If you look at the list of senators who are up for reelection in 2012, you’ll quickly realize that after Scott Brown, one of our best pickup opportunities is Jon Kyl’s seat in Arizona. That tells you that we have a tough challenge ahead of us. That’s why flipping Olympia Snowe to the Democratic column actually has a lot of appeal.
Such a coup could very well mean the difference between maintaining or losing control of the Senate. The question is, what would we be willing to give up in order to woo her. With Sen. Webb hinting at retirement, we’re going to need every vote we can get.
Here are some other thoughts on the 2012 Senate races:
Hawaii- If Akaka retires, we have two women in the House lined up to replace him: Mazie Hirono and freshman Colleen Hanabusa. Anyone have a preference? I’m for anyone but Ed Case.
Wyoming- Our only chance is to convince Dave Freudenthal to run.
Massachusetts- Who’s the best candidate to take down Scott Brown?
North Dakota- Can Kent Conrad survive? Who will run against him?
Nevada- Do we have anyone lined up to challenge for Ensign’s seat?
California- Will Feinstein retire? Who’s placed well to win the nomination if she does?
Utah- Can Orrin Hatch escape the fate of his friend and colleague, Bob Bennett?
Texas- Can Kay Bailey Hutchison keep the crazies at bay and win the nomination for another term in the Senate?
Wisconsin- If Herb Kohl retires as expected, can we convince Feingold to run for his seat?
Arizona- We have to find a candidate who can beat Jon Kyl. Could Janet Napolitano pull it off?
Connecticut- This should be the end of Lieberman’s career. But who will replace him?
Nebraska- It looks like we sink or swim with Ben Nelson.
Montana- Can Jon Tester win reelection in a presidential year?
Virginia- Will Jim Webb even try to win reelection in a presidential year? Is Tim Kaine the only guy on the bench?
It’s slim pickings, folks. We have to be smart, and good, or we’re losing the Senate.
Count Arizona as lost, dude. The bigots there won’t elect anyone but a republican – especially when there’s a black guy running for President (AGAIN! THE NERVE OF HIM!).
If we couldn’t get Snowe to break a filibuster on health insurance reform, I don’t think she’s gettable on switching parties. I think things for her will play out like they did for Lincoln and Crist- moderates who just didn’t play their cards right. I’d love to see Mitchell make overtures that he might run just to scare Snowe into jumping over.
As for MA, gotta be Warren. She’s got the political chops to win it.
I agree we really need to play offense in Nevada and Arizona, if for no other reason than to prevent all the NSCCC and Citizens united outside money from dumping money into all our seats.
To be honest, I’d really like Obama to get more involved in setting Dems up for success in 2012 by recruiting good candidates. Last time he probably cost us a seat or two by widening the playing field through his cabinet picks.
And for what its worth, I think the dancing on Olympia Snowe’s grave is a bit premature. Sure she’ll have a teaparty challenger, but I think in a presidential year, the GOP establishment may be on much firmer footing, or at least have made the necessary accomodations with the tea party to make sure seats like this aren’t unnecessarily lost. And much is made of Snowe being a moderate, but actually she’s a loyal player in McConnel’s political strategy to make Obama a 1 term president. The strategy is something like this:
Step 1: obstruct and prevent things from passing
Step 2. If things are going to pass, make sure somebody is there to strike deals with the president that make the legislation politically unpopular.
Snowe is a key player in the second part of the strategy, and I’m pretty sure McCOnnel has her back. I’d trade the so-called GOP backstabbers like Snowe and COllins for our backstabber caucus like Lieberman and Nelson any day of the week.
I think you’ve defined their game exactly. The sad yearning for Snowe by Dems says everything about what will kill off the party for good.
These elections are going to be about defining who’s radical. But they’re also going to be about numbers. We have nowhere to go to pick up seats in the Senate. We picked the tree clean in 2006 when we ran the table. We need that Maine seat, and we need Massachusetts. And we need at least one more seat. Tell me where we’re going to get them. Mississippi? Tennessee? Utah?
It’s not that I don’t want to win the Maine seat outright, but I’ll take a seat right now from someone like Snowe, who will go out and tell everyone that their mother’s GOP is gone.
Sure I’ll take the Maine seat Booman if Snowe switches but I think people are naive about Snowe doing so. Ideologically she’s much closer to Obama than she is to Demint or McConnel, but she’s shown no sign of being a political ally of Obama. She’s actually a valuable piece of the GOP political strategy- a sort of rope a dope. Somebody has to hold the football, right? Somebody needs to be Senator Lucy. And I don’t think Palin is going to storm into Maine and raise the stature of some crazy teabagger, not when she’s trying to make peace with the Karl Rove’s of the world so she’s does’t get ratfu$#ed like McCain did in SC. So chances are it will play out like this, and I’m happy to be wrong: Snowe gets a crazy teabagger challenger, she moves right on a few important items (after taking the football away while Obama tried to kick it) and survives her primary challenge. Rove and citizens united cash gets dumped in the general and our nominee is a third stringer because Obama tapped the top two dem candidates to serve on some insignificant commission or ambassadorship. Snowe wins, 55-45. Boo please tell me you’ve got some other ideas up your sleave because if this is what our best and brightest are coming up with, we’re fuc*&ED
when she loses in her Primary, maybe it’ll be her come to Jesus moment.
