Democrats See Edge in Early Senate Map as Trump Casts Big Shadow

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Six months into the Biden administration, Senate Democrats are expressing a cautious optimism that the party can keep control of the chamber in the 2022 midterm elections, enjoying large fundraising hauls in marquee races as they plot to exploit Republican retirements in key battlegrounds and a divisive series of unsettled GOP primaries.

Swing-state Democratic incumbents, like Sens. Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Mark Kelly of Arizona, restocked their war chests with multimillion-dollar sums ($7.2 million and $6 million, respectively), according to new financial filings this past week. That gives them an early financial head start in two key states where Republicans’ disagreements over former President Donald Trump’s refusal to accept his loss in 2020 are threatening to distract and fracture the party.

But Democratic officials are all too aware of the foreboding political history they confront: that in a president’s first midterms, the party occupying the White House typically loses seats — often in bunches. For now, Democrats hold power by only the narrowest of margins in a 50-50 split Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tiebreaker to push through President Joe Biden’s expansive agenda on the economy, the pandemic and infrastructure.

The midterms are still more than 15 months away, but the ability to enact policy throughout Biden’s first term hinges heavily on his party’s ability to hold the Senate and House.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/democrats-see-edge-early-senate-153937740.html

[BGBD]

1. The dynamics of

This midterm feelndifferent than normal.

Biden is President....but the election still feels like it could be a referendum on Trump. He refuses to go away and that helps us.

Biden showed a real power during the election to keep the spotlight off of him and that hurt Trump a lot. That still seems to be the case. The achievements are known...but nothing bad has been able to stick.

[wryter2000]

4. The American Rescue Plan is doing real good for people

(I hope I got the name of the bill right.)

If we get both infrastructure bills through, that will help people even more. It will be great for campaigning. This week, people with children got money in their bank accounts. That doesn't happen too often.

[W_HAMILTON]

7. Yep.

People were using the same "well, but history says..." rhetoric to say that it was very unlikely that Biden could beat an incumbent president -- they were wrong.

[FoxNewsSucks]

2. I used to find articles like this to be encouraging,

but now since they talk only of money and completely ignore the massive voter suppression work by republicons (and enabled by Joe Manchin D-WV) they seem moot.

For example, in the last election, all seats that were "narrow republicon leaning" were won by the republicon. Many "narrow Democratic leaning" were in fact "won" by the republicon. ALL tossup seats were taken by the republicons.

Everything Democrats do to win is being blocked by republicons who see what was done then pass laws to thwart it.

[FloridaBlues]

3. With any luck the dems will vote down ballot for state candidates unlike what happened in 2020

Where republicans picked up more state houses. At some point we must catch up to them.

[WarGamer]

5. Author named Pollyanna...

[Marius25]

6. Honestly I'd feel pretty good about our chances

of keeping Congress next year, if it weren't for the massive wave of extreme voter restriction laws that are being passed. We just don't know how much damage they're going to do yet. I hope it backfires and ends up hurting Republican voters more than Democrats, since Democrats might be more determined to stick it to the GOP for depriving them of voting rights.

But gerrymandering and minor voter restrictions is enough to flip the House to Republicans, and I can't handle 2 years of McCarthy and Greene trying to impeach Biden on a daily basis.