Midterm Madness: Our Take On The Senate Final Four
Hello Hackaroos,
Now that primary season is officially over, we’re entering the equivalent of March Madness for the Midterms – so we start with a look at our Final Four in the Senate. Then we dig into the politics behind Senator Lindsey Graham’s proposed 15-week abortion ban and what that might mean for the midterms. Plus, our take on Amtrak Joe’s big win on the looming rail strike and Ron DeSantis’ risky stunt in Martha’s Vineyard.
Please continue to share your questions and comments for the Mailbag! And thanks again to everyone for their patience with our delivery issues recently.
Let’s begin…
All Aboard! Amtrak Joe Pulls Through
MURPHY: Kudos to the President for a nice, important win. (And I don’t only say that because I’m gonna be traveling on Amtrak next week!). A rail strike would have been an economic disaster pure and simple. Now all those honors said, I’ve been around politics far too long not to sense the echoes of the well-scripted Big Finish to a championship pro wrestling match. “So Champ, first we scare ‘em half to death with Supply Chain Brain Twister, then we build to the Amtrak Flying Hammer, then just when the rubes think Capt. Devastation has you dead on the ropes… POW!!! You reverse it with the Claw to Chief Death Grip and win the belt!!!” Now I’m not saying Biden orchestrated the whole thing Wag the Dog style. The rail strike drama was real and it would have been a disaster. But I would not be surprised if a deal was closer than the public knew and the big scary Amtrak move was at least partially to raise the stakes way up and hard nudge the players to a deal, as well as set the President up for a nice, flashy win. The bottom line regardless is a nice win for the POTUS.
GIBBS: Murphy, first and foremost, it warms my heart when you give Biden a win and it’s been happening a lot lately. Second, you need to stop watching so much professional wrestling since it’s giving you delusional conspiracy theories! There’s no doubt that a rail strike would have been an utter mess for the economy. If you think Amtrak cancellations would have caused harm, imagine all the fuel and goods that move via train. The last thing anyone needed, including this President, was another supply chain disaster less than two months before an election. So, well done! Lastly, can you prove conclusively that you’re not Mr. Wrestling #2?!
Midterm Madness: Our Senate Final Four
GIBBS: We don’t have any office pool brackets for you to fill out, but we are now deep into Midterm Madness and in the Senate we can show you what amounts to the Final Four. Most strategists would tell you the most vulnerable seats on the Democratic side are in Georgia, where incumbent Sen. and Rev. Raphael Warnock faces a tough race against Herschel Walker and in Nevada as GOPer Adam Laxalt challenges Sen. Catherine Cortez Mastro. Little surprise here that the two most expensive Senate races in the country so far are… Georgia and Nevada (Pennsylvania is third and we’ll get to that one in a moment).
On the Republican side, the two seats most likely to change hands are in the aforementioned Pennsylvania, where Dem Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and GOPer Mehmet Oz are vying for the seat of retiring U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey and the Wisconsin seat of embattled GOP incumbent Ron Johnson faces Dem Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes. This is where control of the Senate will almost certainly be decided in November. And, to the party victor the spoils of Senate control. If Dems win two of these four seats, the Senate 50-50, giving Vice President Harris the tie-breaking vote again under Dem control. But, if Republicans can win three, then they’re in control by a 51-49 margin. This doesn’t mean one of the other races we are all watching can’t impact the Final Four. According to the Cook Political Report, six more seats are in the contested realm: AZ, OH, NC, NH, CO and FL are all worth continuing to watch closely. A new poll in Wisconsin shows Johnson in Wisconsin, trailing by 7 just a short time ago, now ahead by a point. NV and GA are just as tight and honestly could go either way. Fetterman is ahead in PA, but I expect that to get closer too as we get closer to the end. I’m still bullish that due to candidate quality, the Dems are ever so slight favorites to keep control, but that’s far from a certain thing as we sit here today. We wrote recently about debates and this week brought announcements that the campaigns in Georgia and Pennsylvania have agreed to participate in them (steel cage match anyone?). So, please check to make sure you seat belts are on tightly as we will be flying through some choppy air for the next eight weeks!
MURPHY: I still want to see Biden’s numbers on the economy in early October before I really know what I think, but for argument’s sake guess I’ll stick with history and assume it stays bumpy for the Dems. So I think Ron Johnson pulls it out in WI, even though he is in big trouble. I just don’t think Barnes is a strong opponent, sorry base Dems. In very pro-choice Nevada, I’ve been saying for a while that vulnerable Cortez Masto has a tool to survive, but she has work to do. That race is my test of any Dobbs driven turnout surge. On PA, I’d bet on Fetterman, but again, in a real wave Oz could still win. But he’s so hapless… well, baring a new Fetterman health scare this race is the Big Fett’s to lose. That leaves Georgia. Really close, but if I go history and anti-Biden wave… my gut says I’ll be Senator Walker to you soon, Gibbs. They like him. (And if he does win, Trump will start talking about him as a possible VP, as I mentioned on Hacks this week when that question popped up in the mailbag.)
