The Democrats’ Quest to Win the Senate

Few Democratic leaders in 2006 dared imagine they would capture the U.S. Senate in the midterm elections. Yet there they were on the morning of November 9, celebrating on the Capitol steps after ousting six Republican incumbents. President George W. Bush lamented, “It was a thumpin’,” and indeed it was. Many factors fueled the thumpin’—including broad grassroots opposition to the bloody Iraq quagmire—but Democrats also managed to convince voters that Bush and his congressional allies needed to be held accountable for spawning “a culture of corruption.”

Democratic midterm strategists in 2018 are seeking to repurpose that buzz phrase—fueled anew by the arrest of Representative Chris Collins for alleged insider trading, the Paul Manafort bank-fraud trial, the Michael Cohen tax-fraud investigation, and the latest fervent attempts to Donald Trump from the Russia probe. But even though prospects look bright for a House