It’ll be interesting to watch what Walz can do here in Minnesota, with a state senate that is tied and the house currently a one-seat Republican majority, with a vacant seat and a looming special election. That election is in a heavily Democratic district, so the house will also be tied. He got quite a few progressive laws passed last year when the DFL (Minnesota Democratic party) controlled both houses, but he’ll have to do a lot of negotiating across the aisle to get anything done this term. If he can play it right, it’s a point he can run on.
Not to hijack, but how does that work? Is there a tiebreaking procedure, or can they just not pass anything without at least one vote from each party?
Here’s an interesting question for you all:
Some people think that being Jewish is a problem for a candidate and that we should go with a Christian.
What do people think about how Raphael Warnock’s chances might be affected by being an ordained Christian minister? I think some voters might find that appealing. On the other hand, Jesus is not very popular among the low-information younger/progressive voters; is there a danger people might just assume he has right-wing social views and tune him out?
I think his blackness is more of an obstacle than his being a Christian minister. Yeah, Obama-- but he really was a one-hit-wonder rock star.
But what the heck do I know… not much, and less every day… 
Well, it’s been amply established that voters perceive Black candidates as being more liberal than they actually are, So maybe if they perceive ministers as being more conservative than they actually are, it could balance out!
“Mr. Burns, you have every disease known to man, but luckily they’re all fighting each other to a standstill”.
What are we supposed to talk about there? We aren’t going to have a “strategy” for the midterms, we’re going to have 435 strategies in the House and 33 in the Senate. Likewise, you can’t have a general discussion about “how to win back statehouses”. If people want to have a thread devoted to a particular district or State, that would be great, but I think most States don’t have enough Dopers to sustain a thread.
Outside of Illinois, certainly no earlier than 2004/2005.
Prior to then, he had been in the Illinois state senate starting in 1997, and then won a U.S. Senate seat in 2004, in a contest that he might well have not won if the initial GOP nominee, Jack Ryan, had not been forced to drop out due to a sex scandal.
Also in 2004, Obama also gave a keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, which did give him a fair amount of national visibility, especially within the party; it’s likely that most Americans had never even heard of him before then.
Even when he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, he was still a first-term Senator, and I’m not sure how much of a “household name” he was before he started winning primaries.
This is a good move for Buttigieg. I don’t think he’d win for president, but he has a good shot at the Senate. This could be a good strategy in general for Dems to take back some power. Have people with national name recognition run for for congressional positions. Their name recognition means they’d have a good chance at winning, and also that they’d be interviewed a lot by national media. It gives the Dems a way to regain power and continue to get their message out. Then later on, it would be an easier path for a presidential run.
Exactly. In fact, I found something I wrote in 2004 right after the convention:
“Assuming the Republicans win in 2008, or Kerry wins in both 2004 and 2008, pencil in Senator Obama for a VP nomination in 2012.”
Eric Holder gets it even if most Democrats don’t. I won’t continue with this here because it would be hijacking the thread but getting control back of state legislatures is being ignored by too many people.
Yes, they decide the elections.
There is a third. Older conservative Republicans who have voted the straight GOP ticket all their lives.
Yep. The price of eggs is going UP!
I concur.
Well, feel free to start a thread about it if you want. Your link promises that if you donate money to Eric Holder, his organization will work to “fight gerrymandering”, “educate and mobilize the grassroots”, and “push for reform”. I think I’d need a lot more detail before I would consider that a “strategy” rather than a “fundraising email”.
They seem specifically focused on preparing for fights about redistricting in State legislatures. I don’t think anyone is going to argue that’s unimportant. Potentially there could be an interesting discussion about whether that’s the most effective way to direct our donations.
In the Minnesota state senate, the tie is due to the death of a DFL senator. The special election is today, and the Democratic candidate is likely to win.
The house is tied, but a Democrat’s residency was challenged and ruled invalid. Walz scheduled a special election for today for that seat, but the state Supreme Court ruled that that election was scheduled too early, and will now probably be in March.
In the meantime, Republicans hold a 67-66 advantage, so they thought they had the majority. However, the Democratic house members have boycotted attending, preventing a quorum of a true majority. The state Secretary of State, a Democrat, called the term into session, and without a quorum, he dismissed the house in a matter of minutes.
Republicans were furious, and decided they had the majority, and thus selected a speaker and committee chairs. Democrats went to the state Supreme Court, which ruled on their side. The Republicans and Democrats are back to negotiating how to manage the session until the special election, when an expected Democratic victory will return the house to a 67-67 tie, with shared leadership and commitees, somehow. How Walz handles this and reduces the temperature will be a test of how he can work with a divided political environment.
How about Walz with Beshear?
Right, because that worked so well for Clinton and Harris… Seriously, it should be well-understood by now, especially after what happened very recently, that that is not a winning strategy anymore. Harris went out of her way to cater to centrists, and not only did she not get enough votes from them, she alienated many leftist voters, the very group that’s supposed to be the Democratic party’s bread and butter, which resulted in them either staying home or voting third-party.
I saw with my very own eyes how a lot of my fellow left-wingers winced over Harris taking on centrist positions on certain issues. In trying to appeal to all, she appealed to none while Drumpf went full blast appealing to his base and it paid off.
If centrist candidates can’t even get enough centrist voters, then what good are they? I’ll say this again, we need a strong leftist leader who the people can see as an ally against the capitalist establishment. Having a strong base and keeping them engaged is the real key to success.
So, to summarize the thread, we all agree that the lesson we’ve learned from the 2024 campaign is that the Democrats need to do exactly what we already thought they should have been doing.
So Gary Peters (D-Michigan) has announced he’s not running for another term in 2026. That puts a D seat in greater jeopardy, but also may tee up an opportunity for Gretchen Whitmer (currently in her second term) to raise her profile.
Whitmer has already said she will not be running for Senate. This was yesterday so you must have missed it.
Yes - missed that. Sorry to hear it.
The Dems needs to encourage the GOP and trump to get inflation high- which trump seems to be doing. That was Harris/Bidens mistake- not using their magic powers to reduce inflation overnight. Shame on them! 