While NJ is almost certainly a Democratic hold, Menendez running as an independent adds some uncertainty. Senate Democrats desperately need to focus all their resources on the half dozen seats they’re having to defend, and having one more that they’ll need to at least keep an eye on isn’t great.
Fucking Bob Menendez.
The few polls I’ve seen with Menendez as part of the equation show him as being ineffective with Kim clearly winning. Early days yet. I’ve barely seen any ads yet.
As usual Donald Trump looked deeply into the issues and made his endorsement after weighing the pros and cons. Or it was a kneejerk reactions because Curtis Bashaw is a friend of Chris Christie.
Now I’m not a betting man . . .
With an eye toward November, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer attempted to bring a bill to the floor that would create a federal right to contraception. The motion failed to get the 60 votes necessary to avoid a filibuster, with all present Republicans except for Collins and Murkowski voting against it. Meanwhile all present Democrats voted for the measure (except Schumer, who voted no for procedural reasons). Nine Republicans and one Democrat didn’t vote.
The goal here is to give incumbent Democrats running for reelection an issue to run on, and putting Republicans in the position of opposing contraception is a not a bad move.
Agreed. One of the perks of being in the majority in an election year is forcing the minority to vote in ways that make them look bad.
Anyone understand the “procedural reasons” enough to explain to the rest of us?
Dems just lost the Chik-fil-a AND Hobby Lobby vote.
You have to be on the winning side to move to Reconsider and bring the main motion up again. Otherwise it cannot be brought up again in the current session
thank you.
House Republicans had to do this earlier this year when they botched the first attempt to impeach Mayorkas. When they realized that the then-live vote was going to fail, the main sponsor switched his vote to “no” so that he could move to reconsider. That let them take up the motion to impeach again the next day when they had lined up the necessary votes.
Schumer doesn’t have any realistic shot at passing it this session, but this will let him force Republicans to vote on it again closer to the election.
I have some bad news about the My Pillow bloc…
WARNING: Not intended to be used as an actual pillow.
Bashaw is also gay and pro-choice. Not exactly a typical Republican candidate.
Some (relatively) good news out of Utah – with Mitt Romney retiring, the question for Utah Republicans was whether to replace him with a relatively reasonable politician or an insane MAGA wingnut. Surprisingly, they went with the former – Rep. John Curtis won the primary today despite his opponent being endorsed by Trump.
Curtis is not a moderate (no such thing exist in the current Republican Party), but he is a conventional, establishment Republican in the Romney mold. He voted to certify Biden’s electors as well as to establish a January 6 Commission. He was one of 47 House Republicans to vote for the Respect for Marriage Act. He’s almost certain to win the seat in the general election.
As Romney was one of the very few Senate Republicans willing to (occasionally) buck the MAGA party line, it’s good to see him being replaced by someone hopefully in line with his principles.
Yeah, Utah is one of the few places where conservatives (as opposed to whatever the heck most of the Republican party is these days) still have a chance.
Early polling shows Angela Alsobrooks leading former governor Larry Hogan by 11 points. Maryland shouldn’t be a state we have to worry about but this is still good news.
I think it’s time for renewed focus on these, given recent events. Before Biden dropped out, there were reports of concerns about him dragging down downballot races. Now that there’s a surge in the opposite direction, how do we think those downballot races are affected?
The fundamentals of these races have not changed. The Presidential race has obviously been upended, but it’ll have to wait a couple weeks until things have settled down to see if/how the changes to the top of the ticket impact the down ballot races.
(Post partly copied from the “How can Trump win?” thread):
Looking over the list of polls (link below), the only one that looked a bit worrisome to me was Baldwin tied with her opponent in Wisconsin, but that was on July 10 — four other polls (three of them more recent than that) show Baldwin rather comfortably ahead.
There’s a recent poll with Brown only up by 4 in Ohio – that’s rather close for comfort, but not too bad.
Since early this year, we’ve known that Gallego’s Arizona race would be quite close, and it likely will be, but polls show him with a small lead at this point, so that’s good.
Tester’s running behind Sheehy in the latest Montana poll, that’s not great. With West Virginia now a guaranteed flip to the Rs, if the Ds lose a single additional seat then it’s a Republican majority Senate (assuming no D pick ups).
Obviously still a long time to go and a lot to shake out in terms of how the tumult in the Presidential race will impact down ballot races.