Which politician during the 2018 election do you most want to lose, and why?
I’m not up on a lot of local state races, but for me I’d like Gavin Newsome to lose. I just can’t stand the smarmy ‘I sleep with my best friend’s wife’ attitude of the guy, and I think if he wins governor I’m going to see a lot more of him when he goes for president. If he loses now, it could cut short those aspirations.
Beto or Cruz…
Cruz. That would make not taking the Senate palatable, at least.
You’re in luck. One of those two is guaranteed to lose.
My big wish to see defeated is of course Ted Cruz because nobody likes the Zodiac Killer.
I have several unrealistic house candidates I would like to see lose: Jordan, Meadows, Nunes, etc.
There’s a couple others that might actually happen: Rohrabacher, Brat.
And then there’s dead man walking Mike Coffman.
Scott Walker: Although in the greater scheme of things, I could take 4 more years of him if it meant he never held office again after 2020.
Ooh. Scott Walker. Good one.
Fuck that guy.
My Congressman. Bill Huizenga. Just a hateful, rotten rubber stamp for Trump, wrapped in Christian sanctimony, cut from the same West Michigan Dutch Mafia cloth as Betsy DeVos.
I’ve given both time and money to his opponent, Dr. Rob Davidson, who I predict will lose by 6 points. And that’s as close as a Democrat has ever come in this district. But man, if Dr. Rob could somehow pull off an upset…
Ask me in 2020 so I can answer “Mitch McConnell.”
Whooops, forgot what year it was. Yeah, 2022 and 2024 are too close for comfort.
For reasons I won’t go into here, I watched a Wisconsin Prayer Breakfast on You Tube a few years ago, and a speaker said, “Let’s send our governor to the White House!” and got very spotty applause. 
While her replacement probably isn’t much better, Iowa governor Kim Reynolds is just atrocious, as is Congresscritter Steve King, who has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
Also, if I was able to vote for Rafael or Robert, I’d go with Robert (aka Beto).
No love for Steve King? The guy’s an unabashed white nationalist and his last electoral opponent stepped down after facing death threats and explicit political retribution (her department’s budget was slashed, and she was informed that this was explicitly because she was running). Steve King really is just about the bottom of the fucking barrel.
I plan on helping Dean Heller lose his election, and I look forward to helping Ryan Bundy lose his election for governor of Nevada by as wide a margin as possible.
Also whoever is running against Iron Stache for Paul Ryan’s seat.
Steve King is the one Republican I would be perfectly fine with ANYONE displacing. If someone dug up Nixon’s corpse and put it on a ballot, I’d not only donate, I’d actively campaign for it. He’s a shit person who hasn’t done shit for his district and talks about racist shit with foreign shitbags instead of trying to get shit done. Fortunately, as of the last polling, weeks ago, J.D. Scholten was less than 10 points behind. While Steve King has been doing interviews discussing the Great Replacement and The Camp of the Saints with Austrian white supremacists, Scholten has been crisscrossing Iowa’s 4th actually getting to know people.
Granted, my hometown is in his district, so it’s somewhat personal, but I don’t think I’d shed a single tear if I heard he keeled over from a heart attack. It was all I could not to spit when he was glad-handing down a parade route a few weeks ago.
John Olszewski aka “Johnny O” son of machine pol “Johnny O”. The younger Johnny is a candidate for Balto County executive. He is either posing as a true-believing progressive complete with public policy “degrees”, or he is one. Sorry Johnny. I’d rather not see the county run as an experiment for the ridiculous authoritarian ideas you learned at Johns Hopkins. I could envision nothing better than this goomba getting beat by a fat white republican from Essex.
Runner up would be slobbering drunkard Dutch Ruppersberger. A true pawn of big surveillance and the military industrial complex. Probably won’t lose though thanks to the cartoonish working class Bmore accent.
In terms of pure schadenfreude, Ted Cruz.
But if I’m gonna game this in any remotely realistic way, Mark Meadows. He’s my guy (i.e., I got gerrymandered into his district in order to make my vote meaningless), and 538 lists him as having >99% chance of winning. His loss would mean three things:
I’d take the hypothetical as “assuming all else remains equal, which outcome would you magically change?” If the hypothetical is that the general electoral outcome changes such that the preferred outcome is likely, then I would pick the least likely Dem victory so that, as you say, lots of other seats are likely to also flip.
If I’m only affecting one race, I pick an unlikely senate win. Not Cruz because there is a small, but not unreasonable chance Beto wins.
Lets go with David Baria in Mississippi.
One race only!
As a fellow (I gather) Marylander, I’d be curious about what your attitude towards this candidate is based on, but I wouldn’t want to hijack this thread. Would you be interested in discussing this race in a new thread? If so, I’ll start one (or you can).
I’m going with Scott Walker, though it’s a tough call given Ted Cruz.