With all the attention being placed on the battle for the House in 2022, realistic analysis of the battle for the Senate has been lacking, so I tried to provide some at New York:
Political handicappers looking to the 2022 midterms have focused on House races because the very predictable pattern of midterm House losses by the president’s party makes continuation of a Democratic House a real long shot (and probably a prohibitive long shot unless Joe Biden’s job-approval rating shows significant improvement soon). The loss of either chamber, of course, means the governing trifecta that has made enactment of part of Biden’s legislative agenda possible will be gone, probably for a good while (at least until 2026, by my reckoning). But there is some independent value in continued Democratic control of the Senate thanks to that chamber’s role in confirming Biden’s executive branch and judicial nominees along with the ability to control committee and floor action in a way that gives Democrats significant leverage and opportunities for conveying their message.
Because only one-third of the Senate is up for reelection every two years, there is not the sort of predictable relationship between Senate outcomes and the general political climate. In other words, a bad year for either party in presidential, House, or gubernatorial contests doesn’t mean a bad year in Senate races if the landscape is positive. We saw that most recently in 2018, when Republicans lost 41 net House seats and seven net governorships yet picked up two net Senate seats because the landscape (with 26 Democratic Senate seats and only nine Republican Senate seats at stake) was very positive for the GOP.
The Senate landscape is modestly positive in 2022 for Democrats, who have to defend only 14 seats as compared with 20 seats for Republicans. Moreover, as Amy Walter points out, none of the 14 Democratic seats are in a state carried by Donald Trump in 2020. Meanwhile, Republicans are defending two seats in states carried by Biden in 2020, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
But at the same time, Democrats are defending three Senate seats (in Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada) in states Biden carried very narrowly (he won by 0.30 percent in Arizona, 0.24 percent in Georgia, and a relatively luxurious 2.39 percent in Nevada). Republicans in the two nominally blue states whose Senate seats they control don’t have much ground to make up, either (Biden won Pennsylvania by 1.17 percent and Wisconsin by 0.63 percent). They also control an open seat in North Carolina, a state Trump won by only 1.3 percent.
To give you an idea of how much “swing” Republicans might rationally expect in a midterm, consider that Republicans won the national House popular vote by 1.1 percent in 2016 and Democrats won it by 8.6 percent in 2018. That’s a lot of movement against the party controlling the White House. Anything remotely like that in 2022 — again, controlling for state aberrations despite the trend toward straight-ticket voting in recent years — and Republicans could pretty easily sweep the six contests mentioned above, all rated as toss-ups by the Cook Political Report, and take control of the Senate by a 53-to-47 margin, assuming neither party breaks serve by winning in a less competitive state.
What may give Democrats better Senate odds is the current nature of Republican intrastate and intraparty dynamics. There are potentially fractious GOP Senate primaries in Arizona, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania that could produce nominees with real weaknesses. Moreover, in these states and others (notably Ohio, a “red” state that recently reelected a progressive Democratic senator), Trump’s insistence on turning GOP primaries into referenda on loyalty to his ludicrous 2020 election claims could interfere with the expected pro-Republican midterm trend.
Potential Trump-generated problems affecting Senate races aren’t limited to his involvement in just those races. Georgia is a classic example. Freshman Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, who along with Jon Ossoff won by an eyelash in 2021’s unique dual general-election Senate runoff in what has become the ultimate battleground state, ought to be a sitting duck in 2022 with even a minimal midterm swing. But Trump enormously complicated Georgia politics by pushing the man Ossoff beat a year ago, David Perdue, into a primary challenge to the incumbent governor, Brian Kemp, as part of a purge effort aimed at those who didn’t support the 45th president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. The Perdue-Kemp primary is sure to be an extremely expensive and divisive affair. It could weaken the ultimate winner in a general election against Stacey Abrams and might spill over into the Senate race, where Republican front-runner and Trump favorite Herschel Walker hasn’t shaken questions about his background and temperament (or rid himself of primary opposition).
Divisive Republican gubernatorial primaries seem likely in Arizona and Pennsylvania, as well, and could extend to Wisconsin, where incumbent GOP Senator Ron Johnson is struggling with low favorability numbers.
