Democrats Found A Major Recruit To Take On Susan Collins in 2020

[SaysWho?]

Last week, Democrat Sara Gideon announced her campaign for Senate in Maine. As speaker of the state House of Representatives, Gideon could be the challenger Democrats need to defeat Collins, who first won her seat in 1996. Maine’s Democratic lean and Collins’s increasingly polarized profile could make the incumbent vulnerable, and Gideon’s entry into the race reflects this.

 

 

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If Maine continues to go blue in 2020, Collins is likely to be in real danger. While the state is not overwhelmingly Democratic, it has consistently voted for the party’s presidential candidate in every race going back to 1992. And nowadays, states usually back the same party for president and Senate.

 

Collins' vulnerabilities:

 

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Collins is also a more polarizing figure now than she once was, especially after her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court last year. While Collins has built a moderate profile with one of the most centrist voting records in the Senate, her support for Kavanaugh shifted views of her job performance along partisan lines, with sharp increases in approval among Republicans and, conversely, disapproval among Democrats. The former makes it less likely that Collins will get a primary challenge, but the latter suggests Collins could be in trouble in a general election. Gideon’s introductory video specifically referenced the vote, saying it put women’s health choices in “extreme jeopardy.”

 

While Gideon’s entry probably makes her the leading Democratic Senate candidate, she will have to get through a primary. Betsy Sweet, a progressive who finished third in the 2018 Democratic primary for governor, is already running, and others could join, such as Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap. In Maine’s ranked-choice voting system, a large number of competitive candidates could create unpredictable scenarios for winning the party’s nomination. Still, Gideon has had a strong start, receiving endorsements from major Democratic groups, including EMILY’s List, a group that works to elect pro-choice Democratic women to office, as well as NARAL Pro-Choice America and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the party’s Senate campaign arm.

 

Collins has been impossible to defeat in Maine despite its Democratic bend. This is every reelection she's had:

 

2002 (Collins wins 58.4% - 41.6%):

 

 

2008 (Collins wins 61.3% - 38.6% during Obama's huge win and huge Senate wins across the country for Democrats):

 

 

2014 (Collins wins 68.5% - 31.5%):

 

 

[Greatoneshere]

Not only should we should fight Republicans (so this is great news), we should also primary centrist corporate Democrats who accept "dark" money. 

[marioandsonic]

So those are all of the senators up for reelection this year?

 

I so want the Democrats to take the majority.

[Greatoneshere]

1 minute ago, marioandsonic said:

So those are all of the senators up for reelection this year?

 

I so want the Democrats to take the majority.

 

They could. Republicans have to defend a lot more seats in 2020 than they had to in 2018. 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

7 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

They could. Republicans have to defend a lot more seats in 2020 than they had to in 2018. 

I see 5 states where R's hold a seat with an R lean less than 10 points. And then Dems have to keep Doug Jones's seat in Alabama. 

 

Prepare to be disappointed

[Greatoneshere]

6 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

I see 5 states where R's hold a seat with an R lean less than 10 points. And then Dems have to keep Doug Jones's seat in Alabama. 

 

Prepare to be disappointed

 

I am, I should have emphasized could.  There could also be unanticipated upsets as well. We got +40 seats in 2018 in the House, that's insane. So, you never know. But yeah, I'm not expecting much. 

[SaysWho?]

5 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

I am, I should have emphasized could.  There could also be unanticipated upsets as well. We got +40 seats in 2018 in the House, that's insane. So, you never know. But yeah, I'm not expecting much. 

 

And lest we forget about an hour into election night the proclamations that 2018 was "2016 all over again." Ain't nobody needs to predict anything this far out.  

 

The only thing I'm concerned about is how the presidential race affects the down-ballot races. If even bigger percentages of people do straight-ticket voting, then winning states like North Carolina, Iowa, Arizona, Georgia, and to a lesser extent Colorado and Maine (since they went Democratic last time) will be extremely important to winning the Senate seat.

 

So say we're in early November 2020 and I see that Trump is overall even a bit above the margin of error in Arizona. At that point, based on 2016, I'll think that the Senate race won't be good for Dems.

 

At the same time, they really overperformed in Georgia and Texas last time, with even Gillum, running on a more left platform in Florida compared to past moderate Dems running for governor, doing better than all of them since 1998. So I dunno. Obviously, the candidate matters a lot, but Tennessee also showed that sometimes, your state is gonna reject you eventually because of the letter beside your name.

[PaladinSolo]

On 7/2/2019 at 10:38 AM, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

I see 5 states where R's hold a seat with an R lean less than 10 points. And then Dems have to keep Doug Jones's seat in Alabama. 

 

Prepare to be disappointed

Turnout is going to break records, with an R president with a consistently horrible approval, any R in a state that has a lean of less than 10 points should be terrified.  Especially when you consider some of these republicans have some of the lowest senator approval ratings in their states.  

 

McSally lost in 2018, Tillis won in an off year that was terrible for dems by a point, Collins is in a state that just sent a dem to the house in its republican district, Ernst is in a state where Dems won the popular vote 2018 house, and Gardner is just toast.  All of these states have voted for a dem for president in recent years as well, other than AZ, and have/had dem senators recently as well.