Democrats had a great showing in the 2018 midterm elections. But even in such a strong year, they sometimes struggled to match their traditional support in electorally significant areas — with serious implications for 2020.

Nate Cohn of the New York Times is a very smart numbers cruncher who calls it straight, much like Nate Silver. His personal politics may lean left (I am guessing) but he is worth reading. He does not see 2020 as a lost cause for Republicans despite the 2018 loss of 39 House seats, 7 governorships, 300 state legislative seats.

Their triumph was a somewhat narrow one, concentrated in well-educated, affluent communities. Over all, the distribution of Democratic and Republican support was reminiscent of the 2016 election (snip) The most straightforward alternative for Democrats goes through Florida, which probably gave Republicans their most promising results last week. Florida was probably the biggest disappointment for Democrats last week, and Miami-Dade County the biggest single cause for it. (snip) The overall picture is fairly clear: The states that voted for Mr. Obama and switched to Mr. Trump are still winnable for Democrats, but the party will find it hard to return to its prior levels in the communities that swung most to the current president.

My own view is that the GOP should focus on protecting the Senate rather than winning back the House in 2020 , though they would only need to win a net 17 seats to take back the House.

Predicting the Presidential election is beyond speculative at this point, without knowing the Democratic nominee. In any case, there is certainly the possibility for Trump to again thread the needle and win an Electoral College majority without winning he popular vote.

One piece of advice: make sure the Republicans select faithful electors for the electoral college in 2020. A few faithless electors could change the outcome in 2020, if Trump were to win some but not all of the Middle West states he picked up in 2016.

I am waiting for Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortes to call for making the Electoral College free, just like all other colleges and universities.