Blog
Good Night and Good Luck
In 2006, when I was working in Washington, D.C. for a national trade organization, I was deeply consumed with that year’s midterm elections. I began obsessively tracking all the House and Senate races and, toward the end of the cycle, I made some predictions, which, as it turns out, were almost completely spot on. I only missed the House total by three seats and was nearly perfect in the Senate.
I began regularly making predictions, and in almost every election, I was very close, coming within a handful of seats. In 2012, I called every state correctly but one in the presidential race, and missed the House and the Senate by one seat each.
With the advent of the Trump era, I began to lose my touch. And I have never gotten it completely back. After Tuesday’s election, I had to make a very hard reckoning with myself, and I have come to realize something important. For as much as I have always prided myself on my objectivity, I realized I have been unable to be objective when it mattered, and my personal preferences have been clouding my judgment for years.
In the last week before the election, I wrote a column on this website in which I said that I thought both Kamala Harris and Senator Bob Casey were in trouble in Pennsylvania, and that Senator Sherrod Brown was likelier than not to lose his seat in Ohio. I was right. But I switched course just a few days later as soon as I found information that mirrored my biases. I have written for years about how polls were broken and should be disregarded, but as soon as I saw a polling result that showed what I hoped to see, I disregarded what I was clearly seeing—and everything I thought I had learned in the previous eight years.
On Tuesday night, a follower of mine on X.com, distraught by the results, lashed out angrily at me and my incorrect predictions. It made me think. And it made me realize that my inability to separate my wishes from my analysis, once again, was providing false hope to people who I never wished to mislead.
Over the last 15 years, I have earned a following of more than 13,000 people on X.com (formerly Twitter), who have come to trust my judgments. I have been featured in numerous publications and on several television and radio programs around the world. And I have done all of them—all of you—a disservice. I’m sorry.
So I have decided that I am getting out of the election prediction business. Not only do I no longer believe I can do it well or objectively, but I am actively letting down thousands of people who trust what I say. I will not do that anymore.
Going forward on this website and on social media, I will confine my observations to my own views on politics and analyzing election results. In particular, I will write about what I believe politicians will do and what my party, the Democratic Party, should do if it hopes to reverse the obvious disconnect between itself and the median voter in this country.
I fear that our country faces hard times now, and that much of the progress that has been won over the last hundred years will be undone by aggressive conservative populists in the next two years. I worry that the Social Security and Medicare I was hoping to have at some point in the next 15 years will no longer be there for myself or others. I fear the decisions that the conservative-dominated Supreme Court will make for the rest of my lifetime. There is nothing that can be done about any of that now, sadly.
I will likely be much less active on this site and on social media going forward, though I hope to maintain the friendships that I have made over the years. All that any of us can do now is get on with our lives and make the best of it. I have a terrific wife, a great home, an amazing job, good friends, and a master’s degree to pursue, and I am going to turn a much greater focus to all of those things going forward. I wish you all the best of luck in everything you want to do. Thank you for believing in me, and I sincerely apologize to everyone I have let down.
With a tip of the hat to the originator of the phrase, Edward R. Murrow: Good night, and good luck.
Why Democrats Should Be Concerned About Pennsylvania
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.
15 Days Out: This Race Is A Pure Toss-Up
To view the full ratings chart, click here.
Readers of my Twitter/X page (@clistonbrown) and my website know that I consider polling to be an untrustworthy means of assessing upcoming elections. Having seen the massive polling errors in several key states over the last two presidential elections, as well as recent midterm elections, I believe we can no longer glean anything of value from polls or polling averages.
In assessing the state of the race, it is important to look at other factors, and at this point in time, there are a number of countervailing factors that make it impossible to honestly say that either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump has the advantage with 15 days to go.
On one hand, some of the signals coming out of the key states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada should be troubling to Harris and the Democrats. Democrats in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada over the last few weeks have been warning that they do not like the signs and trends they are seeing in their states. And in Pennsylvania, two things are especially troubling for Democrats. The first concerning point is that Republicans continue to close their gap in registration with Democrats in the Keystone State. The second worrisome data point: Democratic Senator Bob Casey has been running an ad where he points out areas of agreement he has with Trump on certain issues and featuring a married couple, one Republican and one Democrat, supporting Casey.
To be honest, that ad marked the first time in this campaign that I have really thought Democrats might be in trouble. As a rule of thumb, when Democrats are focusing on winning crossover Republicans or getting strong support from young people, that is usually a sign that they don’t think they have enough votes to win without those groups. And because those groups are hard to get—most voters don’t ticket-split anymore, and young people have voted at a lower rate than any other age group in literally every election on record—if Democrats think they need those two groups, they’re in trouble.
On the other hand, we are seeing reports of record early turnout and promising turnout among voters voting by mail. Georgia and North Carolina are seeing record early turnout. Pennsylvania Democrats are building a “firewall” of mail ballots, hoping to withstand an Election Day turnout in the Keystone State that is likely to be heavily Republican.
