Polling has told us a generic Democrat would beat Colorado's doomed Republican Trump enabler, Cory Gardner. Polling also tells us that Frackenlooper would beat Gardner-- or at least that he would have before he got busted and fined for taking bribes.
Schumer picked a slate of miserable status quo Democratic Senate candidates for 2020. Not one of them stands for any change except the superficial change of replacing a corporate Republican with a corporate Democrat. If there's an anti-red wave, some of them will win. They define why there is no blue wave. There's nothing to vote for-- just a series of less-of-two evils races:
I'm sure you've heard that Bernie endorsed 6 congressional candidates yesterday-- 5 for the House and one for the Senate. It was a big move, especially his endorsement's of Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush against incumbent Democrats Eliot Engel and Lacy Clay, not to mention his endorsement of Charles Booker over Schumer's handpicked status quo candidate in the Kentucky primary to pick an opponent for Mitch McConnell.
In the 2000 election, 167,398 Alaskans (58.62%) voted for George W Bush against Al Gore. Four years later 190,889 Alaskans (61.07%) voted for Bush against John Kerry. Bush was popular among Alaskan voters-- who also backed John McCain (59.42%) and Mitt Romney (54.80%). But Trump isn't well liked by most Alaskans. He barely eked out a majority against Hillary-- 51.28%, pretty sad compared to Bush.
You know what would be amazing? That Trump winds up being so toxic that he even manages to lose the Kansas Senate seat for the Republicans! I know, I know... it's impossible. Actually it is-- literally-- impossible since even if the Schumer candidate, Barbara Bollier, wins, it's still a Republican in the seat. (A few months ago, she switched parties, although certainly not her ideology, but...
Yesterday, The Nation published a piece by Jeet Heer, Mitch McConnell Is Even Worse Than Trump, which notes that both are now basically AWOL is the pandemic crisis. While Trump spends his days "stirring up culture-war controversies with the media and Democrats as a way to move the discussion beyond the pandemic and the economic crisis. A distraction strategy makes sense because Trump has effectively given up on crafting any serious policy response to the pandemic.
Last year, it was reasonable to look at the Senate election table for 2020 and predict that the Democrats would have a hard time flipping that chamber. It looked like they were most likely to lose one-- Jones in Alabama-- and possibly gain three-- Colorado (Gardner), Arizona (McSally) and Maine (Collins). That would leave them with the Turtle running the Senate again-- with a fragile 51-49 majority.
Yesterday, Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti invited Marianne to be a guest on Rising to discuss her 2020 congressional endorsements. She explained (above) her thinking about backing candidates who are challenging Democratic congressional leadership-- like Shahid Buttar (vs Nancy Pelosi), Mckayla Wilkes (vs Steny Hoyer), Jen Perelman (vs Debbie Wasserman Schultz), Lauren Ashcraft (vs Carolyn Maloney), Jamaal Bowman (vs Eliot Engel)... To have a national figure who can command attention on media the way Marianne does, is incredibly valuable to the progressive movement.
