Cruz and Scott are in trouble. They are in real danger of losing. All of the D seats will be decided based on two factors - MAGA candidates and Dobbs. And if SCOTUS bans mifiprestone, every Republican is in deep trouble. Manchin will be replaced by a real Republican, so what? I don't want to be Pollyanna here, but I think that the conventional wisdom is as reliable going into this election as it was in predicting the Red Wave that wasn't in 2022. And if Trump has a conviction on his record by November, we could be looking at a 1980 level landslide.
Despite being structurally antidemocratic and having a stranglehold on judicial confirmation, when it comes to the actual people Senate Republicans are by far the most reasonable of the bunch (a historically low bar). They are continually capable of hammering out bipartisan legislation that is then strangled by the clownshow that is House Republicans, and the presidential candidate isn't even worth discussing in this regard.
I'm personally much more pessimistic than you are - I think there is a small but very real chance of the Republicans simply running away with a trifecta if anything goes wrong for Biden before the election.
Cruz and Scott are in trouble. They are in real danger of losing. All of the D seats will be decided based on two factors - MAGA candidates and Dobbs. And if SCOTUS bans mifiprestone, every Republican is in deep trouble. Manchin will be replaced by a real Republican, so what? I don't want to be Pollyanna here, but I think that the conventional wisdom is as reliable going into this election as it was in predicting the Red Wave that wasn't in 2022. And if Trump has a conviction on his record by November, we could be looking at a 1980 level landslide.
Despite being structurally antidemocratic and having a stranglehold on judicial confirmation, when it comes to the actual people Senate Republicans are by far the most reasonable of the bunch (a historically low bar). They are continually capable of hammering out bipartisan legislation that is then strangled by the clownshow that is House Republicans, and the presidential candidate isn't even worth discussing in this regard.
I'm personally much more pessimistic than you are - I think there is a small but very real chance of the Republicans simply running away with a trifecta if anything goes wrong for Biden before the election.
Thank you, Mr Waldman -- glad I found you here. (Wow, had to jump through a lot of hoops to comment, though -- Substack's UI could use some help...)
Mr. Waldman, I have ceased to wonder why your new Substack blog doesn't seem to be gaining momentum.