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Sunday, May 15, 2011

Cloudy Senate Prospect Has A Faint Presidential Silver Lining

Senate math in the upcoming election is truly terrible for Democrats. When you include the two Independent senators who presently caucus with them, Democrats are defending twenty-three states compared to just ten for Republicans, and many of the seats the Democrats are defending are too vulnerable for comfort. The GOP needs only a net gain of four seats to claim the majority, and gain control of the Senate.

The good news is that the Republican presidential field really is a flabbergasting trainwreck. Huckabee is out, which actually is good news for Bachmann, Santorum, and Newt, which actually is good news for Democrats because Bachmann, Santorum, and Newt (even a Newt backed by the Koch machine) are truly jokes and just the kind of jokes the jokers of the GOP base who rule the early primaries want to hear, to the consternation of lame limp noodles like Pawlenty and Romney.

If Republicans manage to run a candidate so awful they cannot garner 40% of the popular vote, those radioactive coat-tails provide Democrats with just about their only hope to retain control of the Senate. (By the way, these days I'm gaming it out for Pawlenty to win in the end, and though I don't think he can win the White House I do think he can make enough of a showing to give the GOP control of the Senate, without which I fear winning the White House will be too Pyrrhic to write home about.)

Maybe Maine's whackjobs will primary Snowe and/or Indiana's whackjobs will primary Lugar and open the door for moderate Dems to squeak out wins and thereafter misbehave in ways that will give the left blogipelago years of material to complain about. In a rational world such as we do not inhabit naked Scotty Brown should surely be beatable in Massachusetts. Maybe Arizona's open seat will provide a Christmas miracle, or Democrats can beat Dean Heller in Nevada (I won't hold my breath on those outcomes, not with the corporate cash spigot Citizens United turned on full blast). Hell, with a bad enough Presidential candidate even browning Texas comes into play, believe it or not (I'm betting on NOT).

No, I'm not counting on it, indeed I don't expect it, I'm expecting the worst, and even with Pelosi regaining her gavel as seems reasonably likely and Obama in the White House as seems incredibly likely Republican control of the Senate keeps America stuck like a gnat in amber in an economy itching to double dip catastrophically while Greenhouse storms sweep the shores and tear the turf of our feudal Red States to the ready ruin of our last faint hopes.

There's a difference between shooting yourself in the foot and blowing your brains out, and sometimes urgent advocacy for Democrats in general really does feel a bit like throwing a pep rally for the joyful prospect of shooting yourself in the foot. But the Republican party in its present incarnation is an organized force of nihilism and irrationality and evil abroad in a land wounded nearly beyond healing in a world on the brink of destruction. That these are the stakes and the terms on which those stakes are to be fought is perfectly grotesque, but there, nevertheless, it is.

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