It would be completely dishonest for me—or anyone—to say we know at this point which indicators are likely to be more important 15 days from now. I have long believed that Vice President Harris, as an African-American woman from California, would be a hard sell to the white voters she needs to win to capture the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. In those states, traditionalist views hold more sway than they do on the coasts, and residents tend to cast a wary eye toward Democratic politicians from California. On the other hand, it is possible that she may run better than Joe Biden did in North Carolina and perhaps Georgia. If she can win those states, as well as Arizona and Nevada, she could overcome losses in the Rust Belt and still prevail. But it is a dicey proposition. A loss in any of the four Sun Belt swing states, if coupled with losing all three Rust Belt swing states, would doom Harris’s candidacy.
It has also always been my contention—backed up by results in both 2016 and 2020, and trends dating back to the turn of the century—that House and Senate races are likely to mirror almost perfectly the presidential results in those constituencies. My view remains that the Republicans are all but certain to flip control of the Senate—and I am now moving the race in Ohio to “Leans Republican,” which would indicate at least a 52-48 GOP majority in 2025. I have rated Montana at least “Leans Republican” (and now “Likely Republican”) since the beginning of the campaign, and the Senate seat in West Virginia, currently held by former Democrat and current independent Joe Manchin, is certain to flip to the GOP. I believe that whichever candidate wins the presidency, his or her party is nearly certain to win the House as well.
In short, I rate the Senate now as “Likely Republican,” and both the presidency and the House as toss-ups.
Given all of the information available at the moment, I am now moving the presidential and Senate races in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin to toss-up status, and as I noted earlier, I am moving the Senate race in Ohio to “Leans Republican,” with GOP nominee Bernie Moreno now a slight favorite to oust Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown. Additionally, based on some of the early voting totals reported by Jon Ralston in Nevada, and also by statements coming from the powerful Culinary Union that Harris would lose Nevada if the election were held now, I am moving the presidential and Senate races in Nevada to toss-ups as well.
All of these aforementioned changes represent movement away from the Democrats, but I also am making two ratings changes in their direction. After seeing the heavy early turnout in Georgia, and a recent court case that went against the Trumpist-dominated Georgia elections board, I am now moving Georgia from “Leans Republican” to toss-up.
I now show all seven “swing states” as being toss-up states in the presidential race, and five of those states have Senate races this cycle, with the exceptions of North Carolina and Georgia. Of the five Senate races in those states, I rate four as toss-ups. I still consider Democrat Ruben Gallego a slight favorite over Republican Kari Lake in the Arizona Senate race—I believe that a female candidate will run slightly behind Trump due to some of the Trumpist base’s prejudices. Those voters may not vote for Gallego, but they might pass on voting for Lake, too. Nonetheless, I think the Arizona Senate race will be much closer than polling indicates, largely due to the fact that the presidential race in the state is a toss-up.
My only other rating change away from Republicans, since 15 days ago, is an unexpected wild card. The independent Senate candidacy of Dan Osborn in Nebraska is causing a tremendous level of heartburn for incumbent GOP Senator Deb Fischer. I believe that Osborn’s status as an independent candidate is helping him overcome the resistance that most of Nebraska’s electorate would have against a Democratic candidate. One thing I have learned over the last 18 years of prognosticating elections is that when candidates are pleading for more money, they are seeing trends and data points they do not like. (Jon Tester, the incumbent Democratic Senator from Montana, has been almost screeching for help for months, and Sherrod Brown’s level of pleading in the Ohio Senate race has become more intense in recent weeks.) Fischer’s camp has been sounding alarms for several weeks now. I ultimately think that enough of Nebraska’s Republican voters will “come home” to reelect Fischer, but I can no longer dismiss the possibility of an upset out of hand. I am moving that race from “Safe Republican” to “Leans Republican.”
It is often presumed that Osborn, should he upset Fischer, would caucus with the Democrats, but I doubt that, as it would likely doom his reelection bid in ruby-red Nebraska. But even if he did caucus with Team Blue, my view at this time is that Republicans are likely to have a 51-49 majority regardless. Should Osborn win, and if Sherrod Brown were to hold on to his seat in Ohio, we could see a situation where the Senate has 50 Republicans, 47 Democrats and two Democratic-caucusing independents, and Osborn holding the keys to the chamber, possibly forcing the Senate to anoint someone like Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) or Angus King (I-Maine) as majority leader. Of course, that would depend on Harris also winning, thus giving Tim Walz the Senate’s tiebreaking vote. But this is all conjecture, and it is all based on probabilities that I consider to be below 50%.
The bottom line is that nobody knows who is going to win the presidency or the House right now, and anybody who tells you that they do know is full of crap. This race will come down to turnout and intensity. Whoever wants it more will win it. That’s why the heavy early-vote turnout in North Carolina and Georgia, and Democratic successes in mail voting in Pennsylvania, have given me pause. If not for that, at this point, I would likely be moving several of these states to “Leans Republican” and characterizing Trump as the front-runner. At this point, I see a lot of worrisome signs for Harris, but I am not yet convinced that she has any worse than a 50-50 shot.
I will try to make predictions for every state in two weeks, but candidly, I am not sure that I will be able to do so. I will tell you this: out of respect for my readers, and my sense of integrity, I am not going to claim to know something I don’t. I do not want to give anybody any false hope or any false reasons for alarm. The one time I got a presidential election wrong, in 2016, it was an honest error based on what I believed to be the best information available at the time. But to be candid, it was also an error based in hubris and my inability or unwillingness to see something that, in retrospect, was staring me right in the face. I will not make such an error again, even if it means telling you honestly that I just can’t call it.