Republicans should be considered the slight favorites to flip the Senate (and much stronger favorites to flip the House) in 2022, assuming Biden’s popularity doesn’t seriously improve by November. But Mitch McConnell should not be making big plans for 2023. His party’s lord and master, Trump, could screw things up yet, and you never know entirely what will happen in a wide array of competitive Senate races.
During the first month after the election, we were all seemingly in agreement that despite having lost, we’d managed to stay united as a party, and avoid the traditional Democratic circular firing squad. Times were gonna be rocky ahead, but we were going to face the enemy as one.
Then Beinart had to aim his guns at Moore and MoveOn, and Al From had to go on the attack against everyone who wasn’t as conservative as him without actually being a Republican.
These guys are a cancer on our party; they’ve got to go. I’m willing to debate ideas with whoever. But when the GOP puts Coburn and DeMint in the U.S. Senate, and worships at the feet of Limbaugh, Norquist, and Pat Robertson, anyone of *either* party has got a lot of damned gall to say our problem is that we tolerate extremists. Compared to the wingnuts I’ve just mentioned, Michael Moore is a freakin’ moderate. And, FWIW, he’s an honest-to-God patriot. If they try to kick him out of the party, I go too. Fercryinoutloud, we didn’t even kick GodZella out when he decided to campaign for Bush.
From: Gone. Beinart: Gone. (His ideas are actually good. But the penalty for starting a circular firing squad should be that you’re the first one shot. Then the rest of us all get to live.) Zell: gone. DLC: Gone. Being a conservative Dem is fine; being a traitor to the party isn’t.
You are very eloquent Aaron….but you are wrong. The Democratic Party MUST go back to its roots. If they don’t they will remain in the wilderness. I for one will not put my efforts into another election that dosen’t embrace a National Healtcare System again, (and again and again until we get it for ALL the American people), withdrawl from Iraq, investment in other energies, stem cell research (government sponsored), Choice and common sense.
If the DLC ignore Howard Dean for DNC Chair, millions will look for another leader in another party. Then the Democratic Party will be finished.
Beluumregio, you have profoundly misread Marshall. As the Dems adjust to the defeat and gather the reins to battle on, there will be much talk of restructuring the army.
But I don’t see any major commentator, certainly not Marshall, Black, etc. who will tolerate the sins of the Rupublican administration, much less endorse them. If you think Marshall supports Bush’s prosecution of Iraq, I’d suggest nothing else shows how badly you’ve misunderstood him.
I disagree with Jason Bradfield. There should be no purge and there will not be one. We cannot become Deaniacs until we have more PR infrastructure. Mr Rove has already made it clear that a sharp distinction between the parties is desirable. Since Republicans control the national imagination through their coordinated communications and public relations campaigns and have strong brand identity we would loose. We should (and must) do the hard thing by addressing the conservative issues in a liberal manner (as Marshall prescribes) and invest the public discourse with issues (and strategies) that put Republicans in a corner (which Marshall does not prescribe). The DLC is helpful but it should not be the Democratic brain trust.
I used to be a conservative Republican activist and I used to think the DLC was great because they forced the debate into a conservative frame of reference.
Now that I am a liberal I shocked that any Democrats, even centrists, take the DLC seriously. They are not centrists, they are conervatives. Every single one of their ideas puts the political debate on turf conservatives can win on.
The purge that is needed in the Democratic party is a purge of conservatives, just as the GOP successfully purged its Rockefeller Republican moderates.
The more a party can stay on message the better party discipline is. With DLC types running around the American public gets easily confused trying to figure out what Democrats stand for.
The sad truth is that, even if the public is not well enough educated, we don’t get to vote them out and elect new people. We work with the only Americans there are, or we lose elections.
The DLC would have us adjust our party platform to get to where the voters seem to be politically. The progressive alternative is to BE LEADERS and to make an effective case for our vision–such that the voters come around to our view. The Republicans have taken the leadership role, and brought the voting public where they want them to be, while the progressive Democrats have not led; they have instead insulted those voters who were following the GOP, calling them sheep, and focusing on attacking the GOP agenda rather than articulating a better alternative.
