Off topic. Stick to the thread discussion. See Post #53.
[ /Moderating ]
Lifelong Texan here, so pardon my ignorance re: Kentucky. I haven’t seen a signal yet that indicates McConnell may ever lose his Kentucky Senate seat - are you f’ing kidding me? Am I understanding this right? If so, why are we not referring to Kentucky-ians with the same disdain that we refer to Alabama-ians who it took an act of God not to re-elect a pedophile mall skirt-chaser to their Senate seat?
States’ voting records are on-topic here, so let me call your attention to OP where I mention that the white evangelicals in that 2017 Alabama election favored Moore 80-18. (That’s Eighty-percent with an E!) Whites (whether male or female!) without college education favored the pedophile 77-22. Even without filtering for education or religious fanaticism, Moore won a landslide among whites: 63-34 for women, and a whopping 72-26 for men. Jones barely eked out victory due to an overwhelming majority from the blacks who hadn’t yet been disenfranchised by white haters.
What “act of God”?
Checking up on the Senate again. Only major change since 7 months ago is that Georgia will now be electing TWO Senators. (IIUC, The Special election has no primary, but possibly a run-off in January?) Can Stacey Abrams be convinced to run? She’s the one Georgian D who’d be favored. And why isn’t Beto O’Rourke running in Texas? Would his chance be better than Hegar’s?
In addition to holding all their incumbencies except Alabama, the Ds need to pick up four seats to get to the Magic Fifty. I think these are the seven states most likely for a Democratic pick-up:
CO John Hickenlooper
AZ Mark Kelly
GA ??? (Stacy Abrams?)
TX MJ Hegar? [DEL](Beto O’Rourke)[/DEL]
NC Cal Cunningham
ME Sara Gideon?
IA ??
Using Wikipedia, I’ve shown the apparent front-runner to win the D nomination.
Iowa’s Joni Ernst is a right-wing nut-job it seems. She wants to abolish the IRS. According to Wiki, ‘Ernst referred to Obama as a dictator who should be “removed from office” or face “impeachment.” She said, “He is running amok. He is not following our Constitution.”’ She’s happy with Trump though. Pundits think Ernst may be very vulnerable, but 2 out of 3 likely D nominees in Iowa (Theresa Greenfield, Kimberly Graham, Michael Franken) don’t even have Wikipedia pages — that seems discouraging. But maybe not — AOC came out of nowhere!
Putting Senate seats in the D’s hands is an urgent priority for the U.S.A. Drastic measures are called for! Would Oprah Winfrey be a shoo-in? She only owns 11 homes; why doesn’t she buy a 12th in Maine and take down Susan Collins? 
Nah, save Oprah for Georgia, if Abrams doesn’t run. She’d juice the black turnout, and get more votes from whites than any other African-American running in GA could possibly get.
Her presence there would also put a big national spotlight on the GOP’s voter suppression tactics in GA, and make it harder for them to keep pulling that shit.
I was kinda joking when I started writing this, but now I’m thinking: the Dems ought to draft her for this race if she’s the least bit interested in running for anything, anywhere. And on top of everything else, she’s rich and can self-fund her campaign.
A Democratic President without 50 Senators will be like a bicycle without wheels. Obama had 59 Senators for most of his first two years, and needed every one of them.
Big Kudos to Bloomberg who has already spent a quarter of a billion dollars on ads to serve his country.
Oprah Winfrey represents herself as very altruistic — I hope the VIPs she listens to are encouraging her to run.
ETA: As long as we’re fantasizing – Why don’t Oprah Winfrey and Stacey Abrams team up and take BOTH Georgia seats!?
My guess is 20/80 if Trump wins and 40/60 with a D president. 2022, however, is a good map for the Democrats. Assuming no unplanned vacancies, that year will have 22 Rs and 12 Ds up for reelection. Of the D incumbents most are in solidly blue states, with a few purple leaning blue in Nevada and Colorado. The Rs will be defending seats in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Iowa as potentially competitive races. One of the Georgia seats and the McSally Arizona seat (should she win n 2020) will also both be back up in 2022. If the Ds don’t have control of the senate after the 2022 election that most likely means that something will have gone very wrong for the Democrats between now and then. The only scenario I see as somewhat likely for having to wait longer is this one. The Democrats win the presidency in 2020 but fail to take the senate, then 2022 is a strong red wave. Short of that I think we only have to wait three more years at most.
Good, so by 2022 at the latest the Senate will flip to majority Democratic control, Trump’s taxes SHALL be furnished to them and Trump is done for.
If a Democrat wins the White House, but the GOP still controls the Senate, the GOP will focus on making the President a one-term President, perhaps even deliberately sabotaging the economy. Given the problems Trump will leave behind, it will not be difficult for the GOP to make a Democratic President look bad, especially if it controls the Senate.
OTOH, if Trump is re-elected, and the GOP gets the blame for any economic or geopolitical problem — (pundits think a recession is likely in 2021) — then there may be a Democratic landslide in 2022.
Some other Doper suggested that a Trump victory in 2020 might therefore be the best outcome for Democrats and the country! This will seem ridiculously “Machiavellian” … but very well may be correct!
That all depends on how much longer RBG can hold out. In general, however, I tend to agree. If Trump wins in 2020, then 2022 and 2024 are likely to be large Democratic victories. Democrats would likely pick up 4 or more senate seats in 2022 under that scenario, and probably not lose any with the unfavorable 2024 map.
The bigger question, of course, is how much of our county would still be left by then.
But the Senate and Presidential elections are not independent. Most Trump voters vote for the Republican candidate for Senate, so it’s pretty hard to imagine how Democrats can win one but not the other. More likely to be all or nothing.
I think Mark Kelly has a decent chance against that anti-woman waste of oxygen Martha McSally. His being a former astronaut must give him a bit of help.
The problem is, if the Dems win the Presidency, 2022 is likely to be a terrible year for the Dems, on the order of 2010 or 1994. Unless they:
a) win the Senate in 2020;
b) kill the filibuster; and
c) pass legislation that quickly makes a positive difference in the lives of marginal Dem voters.
The party holding the White House almost always loses some House seats in the midterms. (The Senate depends on the map.) The question is, how extensive will the losses be? The Dems lost as bad as they did in 2010 because their voters didn’t show up. So the Dems need to give their marginal voters good reasons to show up and reward them.
If I had to speculate, I’d think that Beto has shot his bolt, and that his woeful performance in his Presidential bid didn’t do him any favors for statewide office.
MJ Hegar seems decent, but the biggest problem is that there just aren’t very many state-level Democratic candidates of any note, and MJ Hegar isn’t one.
The only one I can think of is Royce West of Dallas- he’s been a state Senator for thirty-plus years now, and is about as big of a Democratic candidate as you can get.
Of course, he’s black, and big-city urban (he was elected to Eddie Bernice Johnson’s vacant Senate seat when she moved to the Federal House), so that’s not going to play well with anyone who is uncomfortable or angry with either or both of those, versus Cornyn.
Most of the others who are still in the race are proven losers (Chris Bell) or inexperienced/unqualified. Lots of the actual qualified candidates who might have had a chance (Beto, Wendy Davis, Castro bros) declined to run, which makes me wonder if it’s considered un-winnable.