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As for the premise of this article, retirements, they were vastly overstated as a reason for losing the House in 2018. We lost 30 GD incumbents.

Very true. I get a little irritated when I read that retirements were the prime cause of the House flipping in 2018. A lot of incumbents fell. We had 2 open seats in Virginia and held them. The 3 seats we lost were all incumbents.

But the fact remains the map still favors us, IF Trump is winning he’ll carry the majority of districts. There is little reason to expect very many of them will split there tickets. I have trouble envisioning Trump winning and not bringing at least a narrow majority, this is not 1988.

I should hope so. I worry though that B-list/incompetent candidates and lack of money can still make a difference. It's not hard to imagine low single digit Trump seats narrowly re-electing Democratic congressmen.

So I’m not worried at all about people like Pete Olson retiring, to the extent his district is competitive, it’s competitive whether he’s running or not (after all he a closeish call).

There was some talk on the RRH Elections blog that Twitter chatter claimed that Pete Olson had suffered a stroke and wasn't up to the challenge of another campaign. So probably a plus for us that he didn't run again.

The majority of the democrat gains, in 2018, were in districts that usually elected Republicans, in the last 30 years. That includes at least two districts, each, in CA, IL, VA, and NJ. In 2020, Republicans will gain 24 seats.