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Two of those Big Senate Races: A Closer Look

 




Yesterday I listed, though without much discussion, ten of the U.S. Senate races this year that, collectively, will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate beginning in January of next year. 

That is of course critical for the fending-off of autocracy in America. I have to say this though it offends old instincts and quite justifiable habits of thought: lovers of liberty must hope and even work for a Democratic win where they can here. "Here" refers to the very specific issue of control of the U.S. Senate as of January 2023. 

Those of us who are concerned about the central-planning temptations of the Democrats, or just aspire to move forward to anarchism in one way or another, can go back to struggling with the Dems later. But our goal here has to be the fending-off of autocracy (let's not call it "democracy" ugh -- let us not even call it a "republican system" though it would be nice if the capital-R Republicans remembered that concept). The cause is the less demanding one of a non-autocracy. If we get through the next few years without Trump or some Trumpette effectively making himself a dictator, we will have escaped a near disaster.

If one or more of the Bush/Trump nominees leave the bench over the next couple of years and Biden with a friendly Senate gets to replace THEM, we will likely have accomplished that escape. 

So let us look a little more closely at this. As I said yesterday: my guess is the Republicans will probably gain either a seat in Georgia or a seat in New Hampshire. If we consider each of those races as a toss-up then there is also a 1/4 possibility they'll gain both and a 1/4 possibility they'll lose both. Keep a good thought.

Let's look at those a bit further. 

Georgia:  incumbent Raphael Warnock (D) has the Dem field to himself. But he may have been a fluke of the moment. In January 2021 when the run-off for the special election for the seat he filled took place, the Republicans were saying the balloting is rigged, the Venezuelans control it with bamboo ballots or whatever. while the Republicans engage in a fratricidal primary. Warnock is using the time to fill his war chest for the fall. It appears that a lot of the Trump faithful took this to be true, rather than just as an inspirational fiction or an agreed-upon con. Believing that the votes were rigged, they declined to vote. 

The MAGA hat seem to have caught on to the idea that they ARE supposed to vote and THEN complain of a theft, they aren't supposed to refuse to vote because of the inevitability of theft! So Warnock won't have that working for him this time. 

But what he does have going for him is disunity on the Republican side. Trump is supporting Herschel Walker, former star player with the Georgia Bulldogs, and self-taught expert on biology (why are there still apes?). Walker is opposed by Latham Saddler, a former Navy SEAL officer; Kelvin King, the entrepreneur who founded Osprey Management, Jonathan McColumn (about whom nobody seems to know much); Josh Clark, a former state representative; and Gary Black, currently serving Georgia as Agriculture Commissioner. 

Trump is supporting Walker. Not coincidentally, Trump owned the New Jersey Generals, a team in the brief-lived USFL years ago, and Walker played on that team. 

Meanwhile, the other Republicans in the race -- especially Black -- has discovered that Walker has some nasty baggage. And they are using it against him. So Warnock won't even have to. we will see what we will see.

New Hampshire? Here, too, a Democratic incumbent is running for re-election. This time the incumbent is Maggie Hassan, Like most successful Democrats in conservative states like New Hampshire, Hassan is a political moderate on the standard metrics for moderation. She is also supporting the idea of a gasoline tax holiday, as a response to higher gas prices with more appeal than just saying "let's all blame Putin and suck it up." 

She isn't popular in her home state, ad her election to her first term in 2016 was a very close one. But New Hampshire's Republican sentiment is leavened with a lot of libertarianism, live-free-or-die stuff, and the pro-choice abortion position plays well for her. That helped her in her first campaign and may well help her again, especially if there is a backlash against a SCOTUS pronouncement on the subject likely in June or July of this year. 

Like Warnock, too, Hassan may benefit from sharp splits among those who would replace her.   There are six Republicans in the primary. There will be a Libertarian on the ballot too and, in the New Hampshire context, the Libertarians can reach spoiler levels of votes. Were Sununu in the race, he could serve as a unifier. Fortunately for the cause of Maggie Hassan and, for the reason sketched above, for the cause of liberty -- Sununu is not.   


 

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