04-23-2021, 01:44 PM
(04-23-2021, 01:18 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: As I see it, Ron Johnson of WI, Sen. Toomey's seat in PA, and Tillis' seat in NC are the most vulnerable.
Florida is trending Republican, and Rubio is popular, so I don't see him being defeated.
Ohio and Iowa are trending Republican, so I don't see much chance of turnover there in a midterm election with a Democratic president. Missouri seems even more unlikely.
Murkowski has faced a Republican revolt before and survived. I doubt she can be defeated, but if she is primaried and does not win again as an independent, the odds are the seat will stay Republican, but this hasn't always happened (Begich in 2000), so an upset is possible.
I see New Hampshire, Nevada and Arizona as trending Democratic. So if Biden is doing well, they will stay Democratic. I think Mark Kelly is admired and popular, so he will win despite voter suppression efforts. Warnock is pretty strong in Georgia, so it depends on how well voter suppression works there.
I had to make some discretionary choices... I'm trying to avoid making judgments on how good or awful an elected pol is. I put Florida and Alaska in the "iffy" column because Florida is usually close and because even if Lisa Murkowski ran on a write-in campaign and won a three-way race as an alleged moderate in 2016, Alaska now has a jungle primary. That jungle primary could go 38-34-28 with Linda Murkowski ineligible even as a write-in in a second round by being the "28" as the right side of the political spectrum splits the vote. How those who thought her acceptable vote in the general election might decide whether Alaska's Senate race goes D or R. I'm trying to avoid saying something like "Marco Rubio is an empty suit"... even if he is, "empty suits" and even worse can get elected and re-elected. A bad year for Republicans, which I cannot rule out, makes him vulnerable for that reason alone. In a mediocre-to-good year for Republicans, then Marco Rubio wins... which I can say of freshman Democratic incumbents in non-swing states in mediocre-to-good years for Democrats.
Chuck Grassley has typically won by large margins in Iowa for a long time... but he is one of two remaining Senators (the other is Pat Leahy in Vermont) from when Jimmy Carter was President and Walter Mondale, recently departed, was Vice-President. He will be 89 in 2022, and unless he has some desire to break the record for age of a US Senator (Strom Thurmond) he might contemplate retiring. The other judgment call is on Wisconsin. Ron Johnson has yet to say that he is retiring in 2022, but he is doing badly in fund-raising, as is Grassley. His margins of victory never were high, and his 2016 margin in a poor year for Democrats is lower than his narrow win in 2010. Fund-raising is essential to any Senate campaign, and in a legitimate swing state, it is impossible to win without it. The general assessment is that Ron Johnson goes down to defeat in 2022 even in a good year for Republican incumbents.
Paradoxically I see as many sure victories for Republican incumbents as for Democratic incumbents, but the retirements are trouble. To be sure, it's hard for me to imagine any Democrat winning the Senate seat that Shelby is vacating... but I would say the same thing in parallel if some Democrat from a non-swing state (let us say Leahy in Vermont) were to decide to retire.
Midterm elections are often effectively referenda on the President, but this one could be an effective referendum on the previous President who leaves a strong political stench in his wake.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.