Ed Morrissey:
Consider this from The Hill a measure of the rising desperation among Senate Democrats over the upcoming midterm elections. The horizon looks so bleak that Democrats hoped that Republicans would lose the race, since they saw no chance of winning it for themselves with Barack Obama an albatross around their necks and the economy going nowhere except down:
This sober realization came to Democrats on Wednesday, as Tuesday night’s primary results showed they cannot count on Tea Party candidates upsetting more-electable incumbents.
And Democrats are increasingly realizing that President Obama’s approval rating will probably remain mired at 45 percent or lower until Election Day, giving Republicans ammo.
As their difficulties mounted, Senate Democrats met with the president at the White House on Wednesday evening. … But it is clear Democrats are nervous. After Republicans flopped in the last two Senate election cycles, the GOP establishment fought and frequently defeated the Tea Party candidates that Democrats hoped to face.
Even that slender reed of hope was … very slender. Even if Chris McDaniel won the runoff this week, the odds of Mississippi electing a Democrat to the US Senate were somewhere between Powerball and space-alien invasion. And the odds of winning enough seats to keep Harry Reid as Majority Leader are not exactly growing, either, as National Journal’s analysis shows:
The campaign for control of the Senate has changed, somewhat, since The Hotline last ranked the 2014 Senate races in February. The top nine pickup opportunities still belong to Republicans, more than enough for them to win back control of the Senate. But some of the most threatened Democratic incumbents have stabilized since winter, when things looked particularly dire for their party, and they could yet manage enough red-state victories to keep the Senate in Democratic hands. Incumbents like Arkansas’s Mark Pryor still have very difficult campaigns ahead, but they aren’t done yet. …
At some places in the list, the differences between the states are infinitesimal; at other points, there are wide gaps. We think about the Senate landscape in tiers: Democrats are highly likely to lose the top three races; the next four are toss-ups; the six after that are highly competitive campaigns where we think the incumbents still hold the upper hand; and the races at the bottom are against-the-odds upset possibilities.
The top nine slots in this list of potential flips are Democrat-held seats. So are two of the are seats that moved up into the top 10 in likelihood of flipping since their last analysis (Iowa and Colorado). In places 10 and 11 are Mitch McConnell and the open Georgia seat, which assume an awful lot about the political skills of Alison Lundergan Grimes and Michelle Nunn. After that, the next five seats are all Democrat-held too, including a possible pickup in deep-blue Oregon. All Republicans need to do is hold serve and take six of the 14 races rated as competitive by NJ.
Even in a fairly neutral political environment, that wouldn’t be an impossible task in a sixth-year midterm. However, it’s not a neutral political environment, in part because Democrats are losing the enthusiasm gap — and badly:
In the latest Udall campaign ads, here in Colorado, they are sticking with the tried and true: the war on women approach. They also have Udall trying to sound like a libertarian populist. So far, Udall’s ad campaign hasn’t worked with Republican nominee Cory Gardner remaining within the margin of error with Udall.
Unlike the past election cycles, Colorado Republicans have worked hard this year to avoid nominating flawed candidates.
The Tea Party is the reason we have any separation at all between Progressives and Progressives Lite
Having a clear cut vision between the two, would have truly been the death knell for the left I believe
The Tea Party folks are the grassroots, the energy of the right
Drown that energy, then it doesn’t matter which side wins because we all lose