Looks to me the Republicans will gain seats but not control the Senate and increase their hold on the House. That is about what one expects with an unpopular sitting president of a given party.
For the presidential election following a couple years later, I think the Democrats will coronate Mrs. Clinton and if the Republicans nominate anyone even reasonably moderate they will win; her negatives are too big.
The “Tea Party” types are an element the Republicans have always had to deal with (I remember Senator McCarthy and how Eisenhower boded his time until the the Senator destroyed himself. A similar process is now happening.
No, the GOP is honest about where it’s been. The Democrats are the ones that try to whitewash their history.
The specifics of policies are different from a general ideology. A conservative party can cut taxes, fail to cut spending, and run big deficits. Or it can cut spending, fail to cut taxes, and run big surpluses. Or it can cut both only a little bit.
A general dislike of tax and spend can take you in a few different directions. A general enjoyment of tax and spend can also take you in a few different directions. The Democratic Party up until Bill Clinton believed that you shouldn’t run big deficits. The Democratic Party post-Bill Clinton is now into big deficits because Keynes and the Great Recession.
Of course, they have to be into big deficits because they now have adopted the Republican worldview that no one making under $400,000 should ever see their taxes go up. That severely limits how much the government can be funded, leaving Democrats with the choice of either learning to love deficits, or cutting back government sharply. I’d say in 20 years they’ll have resigned themselves to cutting back government.
I think you’re wrong on both counts. I think the GOP will win the Senate, but I dont think they are going to beat Hillary Clinton.
2020 is the most likely year for the GOP to win the Presidency. Hillary will be looking pretty tired by 2020, making her a perfect foil for a young Republican challenger even if she is a decent President. If she’s a great President(a very real possibility), then forget it, Democrats may hold the WH until 2028.
Hopefully you’re right. But the polls say Clinton could fall a LONG way down and still win handily. Although the latest poll showed Jeb uncomfortably close to her. Just what the country needs: A Bush-Clinton race.
Yes, I would be absolutely thrilled by a de Blasio or Warren candidacy as it’d mean the GOP back in the White House far sooner than I expected. I can think of ten Republicans likely to win the nomination that would kill either of those candidates, and I can’t think of one who can beat Hillary.
I can think of a few who CAN, but they’d be underdogs. We have a few likeable governors who poll low now mainly due to lack of name recognition.
That’s why my favorite candidate is Jindal at this point. He’s likeable and a solid governor and I think likeability is the best antidote to Hillary Clinton’s unbeatability, because no matter how hard she tries, that will always be her biggest weakness.
The Republicans haven’t won a presidential election by more than one state since 1988. They’ve only won the popular vote once during those elections. Obama kept all his states he won in 2008 except for Indiana (a fluke in 2008) and North Carolina (basically a tie in 2008 and 2012) during the reelection in 2012.
The 2014 Senate races are going to be tough, the Democrats are defending some marginal seats they won during the 2008 landslide. Still, the Republicans pretty much have to win all their winnable races and avoid comments about witchcraft and rape along the way.
It will be close if the Republicans manage to not throw away any seats to the Dems, but honestly that is the only reason we have the senate in the first place. We should’ve lost the senate in 2010 and 2012, expecting them to throw away enough races to keep it a third time might just be wishful thinking.
As for the Senate, the Democrats have a lot of vulnerable candidates and at least one open seat I’m aware of where the GOP is going to win after the Dem retires (current House Rep Shelley Capito of WV will almost certainly win Democrat Rockefeller’s Senate seat.) I think the GOP will gain 4-5 seats, but a +6 swing is a big order and I doubt it happens. Plus even if the GOP captures 6 Dem seats there’s a decent chance we lose 1-2 incumbents (especially McConnell), so net +6 is probably not going to happen. It’s a bad cyclical year for the Democrats as it’s six years after the Obama landslide so a lot of the Senators up are Democrats who probably wouldn’t have beaten their Republican challengers otherwise.
The GOP also shot themselves in the foot in the past cycle, Todd Akin should have easily beaten McCaskill and was polling ahead of her until he started talking about rape. I also believe it was Delaware (going by memory) where a viable Republican Senate candidate lost to a Tea Party loon in the primary and lost the general that could have conceivably been winnable.
From that link: “A member of his prayer group who was suffering from emotional distress after the suicide of a close friend and her own skin cancer diagnosis was allegedly surrounded by “sulfuric smells” and acting very strangely.”
I’ve had success using ‘Beano’ to prevent that type of thing…
If I can’t have Jindal, I don’t know then. I like a few other Republicans, but I just can’t see any of them beating Clinton unless Obama becomes such a millstone around her neck that she can’t win.
Maybe Giuliani will decide to try again if Christie is too damaged.
I think Christie pre-bridge gate could have, but I think he’d have had a hard time getting nominated. Now even if he gets nominated I think it’s too easy to tar him out of the race. Hillary is a formidable Democrat with a combination of broad policy appeal (she’s even more to the center than Obama and is possibly borderline hawkish on foreign policy, her and Biden apparently sparred constantly over Biden’s relatively doveish views), and deep, deep old school political organization ability. She got beat in the primaries in part by focusing on the wrong races and not fully realizing that it’s a delegate race versus a state victory total race, and by a candidate who had an organization using lots of new media and young supporters. But that happens to her once, next time around she’s going to have all the strengths from her first campaign plus all the know how and etc that Obama used to beat her and win in the 2008/2012 general on top of that.
I think she still has the same weaknesses and would still be susceptible to defeat by an inspiring opponent in the primaries. Democratic voters love the sizzle. That’s why in a 2008 campaign that featured several extremely well qualified candidates and three junior Senators, guess who they got excited over?
I’ve never heard a Dem deny that they were once the anti-civil-rights party, or make excuses for the Dixiecrats.