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When Donald Trump was running for president in 2015 and 2016, he spent a lot of time criticizing President Barack Obama for playing so much golf insisting that Obama could have been more productive if he had spent more time in the White House. But Robert Maguire, research director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), reported in a Friday morning tweet that Trump has now surpassed Obama in the amount of time spent golfing as president. And Maguire illustrates his point by posting a hilarious video in which candidate Trump railed against Obamas golf habit in 2015 and 2016.

Maguire, in his Friday morning tweet, writes that in December 2015, candidate Trump criticized Obama for having played 250 rounds of golf during his seven years as president. But Maguire quickly adds, Trump is making his 251st taxpayer-funded visit to one of the golf resorts he still profits from and said he wouldnt visit if elected.

Maguine also tweets, In less than three years in office, Trump has almost surpassed Obamas eight-year golf tally, which Trump relentlessly criticized on the campaign trail in 2016 (as the video shows).

In Dec 2015, candidate Trump criticized Obama, who had been president for 7yrs, saying Obama had played 250 rounds of golf

Today, Trump is making his 251st taxpayer-funded visit to one of the golf resorts he still profits from and said he wouldnt visit if elected. pic.twitter.com/qB1CwDASCE

Robert Maguire (@RobertMaguire_) December 27, 2019

In the video, one sees clips of Trump repeatedly swearing that as president, he would be way too busy in the White House to play golf. In a February 4, 2016 speech, for example, Trump insists, I just want to stay in the White House and work my ass off, make great deals.

In a February 19 speech in South Carolina, Trump vows, Im not going to play much golf, because theres a lot of work to be done. And at a February 8, 2016 event in New Hampshire, Trump asks, When youre in the White House, who the hell wants to play golf?

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Watch: Trump tore into Obama in 2016 for playing golf but now those attacks have blown up in his face - AlterNet

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) Few states have changed politically with the head-snapping speed of Iowa. Heading into 2020, the question is whether its going to change again.

In 2008, its voters propelled Barack Obama to the White House, as an overwhelmingly white state validated the candidacy of the first black president. A year later, Iowas Supreme Court sanctioned same-sex marriage, adding a voice of Midwestern sensibility to a national shift in public sentiment. In 2012, Iowa backed Obama again.

All that change proved too much, too fast, and it came as the Great Recession punished agricultural areas, shook the foundations of rural life and stoked a roiling sense of grievance.

By 2016, Donald Trump easily defeated Hillary Clinton in Iowa. Republicans were in control of the governors mansion and state legislature and held all but one U.S. House seat. For the first time since 1980, both U.S. Senate seats were in GOP hands.

What happened? Voters were slow to embrace Obamas signature health care law. The recession depleted college-educated voters as a share of the rural population, and Republicans successfully painted Democrats as the party of coastal elites.

Those forces combined for a swift Republican resurgence and helped create a wide lane for Trump.

The self-proclaimed billionaire populist ended up carrying Iowa by a larger percentage of the vote than in Texas, winning 93 of Iowas 99 counties, including places like working-class Dubuque and Wapello counties, where no Republican since Dwight D. Eisenhower had won.

But now, as Democrats turn their focus to Iowas kickoff caucuses that begin the process of selecting Trumps challenger, could the state be showing furtive signs of swinging back? Caucus turnout will provide some early measures of Democratic enthusiasm, and of what kind of candidate Iowas Democratic voters who have a good record of picking the Democratic nominee believe has the best chance against Trump.

If Iowas rightward swing has stalled, it could be a foreboding sign for Trump in other upper Midwestern states he carried by much smaller margins and would need to win again.

Theyve gone too far to the right and there is the slow movement back, Tom Vilsack, the only two-term Democratic governor in the past 50 years, said of Republicans. This is an actual correction.

Iowans unseated two Republican U.S. House members and nearly a third in 2018 during midterm elections where more Iowa voters in the aggregate chose a Democrat for federal office for the first time in a decade.

In doing so, Iowans sent the states first Democratic women to Congress: Cindy Axne, who dominated Des Moines and its suburbs, and Abby Finkenauer, who won in several working-class counties Trump carried.

Democrats won 14 of the 31 Iowa counties that Trump won in 2016 but Obama won in 2008, though Trumps return to the ballot in 2020 could change all that.