If we want to win the seat, Obama needs to call the top 2 on our dem roster in Maine and promise to raise boatloads of money for whichever one runs. Stop pining your hopes on people who are not your political allies, like Snowe. Our team just needs to step it up.
I’m really sick and tired of having a post-partisan, post-politics President. Time to break out the map and start playing some politics. Its like Obama got elected and decided he didn’t want to play “politician” anymore and decided he like the job of philosopher king better.
Perhaps the seeming bleakness of our prospects should encourage a new approach. We have no need, as a party, for anymore bland and temporizing apologists for the status quo of crisis. We don’t need eternal incumbents. We need people with a rational and committed vision of the future, and we should promote those people where we find them.
From a policy perspective, we have to let Conrad and Nelson go and pick up two Republican seats (Massachusetts and who?) just to stay even.
If Nelson (FL) decides not to run–a possibility–do we have anyone competitive for this seat?
We will likely have to strongly defend Sherrod Brown’s seat, Debbie Stabenow’s seat and Amy Klobuchar’s seat no matter who challenges them. And getting a Democrat to replace Carte Goodwin is going to be a challenge unless he has a record he can successfully run on. And Menendez won’t have a easy time of it.
And we don’t have anyone in Indiana if Lugar retires.
The ability for Webb and Tester to hold on if they decide to run depends on what happens in the next two years, and how much buyers remorse folks have over the 2010 election.
I doubt that Freudenthal could pull it off in Wyoming unless there is something transformative in the politics there.
Since Kay Bailey ran against Rick Perry, he might just return the favor. But we don’t have a farm team in Texas with statewide appeal.
Feingold running is going to depend on the political climate in Wisconsin in 2012. Here’s where 2010 buyers remorse could be a big factor.
The Democrats have got to go back to building the strength of state party organizations (the “50 state strategy”) if they are going to make any gains anywhere. There are so many states that have been written off, essentially the entire South (and NC is fortunate not to have a Senator up for re-election in 2012), the inter-mountain West, the Great Plains states. So now we are battling for survival in the “Rust Belt”. Democrats cannot win with just the Left Coast, New York, and southern New England.
Without a whole lot of grassroots and state-level work starting now, we’ve got nothing. The media wave will overwhelm Democratic candidates again and provide larger media subsidies to Republican candidates. The hard nut to crack is winning without huge media buys.
We can forget about progressive improvement in the Senate. We just want some nominal control so we don’t have to vote on House bills we don’t like and maybe we confirm another judge someday.
Other than Lieberman, there isn’t a member of the Senate caucus that I want to see lose next time out, and I have no interest in primarying any of them.
They’re overrunning the castle, Tarheel. Now is not the time to argue about promotions.
If we want to work on a progressive project, its got to be in the House. And, maybe in a primary in Hawaii or Indiana or Virginia if there are retirements in those states.
A party without a strong grassroots is not going to be able to hold control enough to matter. And we don’t have the farm team for a lot of those House seats we lost. And we don’t have the legislators who could become potential candidates there either.
It is the consequences of continuing a capture the swing states strategy.
The second issue is dealing with a media that is subsidizing the Republicans to ensure their financial success, regardless of its effect on its audience. Democrats cannot continue to participate in that subsidization of the GOP. But Democrats don’t have an alternative yet.
…we don’t have Howard Dean’s 50-State Strategy in place… We’d likely have developed alternatives for those whose seats are coming open, or might be unlikely to win as they are (like Conrad)
we have what we have, though….since the Party doesn’t back us, we’ll have to do what we can ourselves.
It doesn’t look real good. Looking over the list, it seems like a potential for 16 or so seats the Dems could lose (depending on retirements):
Conrad, Sherrod Brown, Nelson and Nelson, Menendez, Klobuchar, Stabenow, Cantwell, Conrad, Tester, Webb, and McCaskill all seem vulnerable if the Republicans come up with good candidates.
Akaka, Feinstein, Kohl, and Bingaman seem like reasonable retirement possibilities.
Just looking at Wisconsin, I think most people expect Kohl will retire, and that Ryan wants and will get the seat. The possibility that Feingold will try to get back in the Senate introduces a wildcard, though. I guess it’s even possible that Ryan will decide he’d rather hold onto a safe seat in the House, where he is increasingly influential, then gamble on a Senate race he might not win.
In Connecticut, signs are that Lieberman is toast. I know (because he told me) that Rep. Chris Murphy (CT-5) is seriously considering running in 2012. He’d be an excellent candidate and an excellent Senator.
Living in Ct. like I do, I read the scuttlebutt, and my guess is Joe Lieberman is toast if he runs, seeing he’s only got about a 35% approval rating. Now the question is who will replace him. Chris Murphy says he might run. Linda Mc.Mahon is open to running again in 2012. Rob Simmons?? Rosa DeLauro?? Heck, even Tom Foley says he might run. Too early to tell.