(Bloomberg View) -- So what do we know after the virtual tie in the special U.S. House election in Pennsylvania? It appears Democrat Conor Lamb is going to win by a handful of votes, but nothing had been officially declared as of publication.
I think we learned only one new thing: that not only is the Republican tax law no silver bullet, but it also did so badly that Republicans stopped using it. As Bloomberg's Greg Giroux reported, 55 percent of Republican television ads in January and February mentioned the tax cut, but only 14 percent of the March ads had any mention. It's only one election, but parties pay close attention to this sort of thing. I wouldn't be surprised if the tax cut, which still doesn't poll very well, winds up mentioned more by Democrats than by Republicans this fall.
Republican operatives suspect, as David Drucker reports, that President Donald Trump's rally in Pennsylvania ahead of the election may have done more to energize Democrats than to boost Republican turnout. It would be no surprise -- at least not to most people -- if many Republicans become reluctant to invite an unpopular president to campaign for them, but the exception might be the president, who might not take kindly to any suggestion that he's electoral poison. I'm not sure how much it matters, but the chances of Trump lashing out at Republican candidates who distance themselves from him seem fairly high, and it's hard to believe that would help any candidate who is counting on core Republican voters showing up in November.
Beyond that, the election mainly counts as a relatively minor confirmation of what we already know: This is going to be a very good year for Democrats.
Trump continues to be the least popular president of the polling era at this point in his tenure by a comfortable margin. Since the president's party tends to lose ground in midterms even when they are moderately popular, that's very bad news for Republicans. And the various elections held since November 2016 confirm that the electoral environment is just awful for the party.
At this point, most on-the-ground election analysts think the Democrats are more likely to win a House majority this year than not. When I last wrote about this in January, the Cook Political Report rated 19 Republican seats as toss-up or worse; that number has increased to 27, meaning Democrats don't even need to sweep those seats to get to 218. And there are another 47 Republican seats Cook lists as leaning or likely Republican, at least some of which are likely to wind up very competitive. What often happens in these kinds of years is incumbents in apparently safe seats who have never had to worry about general elections suddenly find themselves in real fights, and it turns out some of them don't really know how to campaign.
It's still unlikely that Democrats will gain two seats in the Senate to reach 51 and a majority; even if they manage to win in Nevada and Arizona, their two best possibilities, they would have to successfully defend half a dozen incumbents facing tough challenges. It's possible, but I'd bet against it right now.
While the focus is always on Congress, state legislative contests are important, too, and not only because we're getting close to post-2020 redistricting. While Democrats face a difficult playing field in the U.S. Senate, they have plenty of low-hanging fruit in gubernatorial and state legislative races, thanks to their dismal performances in the 2010 and 2014 elections.
What we don't know yet is whether it's going to be a very good year or a historic landslide. Some of that depends on whether Democrats can successfully manage their voters' anti-Trump-generated enthusiasm. More of it depends on whether Trump's popularity recovers or drops by November. Of the polling-era elected presidents entering their first midterm, only Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter spent significant time around where Trump's approval rating is right now, and both of their parties did poorly in those elections. Indeed, Democrats suffered in 1994 and 2010 even though Barack Obama and Bill Clinton were quite a bit more popular. So unless Trump suddenly spikes, expect rough times for Republicans in November.
1. Kristin Kanthak on outside money in the Pennsylvania special.
2. Dan Drezner on the demise of Rex Tillerson.
3. Elizabeth Saunders at the Monkey Cage on Mike Pompeo's prospects at the State Department.
4. Michael Nelson and Rachael Hinkle at the Monkey Cage on the importance of diversity in the courts.
5. Why were the Parkland students able to achieve so much publicity for such a long time (compared to other shootings, that is)? Joseph E. Uscinski, Darin DeWitt and Matthew D. Atkinson argue that conspiracy theories helped. Fascinating.
6. Seth Masket on distinguishing between policy complaints against the Trump administration and fears about democracy.
7. Drew Linzer at Daily Kos on a major new polling resource.
8. James Wallner on the chances of the Democrats eliminating the filibuster in the future and more. He's correct, and Ted Cruz is wrong. And I'd still like to see a partial restoration of the filibuster for judicial nominations.
9. And Heather Hurlburt on the mess in the State Department.
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Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg View columnist. He taught political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University and wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.
To contact the author of this story: Jonathan Bernstein at jbernstein62@bloomberg.net.
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