THE MIDDLE ROAD

CHERI BUSTOS SHOWS HER OPPONENTS no mercy. Even in Skee-Ball.

The hypercompetitive three-term Congresswoman from northwest Illinois is walking with a fellow Democrat at a union picnic in the Cincinnati area when she spots the arcade game. “Aftab,” she calls to Aftab Pureval, a former prosecutor who is looking to unseat an 11-term Republican in this southwest corner of Ohio. “How are you at Skee-Ball?” Soon both are shoving tokens into the machine. But as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s chair of heartland engagement, Bustos is a professional multitasker. Between turns she talks about the bigger competition she’s focused on now: helping House Democrats win a bloc of seats that stretches from Omaha to the Philadelphia suburbs.

Democrats have struggled in these working-class districts in recent years, but Bustos has ideas for how to win them back. First, don’t lead with the controversial issues that are popular with the party’s fringe. High-cost, pie-in-the-sky proposals for a guaranteed universal wage and single-payer health care can be toxic with voters who think government is already doing too much, and little of it well. “You don’t go into