How the Democrats Win 2020

Richard North Patterson: “In our current historical moment, our polarized electoral college yields a president picked by people in a handful of swing states. At the congressional level, the Senate map is composed largely of non-competitive blue and red states, which accord equal legislative weight to states with wild disparities in population. And of 435 House districts, gerrymandering and demographic sorting have created, at the utmost, 75 competitive races.”

“To win and then to govern, Democrats must execute a broken field run through a treacherous electoral terrain complicated by the need, in any given locale, to inspire disparate constituencies with differing—and often conflicting—aspirations and resentments than the voting blocs they need to carry other crucial states or districts. Anyone who reduces sweeping this national checkerboard to a singular formula—propitiate swing voters; or turn out the base—is smoking political crack.”