Posted on 02/05/2013 9:23:06 PM PST by neverdem
The odds are against Senate Democrats this cycle. But, of course, they were against the party two years ago at this time, and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Executive Director Guy Cecil didn’t merely beat the odds — he slaughtered them.
This time, Democrats face better prospects of holding onto their Senate majority next November than they did two years ago (after all, they begin with 55 seats instead of 53), but a net loss looks inevitable and a big loss is quite possible. Cecil, who is back for a return engagement this cycle, has his work cut out for him.
The biggest factor in how the cycle turns out probably isn’t candidate recruiting, fundraising or the number of open seats, though each will affect the fight for the Senate next year. It is almost certainly going to be President Barack Obama’s popularity and the electorate’s sense of how he is doing.
Democrats went into the 2012 cycle defending 23 Senate seats to the GOP’s 10 seats, and the landscape of that Senate class — races in Massachusetts and Maine, but also in North Dakota, Missouri, Virginia, Florida and Montana — certainly favored Republicans.
This cycle, the numbers aren’t quite as asymmetric, but with 21 Democratic seats and only 14 Republican seats up for election, the GOP once again begins with an advantage.
Unlike 2012, when Democrats started with at least two serious takeover opportunities, in Massachusetts and Nevada , this cycle the party lacks any good takeover opportunities (before retirements). That reality, combined with a landscape that includes a number of Democratic seats in very conservative states (West Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Alaska and South Dakota), makes for an ever greater initial Democratic headache than at the start of last cycle.
With Senate contests next year in four strongly anti-Obama states, Democrats can’t afford a second Obama midterm election with a national electorate that wants to send a message of dissatisfaction with the president.
Obama carried just 35.5 percent of the vote in West Virginia, 36.9 percent in Arkansas, 39.9 percent in South Dakota, 40.6 percent in Louisiana, 40.8 percent in Alaska and 41.7 percent in Montana last year. While voters were able to split their tickets in 2012 and vote against Obama but for Democratic Senate nominees such as Joe Manchin III in West Virginia or Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, voters won’t be able to do the same thing in 2014.
The president isn’t on the ballot next year, so the only way for anti-Obama voters to express their opinion of the president is to vote against his party’s Senate nominees. And that makes Senate seats in anti-Obama states in 2014 much more difficult to hold than Senate seats in anti-Obama states were in 2012.
An overly ambitious — and overly liberal — agenda coming from the White House, which looks like a distinct possibility, could undermine the Democrats’ chances of holding onto Senate seats in states where Obama performed poorly in both 2008 and 2012.
Still, last year’s elections certainly proved that candidates and campaigns matter, and if all else fails for Democrats, the party can probably figure on Republican primary voters screwing up in at least a couple of states and producing nominees so weak that Democrats can steal a seat or two, as they have done during the past two elections.
You can almost see the writing on the wall in the newly open Iowa Senate race, where GOP primary voters easily could select a doctrinaire conservative over a mainstream conservative, lessening their party’s chances of picking up an already difficult opportunity.
Anyway, the cycle starts off with eight vulnerable Democratic Senate seats and not a single vulnerable GOP one. Republicans need to net six Senate seats to have a majority in the next Congress. Though not impossible, that is a very difficult task, especially given the current standing of the two parties.
At the Rothenberg Political Report, we start off by giving Republicans a slight edge in West Virginia’s open seat. South Dakota looks like a problem for Democrats with or without Sen. Tim Johnson’s retirement, while the politically conservative, anti-Obama natures of Louisiana and Arkansas put them at great risk for incumbent Sens. Mary L. Landrieu and Mark Pryor.
The cycle could deteriorate dramatically for Democrats if most or all of the next group of potentially competitive contests — Alaska, Iowa’s open seat, Montana, North Carolina and even New Hampshire — become really serious Republican opportunities. Of those five, Obama carried only two, Iowa and New Hampshire.
Obviously, this year’s special election in Massachusetts and additional retirements on both sides of the aisle could have a big effect on the final results next November.
No two cycles are exactly alike. The GOP’s failure to net three or four seats last time, as many initially expected, doesn’t mean the same will happen in 2014. Personally I don’t believe in jinxes, whether in second-term midterms or because the Boston Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees. But voter fatigue with a president after six years is a very real danger for Obama, and that, more than anything else, may make 2014 more challenging than last cycle for Guy Cecil.
That’s unfair to sticks and cognac.
With the entire nation apparently drinking Obama’s Kool Aid, all bets are off.
