The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

While the Democrats have excellent prospects in taking back the House this November, the Senate map is still a serious problem.  Democrats have 10 senators now defending seats in 2018 in states that Trump won in 2016.  The latest polling shows that in several of those states, Trump's approval ratings remain pretty good.

President Trump heads into his first State of the Union speech with lousy approval numbers across much of the country — but remains fairly popular in a few states with tough Senate races next fall. 

That’s according to a bevy of state-level polling Gallup released Tuesday, combining data the firm collected from surveys conducted throughout the last year.

Trump has majority approval rating in just 12 states — but three of those have Democratic senators up for reelection next fall, including the two states where Trump’s numbers are the best, West Virginia and North Dakota. He’s also above water in Montana, as well as in Tennessee, where Democrats hope they might be able to seriously contest an open Senate seat. 

These numbers are crucial heading into this fall’s midterms. They’re also powering major strategic decisions with huge policy consequences — including how Democrats will handle ongoing negotiations to try to protect undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) led the red-state Democratic charge to end the shutdown by threatening to retire if Senate leaders didn’t back down.

You may hate Joe Manchin, but he's a Democrat who can win Senate races in a state where Trump still has a 61% approval rating.  You'd better hope he wins in November.

There's good news for the Democrats though.  Even a few months ago picking up seats outside of Nevada and Arizona looked like a very tall order.  Then Doug Jones won in Alabama, and that has opened up opportunities to take other Senate seats that were considered off the board completely.

Slightly more people disapprove than approve of Trump’s job performance in Republican-leaning Missouri and Indiana, both of which have top-tier Senate races next fall, and his approval rating is 10 points lower than his disapproval rating in a bevy of states key to Senate control: Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada. In Texas, according to Gallup, Trump’s approval rating is at just 39 percent, with 54 percent disapproving, a number that should put a scare into Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) as he faces down reelection.

It's going to be a hard, hard slog for Dems to defend all these seats.  But if they can, and pick up seats in states like Texas (imagine that!) then they can win the Senate back in 2018.

And yeah, that means playing defense when needed.