We won a number of legislative challenge races against incumbent Republicans, veteran Iowa Democratic campaign consultant Jeff Link said. I think that leaves little question Iowa is up for grabs next year.

Theres more going on in Iowa that simply a merely cyclical swing.

Iowas metropolitan areas, some of the fastest growing in the country over the past two decades, have given birth to a new political front where Democrats saw gains in 2018.

The once-GOP-leaning suburbs and exurbs, especially to the north and west of Des Moines and the corridor linking Cedar Rapids and the University of Iowa in Iowa City, swelled with college-educated adults in the past decade, giving rise to a new class of rising Democratic leaders.

I dont believe it was temporary, Iowa State University economist David Swenson said of Democrats 2018 gains in suburban Des Moines and Cedar Rapids. I think it is the inexorable outcome of demographic and educational shifts that have been going on.

The Democratic caucuses will provide a test of how broad the change may be.

I think it would be folly to say Iowa is not a competitive state, said John Stineman, a veteran Iowa GOP campaign operative and political data analyst who is unaffiliated with the Trump campaign but has advised presidential and congressional campaigns over the past 25 years. I believe Iowa is a swing state in 2020.

For now, that is not a widely held view, as Iowa has shown signs of losing its swing state status.

In the 1980s, it gave rise to a populist movement in rural areas from the left, the ascent of the religious right as a political force and the start of an enduring rural-urban balance embodied by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley and Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin.

Now, after a decade-long Republican trend, there are signs of shifting alliances in people like Jenny OToole.

The 48-year-old insurance industry employee from suburban Cedar Rapids stood on the edge of the scrum surrounding former Vice President Joe Biden last spring, trying to get a glimpse as he shook hands and posed for pictures.

I was a Republican. Not any more, OToole said. Im socially liberal, but economically conservative. Thats what Im looking for.

OToole is among those current and new former Republicans who dot Democratic presidential events, from Iowa farm hubs to working-class river towns to booming suburbs.

Janet Cosgrove, a 75-year-old Episcopal minister from Atlantic, in western Iowa, and Judy Hoakison, a 65-year-old farmer from rural southwest Iowa, are Republicans who caught Mayor Pete Buttigiegs recent trip.

If such voters are a quiet warning to Trump in Iowa, similar symptoms in Wisconsin and Michigan, where Democrats also made 2018 gains, could be even more problematic.

Vilsack has seen the stage change dramatically. After 30 years of Republican dominance in Iowas governors mansion, he was elected in 1998 as a former small-city mayor and pragmatic state senator.

An era of partisan balance in Iowa took hold, punctuated by Democratic presidential nominee Al Gores 4,144-vote victory in Iowa in 2000, and George W. Bushs 10,059-vote re-election in 2004.

After the 2006 national wave swept Democrats into total Statehouse control for the first time in 50 years, the stage was set for Obamas combination of generational change, his appeal to anti-Iraq War sentiment and the historic opportunity to elect the first African American president.

We were like a conquering army, prepared to negotiate terms of surrender, said Cedar Rapids Democrat Dale Todd, an early Obama supporter and adviser.

Todd was one of a collection of Iowa Democratic activists who gathered at a downtown Des Moines sports bar last year to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of Obamas historic caucus campaign.

Just across the Des Moines River in the state Capitol, there was a reminder of how much the ground had shifted since those heady days.

Republicans control all of state government for the first time in 20 years. Part of their wholesale conservative agenda has included stripping public employee unions of nearly all bargaining rights, establishing new voter restrictions and outlawing abortion six weeks into a pregnancy.

It was in line with Republican takeovers in states such as Wisconsin that were completed earlier, but traced their beginnings to the same turbulent summer of 2009.

On a Wednesday in August that year, throngs flocked to Grassleys typically quiet annual county visits to protest his work with Democrats on health care legislation.

Thousands representing the emerging Tea Party forced Grassleys last event from a community center in the small town of Adel to the town park, where some booed the typically popular senator and held signs stating, Grassley, youre fired.

The events became a national symbol for uneasiness about the new presidents signature policy goal.

