Henry Olsen

Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, a soft-spoken, savvy senator, should be on the Democratic radar screen of presidential candidates.

Despite a roaring economy, Americans remain wary of the president and are as yet unwilling to join forces with his base. Bringing that union to fruition is the key political task President Trump faces in the next year and a half.

U.S. Senate races in Texas, New Mexico, and New Jersey could become unexpectedly close in the fall.

Salena Zito’s books, CNN appearances, and columns give voice to the blue-collar voters who delivered victory to President Trump in 2016. That is why Twitter trolls are poring over her work to find any error, no matter how slight, to discredit her.

For John Kasich, winning in 2020 would require persuading some of the more centrist voters who voted for Clinton or Trump in 2016 to jump ship. The policies that Kasich has so far proposed, however, are not likely to do the trick.

Thirty-seven states will elect governors this fall. If the negative trends apparent at the federal level hit Republicans here, too, the repercussions could be felt in the party for years.

President Trump’s supporters hope that his values and his policies will bring back an ethic of Americans investing in America, of simple patriotism as the norm and not the exception, and of moving away from treating people as rounding errors on a corporate balance sheet.

Democrats should do very well this November if the trends apparent in the special election in Ohio’s 12th congressional district carry through to the midterms. But to manufacture a blue wave and really wipe out the Republicans, they need to boost their appeal among rural former Democrats.

Rather than setting the GOP at ease, the results in the special election for Ohio’s 12th Congressional District should serve as a wake-up call to improve the party’s focus on swing voters before the November elections.

Most strategists and analysts say this November’s midterms will be determined by turnout. But it’s the voters who sit between the two parties, not the party bases, who will choose which party wins.

If Republicans can’t learn how to mobilize the blue-collar Democrats and independents who backed Donald Trump in 2016, they will forfeit their best chance to gain seats in the Senate and offset inevitable House losses in the suburbs.

If you want to get a quick idea about the outcome of the fall midterms, go to Miami, Minneapolis, and Philadelphia. Together these areas include 13 in-play House seats and contain concentrations of the types of voters up for grabs in other places.