to Nate Silver, Democrats have “outperformed their partisan baseline by an average of 17 points” in congressional special elections. But they’ve done their best. Virginia’s GOP wipeout was explained away by saying that the Old Dominion is really a blue state. The humiliating loss of a Senate seat in Alabama was only because they nominated a uniquely dreadful candidate. And my personal favorite, Conor Lamb’s Pennsylvania victory in a district Trump won by 21 points was attributed among other things to the Republican candidate’s “porn-stache.”

Also popular among Republicans is the election of 2016, when pollsters, pols, pundits and more-or-less everyone else now predicting a Blue Wave thought President Clinton was the inevitable outcome. I’m downright giddy to read the rationalizations for the GOP’s narrow win in a district where Democrats have not even bothered to field a candidate in recent years because they judged their chances to be so dim.

It’s hard to predict behavior six months from now, but if the people I’ve met in my travels, the election results to date, and polling on who’s committed to voting mean anything at all, I would expect Democrats to turn out in record numbers — at least record numbers for a midterm.

They aren’t motivated just by dislike of Trump, but by a passionate belief that Republican policies are doing appalling damage. They see this moment as decisive, defining what kind of country we’re going to be. They see this vote in deeply patriotic terms, a civic duty that they must not shirk, a chance to redeem deeply held beliefs.

Like virtually everyone on the left, I’m not making any predictions, or taking anything for granted. I hear Democrats say all the time that we can’t relax until the votes are counted. I hear “if” more than I hear “when” in discussing the future, and sense a determination to suppress any sign of overconfidence. On the ground, I see Democratic candidates steeped in realism, facing off against a Republican Party that doesn’t realize what it’s up against.

Republicans, perhaps you should just go ahead and follow Paul Ryan’s lead and abandon ship.

Krystal Ball is the liberal co-host of a bipartisan morning video show being launched by The Hill this spring. She is president of The People’s House Project, which recruits Democratic candidates in Republican-held congressional districts of the Midwest and Appalachia, and a former candidate for Congress in Virginia. Follow her on Twitter @krystalball.