The previous April, Iowas nine-member Supreme Court Democratic and Republican appointees had unanimously declared same-sex marriage legal in the state. A year later, Christian conservatives successfully campaigned to oust the three Supreme Court justices facing retention, waving the marriage decision as their cause.

Four years later, Democrats had high expectations of holding the retiring Harkins Senate seat. But Democratic U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley lacked Harkins populist appeal, and was beaten by state Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iraq War veteran from rural Iowa who painted Braley as an elitist lawyer.

By 2016, Republicans had completed their long-sought statehouse takeover, in part by beating longtime Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal.

We tried in many cases to win suburbia, but we just couldnt lay a glove on it, Gronstal said. We just could not figure out how to crack it in Iowa.

The answer for Democrats in Iowa is much the same as the rest of the country: growing, vote-rich suburbs.

Dallas County, west of Des Moines, has grown by 121% since 2000, converting from a checkerboard of farms into miles of car dealerships, strip malls, megachurches and waves of similarly styled housing developments.

It had been a Republican county. However, last year, long-held Republican Iowa House districts in Des Moines western suburbs fell to Democrats.

It was the culmination of two decades of shifting educational attainment with political implications.

Since 2000, the number of Iowans with at least a college degree in urban and suburban areas grew by twice the rate of rural areas, according to U.S. Census data and an Iowa State University study.

Last year, a third of urban and suburban Iowans had a college diploma, up from 25% at the dawn of the metropolitan boom in 2000. Rural Iowans had inched up to just 20% from 16% during that period.

The more that occurs, the more you get voter participation leaning toward Democratic outcomes than has historically been in the past, Swenson said, noting the higher likelihood of college-educated voters to lean Democratic.

Since 2016 alone, registered Democrats in Dallas County have increased 15%, to Republicans 2%. Republicans still outnumber Democrats in the county, but independent voters have leaped by 20% and for the first time outnumber Republicans.

There is now a third front, Gronstal said. We can fight in those toss-up rural areas, hold our urban base, but now compete in those quintessentially suburban districts.

Though Trumps return to the ballot in 2020 shakes up the calculus, his approval in Iowa has remained around 45% or lower. A sub-50 rating is typically problematic for an incumbent.

Another warning for Trump, GOP operative Stineman noted, is The Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa Polls November finding that only 76% of self-identified Republicans said they would definitely vote to re-elect him next year.

With no challenger and 10 months until the election, a lot can change.

Still, thats one in four of your family thats not locked down, Stineman said.

There are also signs Iowa Democrats have shaken some of the apathy that helped Trump and hobbled Clinton in Iowa in 2016.

Democratic turnout in 2018 leaped from the previous midterm in 2014 from 57% to 68%, according to the Iowa Secretary of State. Republican turnout, which is typically higher, also rose, but by a smaller margin.

Overall turnout in Iowa, as in more reliably Democratic-voting presidential states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, was down in 2016, due mostly to a downturn in Democratic participation.

The trend was down, across the board, said Ann Selzer, who has conducted The Des Moines Registers Iowa Poll for more than 25 years. So it doesnt take much to create a Democratic victory in these upper Midwestern states.

I think the success in the midterms kind of made people on the Democratic side believe that we can do it, Selzer said.

Perhaps, but Trump has his believers, too.

Read more:
Iowa swung fiercely to Trump. Will it swing back in 2020? - The Associated Press

President Donald Trump looks on during a campaign rally in Battle Creek, Michigan, December 18, 2019.

Leah Millis | Reuters

Now that we're just a few weeks away from the Iowa caucuses and the real start to the 2020 voting process, there are still three basic facts the Democrats need to accept if they hope to have any chance to win the White House.

If you are a Democrat reading this, I warn you that this isn't going to be easy. But no pain, no gain. So here goes:

Let's start with what is still the toughest pill to swallow for Democrats: Trump won the White House fair and square.

The two-plus years of laser focus and high hopes connected to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation were the clearest examples that all too many Democrats believe the only reason Donald Trump is president is because the Russians somehow helped him cheat. Even the release of the Mueller Report showing no direct evidence of that hasn't stopped this narrative from continuing to be promoted regularly.

But let's face it, this is a very good way for the Democrats to lose to Trump again in 2020. Just like in sports, the worst way to overcome a loss in politics is to go around believing you didn't "really" lose and no real improvements or changes need to be made by your team to win next time.

