There may not be another Democrat alive who knows the Pennsylvania electorate as well as Senator Bob Casey, Jr. He and his father, who served two terms as governor from 1987-95, have been deeply involved in Democratic politics in the Keystone State for decades.
In the last couple of weeks, the Casey camp and its allies have made two very interesting moves. First, it was an ad from the Casey campaign featuring a mixed-politics couple–a Republican wife and Democratic husband–who agreed they were both voting for Casey. The ad highlighted some positions in which Casey aligned himself with Trump-supported policies on fracking, NAFTA and tariffs.
Today, Politico reported that a front group operated by Democrats is trying to boost a third-party candidate to shave off votes from Casey’s Republican opponent, Dave McCormick.
These are curious moves by a three-term incumbent who most people expect to be reelected this fall. Think about this logically for a moment: If a Democrat thinks he is winning, why would he need to court crossover voters or try to siphon off an opponent’s voters to a third-party candidate?
I think it is obvious that Team Casey is seeing something in their data that is trending in a direction they don’t like. They probably wouldn’t be making the moves they’re making if they liked what they were seeing.
And in a time when the correlation between Senate races and presidential races has run at 98.6% in the last two presidential election cycles, if Team Casey is seeing trouble, that means trouble for Kamala Harris, too. If a Democratic Senator is taking pains to point out his areas of agreement with Donald Trump, that doesn’t say much for what he thinks about the prospects of aligning with Harris, does it?
These two moves by the Casey camp and its allies now have me convinced that both Casey and Harris are in trouble in Pennsylvania. I moved both his race and her race in the Keystone State to toss-up status nine days ago. I am not going to change those ratings at this time, but if I were a Republican, I would be feeling fairly optimistic right now about the prospects for winning both Pennsylvania’s crucial 19 electoral votes and its Senate seat.
If Trump wins Pennsylvania, approximately 64% of all possible combinations in the remaining six swing states would get him to at least 269 electoral votes. While 270 are needed to win outright, a 269-269 tie would almost certainly put Trump in the White House. In the event of nobody getting 270 electoral votes, the House of Representatives would elect the president in January, and crucially, each state, not each representative, gets one vote. There is almost no chance whatsoever that Republicans will not control at least 26 of the 50 state delegations to the House, and that would ensure Trump’s election.
Should Harris lose Pennsylvania, she would have little more than a 1-in-3 chance of putting together the combinations she would need to reach at least 270 electoral votes. If Harris is in trouble in Pennsylvania, she is in trouble, period.
As far as the Senate is concerned, if Casey should lose Pennsylvania, it is also likely that Democrats lose Senate races in Michigan, an open seat, and Wisconsin, where there has been a lot of talk recently about Senator Tammy Baldwin’s trends on a downward trajectory. With Republicans already expected to gain at least two and possibly three Senate seats, that would mean at least a 55-45 GOP majority, with potential for Republicans to ultimately win as many as 57 Senate seats–just three short of the threshold required to break a filibuster.
As a Democrat, I am very concerned and I am not liking what I am seeing right now.