We will see if developments indicate a decisive break is occurring in one direction or the other between now and November 5th. The decisive break usually comes, but when it doesn’t, you get an election like 1960 or 2000.
The Curious Case of Dan Osborn
With 20 days left before the 2024 elections, a very unexpected U.S. Senate race has popped onto our radar screen. Senator Deb Fischer (R-Nebraska) finds herself in a surprisingly competitive race against Dan Osborn, a blue-collar worker and labor leader who served in the Navy. No Republican expects to be in a dogfight in a statewide race in Nebraska, and if Osborn were running as a Democrat, there is a strong likelihood that Fischer would be far ahead right now.
Osborn, however, is running without any party affiliation, and both polling (which I tend to distrust) and Fischer herself are indicating that he has a real chance to actually win. The Fischer camp has been crying out for a couple of weeks now that they are underfunded and need cash to stave off the surprisingly strong challenge Osborn is giving them.
I still have my doubts about whether Osborn can actually win this race. In the end, with control of the U.S. Senate on the line, I expect most Nebraska Republicans will “come home” and vote for Fischer, and in a heavily red state, that should be enough to get her over the finish line. However, I also believe that if Osborn were running as a Democrat, we would not even be entertaining the possibility that he might win or even come close, and I find this case particularly interesting because I predicted this possibility seven years ago.
In a column published in the Observer on June 26, 2017 (“To Advance In Blood-Red States, Democrats Need To Abandon Them”), I suggested that a number of states were hopeless for Democrats and that the best course of action in such states—like Nebraska—would be for the Democratic Party to stop running candidates in statewide races and instead support independent candidates. I noted that in two states where this approach had been tried, an independent running against a Republican, without a Democratic opponent in the race, had won the governorship in Alaska in 2014. I also mentioned that another independent candidate ran for the U.S. Senate in Kansas the same year and ran the closest race that state had seen in decades. And more recently, in 2022, the same situation happened in Utah, with a Democratic-backed independent coming closer to winning a U.S. Senate race than any Democrat had done in about 50 years.
My view was that it was better for Democrats to get behind a candidate who might give them a chance to defeat a Republican than to keep putting up candidates who were guaranteed to lose in states where a majority of voters simply will not vote for a Democrat, period. An independent who will side with Democrats roughly half of the time is better than a Republican who will almost never vote with Democrats at any time. By taking away the stigma of the Democratic brand, which is toxic in states like Nebraska, a better chance would exist to defeat Republican candidates in general elections.
Based on the results where this approach has been tried, it seems clear that my suggestion was on target, and Osborn’s race may be the crowning example of my theory. Democrats in a number of deeply red states may want to look at Osborn’s example, and the others I have mentioned here, and consider the possibilities. I think there are millions of voters in deeply red states who consistently vote Republican but do not necessarily love the Republican Party—they simply hate Democrats.
As I said, I still do not expect Osborn to win—I expect Nebraska’s Republican tendencies to win out—but I can no longer dismiss the possibility out of hand. Today, I am moving Nebraska’s Senate race to “Leans R” and recharacterizing it as a race to watch closely.
2024 Current State-By-State Ratings: 30 Days Out
Today marks 30 days until Election Day, and taking into careful consideration the trends, demographics and key fundamentals in the states, my view is that Kamala Harris holds a slight edge over Donald Trump in the Electoral College, but is not yet a clear favorite.
At this time, I believe Harris has an edge in enough states to put her at 266 electoral votes, just four short of the 270 necessary to win, and that Donald Trump has an edge in enough states to put him at 236 electoral votes. I consider three states true tossups at this time: North Carolina, with 15 electoral votes; Arizona, with 11; and Wisconsin, with 10.
Crucially, at this time, I am characterizing Pennsylvania, Michigan and Nevada as “Leans D.” I believe that when all is said and done, the demographics in those states point to narrow Harris victories. I also characterize Georgia as “Leans R,” but this is largely due to the machinations of the Trumpist-controlled Georgia Elections Board. To put it plainly, I do not think Harris is going to be allowed to win Georgia. The actions taken by the board–particularly requiring a hand count of all ballots–virtually guarantee a chaotic, drawn-out post-election count, and this provides ample opportunity for bad actors to manipulate the counts.
If my characterizations are correct, that would mean Harris needs to win just one of North Carolina, Arizona or Wisconsin to win the election, while Trump would need to win all three.
I believe Harris’s likeliest win of the three is in Wisconsin, which is a closely divided state but also has a very strong, well-organized state-level Democratic Party. I also tend to think she likely has slightly better than a 50% chance to win in Arizona, where demographic trends are moving leftward. North Carolina will be the toughest of the three to win, but I expect that Harris has close to a 50/50 shot in the Tar Heel State.
However, even the slightest movement in one direction or the other could vastly change the picture. If Harris outperforms expectations–and heavy registration among younger voters, who tend to be less likely to show up in likely voter polling screens, could point in that direction–then wins in all seven of the swing states, perhaps even Florida, would not be off the table. But if Trump continues his trend of overperforming his polling, particularly in the “Rust Belt” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, a Trump sweep of the seven crucial states is entirely possible.