Now just imagine if the Democrats spent as much time and effort on winning back the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin as they have been in pursuing the Russia collusion obsession and the impeachment process. If the latest polls in those states tell us anything, those other efforts have only made things worse for the anti-Trump forces. It's time to cut bait on the stolen election illusion.

Whether they deserve it or not, Democrats have consistently been viewed by most American voters as the party that is more concerned with the poor and lower middle-income earners in this country. In many ways, that's been a golden ticket to victory for Democrats in almost every major election. They only seem to mess it up when a Democratic administration presides over a worsening economy, (like under Jimmy Carter in 1980), or when Democratic candidates latch on to non-economic themes like social issues or foreign policy.

The problem for Democrats now is not only the fact that the overall economy and Wall Street are strong, but even Americans further down the income scale are now experiencing record wage gains. In fact, new data shows that the labor market has become so tight that rank-and-file workers are now getting bigger percentage raises than the bosses and top management.

But all is not lost for Democrats when it comes to economics, thanks to the sticky issue of health care. As health care insurance costs continue to rise, voters from both parties are still ranking health care very high on their list of top concerns going into 2020.

Some of the Democratic presidential candidates have made 'Medicare for All' a key part of their campaign promises. But compare that to the way then-candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton actively paraded their health coverage plans around in 2008, and you can see how no Democrat has really mined this issue properly this time around.

This issue is simply not going away, and any Democrat willing to offer an attention-grabbing new idea on lowering insurance costs stands to gain substantially in the polls. Of course, that opportunity is also still available for President Trump. So the Democrats don't have any time to waste.

Even mediocre students of American history should know that politics in this country have always been nasty. If you don't believe that, do a little reading about the election of 1800 between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

But the nastiness has really only been effective when it's directed at opposing candidates or parties. One of the rules just about every major American politician has followed is to never actually go after the opposing candidate's or party's voters. It's an important distinction.

More and more these days, that rule is being broken and it's mostly being broken by Democrats. The most egregious example from 2016 was Hillary Clinton's description of Trump voters as a "basket of deplorables," a term those Trump supporters have since taken on as a badge of honor.

But in another example of not learning from 2016's mistakes, we're still seeing 2020 Democrats and their supporters following this line. That includes the Democrat with perhaps the best "nice guy" persona, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who recently said Trump voters are "at best, looking the other way on racism"when asked by a cable news host if casting a vote for Trump could be considered a "racist act."

So far, Buttigieg's comments are the most egregious slam on Trump voters from an actual candidate. But prominent liberals and Never Trumpers are increasing their attacks lately. Filmmaker Michael Moore said this week that since two out of three white men voted for Trump in 2016, that means two out of three white men in America are "not good people," and "you should be afraid of them." Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather said last month that Trump voters are part of a "cult," a comment that major news media outlets including CNN echoed days later. Never Trumper Republican Jennifer Rubin has recently been pushing the line that Trump voters are poorly educated.

If the DNC has any power to put a lid on these kinds of comments from Democratic candidates and their supporters, it needs to exert that power right now. The "we think you're stupid and we hate and fear you now vote for us" line has never worked because there's no way it can.

The above three points may seem very simple and logical, but anyone who has been watching the Democrats since 2016 knows that this is kind of like an intervention for a stubborn drug addict. Each of the above truths is something many Democrats have been fiercely fighting against for some time.

The irony is, they need to give up that fight to win the contest that should be much more important to them overall.

Jake Novak is a political and economic analyst at Jake Novak News and former CNBC TV producer. You can follow him on Twitter @jakejakeny.

Excerpt from:
Democrats need to accept these 3 truths to beat Trump in 2020 - CNBC

U.S. President Barack Obama signs the Affordable Health Care for America Act during a ceremony with fellow Democrats in the East Room of the White House March 23, 2010 in Washington, DC.

Win McNamee | Getty Images

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lost her gavel and regained it in this decade. Obamacare played a major role each time.

In 2010, a voter rebellion against the health-care law helped Republicans wallop Democrats and gain House control. Eight years later, Democrats made GOP efforts to scrap Obamacare the centerpiece of their campaigns and then won back the chamber.

