Man! It’s like Deja Vu all over again Yogi Berra
Mitch McConnell can’t be a very happy camper right now. He’s got to be starting to feel like Bill Murray’s character in Groundhogs’ Day, which is music to my ears. I’ll explain.
As Donald Trump took the oath of office on January 20th, 2017, Mitch McConnell was already rubbing his hand together so hard that you could smell bacon grease. The GOP had it all, the House, the Senate, and the White House. An the Democrat’s 2018 Senate reelection map was a GOP wet dream for gaining the fabled 60 seat supermajority, making it impossible for minority Democrats to even filibuster.
McConnell set right to work. He prioritized the Democratic seats by order of difficulty, and then started making a list of top tier candidates, with statewide, if not national name recognition, and previous campaign experience and an already existing donor base. And then he went recruiting.
And suddenly the odor of bacon grease turned into the stench of spoiled meat. Basically McConnell ran into a roadblock, and that roadblock was the fact That Trump turned out to be a dumpster fire. Everything he did engendered mass protests against him, and the Democrats started showing surprisingly strong results in safe GOP districts in special elections. GOP House incumbents in shaky swing districts started bailing for the door en masse heading into 2018.
And so did McConnell’s vaunted top tier class of candidates to go up against the Democrats. Most mainstream Republicans still considered Trump an electoral freak of nature, a one-hit-wonder. And no conservative who wanted a political career post Trump wanted his name anywhere near the upcoming midterm bloodbath. The Democrats basically fought to a draw, keeping the margin close enough for the 2020 Senate miracle flip.
And now it’s 2022 and McConnell has to feel like he’s in a recurring dream loop from a Freddie Krueger movie. The 2022 Senate electoral map is nowhere near as GOP friendly, but long standing tradition is that the incumbent party loses seats in the first midterm. If he can hold home court, and pick up one Democratic seat, he’s home. But he has three problems on his hands.
First, he has more open seats to defend than the Democrats do. And that’s never a good thing. Open seats are harder to defend than occupied seats, since they lost the home field advantage of statewide name recognition, a campaign structure already in place, and an already existing donor base. It’s even worse when one of the open seats is in a state that Biden just flipped in 2020, Pennsylvania.
Second, McConnell has some very weak, vulnerable incumbents running this cycle. The two weakest seats the Democrats hold in 2022 are Warnock in Georgia, and Kelly in Arizona. But since both are likely facing Trump endorsed opponents in states that flipped blue in 2020, and the Democrats will defend them balls-to-the-wall, those are far from a sure thing for McConnell.
McConnell has at least 3 weak links. In Florida, Marco Rubio is such a sniveling sycophant that even freakin’ Ivanka Trump considered butting heads with him in the primary. And he’ll likely be going up against a top tier Democrat, Representative Val Demmings, an African American woman who was the former police chief in Orlando and burnished her reputation with her commentary in the aftermath of the Pulse nightclub shooting. Oh yeah, and she cruises around on a vintage Harley.
In Wisconsin, Ron Johnson has gone so far off the rails that the Democrats might want to consider donating to his primary fund to make sure he survives. Biden flipped Wisconsin in 2020, and Johnson is even loopier now that he was then. McConnel may well be praying for him to go down in the primary, rather than have to defend him in November. And in Utah, Mike Lee is facing an independent challenge from Evan McMullin, who polled surprisingly well in 2020 against trump. The reason I include this is that it’s possible that the Democrats don’t even field a candidate, and tell their voters to pull the lever for McMullin.
The third reason is history repeating itself. In 2018 McConnell couldn’t get top tier candidates because nobody wanted their name tied to Trump and his poison. And in 2022, nobody wants their names attached to the Trump GOP. There is a small but inordinately nationally loud bunch of invertebrate crustaceans in the House, led by Laborious MTG, Matt Gaetz, Madison Cawthorne, Louie Gohmert and Paul Gosar, who are all pounding the pro Russia FUX News drum. And that’s not a good thing in a world united in condemning Putin and Russia. And nobody sane wants their name anywhere near that treason.
