Photo credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

The caption at rollcall.com which accompanies the above photo describes Senator Bob Casey, Jr. (D-PA) and his wife as they "celebrate on the final night of the Democratic National Convention". That's one grim-looking "celebration". It seems they aren't feeling the "joy" which, as you surely know by now, is one of the laughable emotional buzzwords that has been assigned to Queen Kamala's campaign by the gaslighting liberal media. It looks more like the Caseys are feeling a bit of constipation, and there's some chance they may get that sensation again in November, whenever Pennsylvania finally decides to stop vote-counting.

The article linked above was published on Thursday and ranges from the mundane to the ludicrous. It's mostly good news for Republicans, with (on the mundane side) the five Senate seats most likely to flip being ones currently held by Democrats. On the ludicrous side, they dredge up the highly unlikely possibility of upsets in dead-red (proper color usage) New Mexico and true-blue Nebraska.

We'll give our detailed analysis below, which provides much more depth than the cursory evaluations published by left-leaning Roll Call. What follows are the Senate races, in order of their likelihood to move from R to D based on the outcome of the 2024 elections. The current partisan breakdown of the Senate is 51-49, with Democrats in control. There are only 47 actual Democrats, but there are four so-called "independents" and every one of those four are highly dependent on the Democrat party. Even the ones who are retiring after 2024 (Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema) are still showing their true colors and voting with the Democrats as often as ever.

Photo credit: CNN

1. West Virginia

West Virginia is going to be a Republican pickup, period, and at this point there's nothing pertinent left to say about the Mountain State's Senate race. Incumbent Democrat Joe Manchin ran away rather than see his perfect record of election victories shattered into pieces, and doddering moderate Governor Jim Justice will be the new senator from West Virginia in 2025. His voting record may not differ much from Manchin's, and Justice will be a reliable tool for Mitch McConnell or whichever one of his sock puppets becomes the party leader in the Senate next year.

West Virginia will finally have two elected GOP senators for the first time in nearly a century. It's a shame that this now heavily-Republican state still won't have any conservative senators.

Photo credit: Fox News

2. Montana

The Senate race in Montana is looking OK for now, but don't count those chickens yet; the Biden-Harris administration may quietly transport some Haitian "refugees" into Montana, and those chickens (and geese, cats, dogs, etc.) would become greatly endangered.

A few months ago the GOP establishment, or those who work on its behalf, used threats of violence against conservative Rep. Matt Rosendale and his family in order to intimidate him out of the Montana GOP Senate primary (and out of Congress altogether) just moments after he entered that race.

Moderate businessman Tim Sheehy thus was effectively unopposed for the Republican nomination to take on three-term liberal Democrat Jon Tester. Tester has never been truly popular with the Montana electorate -- he's cleared 50% just once in three tries, and even that one was by a mere 0.3% -- but he is adept at campaigning as something other than the ultra-liberal that he is, he has the state's major media outlets thoroughly on his side, and he has benefited in the past by the presence of Libertarian candidates who suck votes away from the Republican. The last time Tester ran (2018) the Libertarian saw that he was being used as a pawn for Democrat dirty tricks, and he withdrew from the race and endorsed the Republican. But since he exited only one week before the election, it had little effect aside from highlighting the dirtiness of the Democrats.

Montana is far from the monolithically-Republican state that some may think it is. It almost never votes Democrat for President (just once since 1968, and that was only because of the Perot Factor in 1992), but Democrats have won 9 of the last 12 elections for Senator or Governor. One of Montana's two House districts is somewhat marginal; the other is solid GOP.

Photo credit: AP News

At long last it appears that Tester's appeal has diminished to the point where he is in serious trouble. He may be in trouble in the polls, where surveys lately show Sheehy ahead by about 5 points, but if money alone determined the election outcome Tester would be winning in a landslide. As of the latest FEC filings, Tester has spent over $33 million as opposed to just over $10 million for Sheehy. As we have mentioned here on numerous occasions, there's not a House district or Senate seat in the U.S. where Democrats can't outspend Republicans by incredible margins if they want to. This will be proven to be true in almost every single hotly-contested Senate and House race in 2024.

