And that will help Democrats.
By Andrew Prokopandrew@vox.com Updated Jan 9, 2018, 9:44am EST
More and more Republicans are looking at how the 2018 elections are shaping up — and deciding they want no part of them.
This week, Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), who chairs the House Foreign Relations Committee, announced he’d retire from Congress rather than run for reelection — strengthening Democrats’ chances of winning in his competitive district.
This makes 17 House Republicans and three GOP senators who are calling it quits, not counting several more who are stepping down to run for another political office.
Viewed in historical context, that number of Republican retirements is already on the high side. And reports have suggested that this is just the start, and that several more GOP House members — perhaps many more — will also soon announce they’ll head for the exits.
Revealingly, only six House Democrats and zero Democratic senators have so far made the same choice. That’s a dramatic discrepancy.
Though the explanations offered for these decisions differ, and many of these GOP-held seats are in no real danger of flipping to Democrats, these retirements are revealing how members of Congress currently view the national political environment. That is: they think there’s a real possibility of a Democratic wave.
But the trend is more meaningful even than that. These very retirements could help make such a wave even bigger, because it’s generally easier for the opposition party to flip open seats than it is to knock off incumbents.
Read more
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/13/16624520/house-republicans-retiring-democratic-wave
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