Bill Scher is a contributing editor to Politico Magazine, and co-host of the Bloggingheads.tv show “The DMZ.”

The internal debates that have wracked the Democratic Party since the election of President Donald Trump have been submerged in the final weeks of the midterm elections. But whatever happens on November 6, you can expect that unity to break down on November 7, as the spin machines of all the various Democratic factions rev up to take credit, or cast blame.

That won’t be a meaningless exercise. Whatever Democrats think was the reason for their success, or failure, in 2018 will heavily influence their 2020 presidential primary—which will begin in earnest shortly after the midterms, if it hasn’t already—and shape the direction the party takes.


To prepare for the post-election frenzy, here is a guide to the races that will matter most in determining what 2018 means:

The Great Liberal Hopes

Much ink, and much progressive small-donor cash, has flooded three high-profile races—the governors races in Florida and Georgia, and the U.S. Senate race in Texas—and for good reason. If Andrew Gillum, Stacey Abrams, or Beto O’Rourke wins it would upend conventional wisdom about what it takes to paint a red state blue: Instead of straining to lean right, all three are trying to build multiracial coalitions that galvanize progressives.

The three are not identical. Unlike O’Rourke and Gillum, Abrams has steered clear of expressing interest in single-payer health care. And while Gillum is running on an increase in the corporate tax rate, Abrams is trying to assure Georgians she won’t raise taxes. O’Rourke, running for Senate, has the most to say about Trump, going as far as to call for impeachment.

All are pointedly critical of the National Rifle Association, and squarely in favor of abortion rights. To win in the South while holding those culturally liberal positions would turbocharge the Democratic Party’s move leftward in 2020.

However, if they all lose, and the more moderate Democratic candidates running statewide in red states—especially the Senate candidates aiming to flip Tennessee (Phil Bredesen) and Arizona (Kyrsten Sinema)—win or even just perform better, then the many establishment voices quietly nervous about the growing populist/socialist faction in the Democratic Party will become a lot less quiet.

The Single-Payer Showdowns

The number of single-payer advocates in the House is likely to be larger after Election Day. Several candidates who have “Medicare for All” in their platforms have a decent shot of being elected in swing districts, including Katie Porter (in California’s 45th District), Mike Levin (California’s 49th) and Scott Wallace (Pennsylvania’s 1st), who are running in bluish districts won by Hillary Clinton in 2016, not to mention left-wing locks to win like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (New York’s 14th).

But to really celebrate, socialists and populists would like to able to say that single-payer helped Democrats win in districts previously won by Donald Trump, to show the issue’s potency on red turf. The three Democrats running forthrightly on a single-payer platform, in Trump-won districts rated “Toss-up” or “Lean Republican” by POLITICO, are Kara Eastman (Nebraska’s 2nd District), Randy Bryce (Wisconsin’s 1st) and Joe Radinovich (Minnesota’s 8th).

Radinovich could end up as an argument against running on single-payer in Red America. The Minnesota 8th was Trump country, but its House seat is currently Democratic. Bad polling for Radinovich has recently prompted the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to pull resources from his campaign. The possibility exists that one of the only Democratically-held House seats Democrats lost to a Republican on Election Day will be lost by a single-payer candidate.

But if Eastman or Bryce can triumph, a Radinovich loss would hold less import.

And a big blue wave could buoy other single-payer backers running on even deeper red turf. Keep an eye on: Diane Mitsch Bush (Colorado’s 3rd), Leslie Cockburn (Virginia’s 5th), Nate McMurray (New York’s 27th) and Sri Preston Kulkarni (Texas’ 22nd).

Gauging the Parkland Effect

One year after the Las Vegas massacre and eight months after the Parkland school shooting, the intensity of the gun debate has cooled. While many Democratic candidates have expanded background checks and assault weapons bans on their issues checklist, few are prioritizing the issue in the homestretch of the campaign.

A major exception is Lucy McBath. Her teenage African-American son was murdered by a white man complaining about loud rap music coming from the car he was in. McBath channeled her grief into activism, becoming a spokeswoman with Everytown for Gun Safety.

McBath is running in Georgia’s 6th District, a diverse, affluent suburban Atlanta district that Trump won by a single point. You might remember last year’s special House election there, which became the most expensive House race ever, with Democrat Jon Ossoff falling 4 points short of flipping the seat.

She is not a single-issue candidate; she is also drawing a big contrast with Republican Rep. Karen Handel on abortion. But McBath has put the gun issue front and center, with a TV ad in which she tearfully recounts the shooting that took her son. She doesn’t push an expansive gun control agenda; she skips the assault weapons ban, and instead proposes a minimum age of 21 to by guns, opposes requiring states to recognize concealed-carry permits from other states and supports banning gun ownership by domestic abusers and other criminals. Policy cautiousness aside, a McBath victory would boost gun control advocates who don’t want Democrats to shy away from gun control when stumping in Red America.

But several other Democrats are going in the opposite direction. Maine’s Jared Golden is running in his state’s 2nd District, an Obama-Trump district in the rural north that’s home to many hunters, and so he is trying to walk a moderate line. He opposes an assault weapons ban and a higher minimum age for gun ownership. He supports expanded background checks at the federal level, but opposed a 2016 state referendum for such checks, arguing the specifics went too far. He also supports keeping guns away from domestic abusers.

