If Republicans have a lick of sense, they are alarmed by a recent sign of intelligent life in the other party. The sign is the election by Democrats in the House of Representatives of Illinois Rep. Cheri Bustos as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. In November, she won a fourth term by 24 percentage points, the largest margin of any Democrat running in a district Donald Trump carried in 2016. Her task as chair, which is to cement the Democrats’ House majority in 2020, involves this arithmetic:
In the next Congress, 31 Democrats will represent districts Trump carried. In 2018, 40 Democrats flipped districts from red to blue. Twenty-two Democrats won by 5 percentage points or less. Twenty-three lost by 5 points or less. Democrats have noticed that Bustos prospers in a mostly rural district. Sixty percent of the district’s residents live in towns with populations of 1,000 or fewer, 85 percent are in towns of 5,000 or fewer. In November, she won all of her district’s 14 counties, 11 of which are entirely rural.
What lessons can Democrats learn from her success among Trump voters? They might start by marrying a cop. She says she gets “instant credibility” by telling audiences that her husband, who has been in law enforcement for 34 years, is the sheriff of Rock Island County. Regarding guns, it is helpful if one of your sons finished second in the national collegiate trap-shooting competition. It also is helpful if another son is a union welder.
Political intuition
Favorable trends might tempt Democrats to think they can thrive without the voters Bustos reaches. The Economist, noting that Trump’s approval rating is “stratified by age,” reports that baby boomers will in 2019 be outnumbered by millennials. Boomers are almost 75 percent white; millennials are 56 percent white. In the midterm elections, Democrats won two-thirds of voters ages 18 to 29, and 71 percent of millennial women.
