Losing an election is almost never good news for the losing candidate, but some losses are costlier than others. Politicians on the way up can sometimes use a high-profile loss to build their brand or to learn important lessons. Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton all survived early-career defeats. Veteran officeholders occasionally come back stronger after some enforced time in the wilderness. And what look like career-enders aren’t always necessarily so: Richard Nixon won the presidency six years after he vowed that his loss in the 1962 California governor’s race, on the heels of losing the 1960 election, meant that, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”
But then there are elections a politician truly cannot afford to lose — at least, not without requiring a Nixon-level reversal of national fortune to rescue them. A bunch of the 2022 candidates are facing those make-or break elections. Some of those, of course, are heavy favorites: It would take a disaster at this point to sink Chuck Schumer, Greg Abbott, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, or Jared Polis, and a disaster that large would be hard to come back from. Some are favorites with immediate ambitions for higher office: If Ron DeSantis were to lose in 2022, as George Allen did in 2006, his potential as a 2024 presidential contender would evaporate instantly.
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