In the Senate, I have consistently said that I considered Republicans to be heavy favorites to flip the chamber this year, regardless of the outcome of the presidential election, due to the brutal Senate map Democrats face this cycle. My view remains unchanged. At this time, I consider Republican Jim Justice an absolute lock to flip the open seat in West Virginia, currently held by Democratic-caucusing independent Joe Manchin, and I also consider Republican challenger Tim Sheehy a prohibitive favorite in Montana over Democratic Sen. Jon Tester. This has nothing to do with Tester himself, but rather of his state’s strong Republican edge and the unmistakeable decline over the last two decades in ticket-splitting for Congressional races when they happen in a presidential year. Of the last 69 Senate races held during presidential elections (2016 and 2020), only one race has produced a split result, and that was in Maine in 2020, when Republican Susan Collins held her seat despite Democrat Joe Biden winning her state.
There are key reasons why I think Collins prevailed that do not apply inversely to Montana, not the least of which is that Republican voters in Montana are less likely to ticket-split in 2024 than Democratic voters in Maine were in 2020. Collins, late in the 2020 election race, voted against Trump Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, and enough Maine Democrats naively chose to “reward” Collins for that action to save her seat. Tester has no such dynamics playing in his favor in Montana, where Trump is likely to win by at least 14-15 points. It is hard to imagine upwards of 1 out of 7 Trump voters in Montana voting to keep Democrats in control of the U.S. Senate.
At this time, I consider Republicans clear favorites to win at least 51 of the 100 Senate seats, which would give them the majority. The only Senate race I consider a toss-up is Ohio, where Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown faces a difficult but possibly winnable race against Republican challenger Bernie Moreno. Like Tester, Brown represents a state that has lurched heavily to the right in recent years, but there are two key differences between Tester’s situation and Brown’s that lead me to believe Brown still has a good chance to prevail.
- First of all, Ohio is not nearly as heavily Republican as Montana is. Trump won Ohio by 8% in 2016 and 2020, while he won Montana by 20% and 15%. Brown doesn’t have as heavy of an anchor around his neck as Tester has.
- Brown also has a very strong relationship with working-class laborers in his state, and it is not inconceivable that just enough white, working-class voters who will vote for Trump will stick with Brown. Organized labor is much stronger in heavily industrialized Ohio than it is in largely rural Montana. This will not be an easy race for Brown, but if Harris outperforms expectations, she could help him by shaving two or three points off of Biden’s 8% loss margin in the Buckeye State in 2020.
Of the 11 Republican Senate seats that are on the ballot this year, Republicans are locks to win nine of them and favorites to hold their seats in Texas and Florida. I continue to believe Democrats have made a massive strategic error by essentially giving up on Florida, which I believe will be much closer this year than anybody expects, and if Harris and/or Democratic Senate nominee Debbie Mucarsel-Powell come up short, the Democratic Party will look back on Florida as a huge missed opportunity. I do not believe that Texas is close enough yet for either Harris or Democratic Senate nominee Colin Allred to prevail.
As to the House, at this time, I expect Democrats to net nine seats to take a narrow 223-212 majority. However, this is entirely dependent on Harris winning the election. If Trump wins, I expect Republicans to hold the House and perhaps slightly increase their current 221-214 majority.
In recent years, the correlation between presidential and House races has roughly mirrored the correlation between presidential and Senate races. In 2020, only 16 seats out of 435 had split results, with nine Biden-won districts electing Republicans, and seven Trump-won districts electing Democrats. The deviation, effectively, was only two seats. Whoever wins the presidency will almost certainly win a majority of House districts, and the number of House districts the president-elect wins will very closely mirror the number of House seats the president-elect’s party will win.
For a full breakdown of my characterizations of the presidential and Senate races in every state, as well as the priority that I think should be assigned to each state for the last 30 days, click here.
You will note that I assign the highest priority to Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, all of which are crucial to the presidential race and all of which also have Senate races. I have also assigned “top priority” status to Arizona and Nevada, which have Senate races, and to North Carolina, which does not have a Senate race.
States I have characterized as being of “secondary priority” are Georgia, due to the closeness of the presidential race; and Texas, Florida, Ohio and Montana due to competitive Senate races.
I have characterized several states, including Minnesota, Maine and New Hampshire, as well as the Second Congressional district in Nebraska, as “watch closely.” While I believe these constituencies are all highly likely to vote for Harris, they should be watched for any late movement toward Trump.
The remaining 37 states, and the District of Columbia, I characterize as “Do Not Contest.” However, that label does not necessarily apply to every House race in those states, as a number of red states have at least one House district where Democrats can compete.
I will review these ratings at 15 days out and make final characterizations, without toss-ups, on Monday, November 4, 2024.
Thoughts on Jimmy Carter
Today, Jimmy Carter, who served a single term as the nation’s 39th president from 1977-81, turned 100 years old.
It has been said of President Carter that he was the best ex-president in U.S. history, and that is probably quite true. He is the first president of whom I have any memories, and I am sad to say that my impressions of him as a young child were the negative impressions that were passed on to me by my mother and stepfather and many of the people in our neighborhood.
By the time I was in first and second grade, Carter had become an object of national derision and ridicule, such that schoolkids were singing mocking jingles about him on the playground. (They sang, to the tune of the “Oscar Mayer” wiener song: “‘Cause Jimmy Carter has a way of screwing up the U.S.A.”) It should be noted that I grew up in a solidly Democratic, labor-union dominated corner of Indiana bordering on Chicago, and that Carter narrowly missed losing Lake County, Indiana in his 1980 reelection campaign. Only two Democrats–Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and George McGovern in 1972–have lost Lake County since 1928.
