On these boards? You might be thinking of some outside pundits.
But yeah, the GOP will keep the House (probably widen their margin) and have a shot at regaining the Senate. I don’t know if that’s a tsunami, but it will be portrayed as the end of the world by the MSM and the SDMB. It should quite entertaining.
I wouldn’t be too sure about that. The result of “RINO” suppression of the Tea Party darlings is to make them into voting bloc who, admittedly, are still inclined to vote Republican… if it’s not raining on Election Day… and if the lines aren’t too long… and if there’s nothing good on TV…
I’m a bit surprised at occasional mentions of gerrymandered districts in this thread considering I view the whole race about the control of the Senate. Senators must run statewide. Now if you want to argue that state boundaries are gerrymandered then that is another thread entirely.
Of course the House is up for re-election but only the most optimistic Democratic cheerleaders think they have any chance of retaking the House. A few seats might swing one way or the other but as Martin Hyde rightly noted upthread people might not like Congress as a whole but they like their Congressman.
Think about Nate Silver’s 50/50 chance applied to the Republicans retaking the Senate. Nate Silver guys, the guru who this board constantly trotted out in the run up to the 2012 presidential election. That should make every Democratic supporter nervous.
Of course there is always the possible October surprise. Keep holding out for that. Six months ago I never thought that US-Ukraine foreign policy would be a possible consideration in political maneuvering in 2014. Now… who knows if it will gain traction but it certainly is big of the news landscape.
Polls are still way too far out from election day to really tell MUCH from them. We’re still in the middle of primary season, for Og’s sake! Even Nate can’t work his magic with polls as nebulous as they are now. Talk to me about polls again in September/October.
No one seems to be denying that the Republicans might take the senate. Personally, I’d ever guess it’s greater than 50/50. People are simply saying that’s not a “tsunami.”
If Republicans got 60 votes in the Senate, that would be a tsunami, and a disaster.
I’m already on record here as saying that the Republicans had a 50/50 chance of retaking the Senate. And that was a couple of months back. The argument is that they need to pick at least six of the vulnerable Democratic seats without losing any of their own vulnerable ones. That is extremely difficult under the best of circumstances. The compendium of chances compiled at Wikipedia shows a possible swing in four competitive states (i.e. at least two of four predictions at least lean R), although three others are across-the-board tossups.
This is exactly the kind of meaningless blathering space-filling punditry that Nate Silver and somebody else – oh, that’s right: me – denounces. You might note that he goes on to do the standard “on the other hand” that completely dismisses any validity to the first half.
Gee, you think?
Are we actually going to be subjected to posters quoting this pablum up until the election? Heaven forfend.
Do you have a crystal ball not available to the rest of us? The primaries haven’t taken place yet.
At this stage of the process, GOP leaders are predicting a “Tsunami” in order to maximize fund raising. By the end of the summer, these same folks will be predicting a very close election(s) in order maximizing voter turnout from their base. Either may be true nor false, but it’s all political bs, nonetheless.
The Republicans may win the Senate, but it won’t be because of a “Tsunami.” In fact it’s almost a certainty that, in the aggregate, more votes will be cast for Senate Democrat candidates than for their Republican opponents. The problem for Dems is that they currently have so many more seats up for election. In 2016, the GOP will find itself defending 23 of the 33 Senate seats up for election, and in a Presidential year, with higher turnout.
I don’t see that much of a big deal if the GOP is able to gain 6 seats in 2014 only to lose it all back in 2016.
I’d estimate that, at present, the GOP has about a 40% chance of getting a gain of 6. Even if the GOP is able to abort all of the Tea-Party nut bags in the primaries, you wonder how many tea-partiers will sit on their hands on general election day. As an example,currently, Mitch McConnell is crapping all over the Tea Party and their candidate, and in the fall I expect many of the TPees will piss all over him.
This is an inappropriate slurring of West Virginia. West Virginia is a traditional socially conservative state that always voted Democrat, and where Democrats dominated the Statehouse (the GOP hasn’t controlled the legislature since the 1920s) because much of the State was either directly unionized because of their position with coal and chemical companies, or they were family members of someone in such a position–like many States traditionally party affiliation tended to be familial.
However this all started to change when the heavy industries that fueled the power of the unions started leaving the State. It eroded their power and left the State as a socially conservative place (which it had always been) but with no real “reason” other than inertia to vote for Democrats. With Al Gore’s candidacy in 2000 the State flipped to the GOP in Presidential elections and has never looked back. So it’s not really possible to say they voted Republican because of a black candidate. Gore was painted in the State as anti-gun (heavy, heavy NRA advertising) and guns are like religious artifacts in West Virginia. To a lesser degree he was successfully painted as anti-industry (he wasn’t as much of a green crusader then), and while there isn’t much industry in West Virginia most of its voters cling to the false hope that the coal mines are all opening again some day and the chemical companies are all moving back and things will go back to how they were, anti-industrial candidates strike at that dream.
