2018: DOAs and Retirements

[Free Bird]

With Boxer basically unofficially confirming "yeah I'm done" I think we more or less know the 2016 scene, I want to discuss 2018 a bit. Who is dead on arrival, and who retires?

[Free Bird]

I think it honestly depends on who's President, and if the Democrats can turn out their voters.

Let's set a scenario then. President Clinton as you all seem to believe, and a 53/47 R senate. Kirk lost to Madigan and Johnson to Feingold, but Sandoval has unseated Reid. How about retirements?

[Free Bird]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Bill Nelson won't run again. Let's see how Florida Democrats screw this race up.

By nominating Checkpoint Charlie

[Free Bird]

The 5 Democrats in Romney seats will probably end up in similar positions to their counterparts this year.

McCaskill will lose badly to Ann Wagner.

Donnelly will probably go down heavily too.

Manchin, Tester, and Heitkamp might be able to put up fights, but they'll be major underdogs.

Yeah,  then if 2018 turns out to be analogous to 2014 in any way we're looking at possible Republican pickups in PA, VA, FL and WI.  That's an R+9 year, and with a 53R/47D composition that means that the GOP is well-positioned to have a filibuster-proof Senate majority to end the decade.

So you think there will be three Republican waves in a row? Keep dreaming.

We've had two in a row.  With Hillary Clinton poised to win in 2016, I still don't think Democrats will have found a solution to their GOTV problems and 2018 could thus easily turn into another wave.   

I'm not trolling, so please don't take offense, but 2018 won't be a Republican wave for one very obvious reason: Hillary Clinton is not black.

If you don't believe that xenophobia has motivated Tea-Partiers to show up and vote against Obama you're living in a fantasy. The guy hasn't been a bad President, not to say that he's been a good prez either, but honestly the amount of outrage directed at him is outsized and is related to his race, that's a fact. A third of conservative voters think that he is a Muslim and almost as many don't believe that he is an American. The Tea Party and GOP have ingeniously manipulated this by using code words and phrases--Mike Coffman's "un-American" comment and Doug Lamborn's "tar baby" comment are two examples just here in CO.

Good luck trying to paint Hillary Clinton as "in bed with the enemy" though. She's a relatively conservative white grandmother from Chicago's upscale suburbs and married to America's most popular President in a generation. 2018 isn't going to be a wave.

That same president whose party was also clobbered in his first midterm