House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has seen it all before—including the 2006 Democratic wave that led to her elevation as the first female Speaker of the House, and the 2010 GOP wave that swept her out just as quickly. Carolyn Lochhead of the San Francisco Chronicle writes:
These forces are again aligning — one party in control of Washington, led by a president with sagging popularity, in this case one with record unpopularity, facing FBI and multiple other investigations and an inability to enact the legislation he promised despite this party’s control of the House and Senate.
“History is on our side,” Pelosi told The Chronicle last week in an interview in her offices just outside the House chamber. [...]
Democrats need a net gain of 24 seats next year to retake the House, and typically, when the president’s approval rating is below 50 percent, “the average seat gain for opposing party is 36 seats,” said Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz.
Of course, Trump's dismal approval ratings are legendary. While both George W. Bush and Barack Obama were sub-50 percent leading up to their midterm trouncing, Trump's been hanging out in sub-40 territory on HuffPo Pollster’s average of polls since June 8.
Some people are arguing that the Bernie/Democratic rift could hurt the chances for a Democratic takeover in 2018, but Pelosi thinks Trump is plenty horrible enough to bridge those gaps.
Trump’s presidency has sobered people, Pelosi said. “I’ve never seen such a reaction to an election all the years I’ve been involved,” she said. “People just see the urgency, they want to take responsibility.
“People who have never helped the House — we’re not the glamour, we’re not the White House, we’re not the Senate — now are coming to us and saying, you have to win. We will help.”
Abramowitz agrees, using Tuesday's election in Georgia's 6th congressional district as a case in point.
Polls are tight. Ossoff is running as a centrist, yet “it doesn’t seem to be hurting him with the Democratic base here,” Abramowitz said.