This race is not nearly over yet, and Sheehy's lead is hardly insurmountable. Even months-old data shows Tester with nearly $11 million still in the bank, and those funds will be used to saturate the airwaves and mailboxes of Montana with typical Democrat ads full of hate and lies about Sheehy (and lies about what a great senator Tester has been). Sheehy may not yet comprehend what's going to hit him between now and November, but he will find out shortly and he'd better be prepared. His lead could evaporate as quickly as it materialized.

Photo credit: 10TV

3. Ohio

The current Senate campaign in Ohio bears a strong resemblance to the one which took place in that state two years ago. The only substantial difference is that there was no incumbent seeking re-election in 2022 however there is one running in 2024. Incumbency is normally a distinct advantage, and this race is no exception even though the incumbent is a Democrat and Ohio (like Montana) is thought to be unfriendly territory for those on the far left of the political spectrum.

In 2022, Republican senatorial squish Rob Portman retired and there was a fractious 3-way primary to determine the GOP Senate nominee, while slimy Democrat challenger Tim Ryan faced no intra-party opposition and was able to keep his powder dry while watching three Republicans stab at each other.

In 2024 there was a fractious 3-way primary to determine the GOP Senate nominee, while slimy Democrat incumbent Sherrod Brown faced no intra-party opposition and was able to keep his powder dry while watching three Republicans stab at each other.

Photo credit: WCPO

The 2022 Republican nominee, J.D. Vance, was (and still is) unacceptably conservative according to the wimpy wing of the Republican party, he had some trouble raising money and seemed to be off the air for long periods in the summer while Ryan was on the attack 24/7. Smelling blood in the water and sensing an unexpected pickup opportunity, Democrats flooded the state with oodles of cash and Ryan was able to outspend Vance by the margin of $57 million to $15 million. After trailing most of the time, finally in October Vance consistently pulled ahead in the polls and then won in November, but it was uncomfortably close in supposedly "dark red" Ohio.

Photo credit: Ohio Star

The 2024 Republican nominee, Bernie Moreno, is unacceptably conservative according to the wimpy wing of the Republican party, he has had some trouble raising money and seemed to be off the air for long periods in the summer while Brown was on the attack 24/7. Democrats flooded the state with oodles of cash and Brown has so far been able to outspend Moreno by the margin of $43 million to $11 million. After trailing the entire time, finally in September Moreno appears to be closing the gap in the polls, but has yet to be shown in the lead in any poll. Will "dark red" Ohio come through for Moreno, with Trump dragging him across the finish line?

We'll see.

Trump may have difficulty attaining the 8-point margin he received in Ohio in 2020, which means his coattails aren't going to be as long as might be hoped.

Photo credit: Market Realist

4. Michigan

Retiring liberal Democrat incumbent Debbie Stabenow was first elected to Congress in 1996 when she unseated conservative freshman Republican Dick Chrysler in Michigan's 8th congressional district. At the time that district was rated as "even" although it included all of Ingham County (Lansing) and a heavily-Democrat suburban portion of Genesee County (Flint). The presence of suburban Livingston County helped balance out the bad areas of the district, and Chrysler had won in the glorious year of 1994 because of Livingston alone (he very narrowly lost the rest of the district).

As you will see, there has been a cozy relationship between this Senate seat and that particular congressional district ever since.

Stabenow moved up to the Senate in 2000, failing to win a majority of the vote but still defeating incumbent one-termer Spencer Abraham. Abraham's win in 1994 was the last time a Republican was elected to the U.S. Senate from the state of Michigan, and Stabenow was re-elected with relative ease in 2006, 2012 and 2018, all of which were anti-GOP years. Like nearly all Democrats in elections which are even slightly contested by Republicans, Stabenow was able to outspend her GOP opponents each time by considerable margins.

Photo credit: Rogers for Senate

Stabenow's replacement in the 8th congressional district in 2000 was Republican Mike Rogers -- the same guy who is now trying to replace her in the Senate in 2024. Rogers, who was at the time a Michigan state senator, defeated fellow state senator Dianne Byrum in 2000 by just 160 votes out of nearly 300,000. Rogers campaigned as a moderate and was even able to obtain some endorsements from Democrat politicians.

Rogers' voting record in the House was a shade to the right of "moderate" for most of his 14-year career, which ended when he chose not to run for re-election to an 8th term in 2014. The 8th district was moved to the right in the 2001 redistricting, perhaps emboldening Rogers to show a little more backbone in his congressional voting. Or maybe it forced him to move a little to the right, lest he be vulnerable to a conservative challenge in a primary election.