It would be fair to say that Carter’s presidency was largely unsuccessful, although it would also be fair to note that he had some key successes. The Camp David Accords, resulting in peace between Egypt and Israel, represented one of the finest diplomatic accomplishments of any president in U.S. history–right up there with Richard Nixon’s opening to China in 1972 and Theodore Roosevelt’s mediation of the Portsmouth, N.H. peace settlement between Japan and Russia in 1905. He also successfully negotiated the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks with the Soviet Union and made the courageous, and morally correct, move of pardoning all Vietnam War draft evaders on his second day in office.
Sadly, Carter’s successes were few, and he fell victim to a number of events which he either mishandled or could not control. The Iran Hostage Crisis, in which 53 American citizens were held in captivity for more than 14 months, and the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, both coming in 1979, reinforced the popular impression that Carter was weak. His tireless work to solve the crisis was undermined by the Ronald Reagan campaign’s secret promises to Iran that if the Iranians kept the crisis going through the 1980 election, ensuring Carter’s defeat, the Iranian theocratic regime would get a better deal from Reagan than it would from Carter. Although Carter ultimately secured the hostages’ freedom on his last day in office, he never really got the credit for it from the public. I remember Reagan supporters claiming that Iran freed the hostages on the day Reagan was inaugurated because they were afraid Reagan would “get tough” with them.
Carter was also beset by an energy crisis that he did not cause but was unable to solve. His appearance on television wearing a sweater and urging Americans to conserve energy was at odds with the national mood; he was seen as weak and pessimistic, and the country went through a period of psychological “malaise.” The sunny, optimistic pronouncements of Reagan captured the nation’s imagination, and Carter lost all but six states when he failed to win a second term.
The night he conceded the 1980 election, Carter reminded Americans that he had promised, in his successful 1976 campaign, that he would never lie to them. In that spirit, he admitted he could not say that his landslide defeat that day didn’t hurt.
But Carter bounced back from the agony of his defeat and took on the rest of his life with gusto, earning well-deserved plaudits and praise from even his biggest political detractors for the work he did after leaving the White House. He established the Carter Center to fight for human rights around the globe and worked tirelessly around the world, conducting peace negotiations, monitoring elections, helping to fight devastating diseases. He also worked nonstop with Habitat For Humanity, helping build countless homes for the needy with his own hands. He refused to lay down and die after losing the presidency and spent more than 40 years simply doing good for his fellow human beings–all while living humbly in his tiny hometown of Plains, Georgia, where he taught Sunday School at his church until his health made it impossible for him to continue.
Perhaps Carter was not the most effective president, but we would be so much better off if all of our leaders cared about people as much as he does. And even if his message on energy conservation was not one that Americans wanted to hear, it was the truth. He was right.
Carter’s grandson said a few weeks ago that the former president said he is trying to hold on and live long enough to cast an absentee ballot for Kamala Harris for president. It is typical of Jimmy Carter that even as the end of his life draws near, he continues to live for his country and his fellow human beings.
We may have better presidents in the years to come, but we will never have a better human being as our president than Jimmy Carter.
Happy birthday, Mr. President.
Democrats Must Make Plays in Florida, Texas and Ohio to Save the Senate
I was heartened to read in The Hill today that the Biden campaign is going to be sending surrogates to Florida, Texas and Ohio, among other states, in the wake of his triumphant, “Trumanesque” State of the Union speech.
Last night, after the president’s speech, I posted on Twitter (I refuse to call it anything else) that I thought President Biden should campaign in Ohio. I felt that his pro-union message, his fighting demeanor, and his status as the only sitting president to walk a picket line offered the potential to shrink his margin of defeat in the Buckeye State from the 8% rout he suffered at the hands of Donald Trump there in 2020.
I don’t have very high hopes for Biden actually contending in Ohio, but I think shrinking Trump’s margin might give Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) a puncher’s chance to survive this fall.
As I have noted, both on this site and on Twitter, ticket-splitting in presidential years between presidential and Senate candidates is at an all-time low. Voters have become highly polarized, and they have also come to understand that it makes no sense to vote for one party’s candidate for president, and then simultaneously vote for a Senate (or House) candidate who is going to block virtually everything that president wants to do.
The statistics bear this out. In 2016, every state that had a Senate race voted for the same party’s candidates for president and Senate. In 2020, there was only one exception to this trend, with Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) prevailing despite Joe Biden winning her state. Even in that case, Collins had her closest race since she was first elected in 1996. That means 68 of the last 69 Senate races held during presidential election years have resulted in the same party winning both the presidential and Senate races in those states (a 1.4% split rate over the last two cycles). Statistically, the likelihood of Brown holding his seat while Biden loses Ohio is very low, and the larger Biden’s margin of defeat, the likelihood of Brown surviving gets even lower.
If Biden can shrink his margin of defeat in Ohio, Brown might be able to hold on to his Senate seat. But even then, Democrats are likely looking at losing the Senate by a seat, and that’s where Florida and Texas come into the picture.