"I'll just tell you that the lesson from all of this is that health-care policy is treacherous politics," said Carlos Curbelo, a former Republican congressman. He won Florida's swing 26th District in 2014 after a campaign in which he promised to repeal Obamacare, then lost his seat to Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in 2018 following a vote to scrap the law.

In the nearly 10 years since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act became law in March 2010, it has gone from political anchor to tailwind for Democrats. President Barack Obama's signature legislative achievement became one of the defining issues of the decade and shaped recent elections more than just about any other policy issue.

"Backlash to the ruling party's actions on health care were a significant part of both the 2010 and 2018 waves," said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of election forecasting site Sabato's Crystal Ball. He added that resistance to the law also probably helped the GOP in the 2014 midterms, especially after a messy rollout of the insurance exchange website in 2013.

Obamacare sentiment reflects broader trends in American political opinion, Kondik said. Voters often buck the party in power, so the Affordable Care Act was less popular under Obama but gained traction once President Donald Trump took office. Both Democrats and independents started to feel better about Obamacare after Trump entered the White House, driving the increase in popularity, according to monthly Kaiser Family Foundation tracking polls.

Democratic calls to maintain the law particularly its provisions protecting Americans with preexisting medical conditions appeared to resonate with voters when Republicans got a real chance to replace the health system.

"Health care was on the ballot, and health care won," Pelosi told reporters in November 2018 after Democrats flipped House control.

The landmark law better known as Obamacare offered new subsidies for buying plans, barred insurers from denying coverage based on preexisting conditions, allowed states to expand the joint federal and state Medicaid program for low-income Americans and let children stay on their parents' plans until age 26, among other provisions. Last year, 8.5% of the U.S. population was uninsured, down from 13.3% in 2013, before Obamacare fully took effect.

Before the shift, the Affordable Care Act appeared to hurt Democrats politically at the outset as Republicans billed it as a government takeover of health care.

While a plurality of voters approved of the law a month after its passage, sentiment changed before the 2010 midterm elections, according to Kaiser surveys. In October 2010, 44% had an unfavorable view of the law, while 42% saw it favorably.

In the 2010 elections, Democrats lost 63 House seats. Republicans flipped the chamber and kept control until this year. The GOP also gained six Senate seats.

The incumbent president's party almost always loses seats in midterm elections. Even so, Obamacare appeared to propel the Democratic drubbing.

Nearly half or 45% of voters said their 2010 vote was a message of opposition to Obamacare, according to exit polling cited by NBC News in 2014. Only 28% responded that their vote was a message of support for the law.

After Republicans took over the House in 2011, then the Senate in 2015, they tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act dozens of times. The party made opposition to the law a central part of its political messaging for years though Obamacare remained safe as long as its namesake president sat in the Oval Office.

The GOP gained another 13 House and nine Senate seats in the 2014 midterms. Following the election, then-House Speaker John Boehner said resistance to the health-care law drove the results.

"The American people have made it clear: They're not for Obamacare. Ask all those Democrats who lost their elections Tuesday night. A lot of them voted for Obamacare," he said in November 2014.

Exit surveys cited by NBC News suggest the health-care law had a smaller effect in 2014 than it did in 2010. Only 28% of voters said they wanted to express opposition to Obamacare, while 12 percent said they aimed to show support for the law.

When Trump won the White House and the GOP held control of Congress in 2016, Republicans finally got their chance to dismantle Obamacare. While the House passed a repeal bill in 2017, the Senate never could. The GOP fell one vote short in a dramatic late-night vote on a bill to roll back major parts of the ACA.

The Trump administration has managed to dismantle pieces of Obamacare, both through administrative and legislative action. The GOP tax law passed in 2017 to end the individual mandate, a divisive provision that required most Americans to have health insurance or pay a penalty.

Public opinion around the law started to shift after Republicans gained control of the White House and Congress and started to propose their own alternatives to Obamacare. For nearly all of the stretch from February 2013 to February 2017, monthly Kaiser polls found a larger share of adults had a favorable view of the law than unfavorable.

But in every month since May 2017, Kaiser has found more adults like the ACA than dislike it. In November, 52% of adults surveyed by Kaiser had a favorable view of Obamacare, versus 41% who had an unfavorable opinion.

