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Yes, the Democrats Have a Real Shot at the Senate This Time

The historic political failures of the GOP have even created openings in reliably red states.

Participants at last month’s general-election kickoff rally for Michigan Democrats.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: the Democrats have recruited a series of their top-choice Senate candidates to take on Republicans in double-digit Trump states on a pretty brutal map. The unpopular president is mired in scandal, and because GOP primary voters picked a series of creepy MAGA quislings as their nominees, hopes are high. Democrats look competitive almost everywhere and sport a large and durable lead on the “generic ballot.” Party strategists are whispering about a once-unthinkable takeover of the upper chamber just two years after a stinging, demoralizing defeat.

If this set of shifting baseline conditions ahead of a crucial midterm test of Trump’s power sounds a lot like the situation as the 2018 cycle began in earnest that September, that’s because we are, uncannily, at pretty much the same point we were at the end of that fateful summer. And we all know how that ended: Democrats cruised to a decisive House takeover in November but somehow lost two seats in the Senate, as red state voters reverted to their underlying partisan preferences. That crushing setback for the Democrats gave the president the consequential opportunity to put one last hardliner on the Supreme Court—Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett—in October 2020. 

More than a decade into the Trump era, dreaming of a major electoral breakthrough in hostile partisan territory based on the president’s manifest ineptitude, grotesque shenanigans and unabashed corruption feels almost masochistic. But this time around it really could be different. Subtle distinctions are emerging in the national political environment and polls that could put Democratic senate candidates over the top in deep red Alaska, Ohio and Texas. Those Democratic incursions on the red Senate map, coupled with expected pickups in Maine and North Carolina and holds in Georgia and Michigan, suggest that Democrats could actually seize a 52-seat majority—and possibly a bigger one,  if the president continues his hopeless standoff with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz and further erodes his party’s standing.

 One central dynamic behind this shift is that Democrats are picking up momentum in what had been regarded as long-shot races as normie voters are starting to tune in this fall. We’re understandably loath to recall the details of the Democrats’ Senate trauma in 2018, but in point of fact, the fall was when many highly touted Democratic candidates in red states like Missouri and Tennessee had already started to fade. In Missouri, incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill had surrendered her slim polling edge to MAGA toady Josh Hawley. And in the Volunteer State, former two-term Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen had by now blown his once significant lead over Republican Marcia Blackburn, and was running even at best. For all the money and attention lavished on Beto O’Rourke’s energetic challenge to Ted Cruz in Texas, he actually never led the race and was down more than 5 points on this date in 2018. 

Today, by contrast, many red state Democrats in tough races look as strong  as they have all year. In Alaska, Mary Peltola is the party’s dream candidate, with a strong brand and a recent track record of running competitive campaigns for the state’s one at-large House........

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