Democrats have their eyes on the 2018 midterm elections as a golden opportunity to unseat many House and Senate Republicans, taking advantage of an unpopular presidency to regain control of Congress. It’s been a struggle so far, having failed to win a seat in the four special congressional elections since Trump’s victory and having won just one seat in a string of state-level special races across the country. Meanwhile, the president’s approval rating has fallen by more than 40 percent averaging that number or higher in seven of the last eight national polls. That’s not Goodremember (historically, this would predict a Democratic wave), but Trump has clearly stopped the downward spiral, stabilizing his position and rebounding slightly. Why am I writing about presidential approval ratings more than 15 months before the next national election? Aren’t they irrelevant? Absolutely. Things will have changed a thousand times between now and then.
But Trump has endured one brutal news cycle after another, and a solid 40-plus percent of the country still supports him. That may not be enough to support Republicans keep the House (again, we’ll see), but the Senate is a different story. The map in 2018 is unusually beneficial for the GOP. Barring a blue wave, Republicans are realistically defending just two seats next year (Arizona and Nevada), while Democratic weaknesses are everywhere. The momentum is so helpful to the GOP that simply holding on to 52 senators would be considered a real disappointment; losing the chamber would be catastrophic. I’ve talked to a number of Republican operatives and strategists about the Senate landscape, and they’re almost unanimous that one of the most, if not the most, endangered Democratic incumbents is Joe Donnelly of Indiana. And those assessments came before this story fell With Associated Press:
Difficult @AP article about Joe Donnelly (Democrat from Indiana), one of the most vulnerable senators up for re-election next year. https://t.co/K2IB7uB76V
— Steven Shepard (@POLITICO_Steve) July 13, 2017
Joe Donnelly, considered one of the most vulnerable Democratic senators up for re-election next year, has long criticized free trade policies for destroying American jobs. He accused Carrier, a maker of air conditioners and furnaces, of exploiting $3-an-hour workers when it announced plans to close its Indiana operations and move to Mexico. But the arts and crafts company that Donnelly’s family has run for generations has used some of the same trade policies — and low-wage foreign labor — the senator condemned. For more than a year, Stewart Superior Corp. and its subsidiaries shipping thousands of pounds of raw materials to Mexicowhere the company has a factory that makes ink pads and other supplies, according to customs records from Panjiva Inc., a company that tracks U.S. imports and exports.
Finished products are then transported back to the company’s plant in California, documents show. Stewart Superior, which also has a plant in LaPorte, Ind., on its website, says the company’s Mexican factory “provides our valued customers with cost-effective, competitively priced manufacturing and product development.” Although Donnelly’s brother runs the company, the senator previously served as corporate director and general counsel before being first elected to Congress in 2006. On a financial disclosure form he filed in May, Donnelly said that in 2016 alone he owned $50,000 worth of company stock and earned between $15,000 and $50,000 in dividends.
As a free-market conservative, I support free trade, but that is not the position Joe Donnelly took as a rust-line senator. He dressed up and assumed the posture of an anti-free-market, anti-outsourcing populist while his family business sends jobs to Mexico to cut costs. And he personally raked in thousands of dollars as a result of this corporate policy — as he surely knows, as a longtime corporate executive whose brother runs the place. Oops. Donald Trump and Mike Pence won the Hoosier State by 19 points last fall, winning all but four counties. Democratic hopes of winning a Senate seat with a brand name in the state were dashed when the GOP candidate won by 10 points. They even lost the governor’s race by six points, which was seen as a key opportunity for the party. Donnelly has few accomplishments to his name, marching with Chuck Schumer on key votes such as opposing the Reid Rule’s “nuclear option” to thwart the Democrats’ unprecedented filibuster attempt against Judge Gorsuch, and now he’s in a mess over outsourcing. These types of questions won’t just disappear.
Elsewhere, a survey from ohio shows Republican Josh Mandel, the state treasurer, leading Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in what would be a repeat of 2012. The Buckeye State Battleground poll — which isn’t very well-known but was fairly precise in 2016, if that counts — gives Mandel has an eight-point lead (50/42). All the usual caveats apply, since head-to-head polling is essentially worthless at this point in the cycle, and that lead seems generous to me, but there is one data point from the poll that might yield some useful insight: “Fifty-four percent (54%) of likely voters in Ohio approve of President Trump’s job performance, while only 41% disapprove.” Trump will be a drag on some Republicans in some states and districts. But he could be neutral or even an asset elsewhere. His national approval rating may be faint, but that 40-plus percent comes from somewhere, and his support is disproportionately concentrated in certain areas, including many places where Democratic senators are up for reelection, such as…
Missouri AND West Virginia“Collusion Claire” could have had a chance at success with a qualified contender in its ranks he took a pass in the race, but her state still won against Trump by 18 points in November. Unlike the Democratic Senate freshman with a restricted paper trail who scared Roy Blunt last year (losing by only three points), McCaskill has a track record of being a party ally, enthusiastically embracing Barack Obama and then Hillary Clinton. She has voted with Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer on every major issue, including Obamacare and every item Gorsuch’s filibuster. She is consistently and significantly at odds with her constituents, so if she can’t choose your opponent personally Again, she is ready to fail:
#Moses CFG poll: McCaskill with 38% chance of re-election vs. ‘someone up-to-date’ and underwater by 10 points among independents: photo:twitter.com/44jafsMP8R
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) July 14, 2017
Is anyone going to step up to the plate Beat Her? The same poll shows McCaskill already trailing Missouri Attorney General Josh Howley by four points. Finally, meet the man some Republicans believe will beat Joe Manchin: West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrissey, who it will be square With Congressman Evan Jenkins in basic battle:
