In light of last night’s razor-thin Pennsylvania congressional race in the 18th district, there’ll be plenty of people trying to draw conclusions about what it means for the midterms later this year.
Honestly, there’s not much to draw from it: Republicans ran a deeply mediocre candidate against the perfect Democrat, who ran more like a blue-dog Democrat or moderate Republican. If Democrats can clone those exact dynamics across the country this fall, they’ll take the House back. But the reality is they won’t be able to replicate the outcome of this congressional race. Moreover, if Conor Lamb is able pull off this upset, there is an indicator of a blue wave that’s building.
With all the chatter of said blue wave, you’d think it almost inevitable. There should be concerns among Republicans with Democrats picking up 39 state legislative seats in traditionally strong Republican districts. But it should be noted Democrats lost hundreds of state legislative seats between 2010-2016, so they have over 900 more seats to take back just to return to pre-2010 levels.