I know that it is fashionable among Democrats these days to suggest that Democrats should forget Florida, but Florida, rich with electoral votes and House seats, remains one of the closest states in the country and one of its biggest electoral prizes. Conceding Florida is a mistake, especially with the Sunshine State having a Senate race on the ballot this year. Everyone understands that North Carolina is a better bet for the president than Florida is, but North Carolina has no Senate race on the ballot this year. It would be great for Biden to win North Carolina, but if he wins there, he almost certainly already has the election won irrespective of the results in that state. There’s really no benefit or added value to winning North Carolina in 2024. But winning Florida, or at least making it close, could help Democrats defeat Senator Rick Scott (R-Florida) and get back to 50 seats in the Senate, if Sherrod Brown also wins.
Texas is also a state which I believe is not especially promising for Biden this fall, but again, if he can cut his margin in the Lone Star State, he could help Democratic Senate candidate Colin Allred in his race against the unpopular Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Remember that Cruz only won his last race by about 2.5%, and while that was a midterm election in which Democrats overperformed nationally, Cruz clearly does have some electoral and political weaknesses.
None of these three states are especially good bets for Biden, but conceding them also means conceding the Senate. The likelihood of Senator Jon Tester (D-Montana) overcoming a double-digit Biden loss in his state is very, very low. Don’t kid yourselves about that. Tester has never faced a race with these kinds of headwinds. Of his three previous races, two were in midterm elections, with no presidential race on the ballot to weigh him down, and the one time he won during a presidential election, in 2012, was when Barack Obama only lost Montana by about 10%. Biden lost Montana in 2020 by 16%. Tester has never won by a large margin, and if Biden loses Montana by double digits again–especially now, in a more polarized environment that 2012, with presidential/Senate ticket-splitting all but dead now–Tester is probably doomed. With the West Virginia Senate seat being vacated by Senator Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia), that seat is certain to flip Republican. Democrats have to hold Brown’s seat and, let’s be honest, find another seat to flip to guard against the likelihood that Tester will lose.
Besides Florida and Texas, there are no other Republican-held seats on the ballot this fall where Democrats have any chance to win. The other nine Republican Senate seats up in this year’s election are in Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Wyoming and Nebraska (where both seats are on the ballot due to a special election). Unless something extremely weird happens (like a Roy Moore situation), Democrats don’t have a prayer in a single one of those nine races.
In short, if Democrats want to hold the Senate, they have to win two out of four seats in Florida, Montana, Ohio, and Texas, and despite Tester’s incumbency and unusual strength for a Democrat in his state, his prospects are by far the worst.
That is why I wrote, over a year ago, that Biden needs to devote significant resources to these four states even if it appears unlikely that he can actually win them.
So I’m heartened by the fact that the campaign is clearly targeting three of those states–the three where Democrats have the best chance to win. If Democrats don’t win two of those seats, the Senate is all but gone. That means even if a Supreme Court seat comes open, Biden likely won’t get to fill it, even if he himself is reelected.
It’s not just the right move–it’s the only move.
Keep Calm And Stop Paying Attention To Polls
The recent set of swing state polls by the New York Times—the world’s most overrated media company and one of the world’s most overrated institutions, period—have cued up a whole line of Democratic bedwetters to scream and cry and shout that the sky is falling. Despite the fact that the poll results are so laughably off-base (Trump +11 in Nevada and winning Las Vegas?) that anybody who takes them seriously clearly knows nothing about politics, that hasn’t stopped a cavalcade of panicky Democrats from seriously suggesting that Joe Biden ought to forego another run.
Folks, the first thing you need to do is grab a paper bag and breathe into it until you stop hyperventilating. Then you need to sit down with a stiff drink, or some weed if that’s your thing, and let Uncle Cliston tell you a bedtime story.
In a land called America a long time ago, there was a fellow named Michael Dukakis. I’m told some of his friends called him Mike. He came out of the Democratic convention less than four months before the 1988 election leading George Bush by 17 percentage points. But when November came, Mike lost 40 states to George, who then became America’s president.
George eventually took America into a war and saw his approval ratings reach 91%. The Democrats were terrified, and almost no leading Democrat chose to run against him in 1992 because he clearly could not be beaten. But a brave, if unknown, soul from Arkansas named Bill Clinton took a gamble, and a year and a half later, Bill won big and became the next president.
Things went sour for Bill quickly, and his party was crushed in the 1994 midterm elections. It was obvious that there would be no second term for Billy Boy, whose polling was in the toilet. Yet, in 1996, he won in a landslide that surpassed his 1992 election. Nobody has won by as large of a margin since!
Then, along came a man named Barack Obama, who fell behind John McCain in the polls in 2008 with less than two months to go before the election. Yet he somehow won a landslide that carried in crushing majorities for his party in Congress.
Much like Bill, Barack had a short honeymoon after becoming president. His party was creamed in the midterm elections, and his approval ratings almost never even sniffed 50%. Many polls said a man named Mitt Romney would defeat him in 2012. The leading pollster of them all had Mitt ahead all the way up to election day! And yet, Barack beat Mitt like a drum in almost every swing state and even won Florida, which it was believed was too Republican for him to win a second time.
Four years later, Bill’s wife Hillary ran for president, and her prospects were so certain that nobody believed she could lose to her opponent, an orange-haired clown named Bozo. She was so far ahead in the crucial state of Wisconsin that it clearly made no sense at all for her to waste precious time and money visiting that state. And yet, when the circus ended, Bozo had won, and the clowns were now running the circus.
