Retaking Congress – Or Not

Karl Rove wrote in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal about how the left may be damaging the Democrats’ chances of keeping control of Congress in November, 2022.  While Mr. Rove made some good points about how the “left-wing loonies” could hurt the Democrats, he doesn’t mention what the “right-wing crazies” could do to the Republicans. 

After all, Democrats control the Senate because of Donald Trump.  Instead of going to Georgia and urging Republicans and independents to vote for Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, so the Democrats wouldn’t control the Senate, former President Trump spent his time in Georgia doing his normal “it’s all about me” thing, complaining about how the election was stolen from him and the Republican governor and secretary of state in Georgia didn’t care.  Not surprisingly, turnout in Republican areas in the special senate run-off election went down; why vote, if the election will get stolen and your vote won’t count.  And so, Mitch McConnell is Senate Minority Leader, instead of Senate Majority Leader.  If President Trump had cared more about the cause than himself, that might not have happened.

Also, Mr. Rove talked about the House in his article, and there is hope the Republicans could pick up enough seats to take control of the House in November of 2022.  Still, with former President Trump promising revenge against Republicans who did not support him in his stolen election claims and his second impeachment, that might be harder than Mr. Rove thinks.

Then there is the Senate, which could be even harder to win than the House.  Consider some recent history.  Republicans took control of the House in 2010, but they didn’t take control of the Senate until four years later.  Part of that may have been because of the electoral cycle for Senate.  But another part of it was the terrible candidates the Republicans ran in some of those races.  For example, there was Christine O'Donnell in Delaware in 2010 and Troy Akin in Missouri in 2012.  “Ring-wing crazy” candidates who win Republican primaries for Senate are too often beaten by relatively centrist Democrats in the general election (or at least Democrats who can sound relatively centrist compared to the right-wing crazy Republicans).  Districts for House members are often gerrymandered to make it relatively easy for extreme candidates to get elected (on both sides).  States, however, can’t be gerrymandered, and the average voter is often close to the center.  Which means right-wing crazy candidates get beaten.

This problem will be exacerbated in 2022 by retirements of Republican incumbents in states that could be close.  Roy Blount is retiring in Missouri, as are Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania), Rob Portman (Ohio), Richard Burr (North Carolina), and Richard Shelby (Alabama).  While some of these states will probably still elect Republicans, others may not.  It depends on who is nominated.  As I said above, Republicans lost Missouri in 2012 because they had a terrible candidate.  If that happens in a couple of these open seats in 2022, the Senate could easily stay Democratic in November of next year.