That was enough new regulation on guns for Golden to attract the ire of the NRA. But in the homestretch of this campaign, Golden is trying to get to the right of his opponent, Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin. Even though Poliquin has the NRA endorsement, and has adhered to the organization’s positions while in Congress, Golden is airing an ad showing a 2010 video when Poliquin briefly broke with the NRA and voiced support for mandatory background checks.

Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey’s rural 2nd District is a longtime gun rights advocate who once received an “A” rating from the NRA. He has since been downgraded to a “D” for supporting universal background checks, but otherwise touts himself as a defender of the Second Amendment. Van Drew is expected to flip the House seat in this Obama-Trump district, as the national Republican Party cut off support for his opponent, Seth Grossman, after he declared “the whole idea of diversity is a bunch of crap and un-American.”

Also of note: Democrat Billie Sutton has a shot of pulling off an upset in the South Dakota gubernatorial race, painting his opponent, Republican Congresswoman Kristi Noem, as a creature of Washington and himself as a “pro-gun fiscal conservative.”

Each of the House candidates above is at least comfortable with expanded background checks, so they could all win and still give gun control advocates hope that such legislation could clear a Congress under Democratic rule. But wins by those Democrats who lean right on guns would also signal that the Parkland Effect had limited reach in the white working-class areas that Democrats are hungry to win back in 2020.

Trumping the Racist Card

An unprecedented number of Democratic House nominees are people of color running in predominantly white districts. Many of those candidates have been hit with racially charged Republican attack ads, of varying degrees of subtlety. (HuffPost’s Julia Craven is maintaining a running list.)

For example, an ad targeting Ammar Campa-Najjar (California’s 50th) calls him a “Palestinian Mexican millennial Democrat” who is backed by the Muslim Brotherhood (the ad earned “Four Pinocchios” from The Washington Post.) A mailer attacking Korean-American candidate Andy Kim (New Jersey’s 3rd) printed his name using a font known as “Chop Suey” or “Wonton”—“essentially the same font that has been used to depict Asians since at least the time of the Yellow Peril,” according to New Jersey Globe writer Amy Wilson.

But no one has suffered such a sustained, overtly racist barrage as Antonio Delgado, the African-American, Hispanic corporate attorney running in New York’s 19th, an Obama-Trump upstate district. Ever since Republicans caught wind of his brief attempt to be a hip-hop artist, the Congressional Leadership Fund (the super PAC affiliated with House Speaker Paul Ryan) has consistently defined Delgado as a “rapper” who holds “New York City values” and “not our values.” One ad criticizes Delgado’s position on welfare reform while showing a liquor store sign that reads: “WE ACCEPT FOOD STAMPS.”

How has Delgado responded? With his own steady stream of ads that show him comfortably chatting with middle-class white families, who assure voters that the Democrat “gets us,” is “with us,” and embodies, “our values.” Response ads don’t call the attacks “racist,” but “misleading” and “distorted.” Recently the campaign brought in the big gun: former Vice President Joe Biden, who cut an endorsement ad in which he says, “Antonio grew up in a working-class family, like I did. So he knows what matters to working people.”

Democrats have been grappling with whether they need nonwhite candidates who can spark higher turnout from their diverse base, or candidates who can more easily connect with the white working-class voters who were lost to Trump. If Delgado wins, that choice may be rendered a false one.

The Hippie-Puncher

With a populist/socialist faction ascendant in the Democratic Party, most establishment politicians have been careful not to blatantly antagonize their left flank, even when running in right-leaning areas. The days of “triangulation,” in which Democratic politicians purposefully took swipes at the left in order to claim the center, seem long gone.

But no one told Sen. Joe Donnelly.

Seeking to survive reelection in Indiana, a state that voted for Trump by nearly 20 points, Donnelly is running ads that gleefully attack the socialist left.

One Donnelly ad could easily be mistaken for a Republican spot: “Socialists want health care to be taken over by the government” intones a narrator while viewers see grainy footage of unruly protests. “Over my dead body!” declares Donnelly. Another one (resembling a fictional ad from Veep character Jonah Ryan) has Donnelly chopping wood while lacing into “the liberal left” for wanting to “chop defense spending.”

It’s politically rational for Donnelly to reach out to right-leaning voters in a right-leaning state. But a red state Democrat needs to entice swing and base voters to clear the 50 percent mark. Two decades ago, a liberal voter in a conservative area might have more readily accepted an elbow in the gut that came with a wink of an eye. But in this polarized era, is it possible to kick your own base and still expect them to get up and vote for you?

The Trump Voter

Most Democrats running in House districts that Trump won are not attacking the president by name. But there’s one who actually voted for Trump.

Richard Ojeda has taken a district that Trump won by almost 50 points—West Virginia’s 3rd—and turned into a toss-up. He’s no conservative. Like any West Virginia politician, he supports coal mining. But he’s known more for publicly encouraging his state’s 20,000 public school teachers and employees to go on strike (which they did, winning a substantial pay raise) and for persuading the state government to legalize medical marijuana.

He is also known for his fiery populist tirades—one 30-second ad features Ojeda proudly detailing all the reasons why he’s “angry” (including House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi). As a result, the Miller campaign is trying to paint him as a “radical” (who would be beholden to Pelosi) and Trump himself labeled Ojeda “a total wacko.”

Ojeda is not running as a Trump loyalist. He told Politico Magazine in March that Trump “hasn’t done shit.” But recently, his appraisal has become more balanced. He credits Trump for helping the coal industry, while criticizing his foreign policy and track record on bringing back offshored jobs.

If Ojeda wins, it would send a strong message to Democrats that to win in Trump country, they can’t make everything about Trump.