Look, I get it, folks. You’re scared. Because Democrats are ALWAYS scared, and it’s annoying and completely not a good look, but it is what it is. But one of the reasons you’re scared is because you lack perspective—especially if you’re in your 20s and you haven’t seen 35 years of embarrassing polling mistakes or quick, crazy shifts in the electorate the way Uncle Cliston has.
Now, kiddos, I’m not going to promise you that Story Time with Uncle Cliston is going to have a happy ending. There’s no way in hell Joe Biden is losing all these states, and certainly not by the margins these ridiculous polls say he is, but it is absolutely possible that he could lose several of them and Bozo could become president again. We have to be honest with ourselves about that.
But freaking out and flailing around like unhinged lunatics every time a poll comes out doesn’t do any of us any good. The upcoming election is going to be close. It could go either way. What we need to do right now is to get ahold of ourselves, stay steady and courageous, and see this thing through.
And with any luck, we’ll all live happily ever after.
The End.
Democrats Need To Focus On 13 States In 2024
In thinking about the upcoming presidential election, Democrats have two considerations to keep in mind. First and foremost, they must ensure that President Joe Biden is reelected. Secondly, and closely related to the first consideration, they need to think about how to deal with the extremely daunting Senate map they face in 2024.
Of the 34 Senate seats that will be on the ballot, Democrats are defending 23 (a total which includes three independents who caucus with the Democrats). Of the 11 Republican seats which are up for election in 2024, nine are in deeply red states where Democrats simply cannot win a statewide race these days, and the other two (Texas and Florida) offer Democrats odds which are well under 50%.
On the flip side, Democrats will be defending as many as 11 seats where Republicans have a legitimate chance to win, although certainly some of those states offer Democrats odds above 50%. With Democrats holding a 51-49 advantage in the Senate, they can only afford to lose one seat, but three of the seats they must defend are in states that Donald Trump won by landslide margins (8% or greater) in the last two elections (Ohio, Montana and West Virginia). Unless Democrats can somehow figure out how to hold on to two of those three seats, and all the others they currently hold–or win in either Texas or Florida–they will lose the Senate in 2024.
The reason that presidential and Senate consideration are closely related in 2024 is because ticket-splitting in presidential and Senate races is at an all-time low. Over the last two presidential elections, states have voted for the presidential candidate and Senate candidate of the same party 68 times out of 69 (a 98.6% correlation rate). The lone exception was the 2020 reelection of Republican Susan Collins in Maine, which Biden carried–and even Collins had her closest Senate race ever.
As such, President Biden has to think about campaigning not just in the states that he needs to hold on to in order to prevail in the Electoral College, but also in some states where he might not have a great chance to win. If he loses Ohio by 8% again, or Montana by 16%, Senators Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Jon Tester (D-Montana) are likely to lose. At the very least, Biden will have to significantly shrink his margin of defeat in those two states–or compete seriously in Texas and/or Florida–if Democrats are to retain control of the Senate after 2024.
FIRST-TIER STATES
As we look at the electoral map, it is very clear that there are two absolute must-win states for Biden: Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes) and Michigan (15 electoral votes) are irreplaceable keystones of a Democratic Electoral College win. As it happens, both states have Senate races in 2024 as well, and Michigan’s Senate race will have no incumbent, because Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow is retiring after four terms.
BOTTOM LINE: The Democrats must do whatever is necessary and spend whatever funds are required to hold onto Pennsylvania and Michigan. They cannot afford to lose either state.
SECOND-TIER STATES
The second tier for Democrats includes the three states that Biden won by less than 1% each in 2020: Georgia (16 electoral votes), Arizona (11 electoral votes) and Wisconsin (10 electoral votes), and one state he won by 2%, Nevada (6 electoral votes). If he holds Pennsylvania and Michigan, Biden only needs to retain one of Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin to be reelected. Of these three states, only Georgia has no Senate race in 2024. Democrats will have tough holds in Senate races in Arizona and Wisconsin. As such, Arizona and Wisconsin should be considered slightly higher priorities than Georgia, though Georgia cannot be ignored, because the Peach State’s demographic trends make it a far more promising state for Democrats going forward than either Arizona or Wisconsin. Biden must also ensure he hangs on to Nevada to ensure that Democrats retain that Senate seat.
BOTTOM LINE: The smart strategy here is to go all-out in Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada–sparing no expense–but to take a slightly less aggressive approach in Georgia, which Biden can afford to lose if he wins either Arizona or Wisconsin, and where Democrats are not defending a Senate seat.
“REACH” STATES
The third group of states where Biden and the Democrats must consider playing includes four states that voted twice for Donald Trump. But here, the strategy depends on whether it is considered smarter to defend incumbent Democratic senators in two states where Republicans now have a considerable advantage (Ohio, Montana), or to try to take out incumbent Republican senators in states that are not quite as red as the other two (Texas, Florida). Another factor to keep in mind is that Texas and Florida are extremely expensive states to campaign in due to their large populations and multiple big media markets. Ohio is not a cheap, low-population state, either, but Democrats can get more bang for their buck in Ohio, and certainly in sparsely populated Montana, than they can in Texas or Florida.