Our job as progressives is to give the voters an attractive vision of why what we want to do is best for them. If we do that effectively, then they will vote for us. If we’re not willing to do it, then the DLC is right and the only remaining way to win is to offer the people what they believe they want now, at the expense of our beliefs to the contrary.
I’m one of those rare believers in both the Beinart thesis (Democrats lost this election on national security grounds, and need to make Arab democracy the centerpiece of their foreign policy) and that the DLC is almost wholly irrelevant on domestic issues.
With a few notable exceptions, the DLC red state strategy has been a certifiable failure. Five out of six decent corporatist DLCish red state senate candidates went down in flames last month, and in at least two of those cases to complete lunatics. The only red states this strategy works in have large Democratic bases, and large quantities of white, professional, moderate, suburban swing voters (as in Colorado and New Hampshire.) This doesn’t describe most red states today.
Democrats need to recover their losses with the white working class if they want to have any hope of becoming a majority party again in the next thirty years, and economic populism is their best shot at that end. Combined with a program of democracy promotion abroad and you have not only a winning formula for the next generation, but you have again the party of FDR and Truman.
When I think of the DLC, I think of the smarmy, smug Evan Bayh who is a prominent member.
I think about how as a Democrat in the state of Indiana, one needs to go about being elected it’s US Senator. My best guess would be to position yourself just to the right of Joe Lieberman, and just close enough to Zell Miller without being laughed out of the party.
There is a reason why during our annual summer confrontation with hate groups here in the Chicago area, we had to bus them in from Indiana.
I disagree with the last poster Joe, as he is under the wrong assumption that the Democratic Party has been actively turning away or purging those of ‘faith and conscience’, which is exactly what the Republicans have been doing to gays and pro-choice members.
We are dealing with an American electorate where still today, 44% percent think that a ‘stable democracy’ is possible in Iraq.
There is nothing wrong with our message or our messengers. The problem is the truth does not translate well into the language of fear, intolerance and hate.
“The DLC is full of smart people who have many good and useful ideas about the road forward for Democrats.”
Perhaps they could work for Democratic institutions then? There’s more than a few on the rise, and they actually believe Dems should be… Dems.
Seriously though, I think MoveOn’s response was, while blunt, accurate. The DLC came up because they were successful at raising money via large corporate donations. Dean, MoveOn, TrueMajority, and Kerry in their wake showed that we can reach financial parity with the right with “trickle up” fundraising, and none of those efforts involved foresaking Democratic values to curry favor with big business. How thrilling was it, amongst the grief on Nov. 3rd, to see and hear all the responses of “Okay, I’m ready to keep fighting, where do I send the check and when do the ’06 campaigns get under way?”
I wouldn’t worry about all the truly smart and skilled people at the DLC. There is an upsurge of Democratic institutions afoot, there will be plenty of room for the good ones to get in and contribute, and hopefully working for those institutions won’t entail wincing when the bosses decide to berate the grassroots in the pages of the Wall Street Journal.
Worse things could happen than to have From and Reed fade into obscurity.
John Kerry lost to George Bush because the latter was successful in scaring the hell out of the American people and the former was not convincing enough that he could protect them as well as the guy who proved he couldn’t on 9/11.
Go figure.
The Dems don’t need to move to the center. Kerry did and he outscored Bush among independents and still lost. We turned out more voters for the Democratic party than any previous winner from either party ever got and still lost.
The Democratic party simply needs to open itself to people of conscience and faith while still voicing a progressive theme on economics, health care etc. and forget gun control, abortion rights and other social issues that Repubs use to bolster their base through identity politics.
Bush won because Rove grew the Republican base. The Dems will win when they field a candidate who grows their base and caters to it.
hmmm…
I’m not sure that the DLC and Clinton didn’t lead the Democrats down the garden path to near-oblivion. Clinton is a political genius, but with the republican party lurching off to the ideological gamma quadrant, the Democrats need to keep their distance from them, now more than ever.
The Republican party is simply crazy now, but the Democrats don’t win because they are still playing Clinton’s games.