An unpopular president, the scent of corruption in Washington, a riled-up liberal base — to House Democrats, 2018 is already looking like 2006 on overdrive.

Now, Democrats see the same ugly storm forming for Republicans that delivered them the majority 11 years ago, and they’re digging out the blueprint.


The party is vastly expanding the number of districts it plans to contest, recruiting veterans and business owners to compete in conservative terrain as it did back then. Three senior House Democrats are soon heading to Chicago to seek advice from Rahm Emanuel, the party’s 2006 master strategist. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has been tutoring members on the party’s campaign efforts that year.

Outside groups have gotten in on the revival spirit, too, with large organizations, including MoveOn.org, diving into their email archives and seeking out lessons from people on the front lines in 2006.

“In 2006, there was a similar landscape, where Republican-controlled majorities in the House and Senate refused to do anything to hold George W. Bush accountable,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, one of the three Democrats planning the Chicago trip. “The 2006 blueprint will have to be updated and reloaded to reflect the environment of today, but there are some lessons that can be learned.”

Still, a lot has changed for Democrats since 2006, mostly for the worse, so re-adopting the campaign tactics from that year alone probably won’t cut it. For starters, Democrats need 24 seats to take back the majority vs. 17 seats to make up in 2006. The 2010 redistricting tilted the House landscape toward Republicans, putting more seats even further from Democrats’ grasp. And there’s a year-and-a-half to go in the most unpredictable environment in modern political history.

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“The only place I could see today there are parallels is if the Democratic base is ginned up to give them some candidates, but other than that the jury is out,” said former New York Rep. Thomas Reynolds, who was chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee in 2006.

“In ’06, there [were] probably more swing seats than there are now,” he added. “They’re kidding themselves.”

Nonetheless, parallels abound in House Democrats’ minds.

The environment then was defined by the Iraq War, the botched federal response to Hurricane Katrina and the aftertaste of President George W. Bush’s attempt to privatize Social Security. Now, it’s Russia, the firing of FBI Director James Comey, Obamacare repeal and a tempestuous, mistake-prone president. Democrats believe President Donald Trump has already given them enough to make the “cronyism, corruption and incompetence” argument they employed in 2006 — when Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid first implored voters to “drain the swamp” in Washington.

This cycle, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is investing early in research into Republican incumbents, diving deep into their records and histories for possible corruption and other liabilities, in hopes of promoting a narrative they then can tie to suspicions about Trump’s self-dealing.

“Ethics,” said DCCC Executive Director Dan Sena, “will play a significant role.”

The person who had Sena’s job in 2006 said what’s most striking is how early in Trump’s term the environment has soured for Republicans.

“There is an undercurrent of a real concern for the direction of our country,” said John Lapp, the DCCC’s executive director in 2006 and currently a Democratic strategist. “What’s so strange is right now, in Donald Trump, we have a guy who has broken that trust months into his presidency. And you have a Republican Congress that refuses to hold him in check.”

Lapp’s advice to those in charge now: Don’t sit back and assume Trump’s problems will automatically mean a Democratic wave election. “You don’t know it’s happening until it’s happening. You can’t sit by and let it happen to you, you’ve got to make it happen.”

To that end, Democrats are investing heavily in opposition research even on safe incumbent Republicans, not just those in targeted districts, hoping to turn up material they can use to push the corruption message. Democrats are also busy sorting through potential candidates, who in some cases number more than a dozen interested prospects for a single district. The DCCC has been succeeding much earlier than usual in landing strong recruits.

It all loosely follows the blueprint that Emanuel drew up in 2006.

“The future, in a presidential election, a statewide election, or a congressional, is in the suburbs, where more moderate voters exist,” Emanuel said in last week’s episode of Politico’s Off Message podcast. “I purposely recruited candidates who reflected the temperament, tenor and culture of their district. I didn’t try to elect somebody that fit my image. I tried to help elect somebody that fit the image and the profile of the district.”

Leading the DCCC that year, Emanuel put an early focus on raising money, decrying the fact that Republicans consistently outraised House Democrats. Emanuel that cycle emphasized recruiting centrists — who may have broken with Democratic Party orthodoxy on abortion — in conservative districts where his party usually wasn’t competitive.

And when it came time to hammer incumbent GOP members of Congress, Emanuel directed his committee to focus on Republicans’ ethical problems and their close ties to Bush. One tactic was to name Republicans the “rubber stamp of the week,” a move yoking them to their unpopular president. That’s now being emulated by Organizing for Action — the political group spawned by Barack Obama’s campaigns — as it targets Republican lawmakers as “rubber-stamp reps” for their votes in line with Trump’s positions.

Emanuel has been in touch regularly with Democratic leaders in Washington, holding frequent strategy phone calls with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.

Outside allies have been thinking 2006 for months. At the progressive gathering RootsCamp in November, Blue State Digital founder and CEO Joe Rospars put together a panel of digital operatives to coach Democrats on how they handled the 2006 cycle. It featured Lauren Miller and Macon Phillips, who were key strategists then.

Pelosi likes to talk about the strategy as inspired by Tylenol and Advil commercials, which tend to start by trashing the competition, only to mention later what their pills do by comparison. For now, Democrats are still in the trashing phase. But Pelosi, Schumer and other top congressional Democrats have accelerated planning for a release on what issues they would prioritize if they controlled Congress, according to leadership aides. (They haven’t yet figured out what that agenda would be, other than not repealing Obamacare and not going along with the Trump tax plan.)

Pelosi also has turned back to several of the private-sector branding experts she brought in ahead of the 2006 elections, including software entrepreneur John Cullinane, who has met on Capitol Hill with Pelosi and other members.

Democrats credit Trump for their bullishness about 2018, and the overwhelming response from potential candidates. At a closed-door meeting with top party operatives organized by the AFL-CIO last month, Sena said he had already spoken with over 300 candidates in 75 districts, and that he was directing his committee to invest in Montana’s ongoing special election as a way to signal to recruits in rural or “stretch” districts that the group would have their back. For next year, Sena said House Democrats are looking to triple "notable investment" from the 28 races they spent in significantly in 2016.

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In 2006, the DCCC scoured John Kerry’s 2004 presidential map to see how many districts in which he had earned 40 percent to 49 percent of the vote they could put in play; for 2018, they’re looking at how many Democrats actually won to guide their ambitions.

“One of the biggest lessons we learned from 2006: We need to build the largest battlefield in the last decade and build as much of a map as we can possibly build,” Sena said. He is working to put more than 130 districts in play, he told a gathering of top party operatives in Washington last month — a competitive map that would be three times the size of their 2016 efforts.

“Candidates are coming forward in a rush. Every time [Trump] does something egregious, more come forward,” said Rep. Denny Heck (D-Wash.), the DCCC’s recruitment chairman.

Democrats have also been getting deep into the 2010 cycle, when Republicans took back the majority with a much bigger wave.

“The route to unroot an incumbent,” Sena said, “comes more from 2010 than 2006.”

They’re starting with the 23 districts Hillary Clinton won in 2016, the 10 she lost by less than 4 points and the nine she lost by less by than 4 points but Obama won twice. Add in what Heck calls Republican incumbents “who have vulnerabilities of a self-inflicted nature,” and that’s their update on the 2006 play.

“The shorthand term here is ‘targets of opportunity,’” Heck said, but added that the battlefield will likely expand. “The other way to become a target of opportunity — here’s the technical term for it: ‘Stupid votes.’”