Curbelo said opposition to Trump, and his most prominent policy push in trying to unravel Obamacare, helped to drive a rough 2018 election for the GOP.

"A large part of the debacle that was that election, certainly in the House, can be attributed to health care," he said.

The former congressman said he does not regret his vote to pass the American Health Care Act, the House Republican ACA overhaul, even now knowing he lost his seat. Curbelo said the vote "was about keeping [his] word" to repeal and replace Obamacare, which he had promised to do since he first ran for Congress.

At the same time, the top Democrats running for the party's presidential nomination all support Obamacare. They only disagree on how best to improve the system.

Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., want a "Medicare for All" system to move quickly to insure every American. Former Vice President Joe Biden and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg want Americans to have the option to buy into public insurance while keeping the private system.

"There is a significant segment on the left who appears to believe the ACA was insufficient, and even the candidates who are more moderate on health care, like Biden and Buttigieg, who want to do more on health care than the ACA did," Kondik said. "So at the very least, there seems to be some broad consensus that a future Democratic president/congressional majority should build on the ACA."

As the popularity of Obamacare and the former president himself have grown, Democrats have become more comfortable tying themselves to the ACA and Obama. In a presidential debate in September, Biden pointed to the fact that Warren said she was with Sanders on health care.

"Well I'm for Barack. I think Obamacare worked," he said.

In releasing his health plan in July, Biden also defended the law passed when he was vice president.

"I understand the appeal of Medicare for All," he said. "But folks supporting it should be clear that it means getting rid of Obamacare, and I'm not for that."

Graphics by CNBC's Nate Rattner

Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube.

Read more here:
A decade of Obamacare: How health care went from wrecking to boosting Democrats - CNBC

House Republicans are feeling good about their defense of President TrumpDonald John TrumpGermans think Trump is more dangerous to world peace than Kim Jong Un and Putin: survey Trump jokes removal of 'Home Alone 2' cameo from Canadian broadcast is retaliation from 'Justin T' Trump pushed drug cartel policy despite Cabinet objections: report MORE in this months impeachment vote, and now want to use the divisive fight to cut into the Democratic majority in next falls elections.

Republicans would need to gain about 20 seats to win back the House majority, something seen as a tall order by most political observers.

Much will depend on the presidential election, as a Trump victory would likely offer some coattails for Republicans. Yet Trumps low approval ratings and the possibility he could again win the Electoral College while losing the popular vote makes the GOP an underdog in seeking to end Speaker Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiPoll: More independent voters trusting of news stories Health care, spending bills fuel busy year for K Street Trump goes after Pelosi in early morning tweets complaining about impeachment MOREs (D-Calif.) second Speakership.

Gains by the GOP are much more likely, and Republicans are confident they can use the impeachment votes by many House Democrats against them starting with those representing districts won by Trump in 2016.

There are 30 such seats following Rep. Jefferson Van Drews (N.J.) decision to switch parties and become a Republican.

For the Democrats running in those 30 Trump districts, they now need to tell their constituents why they voted against their vote for president, and I think that's going to be a very difficult argument to make, especially with President Trump on the ballot, National Republican Congressional Committee Spokesman Michael McAdams told The Hill.

McAdams argues Democrats will be in a tricky position given GOP voters are energized by an impeachment they oppose. He also noted polling that shows independents opposed to impeachment.

Democrats recognize the threat, particularly in districts such as Rep. Joe CunninghamJoseph CunninghamHow the 31 Democrats in Trump districts voted on impeachment The Hill's Morning Report - Vulnerable Dems are backing Trump impeachment GOP claims vindication, but Van Drew decision doesn't spark defections MOREs in Charleston, S.C., and Kendra HornKendra Suzanne HornHouse votes to temporarily repeal Trump SALT deduction cap How the 31 Democrats in Trump districts voted on impeachment Pelosi, other female Democrats wear black to mark 'somber' Trump impeachment vote MOREs in Oklahoma City. Those two districts were surprises for Democrats in 2018, with Horn having flipped a seat that had been held by Republicans since 1975 and Cunningham won a district held by the GOP since 1981.

