Uphill Climb for Democrats in 2018

This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on November 28, 2016 In just a few weeks Demo­crats have gone from driv­ing for what figured to be an easy lay up to hav­ing the rest of the sea­son can­celled, with the next sea­son in real doubt. They seemed to have the pres­id­ency in hand, a ma­jor­ity in the Sen­ate very likely, and, while win­ning a ma­jor­ity in the House was al­ways un­real­ist­ic, they did seem to have a good chance to cut the GOP ma­jor­ity in half with a gain of between 10 and 20 seats. In­stead they al­lowed the White House to slip from their grasp, gained just two Sen­ate seats, leav­ing them in the minor­ity, and gained only a half dozen seats in the House, be­low the bot­tom end of what thought pos­sible. It only gets worse. Demo­crats would need a three-seat net gain in the to se­cure a Sen­ate ma­jor­ity in 2018, a tall or­der since they’ll be de­fend­ing 25 seats and Re­pub­lic­ans just eight. Of the eight Re­pub­lic­an seats up in 2018, just one, that of fresh­man