Anyway, remember when the real battlegrounds would be in the Obama/Trump states, as they would decide whether or not the GOP got a filibuster proof majority? lol
Not really, no. MT has been considered Lean/Likely D ever since Zinke (lol) and Fox declined to run, and I don’t recall anyone predicting that Manchin couldn’t possibly win reelection. It’s true that most people underestimated Brown, Donnelly, and McCaskill, but let’s not act as if Republicans or pundits were confidently predicting a GOP filibuster proof majority at any point. My initial Senate ratings were too R-friendly, but even I never bought Heitkamp being DOA because of polarization or Native Americans or whatever ridiculous argument people will come up with to "prove" that she’s vulnerable even in a massive D wave year.
Yeah, I remember when people were predicting a filibuster-proof majority with Sen. Mandel, Sen. Rock, Sen. Duffy, and Sen. LePage.
I don’t. Rating those states Tossups or saying that they could become competitive under the right circumstances ≠ predicting that they will flip. I might be wrong, but I don’t recall many people rating ME, MI, and WI Tossups, even in 2016 and 2017. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s always easy to mock Republicans for making overconfident predictions, but even many Democrats on this site underestimated how pronounced the enthusiasm gap and how Democratic-leaning this election cycle in general would be (in part because most of us gave way too much weight to factors like the state of the economy and foreign policy issues). If you think it’s only Republicans who are being "delusional" or "overconfident", you don’t seem to remember 2014 and 2016 very well. It’s probably more accurate to say that many people have some sort of recency bias, underestimating how rapidly the political environment can change in a year or less. When Republicans lose badly this fall, I’m sure many Democrats and pundits will predict a D wave year in 2020 or 2022 (even under a Democratic president) and declare the GOP dead. These things happen after every election.
I remember when some Very Serious PeopleTM thought Debbie Stabenow was going to lose to Kid Rock and OH-Sen was Lean R.
One or two posters ≠ "people".