The district's partisan composition notwithstanding, Rogers anticipated that he would never face the voters again and therefore he dropped the charade and lurched to the left in his final term. He announced his retirement in March of 2014, and pointedly declined to endorse a conservative Republican state legislator as his successor (claiming that the guy might "embarrass" the district) and opted instead to back the more moderate Mike Bishop.

After two terms in the House, Bishop was sent packing in the anti-Trump referendum election of 2018. Bishop's ultra-liberal Democrat opponent and her party were able to spend a whopping $7.5 million to purchase that House seat -- and that doesn't even include the $5.5 million which was accumulated on her behalf by "independent" groups.

Who was that extremely well-funded Democrat?

Photo credit: CNN

It was Elissa Slotkin -- the "former" Deep State operative who is now the Democrat nominee for the 2024 Senate race against Mike Rogers.

Financially, it's the same story as in all other swing states this year: the Democrat has raised and spent far more money than the Republican. As of two months ago, which is the latest available data at this time, Slotkin has raised $24 million to $5 million for Rogers; she has spent $15 million while Rogers has forked out less than $3 million.

You don't have to be in some Michigan media market to understand that voters are being influenced by non-stop Democrat ads, while Rogers probably has his hands full just playing defense and trying to fight off the attacks. Rogers has done well to stay within the margin of error (but always on the losing side) in the polls. A poll which was released on September 13 showed him down by 3 points, which is his high-water mark over the last several months.

Can Rogers break the 30-year iron grip which liberal Democrats have had on Michigan's pair of Senate seats? The probability of that happening is still less than 50%, but his chances seem to be improving at this time.

Photo credit: Lancaster Online

5. Pennsylvania

Current senator Bob Casey, Jr. is dumber than a chimp (or even Kamala Harris). But unfortunately so are a slim majority of PA voters, as has been consistently demonstrated in recent years with the exception of the 2016 presidential election, when Democrat overconfidence led to a (relative) lack of fraud on their part, and Trump was able to win the Keystone State by a fraction of a percent.

Part of that slim majority of ignorant PA voters consists of Gullible Geezers who tend to believe whatever lies ("Republicans are going to ELIMINATE your Social Security and Medicare! For real this time!") the liberal media continually spouts on behalf of their party.

PA is a fairly elderly state, with a percentage of over-65s (18.8%) that is nearly as high as Florida's (20.3%). When they see the name "Casey" on a ballot, some portion of Pennsylvania geezer-dom undoubtedly believes that it is Bob Casey SENIOR they are voting for. Senior was a much-beloved Governor in the 1980s and 90s who became famous nationally when he was prohibited from speaking at the 1992 Democrat National Convention due to his outspoken anti-abortionist position. Senior was totally in line with liberal Democrat orthodoxy on every other issue, however.

Photo credit: Dave McCormick PA

Casey's (the Junior one) challenger this year is Dave McCormick. McCormick spent lavishly of his own money in the 2022 Republican primary vs. "Electable" Dr. Oz, but lost by less than 1,000 votes out of 1.34 million which were cast. McCormick graciously conceded and now has returned for another shot at the Senate -- this time with the GOP field cleared for him; no more dealing with pesky moderate dilettantes like Oz or staunch conservatives like Kathy Barnette. McCormick is again funding a large part ($4 million as of late June) of his own campaign and, aside from a recent left-biased outlier poll from CBS, appears to be inching closer to a possible -- but still unlikely -- upset.

Casey is now in his 18th Senate year, and has voted the liberal position 94% of the time during his tenure. He has been a reliable supporter of the Biden-Harris agenda and marches out of lockup on only the rarest and most unimportant of occasions. McCormick is a wealthy moderate businessman -- the kind of candidate the GOP establishment absolutely adores. Wealthy businessguys often lack icky conservatism and they have the ability to waste spend lots of money on their own behalf. It could be argued that a true conservative would have little chance of being elected statewide in Pennsylvania, and a nominal conservative like Pat Toomey or Rick Santorum is the best we can do.

Should McCormick somehow pull off the upset, his voting record in the Senate would likely be a little to the left of Toomey-Santorum though nowhere near (hopefully) as lunatic leftist as ex-Republican Senator Arlen "Judas" Specter, who went out in a blaze of bitterness back in 2010. Anything even close to Toomey-Santorum territory would be a tremendous improvement over the Casey pup in the empty suit.

