The Democrats Are Gaining Ground in the Senate

Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ)

Yesterday two seemingly unrelated things happened in the battle for the US Senate that made my back straighten up a bit.  While the attention right now has been on the battle for the White House, with less than three weeks left before the Iowa caucuses, the Senate still sits as a critical prize for both parties headed into November, particularly considering the upper chamber has had such a direct impact on the judiciary since Donald Trump has become president.  For most of the past year, the Republicans have remained highly favored to win the Senate, but yesterday I think it has started to become clear that the battle for control of the chamber has, while not necessarily started to favor the Democrats, shifted in their direction, in a way that could become meaningful.  If in November the Democrats get the majority, I think January 16th will be the date to point to as to when the tides turned.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here, as I need to point out the two events that happened yesterday.  The first was when Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ), the junior senator from the Grand Canyon State, took a cheap shot at CNN reporter Manu Raju for asking whether the Senate should consider new evidence in the Senate impeachment trial (a seemingly reasonable question considering the recent evidence brought forward by Lev Parnas, a former associate of Rudy Giuliani, who has indicated multiple high-ranking members of the Trump administration in the Ukraine investigation, including the president himself), and she called him, without answering the question, a "liberal hack."  McSally was criticized heavily by members of the media, with John McCain's daughter Meghan (McSally was appointed to the seat of the late Arizona senator) noting rather matter-of-factly on The View that McSally "didn't earn" her seat and saying that McSally was "playing her cards completely wrong."

McSally quickly doubled down on this attack, selling merchandise based on her calling Raju a "liberal hack," which indicated pretty strongly that this was a premeditated attack, which made me think that McSally is worrying about her fundraising and base support in the coming election.  McSally, let's remember, lost the Senate race in 2018 against her now colleague Kyrsten Sinema by about two-points, a similar margin to what the polls indicate she's losing by to her likely 2020 challenger, Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and the husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.  Kelly has out-raised McSally every cycle of 2019, and led her in every poll since July.  It's clear with these kinds of stunts that, while this is a still a "tossup," I'd rather be Kelly than McSally based on these chances.  If McSally loses, that's one less seat that Democrats need to hold the Democratic majority, and they only need a net of three seats.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)

The other piece of news yesterday was out of the state of Maine.  Morning Consult released their rankings of the most and least popular senators in America, and for the first time in a while, Mitch McConnell doesn't top the list-instead it was Susan Collins (R-ME), who just a few years ago was toward the top of the list of the most popular senators in the nation.  Collins is running for reelection in 2020, and is currently one of only two Republican senators running for a seat that Hillary Clinton won in 2016.  Collins has long been able to count on her more moderate record to win her bipartisan support in the Pine Tree State, but yesterday proves that that has evaporated after her vote for Brett Kavanaugh and lukewarm approach to the Trump impeachment hearing.  Senators with her kind of disapproval ratings have won in the past, but they usually are either facing weak opponents (think Harry Reid in 2010) or are in states with strong partisan bends to help them get reelected (think Mitch McConnell in 2014, and likely 2020).  Collins has neither of those things going for her, and is starting to look less like a teflon candidate, and more like people such as Gordon Smith, Lincoln Chafee, and Rick Santorum, who fell victim to straight-ticket voting besting them even if they'd been historically popular.  Again, I'd wager at this point that, while she's not as much of an underdog as McSally, I'd rather be Democrat Sara Gideon in this race than Collins.

If Democrats are indeed poised to best McSally and Collins, and are also favorites to win the Colorado Senate seat held by Cory Gardner (their best shot at a pickup), that's the three seats they'd need to win reelection.  That said, there's still things going against the Democrats, principally that they are heavy underdogs to keep Doug Jones in office (so they'd need four seats), and they need to win the White House in order to take the Senate (to get the VP to cast a tie-breaking vote).  It's also possible that either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren is the nominee, putting their Senate seats in jeopardy since they live in states with Republican governors.

But the Democrats, especially if Joe Biden is the nominee (considering his polling numbers in key Senate races, which we talked about here), are in a considerably stronger position today than they were last week.  If they are able to put away a seat like Maine or Arizona enough so that McSally & Collins are underdogs come Labor Day, they could focus their attention on their other top Senate prospects, principally Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia, Kansas, and holding Michigan.  Those states feature people like Joni Ernst (currently the third most unpopular senator in the country) and Thom Tillis (who has a -3 approval rating and 29% unknown, hardly impressive for a first-term senator).  Democrats coming into these races just needing to win two, rather than 3-4 (assuming McSally and Collins lose) puts them in a better position to win the Senate.  The Democrats aren't yet favorites to take the Senate, but this is a positive direction for the party, enough so that there's reason to have true optimism here.