Inspired by user bjssp, I've decided to do a diary on why Michele Bachmann's district, while winnable against her, is not a district we can hold in the future.
First, her district:
By my estimation, the blue parts are suburban/exurban, while the green parts are rural (or the St. Cloud area, which is I guess a micropolitan area, but which for these purposes don't count as suburbs).
Population wise, 67.1% of her district's population is contained in its suburbs. I expect that number to increase, as it's overpopulated and the St. Cloud area should go into a different district.
Barack Obama received about 45% in her district. We hold very few Obama districts below 50%, and in fact the only ones that are suburban we have held in recent times are Melissa Bean's/Joe Walsh's (Obama was above 50%, but he got a home state boost), Jason Altmire's (which is heavily ancestrally Democratic), and Harry Mitchell's/David Schweikert's (which would've been more Democratic had McCain not been from Arizona. Jim Matheson is a special case that, frankly, I can't understand. Bart Gordon's probably qualified too, but he was a longtime incumbent. I haven't thoroughly examined the list, but I don't believe we are missing any. McCain districts we do hold are generally in ancestrally Democratic areas (W. MN, W and SE NC, S. GA, etc.).
Secondly, http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/... Nate Silver's Partisan Propensity Index (thanks to Xenocrypt for reminding me of it). According to it, Bachmann's district is LESS winnable than any district we held after the wave year of 2008 except:
Chet Edwards' district (he lost by about 20 points in 2010, so I doubt he'd have held on even in a neutral year)
Walt Minnick's district (he barely won in a Dem wave year, and only because of a flawed incumbent. This would be similar to winning Bachmann's district)
Frank Kratovil's district (he was endorsed by the Republican incumbent and still lost in 2010 by a wide margin)
Gene Taylor's district (longtime incumbent)
Jim Matheson's district (as I said above, I can't understand this one).
Bart Gordon's district (longtime incumbent).
Even Bobby Bright, Lincoln Davis, and Ike Skelton held more favorable districts for us than the one Bachmann has now.
As I've stated in the DKE comments, suburban Republicans vote straight-ticket; they don't have ancestrally Democratic loyalties. You can check this on your own. Where will a Democrat win: R+ single digit Gwinnett County near Atlanta (now, demographic shift may make Gwinnett blue in a decade, but this is for 2012) or R+ single digit counties in rural South Georgia? Where will a Democrat win: R+4 but very wealthy and suburban Orange County, California or the R+5 ancestrally Democratic district held by Tom Perriello until 2010?
PVI isn't everything, and in fact Nate Silver's PPI may be better. Suburban vs. rural is an important distinction to keep in mind.
One last point: even within Bachmann's district, the Democratic Party Average was...
44.8% in the suburban parts (.1% worse than Obama)
45.5% in the rural parts (1.7% better than Obama)
So being rural rather than suburban adds two points of local Democratic strength, at least in Minnesota.
We can beat Michele Bachmann. She's an extremely flawed candidate. But let's not pretend we can hold this seat for the entire decade.