And so McConnell has to satisfy himself with quality like Hillbilly JD Vance in Ohio, domestic abuser Herschel Walker in Georgia, and world famous television quack Dr Oz in Pennsylvania. Of the three, only Walker is at least treading water, but the simple fact that they’re still even there shows you the depth of the GOP Senate gene pool.
So don’t give up on the Democrats retaining the Senate just yet. There are miles to go, but Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and the GOP Trump House response to it has made it more of an uphill battle for McConnell and the GOP. And while you’re at it, don’t give up on the Democrats retaining control of the House just yet either. Recently, both GOP strategist Rina Shah, as well as GOP strategist Shermichael Singleton, predicted that 2022 will be a bloodbath year for Trump anointed candidates, incumbents as well as challengers, in both the primaries as well as the general election. The GOPs House’s slavish devotion to Putin isn’t going well, and will only get worse as more images of carnage emerge from Ukraine. Meanwhile, Biden and the Democrats have successfully cast themselves as the staunch defenders of Ukraine, forcing the GOP to go along, and they’ll reap the benefits at the ballot box. This will throw open a whole shitload of critical suburban swing districts that may not have as much in play under different circumstances. Don’t touch that dial.
The House is what concerns me far more than the Senate…..the possibility that the Repubes win a majority and then vote the Orange Shitstain in as Speaker.
This possibility/threat needs to be highlighted every single time a microphone is shoved in a Dem’s face from now until Election Day. This can’t be allowed to happen.
As much as the GOP and Trump keep loving to bring that up, it’ll never happen. Trump HATES anything close to actual work and the Speaker of the House is NOT a job that you can just do half-assedly. You have to preside over EVERY SINGLE VOTE. You have to begin the sessions and end the sessions. When would “Speaker Trump” get a chance to hit the links when he’s expected to be front and center every single minute of a House session? And then, there’s those pesky State of the Union addresses. The Speaker has to welcome the President (whoever that may be) and then turn over the podium to the President. Sure, he could then sit his fat ass down and play Angry Birds or whatever keeps him occupied (but I really doubt he’d enjoy having the cameras catch him nodding off because it’s past his bedtime).
There’s a lifetime (in political terms) between now and November but I am feeling more hopeful every day. Biden’s handling of Ukraine has his poll numbers going in the right direction. Inflation will be a concern, but if the economy as a whole is on the right track that may not be the deciding factor. Plus, the Supreme Court is primed to at the very least roll back Roe v. Wade and that will likely light a fire for all voters that care about women’s rights. And most importantly, we have some really outstanding candidates.
In Ohio, Tim Ryan (who is wisely employing the Sherrod Brown playbook) will face a trombie, probably Josh Mandel (who is just as awful as JD Vance). In PA, either Connor Lamb or John Fetterman could easily defeat Dr Oz. Hershel Walker is already imploding in GA, and I would pay to see him try to debate Raphael Warnock. In AZ, I don’t even know who the frontrunner for the rethugs is, but the fact they couldn’t even induce the fairly popular governor to run for it means it’s probably a lost cause. In IA, Chuck Grassley is pushing 90 and a majority of rethugs have told pollsters they want someone different, so Abby Finkauer may have a fairly easy race.
Being from KY, nothing would make me happier than the Democrats enlarging their majority, which might have the equally enjoyable side effect of Yertle retiring rather than remain minority leader.
I am still agog that NOTHING has been done about these RWNJs out and NO ONE has taken a single step to expel them from congress or indict them for their participation in the violent events of Jan 6 and continued violation of the Constitution. They almost freely admit to violating laws and no one is there to shut them down and lock them up. Something is seriously wrong, when more than a year after the capitol riot and all events leading up to it, Bannon is still doing his thing, and the Putin wing is moving about freely trashing the government they are sworn to defend. Just how much evidence does it take to get these people the hell out of Washington. Instead, we are talking about RE-ELECTION!! I think the whole federal apparatus has gone off the rails, and there is nothing good to look forward to in our future unless officials get the lead out of their asses and shut them down.