Pushing Back The Boundaries

The real message of Jon Martin's Politico piece this morning is that "safe" Senate seats for them Dems are now up for grabs, putting control of the Senate firmly in play for the Republicans.  Russ Feingold in Wisconsin, Patty Murray in Washington state, and Barbara Boxer in California are all struggling.  If Republicans can win here, Martin's logic goes, then the races that pundits thought that would matter like Nevada, Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania are firm and certain Republican wins that will give them the Senate as well as the House.

Control of the U.S. Senate increasingly appears to hang on the fate of an unlikely trio of Democratic incumbents who were elected along with Bill Clinton in 1992, hail from liberal-leaning states and have lived mostly charmed political lives.

At the start of the year, few observers thought the Senate was up for grabs in part because it seemed implausible that Washington’s Patty Murray, California’s Barbara Boxer and Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold were in any serious danger.

All three had won their last elections comfortably. And they were stockpiling the sort of money that flows readily to three-term senators.

But with the political environment turning toxic for Democrats and incumbents, Murray drawing perhaps her toughest possible opponent and Boxer and Feingold facing self-funders, the three Class of 1992 veterans are in the fight of their long political lives as the battle for control of the Senate moves from traditional battlegrounds to blue state venues.

The Senate majority could rest in their hands since it’s difficult to conjure a scenario where Republicans could pick up the 10 seats they need to reclaim the Senate without knocking off at least two of the three.

None of them will be easy to defeat—each is keenly attuned to the threat and has begun hammering the opposition. Senior Democrats, however, are increasingly worried about the trio and especially Murray and Feingold.

I'm not convinced yet that the Senate is lost.   I'm definitely not convinced that Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and Kentucky are all Republican wins either.  I think Democratic losses in the Senate will be much lower than people are guessing they will be because these are individual races in battleground and blue states (and Rand Paul has serious negatives in Kentucky).  Sure, it's plausible that the Republicans could run the table and pick up 12 seats.  It's also plausible they don't and pick up only 5.

Still, all this comes down to who votes in November.  Republicans have shown in primary battles that a small number of motivated voters can have force multipliers when the other candidate suffers from the enthusiasm gap (ask Alaska's Joe Miller).  If that gap is still there in November, then yes, the Dems are in catastrophic trouble.

But I think that in a general election, a lot more people will be motivated to come out.