After Obama’s first election the State was basically carpet bombed with “Obama’s No-Job Zone” ads which asserted all the coal jobs had disappeared because of Obama policies. So even their “protest vote” for some no-name prisoner in Texas against Barack Obama in the 2012 Democratic primaries probably was not based on race like so many would like to assume, but just the massive anti-Obama advertising effort that most West Virginians uncritically accepted.
I’m not sure I understand this line of thought. It only really affects nominations, either way you need the Republican House to pass legislation. Not sure what it matters if legislation gets filibustered in the Senate when it would die in the House in any case. I’m one that’s long been for filibuster abolition (and a general reform of the Senate as a concept in our constitution), but I don’t see where it’s had much practical effect outside of nominations.
All of the notable Senate-originated legislation that was killed by Republican filibusters or just opposition in the Senate that I can think of in recent years would never have passed the House. And now that Reid has (rightfully) agreed to nuke filibusters in the case of nominations it’s even less of an issue there.
While Ted Cruz and a few other Senators continue to grand stand, from what I’ve seen the Senate Republican leadership has actually done a better job of compromising when it’s been time to comprise than the House has done (where Boehner is a powerless speaker who only seems to have the loyalty of about 85 members of his 200+ member caucus.)
Definitely true, McConnell I think is the race that will show this most prominently and how it plays out. After some early hope for the Tea Party loons in Kentucky it’s now obvious Mitch is going to win the nomination. If all the supporters of Bevin loyally vote for Mitch on election day he should end up winning a close general election. But if any significant portion of them stay home, he will lose. I’ve not seen a poll that’s specifically targeted Bevin voters but I’ve read several Kentucky news articles where Bevin supporters when interviewed have definitely said “if they vote on election day it will be for McConnell, but they will have to hold their noses to do it and will consider it a tragedy.” Which doesn’t bode well for him.
FWIW for the GOP as a whole I think I’d rather us have a real Republican candidate (humorously we’re called RINOs by the Tea party which has existed for about five minutes) win nominations and lose hard fought general elections than nominate Tea Party Todd Akin types who lose in a landslide and hurt the entire national brand with inappropriate comments.
These boards slant left hard enough that it is possible to interpret “they’ve got a 50-50 chance to take the Senate” as “they have a lock”. Which is good news, and raises hope that things will work out as they did in 1994 and subsequently. Or better - Obama is not nearly the politician Slick Willie was.
Yep. The error bars right now are just too big. “If the election were held today” isn’t very meaningful when the election is still > 7 months away. A lot can happen in 7 months, and the Republicans have recently proven that they are every bit as good, if not better, than the Democrats at blowing an opportunity whenever they have one.
As for the OP, I think even the most optimistic scenario for the GOP can’t accurately be called a “tsunami”. This looks more like the pendulum swinging the other way, as it has many times in the past. The biggest thing the GOP could do if they actually gain control of the Senate is dictate more strongly which SCOTUS justice(s) get confirmed, if there are any. They pretty much prevent the Democrats for getting anything done already.
Even if we saw a GOP controlled Senate repeal Obamacare, Obama would veto it. I couldn’t see that do anything but backfire on the Republicans a la Clinton’s impeachment.
He was a member of the Tea Party Caucus in the House.
Another good example of how the Tea Party has hurt the party was Christine O’Donnell–proof that most Tea Party voters are blithering idiots. They voted for her because she passed “ideological purity” tests despite her being a neophyte with no serious ideas about government. That’s before the personal revelations came out which just worsened her candidacy.
The GOP had a strong chance at winning Biden’s seat if the GOP primary voters in Delaware had nominated Michael Castle, a nine term House member and former governor. But that’s also part of the problem with the Tea Party, their assumption is “experience in government” is a negative mark against a politician.
That may be fine for some positions, but the Senate is the upper house and is supposed to be where more experienced politicians go, it’s rare that the other party is going to nominate someone with no practical experience to a Senate race and experienced politicians rarely lose to empty suits with no experience when it comes to a Senate race.
Different Tea Party groups actually endorsed all 3 of the Republican candidates in that race. Freedomworks endorsed John Brunner, Tea Party Express endorsed Sarah Steelman, and Michelle Bachman and other leaders of the Caucus endorsed Todd Akin.
People don’t hate Obama. People love Obama. Really. Sure, voters don’t seem to support candidates that Obama campaigns for and candidates don’t seem to want Obama to publically support them but they love Obama. Obama could get reelected to some other office.
Whether the GOP/Tea Party takes control of the U.S. Senate depends on actual voter turnout. What current issues are going to get Democrats and independents to the polls to vote for Democrat Party candidates? What other issues besides Obamacare, admitted WH/Justice Dept gunrunning to Mexico (Executive Privilege doesn’t extend past actual presidential involvement), the stonewalling of Benghazi investigations, are going to get Republicans, Tea Party supporters, and independents to the polls to vote against a Democrat controlled U.S. Senate? Energy production? Pipelines? Rising cost of food? Slow/non-existent job growth?
Hopefully, the fear of Republicans controlling the Senate (and continuing to control Congress) will get Democrats and independents out to vote. We’ll see.