Interesting: “Conservative economist and media figure Larry Kudlow says he’s talked to national Republicans about running for Senate in Connecticut.” I mean, I don’t know if Larry Kudlow would win. But the mere fact that Senator Richard Blumenthal is generating this kind of anger over his looming vote for the Iran deal is pretty significant on its own. I’m starting to think that the Democrats don’t really realize how little the rest of the country wants to treat the Iran situation as Business As Usual.
Admittedly, he’s currently up more or less two-to-one against a hypothetical Kudlow candidacy. Currently. As I noted last week, Schumer wasn’t exactly challenged in his last election, and his current relationship with Wall Street threatens to clash badly with the President’s unfolding plan to demonize that institution. How well his supposed invulnerability will hold up under a real political assault has yet to be seen. Aggressive, ambitious New York Republicans, please note…
Which is great for a Democratic Senator, these days; but what it is not is the kind of numbers that make an actual electoral challenge a self-evident absurdity, particularly in an election cycle where Republicans can win statewide in New Jersey and Massachusetts.
Don’t get me wrong: he’s got a fearsome reputation as a retail politician. But I can’t help but notice that Senator Schumer’s a two-term Senator whose last election was against someone who nobody outside the NY GOP leadership actually wanted. Did you know that they didn’t have a Republican primary in 2004? Or that they went over the head of the guy who actually raising money via the grassroots? Or that the eventual Republican nominee didn’t get the nod from NY’s Conservative party? You probably already know that Schumer’s an exceptionally arrogant man who talks as if God Himself signed over the title to his Senate seat, but then, so does everybody else*.
So. If you’re wondering why Larry Kudlow seems to be at least thinking about this, that would be why. It’s not actually impossible to take the Senator down… particularly if the President really does try to play the faux-populist card against Wall Street, which by the way absolutely loves Schumer (or at least keeps their protection payments up to date with him). The American political graveyard is full of people whose careers came to an abrupt end after somebody said “Define ‘unbeatable.'”
Moe Lane
*Remember this?
Still think that the American people really don’t care, Chuckie?
