Among the many lessons from watching Democrat Conor Lamb sack GOP candidate Rick Saccone in a deep red Pennsylvania district is the fact that letting candidates keep it local has proven to be a winning strategy for Democrats. All you have to do is look at the disparity in what the campaigns of Lamb and Saccone spent vs. the spending of outside groups in the race to get an idea of which candidate determined their own message.
Lamb's campaign spent nearly twice as much as outside groups did on his behalf, while outside groups contributed more than 17 times what Saccone's campaign spent on the race. And similar to the tactic national Democrats took in Doug Jones's successful Alabama senate bid, they kept an off-the-radar profile in Lamb's PA-18 race. The same was not true in Democrat Jon Ossoff's gutsy-yet-unsuccessful effort in Georgia's 6th congressional district last year. Although Ossoff's campaign lavished nearly $30 million of its own money (raised mostly from small donations) on the race, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee still poured about $5 million into the election, giving national Democrats a bigger footprint in that campaign.
As Cook Political Report's David Wasserman noted Tuesday night, not having a distinct national message or personality to answer for has strategically benefitted Democrats.
This localized formula also proved true in last year's Virginia State elections, where Democratic candidates made incredibly strong showings by tailoring their messages to their districts.
The downside, of course, is that if Democrats do seize a majority in the House in November, the diversity of representatives will likely pose some governing challenges (just like the Blue Dogs did for several congressional sessions following Democrats’ 2006 takeover). But there will be one unifying factor among all Democratic members in any potential majority next year—they will have been boosted to office by a sweeping national backlash to Donald Trump. In other words, if there's one issue on which they should both have a mandate and agree, it will be the need to finally serve as a proper check on Trump's executive authority. In fact, many incoming Democrats will owe their congressional existence to the GOP's complete and utter failure to provide any proper oversight on Trump.
So yeah, forget the national message for 2018, let the candidates run distinctly local campaigns. Out of that diversity of races, we will likely see a handful of unifying messages emerge that can be used in 2020. And hopefully, the 116th Congress will be run by a group of adults ready and willing to return a sense of order to our national government that includes reining in the manchild in the Oval Office.