Put a gun to my head, as of this moment this is what the Senate map looks like for us in November.
(Map via 270 To Win) Pickups in AK, AR, LA (hardest to pick up), MT, NC, SD, WV; we retain GA (close) and KY (not close). CO, IA (second-hardest to justify), MI, and now NH (hardest to justify, and I am indulging myself there) up for grabs. And I am still keeping an eye on Oregon. Conditions aren’t quite ripe, there, but it could be the sleeper of the season.Two things pop out: one, the battlespace has almost shifted to the point where we can afford to lose one of those states and still count on having a majority. Right now we’re not precisely there: LA & NC are not locked down, merely good bets. But if things keep moving along the way that they are, pretty soon we’ll be talking about how to have enough of a margin for 2016. This is going to have an effect on… certain candidates’ rhetoric, so be ready for that.
Two: right now the Democrats are not exactly complaisant about the situation so much as they are committed to bad ways of handling it. Their current leadership is not up to the task of countering the American people’s genuinely hostile reaction to their signature policy (mostly because the Democratic leadership is perhaps incapable of admitting that the hostility is genuine). The Democrats lost a lot of territory in 2010. They largely failed to get it back in 2012, which was a year that was theoretically promising for them. If they lose more territory in 2014 – and that’s what is most likely to happen – even a good year in 2016 won’t be enough to put them back to 2008 levels.
I bring this up because there are a lot of Democrats on the state level that would like to go to Washington, or at least control their own state legislatures and governorships. Right now they’re not getting many opportunities to do that, and it’s very much due to their leadership. And they know it. Pain is a remarkable teacher; eventually enough of them will get the message, which is to change the message and remove the idiots that are currently in charge. We can’t expect them to stay dumb forever. If only because they’re running out of leadership cadre members that are still in office.
So that’s my take.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
I’m actually more concerned about them trying to use the IRS as a weapon, like they did in 2012, or massive election fraud, etc.
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They were complacent in 2010, they are continuing to get away with the IRS targetting of Conservative groups, and the recent special election in Florida has probably scared a good many Democrats. Now, they could end up turning on Obama in order to try to save their own political skins. However, they also could attempt to use the IRS as weapon again, just like they did in 2012, or worse because they are desperate to maintain their hold on power.
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I’m hoping they just start acting to save their own political skins and turn on Obama, Reid, and Pelosi; but we need to be on guard to the possibility that they will pull something like the IRS targetting of Conservatives like in 2012.
I think that particular weapon is done, for the Dems.
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Any conservative group that gets so much as a letter from the IRS will be scanning it and making it available online, any group that gets unrelated interest from other Fed agencies too.
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No, they’ll be looking for other avenues to shiv the GOP.
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Mew
acat, aside from Fox News who has been covering the IRS scandal?
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Seriously, nobody has suffered any consequences for the IRS targetting conservatives, the investigation has been stalled and DoJ’s investigation is a sham. In fact they are already pushing to get the IRS to continue targetting Conservatives…
http://www.examiner.com/article/vulnerable-senate-dems-want-irs-to-crack-down-on-conservative-political-groups
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So I seriously believe we need to be on guard for the possibility that the IRS will be used as a weapon in 2014.
I’m not at all convinced that Oregon should be colored blue. in 2008, Democrat Jeff Merkley defeated Gordon Smith, 864,392 to 805,159 (48.90% to 45.55%) in the election for Senator. But there was a third-party candidate in the race, David Brownlow of the conservative Constitution Party, and he received 92,565 votes — 5.24% of the total. A good Republican candidate and/or a weak third-party candidate could change the color of that Senate seat this year.
Since he’s been in office, Merkley has proven to be a colorless, doctrinaire Democrat flunky (unlike Oregon’s other Senator, Ron Wyden). Merkley is also on the record as parroting the Obamacare Big Lie: If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan. And Obamacare doesn’t have a lot of good publicity these days in Oregon … I suspect that Republicans will use that against him.