Based on this article, and a realistic appreciation for political reality, the outlook for the Democrats retaking the Senate in 2020, and thereby potentially controlling the Executive and Legislative Branches to pack the Supreme Court and make PR and DC states, looks grim:
“Rather than a pendulum shift in Democrats’ favor, the 2020 Senate election is shaping up to be the moment when the organic Republican majority within the Senate falls into place. Trump won 46 percent of the popular vote in 2016 but 60 percent of states, and states like Idaho and Wyoming get just as many senators as California. Unless a whole bunch of red states suddenly turn blue, Democrats will be stuck where they are: in the minority.”
or you keep running canidates that can win in those states for other reasons, I mean we didn’t get a Senator in ND, IN, WV and AL by mistake.
True, but how many of those Senators are going to still be there after the 2018 midterms? I don’t want to come off as too pessimistic, but with liberal/Democratic voters increasingly clustered in smaller geographic areas, it becomes harder and harder for Democrats to retake (and hold) the Senate in order to get a majority.
I mean the only one that doesn’t look like a pretty decent chance of being reelected is ND.
So, best case scenario, Democrats lose ND. Do they pick up any other Senate seats elsewhere? If not, that means that the need three pick-ups in 2020.
I’d look towards Nevada and AZ for pickups.
In 2018 or 2020? Because if it’s in 2020, that still doesn’t get Democrats a majority in the Senate.
Unless the Senate is fundamentally reorganized, it is the eventual doom of America. It guarantees that the worst of us are the most represented in half of congress forever.
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That’s in 2018, 2020, is far away enough not to matter yet, the Republican party is going to be literally off the hook in 2020, especially if the D’s have the house. I’m sure they won’t manage to get a good candidate for some of those races…
But in 2020, all the Republicans in the Senate will be incumbents, unless there are some sudden and unexpected retirements. They’ll already have “good” candidates for those races, so to speak.
That is one of the fundamental problems with American democracy. Outside of a complete reorganization of the Senate and the Legislative Branch, which would require a Constitutional Amendment, I don’t see a way to fix things.
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claims of permanent electoral doom tend to be overblown. It’s not going to be easy but D’s tend do better on a senate level than one would expect, I mean how come we have a D in Montana?
Fair point. I guess my reason for posting the article, and the article’s purpose, is to kind of say that trying to retake the Senate in 2020 is going to be super hard.
With Kavanaugh being confirmed to the Supreme Court, I’ve been seeing a lot of people talking about packing the court and adding PR and DC as states like it’s almost a forgone conclusion.
If I had to pick a cause that I’d really focus on it would be getting a new voting rights act at the federal level and have it apply across to every state across the board. (Which was the excuse the Robert SC decided to gut the old one.)
I’m getting really sick of the “hur hur Voter Fraud, time to purge the voter roles of non-white people.”
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I could definitely get behind a new voting rights act.
The scary thing though is that even if the Democrats somehow retake the Executive and Legislative branches to pass something like this, or anything really… comprehensive immigration reform, healthcare, whatever, given the NOW current make-up of the Supreme Court, all that could be found unconstitutional. What then?
But that’s a Catch-22.
We need the Senate to stack the Court, but we need the Court to control the Senate.
True, if the Senate had majority it needed to over turn a Veto, it would also have the majority to impeach the President.
If the act became law, there would be a very lengthly process before the SC heard the case. The Court is still subject to the rule of law, so if they’re going to nix a new VRA they need a reason beyond. “We’re paid tools of insane rich people who don’t think poor and/or non-white people should vote.”
Do they though?
The Supreme Court conservative majority have been blowing up “settled law,” judicial precedent, and stare decisis for a while now. What’s to stop them from just making up some excuse as to why universal healthcare (just to pick one random example) isn’t Constitutional?
No, they could rule however they wanted. There’s no higher authority to which to appeal.
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