Moe Lane

I’m not saying that February of 2015 is late to be having stories like this with regard to the 2016 elections…

Less than four months after the painful losses, Democratic officials have begun charting a path back to Senate control that runs through more than half a dozen blue and purple states where the presidential campaign is expected to boost Democratic turnout. But even in that favorable terrain, the party faithful fear they could fall short if marquee challengers don’t step forward, since their talent pool is shallow and they are trying to unseat a well-prepared group of Republican senators.

…but if this is still the situation in, say, July – well. Truth of the matter is, the Democrats really should have a better idea of who they’re going to be running with. That they don’t yet is, well, kind of fun.

Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air is wondering why there was no money allocated for Mary Landrieu’s runoff:

This runoff was a flat-out certainty for months, which is why the GOP and its allies planned for big spending in Louisiana past Election Day. They put money aside even while aggressively spending against Democratic incumbents — like Landrieu herself, Mark Pryor, Mark Begich, Kay Hagan, and Jeanne Shaheen and Mark Warner in narrow losses. …Yet no one in Democratic circles prepared for the four-week campaign to save Landrieu from Barack Obama and herself.

Well, perhaps it’s due to a bad call on the DSCC’s part. Let us pretend, for a moment, that the results in 538’s last Senate ranking were correct, and reflected election night results. Well, in that scenario the GOP is not at 53 Senate seats and counting: we’re at 50. That’s because in that scenario we lost North Carolina and effectively Kansas (we will no longer pretend that Greg Orman was anything but a Democrat), and Georgia is on its way to a runoff election. As is Louisiana, of course; but in that situation a Democratic strategist could legitimately conclude that it would be simple enough to fund an emergency drive to take/flip the seats and retain the Senate. It would not be a hard sale, given the knife’s-edge nature of the scenario – which was, mind you, also the Democrats’ public worse-case scenario. (more…)

Thought so.

After getting criticism by Democrats for cancelling advertising reservations for the Dec. 6 Louisiana Senate runoff, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee says it is now raising funds for a “moneybomb” to support Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La.

The cancellation of ad time previously reserved by the committee for the runoff had fueled speculation the committee was giving up on Landrieu after she only mustered 42 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s primary. Rep. Bill Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, qualified for the runoff with 41 percent of the vote, but conservative Republican Rob Maness received 14 percent, meaning the two Republicans took 56 percent of the vote.

(more…)

Who am I kidding? The DSCC will forgive ALL of their candidates their sins.  It is not in their nature to do otherwise.

DSCC chair Michael Bennet says committee "absolutely" stands by Sen. Walsh despite plagiarism episode

— Mike Memoli (@mikememoli) July 24, 2014

So, remember: the Democrats don’t think that lying and misrepresenation are necessarily deal-breakers for one of their candidates.

Ah, my droogies: let me show you the wickedness of the world.  Or at least the wickedness of Jeanne Shaheen’s reelection campaign.

• It all started when this rather bizarre post went up on the Jeanne Shaheen website (don’t worry, safe link).  You look at that, and you think to yourself: That looks a lot like the framework of an ad – complete with stock photos! – that the Shaheen campaign would very much like a third-party group to grab and turn into an actual campaign commercial, only the campaign can’t actually say that.
• And the reason why you would think that is because that’s what it is.  You see, candidates cannot coordinate with third party political Super-PACs, thanks to the amazingly bizarre and remarkably pointless regulatory regime that we like to call ‘campaign finance reform.’ But as that link shows, there’s nothing stopping campaigns from putting up public ‘Important Messages,’ and then looking surprised when a third-party group turns that message into a campaign ad. (more…)

I so totally knew that they would use this argument.

Democrats aren’t taking Nate Silver’s latest Senate prediction lying down.

In an unusual step, the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee on Monday issued a rebuttal the famed statistician’s prediction – made a day earlier – that Republicans were a “slight favorite” to retake the Senate. Silver was wrong in 2012, the political committee’s Guy Cecil wrote in a memo, and he’ll be wrong again in 2014.

“In fact, in August of 2012 Silver forecasted a 61 percent likelihood that Republicans would pick up enough seats to claim the majority,” Cecil said. “Three months later Democrats went on to win 55 seats.”

(more…)

In a nutshell: Only three Democratic incumbents have lost reelection in the last decade.

…which is interesting, until you remember that the Democrats lost seven Democrat-held Senate races in 2010, and one in 2012.  If you’re wondering how that could be, well, either way you look at it it’s easier to maintain a high incumbent-reelection ratio when you’re sufficiently ruthless about getting weak incumbents out of the door. I don’t criticize the Democrats for that; pruning is what you have to do.  But it does a disservice to your own party’s contributors when you pretend that any election cycle is like any other.  The brutal truth is that this time around the Democrats have a large number of freshman Senators up for re-election who can’t be tossed out; and that their best two pickup states at this time are both long shots.  So you assume defense, going in. And it’s an off-year, which will help the Republicans more.

The Republican party is in a good position, in other words. Not good enough to suit its own partisans, but a deep and abiding pessimism is frankly baked into that particular partisan cake and there’s not much that any of us can do about it.

Moe Lane

The Hill, about the problems that the Democrats are facing next year in keeping their Senate majority:

[Brian] Schweitzer’s decision [to not run for the open Senate seat in Montana] deflated the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s annual retreat on Martha’s Vineyard, where many senators heard the news.

Because nothing says ‘Left-populist’ like ‘private Martha’s Vineyard retreat.’

Moe Lane

Just a link-free, quick observation: while I expect the House to not shift too much over the next few cycles (we will pick up some seats in 2014, probably, and lose some seats in 2016, probably*), I AM expecting a fairly large shakeup in the Senate in 2014, 2016, and 2018.  Why? Simple: in 2008 and 2010 we had somewhat drastic swings in Senate representation, and a slightly drastic one in 2006.  That means that 2014 and 2016 will have a good number of freshmen Senators being checked for the first time; and while the 2018 election will have less freshmen to be tested, some of the Democrats that did survive last cycle shouldn’t have.

So it should be brisk business for the the NRSC and DSCC for the next six years or so.

[pause]

That’s it.  And that’s a guess, honestly.

Moe Lane

*And that will have no link whatsoever to whoever wins the Presidential election.

Just can’t quite see their way clear to get somebody strong to keep the seat.

Attorney Nick Preservati will not run for Senate in West Virginia, forcing Democrats to continue their search for a strong recruit in the 2014 battleground state.

Democrats have been hunting for a candidate in the Mountain State since Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., announced his retirement earlier this year. Rothenberg Political Report/Roll Call rate this race Lean Republican.

Last year, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican, announced her campaign for Rockefeller’s seat. She remains the top Republican in the race.

(more…)

Could be, could be:

Left to cope without the party’s top possible recruit, conservative Democratic Rep. John Barrow, who announced he would seek reelection to the House over a Senate bid, Georgia Democrats are now poised to nominate their own Colbert Busch: Michelle Nunn, a prominent nonprofit strategist who boasts a gilded surname in these parts.

Nunn’s father, Sam, once held the Senate seat up for grabs in next year’s race, but she claims no personal experience in the political arena and, like the Colbert Busch experiment, would likely pitch voters a technocratic vision of public service.

But Republicans say that formula has already been tested by voters whose conservative orientation closely mirrors the public sentiment found in Georgia.

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Interesting.  Below are the latest (just before the election) Debt and CoH (Cash on Hand) totals for the various committees:

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