Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

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Ramparts against Republicans

Republicans believe they have a chance of taking control of the Senate in November. And they do.

Who will win control is at the moment basically a tossup, but Republicans get the nod by narrow statistical margins.

Republicans need to pick up just six seats to gain control of the chamber. Thirty-six seats are open, and nearly two-thirds are currently held by Democrats. That means Democrats are playing defense in a political climate poisoned by Republican intransigence that has made much of the public sour on Washington in general. And it doesn’t help that the president’s approval rating remains underwater.

As the Los Angeles Times pointed out last week: “Of the dozen or so most competitive races, virtually all are for seats held by Democrats. Of those, seven are in states that President Obama lost in 2012: Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota and West Virginia.”

According to the Cook Report, “Republicans are on track to pick up between four and six seats; it is more likely than not that the number will be at the higher end of — and may exceed — that range.”

The New York Times’ current Senate forecast from The Upshot puts it this way: “According to our statistical election-forecasting machine, it’s a tossup. The Republicans have about a 54 percent chance of gaining a majority.”

Last month, Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com said: “It’s almost certain that Republicans are going to gain seats. The question is whether they’ll net the six pickups necessary to win control of the Senate.” But he continued: “If asked to place a bet at even odds, we’d take a Republican Senate.”

And big-money conservatives are flooding the zone with cash to ensure victory.

Lauren Windsor reported last month in The Nation that Charles and David Koch held their annual summer seminar for “a gang of the world’s richest people,” and, according to a source who attended the conference, “the explicit goal was to raise $500 million to take the Senate in the 2014 midterms and another $500 million ‘to make sure Hillary Clinton is never president.’ ”

This continues a disturbing trend in which the wealthy tilt right in the fight against the rest. According to a report last month from the Center for Responsive Politics, “So far this cycle, the top 20 deep-pocketed contributors to the joint committees are all giving to conservatives. In contrast, during the 2012 cycle four of the top five donors to (joint fundraising committees) were giving to Democrats.”

The plutocrats are flexing their muscle and placing their bets: Republicans for the win!

For one thing, it would signal a reward for obstruction, so a government that already has nearly ground to a halt could become even more resistant to action. This could mean another lost year for us as a nation, as Congress whiles away the time in anticipation of a changing of the guard in 2016.

Or, a Congress completely controlled by Republicans could feel a need to put some points on the board, so to speak, redoubling investigative queries into conservative crusades like the Benghazi attacks and scheduling votes on, and possibly even passing, a raft of bills that stoke conservative passions, like limits on abortion.

According to The Daily Independent, a newspaper in Ashland, Ky., Sen. Mitch McConnell, while speaking at a national Right to Life Convention in Louisville last month, told the crowd that if Republicans gained control of the Senate, they would schedule a vote on legislation to outlaw abortions after 20 weeks.

To that point, The New York Times’ Jackie Calmes reported last week: “With their Senate majority at stake in November, Democrats and allied groups are now stepping up an aggressive push to woo single women — young and old, highly educated and working class, never married, and divorced or widowed.”

On the heels of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Hobby Lobby case, and the court’s temporary order in the Wheaton College case, this might be smart politics. Both decisions limited women’s rights relating to contraceptive coverage, and both were attacked in strongly worded dissents by female justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Notorious R.B.G., as the Internet has crowned her) writing on the former and Sonia Sotomayor on the latter.

But Democrats can’t lean on a single demographic. The corporatists, oligarchs and plutocrats are working in concert. Liberals must marshal all their constituent groups to do the same. Everyone must vote.

Charles Blow is a columnist for The New York Times.

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