Of the long shots, I’d start with independent Rule of Law candidate Evan McMullin who has tied the race (in one credible poll) and is only a few points behind (in another) to hapless GOP incumbent Mike Lee. That race may check out of the national wave gravity field a bit; Utah is quirky and frustration with Lee has been building for a long time (we only got 62% in the GOP primary earlier this year.) The other upset I see building is Tim Ryan in Ohio. He’s running the best campaign of any Dem Senate contender this year and, like the Big Fett, has the blessing of a weak GOP opponent in J.D. Vance. The difference is Ohio is tougher for a D than Pennsylvania and most operatives think that’ll save Vance in the end. They may be right, but this race is the clearest Good Candidate with Good Message vs. Bad Candidate with Limited Message race in the country. Check out Ryan’s perfect for Ohio ad responding to GOP attacks here:
Of the others, I’d love O’Dea to win in Colorado – it would help the Greater Cause as the perfect push back to the crazies in my party – but it’s a long shot. And I know and like Michael Bennet, a good Senator particularly on education issues. Marco may wind up with more trouble on his hands than CW currently projects, but at least at this point I think he’ll prevail. Finally NC, has the GOP Weak Candidate disease – shocker – so the Dems have a chance but again, I’m sticking with the history theory so I’m calling most ties for the GOP.
The Politics of Lindsey Graham’s Abortion Ban
MURPHY: Whole lotta pivoting going on. Here is what I think Graham is trying to do. The smart GOP pols – and Lindsay is smart, if far too much the weather-vane on the important stuff – recognize the surge in pro-choice voters as a threat in the suburbs and competitive areas. So the Big Idea here is give them something they can be for. The ugly secret of the pro-life, pro-choice issue is most people disagree with the bases of both parties, finding themselves in the middle. They don’t want GOP total bans on abortion, nor lefty Democratic late term abortion laws. A ban on abortions at 15 weeks is a moderate position (and sort of a world standard; France is at 14 weeks, Sweden bans after 18 weeks, Denmark at 12 weeks.) So Graham is trying to create a centrist pro-life position that GOP candidates can try to safely land on, rather than have to go out and defend hugely unpopular total bans, let alone measures banning abortions even for victims of rape or incest. The bill, of course, has no chance of passing; it’s a total political creation and the problem, of course, is it’s a bit too late. Many GOP candidates have already taken – with primary season enthusiasm – the full base position, so wiggling out of that straight jacker will not be easy. So for those Republican candidates who have already dug themselves into a hole, Graham’s proposal is a bit too clever by half.
GIBBS: Totally agree Murphy. And interestingly a few campaigns said they supported the Graham bill including Rubio in FL, Walker in GA and Masters in AZ. Masters is a good lens with which to view this political maneuver. Masters has been way out there on the extreme side of this issue and, lo and behold, he figured it was a problem in his race. So, what’s the solution? Just scrub your website! That’s right, if people don’t see your position on the world wide web, well, then you can just decide your opponent is just lying about you! Ah, Blake, if it were only that easy! Coming out for the legislation gives Masters something to say he’s for as Mike said and then you’re in an argument about 15 weeks vs. 20 weeks, which seems a whole lot better politically than being against exceptions for rape, incest or the health and life of the mother. In FL, Rubio used it to try desperately to turn the table to so-called late-term abortion. The problems though with this are many. First, a lot of candidates said this should be a state issue, so federalizing it now is the equivalent of closing the barn door after the horse has already run out. Second, it seems to let some state laws banning exceptions stand, so in the end this doesn’t really get you to a less extreme position as Graham probably hoped for when he dropped it. Next, he appears to have taken nearly every one of his colleagues by surprise in dropping this plan into a boiling cauldron just weeks before the election and much to the dismay of many political strategists on the GOP side who don’t want to re-engage in this debate. Lastly, this week’s inflation report gave the GOP another opening to try and shift the focus on abortion in 2022 back to the economy, but most in the GOP couldn’t get that message out because Graham’s new bill blocked the way. I can see what he was trying to do and it might have worked at a certain point but it blew up on him this week.
Madness on Martha’s Vineyard
GIBBS: Walk me again through how the Republican Party is the one who cares about protecting life? Go ahead, I’ll listen. This is a terrible stunt by a heartless politician who knows to get promoted to the White House he’s going to have to be outlandish every single step of the way. I fear we’ll see a lot more of these stunts over the next two years because I’m sure the base of the party just eats this stuff up.
DeSantis is following in the great footsteps of the infamous White Citizens’ Councils in the South in the early 1960s. You may have seen this on twitter yesterday, courtesy of the JFK Library.
Source: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
MURPHY: It’s too much. It’s cruel. It’s cynical and it’s cheap. Both governors know better and should be deeply ashamed of themselves.
Have a great weekend!
Murphy and Gibbs