For Biden, it is obvious that he has a better chance to carry Florida–even with its recent rightward trend–than he has to win Ohio. He has perhaps a better chance to win Texas than he has to win Ohio, although Ohio and the Midwest tend to be a little more elastic than Texas and the South. Biden has no realistic chance whatsoever to win Montana.
There is also the fact that Texas (40 electoral votes) and Florida (30 electoral votes) pack much more of a punch in the Electoral College than Ohio (17 electoral votes) or Montana (4 electoral votes), and the two bigger states in recent elections have been more promising for Democrats than either of the two smaller states. An upset win in either Texas or Florida guarantees Biden’s reelection. For that matter, a (less-likely) win in Ohio does the same. Montana makes no difference and isn’t really winnable for Biden anyway. The only reason for Biden to campaign in Montana is to avoid hanging a 16-point anchor around Tester’s neck. So if you’re Biden, you’re probably more interested in the Texas-Florida route than the Ohio-Montana route.
But Democrats do not want to lose Tester or Brown, and as Democratic incumbents, they in some ways have a slightly easier task than the Democrats who will challenge Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rick Scott (R-Florida). Incumbents start with a thumb on the scale.
Not included in this group of “reach” states is West Virginia, where Democratic Senator Joe Manchin will face the most difficult race of his career. It would be futile for Biden to campaign in West Virginia, a state where he is guaranteed to lose by at least 30 percentage points. If Manchin can overcome a 30- to 40-point anchor at the top of the ticket, tip your hat to him. But Democrats can afford to lose Manchin’s seat as long as they win two of the four Senate seats in the “reach” states, and all four of those states are far better bets for Democrats. The Democrats should leave Manchin to fend for himself, which might actually help him in the nation’s second-reddest state.
BOTTOM LINE: Democrats don’t need any of these four “reach” states to keep the presidency, but they do need to win two of these four Senate seats to keep the Senate. They have no chance to win any of them if Biden doesn’t do decently in those states. The best bet is to campaign in all four and hope Democrats can win two of those Senate seats.
“DEFENSE” STATES
Finally, Biden and the Democrats should spend some money and resources in three states where Biden is likely to win, but all of which remain close enough that they could go haywire under the right circumstances. These three states are Virginia (11 electoral votes), Minnesota (10 electoral votes), and Maine (4 electoral votes).
BOTTOM LINE: Democrats are likely to win both the presidential races and Senate races in all three of these states, but they can’t take any chances and must make sure to nail them all down.
SUMMARY
For Joe Biden to win reelection and give his party the best chance at retaining its slim advantage in the Senate in 2024, he must campaign in, and dedicate significant resources to, exactly 13 states, and only those 13 states. There is no utility whatsoever in campaigning in any of the other 37 states, or the District of Columbia, which–with the exception of North Carolina–are all safe for one party or the other.
With North Carolina unnecessary to an Electoral College majority for Biden, and the Tar Heel State having no Senate races on the ballot in 2024, there is no strategic reason to vigorously contest it when the party has more pressing priorities. (Although a similar case can be made about Georgia, which also has no Senate races on the ballot in 2024, the fact remains that Georgia flipped blue in 2020 and North Carolina did not. As such, Georgia could be a backup for Biden in the event that he loses both Arizona and Wisconsin. Strategically, Democrats would do well to leave North Carolina alone in 2024 and revisit it in 2026 and 2028, when it has Senate races on the ballot.)
There will be some talk of trying to challenge Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) or flip an open Republican seat in Indiana, but such talk should be ignored. Democrats will have their hands full in the 13 states where they really need to compete, and spending money and resources in deeply red states like Missouri and Indiana, where Democrats are simply not going to win or even come close, would be foolish, wasteful, and bad strategy. Any money spent in any of these 37 states is money that can’t be spent where control of the White House and the Senate will be decided. Democrats need to keep their eyes on the prize and not go off on wild goose chases in impossible states.
Georgia Senate Runoff: Warnock Likely To Win
Now that Democrats are certain to retain control of the U.S. Senate for the next two year, the Georgia runoff on December 6 between incumbent Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker is not going to be the titanic struggle for control of the chamber that it might have been had Nevada flipped red.
I now rate the Georgia runoff Likely Democratic for several reasons.
- I have no doubt that a significant number of Republican voters understand that Walker shouldn’t be let within a country mile of the United States Senate, but held their noses and voted for him anyway in order to get their party control of the chamber. That motivation is no longer there, because Democrats have clinched control of the Senate. I expect some portion of these voters to stay home, with a handful perhaps even voting for Warnock.
- A Libertarian candidate dropped out and endorsed Warnock, but not in time to get his name off the ballot. He ended up pulling about 2% of the vote. Probably many or most of these voters won’t even vote, but of those who do, I expect many will heed their candidate’s endorsement and vote for Warnock.
- Democrats, unlike Republicans, still have good reasons to show up. So much of what Democratic rank-and-file voters wanted done the last two years was flummoxed by Senators Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona) having outsized power in a 50-50 Senate. If Democrats get to 51 seats, they only have to hold one of those two fickle votes, and Manchin has been much more willing to play ball with his Democratic counterparts, and cut deals, than Sinema has.
While Georgia is still a closely divided state, under the circumstances, I expect Warnock not just to win, but possibly to win by perhaps four or five points.