So far this cycle, the boring Democrats are doing fine. It’s the well-funded superstar challengers who are flopping.
The future is still unwritten, and we don’t know how the midterms will shake out. But if you follow David Byler’s reasonable theory that turnout in the midterm primaries is a good indicator of each party’s energy and interest in voting, 2022 is on pace to be a modestly good year for Republicans — not quite as good a year as 2010 or 2014, but a year of gains that should give them at least a small House majority and a decent shot at winning control of the Senate.
Considering the near-apocalyptic outlook for Democrats earlier this year, progressives may crow that a midterm of only modest GOP gains counts as a win for them. They’ll argue that the Supreme Court decision Dobbs hurt Republicans, but many pro-lifers will gladly trade a few House and Senate in exchange for ending Roe v. Wade.
But there’s another angle that will likely get less attention.
- Right now, it looks like Colorado senator Michael Bennet – the epitome of “generic Democrat” — is going to cruise to reelection against Joe O’Dea — even though O’Dea looked like the perfect non-Trumpy Republican Senate candidate for a bluish-purple state.
- In Arizona, Mark Kelly’s short time in the Senate is marked by how little he’s willing to take a controversial stand, in contrast to his state’s other Democratic senator, Kyrsten Sinema. The race seems to have tightened some, but Kelly’s still favored.
- Up in New Hampshire, incumbent Democrat Maggie Hassan was long troubled by lousy job approval numbers, but she begins the brief general election period with a solid lead over GOP nominee Don Bolduc.
- Other than one Trafalgar poll in late August, the early-cycle sense that Washington Democratic senator Patty Murray could be in trouble doesn’t seem to be panning out.
The outlook could change, but at least for now, a bunch of blah, not-so-high-profile Democratic incumbents who once looked potentially vulnerable look like relatively comfortable favorites. In other words, the boring Democrats are doing just fine.
You know who’s flopping? A lot of the well-known, well-funded superstar challengers on the Democratic side.
Yesterday I laid out the signs that Beto O’Rourke is wearing out his welcome in Texas. In Georgia, Stacey Abrams is on pace for another loss to Brian Kemp, this one by a much wider margin than last time. In Florida, a lot of Democrats convinced themselves that Val Demings was going to send Senator Marco Rubio packing, and donated $47 million to her — but her victory is not looking likely. Elsewhere in the state, you may not be able to call Charlie Crist well-funded, but he’s certainly well-known from his previous bids, and he looks set to lose to governor Ron DeSantis by a sizeable margin. You could even argue that Tim Ryan, whose Senate bid in Ohio was generating a lot of buzz among Democrats during the summer, is fading down the stretch.
You can find exceptions here and there. Fetterman’s not boring, but his health issues make him an unusual case. Mandela Barnes is the kind of candidate who you would think would be a fundraising juggernaut — young black progressive Democrat, taking on Trump ally Ron Johnson — but Barnes’ fundraising is nothing special, compared to Demings or Fetterman or Ryan.
If Hassan and Kelly win, they may well owe their victories to the judgment of GOP primary voters — and maybe the same will be said of Fetterman.
But this year is on pace to continue the trend that the candidates who are most beloved by the party’s grassroots are not necessarily the ones who will win. For a couple cycles now, it’s been clear that the quickest and easiest way to be a fundraising phenom with the Democratic Party’s grassroots is to take on a well-known Republican that Democrats loathe, and run a pugnacious, in-your-face, unapologetically liberal campaign. The problem is, that’s just not the way to win a general election in Texas (O’Rourke, both in 2018 and this year) Georgia (Abrams, both in 2018 and this year) South Carolina (Jaime Harrison against Lindsey Graham in 2020) or Florida (Crist and Demings this year, Andrew Gillum four years ago).
If candidates like Bennet, Kelly, and Hassan hang on, it will be an indicator that a not-so-beloved incumbent can hang on in a bad year for his party by keeping their heads down and avoiding controversy.
It’s good fortune for Republicans that cycle after cycle, Democrats keep sending a ton of money to candidates in southern states who are too liberal to win.