At the same time, they arent sweating too much about the possibility of losing their majority.

One Democratic operative pointed to a recent Politico-Morning Consult poll showing 52 percent of respondents support impeaching the president, as well as a funding edge for the party.

The source said they expect Democrats in swing districts to place a strong focus on health care and drug pricing.

We have a huge, huge, huge advantage on drug prices and health care and it's where we're going to spend our money money that we have more than they do," the operative said. We have more money on the hard side than they do, which obviously goes a lot further.

Given Van Drews party switch, just one Democrat Rep. Collin PetersonCollin Clark PetersonGabbard under fire for 'present' vote on impeachment Gabbard rips Pelosi for delay of impeachment articles The Hill's Morning Report - In historic vote, House impeaches Trump MORE (Minn.) voted against impeachment. Peterson represents a district Trump won by more than 30 points. Hes held it for decades, but is likely to face a tough challenge.

Of the 30 Democrats representing districts won by Trump, McAdams noted that Trump won 13 by more than 6 1/2 points.

He also said New Jersey, where Van Drew appeared to decide his best route to reelection was to run as a Republican, will be a key state. Democrats gained four seats in the state in 2018.

Conservative outside groups have also ramped up spending on anti-impeachment ad campaigns, hammering Democrats on their votes in districts they see as winnable.

Shortly after the Houses impeachment vote, American Action Network announced plans to spend an additional $2.5 million in 29 Trump-won districts held by Democrats, following an $8.5 million spending blitz in the weeks leading up to the articles of impeachment coming to the floor.

And prominent figures in the party have been making the rounds on cable news and taking to social media in an attempt to amplify their anti-impeachment messaging, taking aim at Pelosi and leaders of the inquiry including House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam SchiffAdam Bennett SchiffTrump's tweets became more negative during impeachment, finds USA Today Trump attacks Democrats over impeachment following call with military members Saudi sentencing in Khashoggi killing draws criticism except from White House MORE (D-Calif.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold NadlerJerrold (Jerry) Lewis NadlerImpeachment's historic moment boils down to 'rooting for laundry' Impeachment just confirms Trump's leadership 2019 was a historic year for marijuana law reform here's why MORE (D-N.Y.).

House Minority Whip Steve ScaliseStephen (Steve) Joseph Scalise2019 in Photos: 35 pictures in politics A solemn impeachment day on Capitol Hill House votes to impeach Trump MORE (R-La.) said he expects moderate Democrats to try to separate themselves from the impeachment narrative as the election grows nearer.

There are a lot of Democrats today who voted for people who can't go back home and explain that vote, and I will challenge them if they're getting a lot of people criticizing their vote, I would challenge them to invite Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff to explain what was done today, he told reporters immediately after the impeachment vote.

The Democratic operative said if Republicans were that confident about winning back the majority in 2020, fewer would be retiring.

So far 25 Republicans have announced they will not run for reelection next year, including Reps. Will HurdWilliam Ballard HurdSunday shows - Republicans, Democrats maneuver ahead of House impeachment vote Texas Republican: You can oppose impeachment and disagree with 'some of this behavior' Sunday Talk Shows: Lawmakers look ahead to House vote on articles of impeachment, Senate trial MORE (Texas), Mark WalkerBradley (Mark) Mark WalkerA solemn impeachment day on Capitol Hill GOP begins impeachment delay tactics with motion to adjourn The Hill's Morning Report - Vulnerable Dems are backing Trump impeachment MORE (N.C.) and George HoldingGeorge Edward Bell HoldingMark Walker mulling 2022 Senate bid, won't seek reelection in the House North Carolina congressman says he won't seek reelection after redistricting Democrats likely to gain seats under new North Carolina maps MORE (N.C.).

Some represent districts that appear likely to be won by Democrats.

The Cook Political Report has Democrats favored to win two seats in North Carolina that will be easier pickups for the party because of new congressional district lines brought about by a court decision. The two seats are held by Walker and Holding.

Democrats are also favored to pick up a seat in Texas.

If impeachment is so great for them, why are all their members retiring and why are they are not raising more money two signs that look bad for them in flipping the House, the operative said.

Go here to read the rest:
House GOP vows to use impeachment to cut into Democratic majority | TheHill - The Hill