America, once the land of the free and the home of the brave is now merely the land of Marxists sucking the tail pipe of outdated communist doctrine and calling out, “Yes, Premier Obama, give me more of the same!”
Contemptible.
It certainly didn’t help.
Republicans have got to get used to the idea that the media is not their friend and the media is actively looking for the most innocuous statement to blow out of proportion, all across the country.
Not learning to stay on message is preventing conservatives from winning seats in close election areas. It’s fine where conservatives are guarenteed seats for candidates to say whatever they want, but when those same words are heard in blue counties and states, it’s costing votes.
Canada went through the same thing. We had candidates, in backwater towns that nobody has heard of, saying the reasonable things, from a conservative point of view, but those same words somehow made it on the front page of the Toronto or Montreal papers and the conservative candidates in liberal areas suddenly had to defend themselves for those words, that they did not say.
Yes, it did cost the conservative party seats during those years. It was only when conservative candidates refused to be baited by hostile reporters did we finally make headway.
Who? Sasser was one.
“We Need that Senate.”
Well, I’m sure Rince Priebus and Karl Rove will get the job done—just look at last Nov. (snort, snort)
Democrats, esp. those in conservative leaning states, seem to have an easy time convincing voters that they are conservative and will be independent voices in D.C.. Manchin, Heitcamp, Landrieu, e.g.
But when they get to D.C., they play faithfully on the Democrat team. And voters rarely hold them accountable for that.
Some losses you can chalk up to just plain weak candidates and the power of incumbency.
But there’s absolutely no excuse for a Republican to lose an OPEN U.S. Senate seat in a conservative leaning state. None, whatsoever.
the Dems will just paint the Republicans as the party of ‘no’ and say look how they fight Obama on all the good he wants to do. And all the mushy moderates will again be swayed and want to ‘punish’ those that don’t get along in the Senate playgroup. They will say we really can’t judge Obama until he is given full reign to do whatever he wants (as if he doesn’t already). I have little hope that this will will be any different than Nov. 6.
It was pushed through by the arch-Socialist Wilson as the first step in dismantling the Republic.
As for West Virginia, a GOP pickup is a pipe dream.
Well in GA we will be replacing one of our POS RINO’s for a conservative and then in 2016 we will get rid of the other one.
Here is the way to handle that. Have someone stand behind our candidates where they are within arm’s reach, and carry a big roll of duct tape. When the candidate is questioned by the ‘Rats and/or the media (and you know they will be) about abortion and rape, have the person with the tape slap a big strip of it over the mouth of the candidate. Keep doing that until they learn not to fall into that ‘Rat trap.
In case that was misread, I didn’t mean that we’ve only defeated 2 Senate Dem incumbents since after 1980. I said that we’ve never beaten MORE than 2 in each election since. In 1994, we won the Senate solely because of a rash of Dem retirements. We still only defeated 2 incumbents, Sasser in TN being one (by Bill Frist), and the weak Harris Wofford in PA (who was serving out the 3-year remainder of John Heinz’s term), whom was beaten by Rick Santorum.
I look at Landrieu as especially galling. In pre-Katrina Louisiana in 1996, she won by massive voter fraud in New Orleans (coordinated by then-Mayor Marc Morial’s LIFE political machine). The Republicans were too scared to challenge her (and Loretta Sanchez’s in the House) “win.”
We end up running these retreads and weak candidates, and we shouldn’t be surprised at the outcomes. Perhaps it’s time to set up some sort of Conservative candidate school to prepare our girls and boys for the hard-knocks and having to fight against three sides (first, the party establishment that hates small-government Republicans; two, the media/culture that will try to trip them up, especially on gotcha questions on rape; three, their Democrat opponent, who hopes that the prior two will have softened them up to the point that they can deliver the death blow).
It’s time to raise and train an army of teflon candidates who can go out there and get the job done.
That may be the ONLY way to keep those politically unskilled to keep their mouth shut. The problem is they are too honest about their beliefs. Which is just fine, but please do not run for a statewide office. The statements by Akin & Mourdock was the fodder demorats used to portray republicans as at war with women. It was very effective based on the exit polls for women’s vote.
Question:
Does that say more about Akin and Mourdock...or about the women who cast those votes?
Democrats AND RINO VICHY GOPe TYPES used....
No, there won't be a GOP Senate in our lifetime, because...well, you know. They pee on their base.
This has been my talking point. We will HAVE to overcome that to get majority in '14 unless there are more retirements and we sweep the open seats.
Meanwhile GOP incumbents have dropped like flies.
Those two must not understand if they are laughing at that accurate comment.
Hey Obama keep pushing that gun thing.
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