PA may be 51% Democrat at the ballot box, but it deserves better than a pair of 100% liberal Senators; one is quite enough.

• Democrats are desperately wishing for major upsets of Republican Senate incumbents in Florida and Texas; there are no other GOP-held Senate seats which are even close to being in play. Republicans are desperately hoping for major upsets in Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin or Maryland. The probability is that none of the above will happen, although the loss of Florida or Texas for the GOP has a greater chance of occurring than pickups elsewhere.
• GOP candidates are particularly floundering in the southwest (AZ, NV) and Ted Cruz is underperforming in Texas. We've already written in great detail about how Texas is absolutely not the solid "red" state that it might have been a few years ago, and people have quickly forgotten how marginal Florida is capable of being; 2018 wasn't all that long ago.
• Even after Governor Ron DeSantis' successful election integrity measures which targeted shady Democrat election officials in places such as Broward County and Palm Beach County, Florida can still be finicky and Rick Scott may not be taking this Senate race as seriously as he should. Scott has raised a handsome sum of money, but he may have shot his wad too early -- the femiNazi running against Scott actually has more cash on hand as of the end of July. She is also a lot closer to Scott in the polls than she should be.
  
  Debbie Mucarsel Hyphen Powell isn't right on Scott's tail because of anything desirable or positive on her end; she may as well be listed on the ballot simply as "Not Rick Scott". Scott is the "Jon Tester" of Florida -- he has won three elections and only once has he cleared 50% (he received 50.1% in 2018). He is not popular and never has been; he has been just barely popular enough in the past.
• Only one outlier poll has showed the Republican within true striking distance in Wisconsin. In Maryland, although Larry Hogan is keeping it somewhat close against his affirmative-action opponent, Hogan seems less interested in winning a Senate seat than he does in using his campaign as a vehicle for virtue-signaling and Trump-hating.
  
  Perhaps Maryland's version of Chris Christie is trying to position himself as a GOP presidential candidate for 2028? Or maybe he's looking to be the Democrat nominee? Either way, Hogan's not winning anything in 2024 absent divine intervention. He's going to get beat down hard in the Baltimore-D.C. corridor.

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Photo credit: townhall.com

Confirming what had been rumored for months, conservative two-term congressman Matt Rosendale on Friday announced his entry into the Montana Senate race against ultra-liberal Democrat Jon Tester -- and the GOP establishment is absolutely irate at this development.

National Republican Senate Committee (NRSC) chairman Steve Daines, a squish who serves as Mitch McConnell's sock puppet regarding GOP Senate election campaigns (and who also happens to be from Montana) immediately ran crying to the liberal media to attack Rosendale for creating a "divisive primary". The establishment already had a horse in this race: moderate newcomer Tim Sheehy, a wealthy businessman who was selected on the basis of being able to help fund his own campaign, and on the basis of not being too conservative -- the two things the GOPe looks for the most in a candidate these days.

Daines blasted Rosendale for giving Tester "the biggest win of his career" when the two faced off in the last Senate election for this seat in 2018. In his lame attempt to smear Rosendale as a loser and as a bad candidate, the NRSC squish conveniently left out a few pertinent facts:

• That "biggest win" was by a mere 3.6 percentage points, in the Democrat landslide year of 2018 when every election for the House or Senate was a referendum on the Trump presidency and the haters came out of the woodwork to show how much they despised Trump and pretty much anyone else with an (R) after his name.
  
  
• In that year, Tester was allowed to spend nearly 4 times more than Rosendale, as the Republican party left Rosendale high and dry in the money department. Yet, even as a relative unknown in statewide politics, with little name recognition and facing an incumbent who had all the money in the world to campaign with, the Republican still came within 3.6 points of a major upset.
  
  It would have been even closer than that if not for the presence on the ballot of Libertarian candidate Rick Breckenridge who took nearly 3 percent himself despite withdrawing from the race (too late) and endorsing Rosendale. Breckenridge took exception to an "anonymous" Democrat dirty-trick mailer which made fraudulent claims about the Republican and encouraged GOP voters to choose the Libertarian instead.
  
  
• Speaking of being a newcomer, the main Democrat campaign tactic (aside from dirty tricks) in 2018 was to paint Rosendale as an outsider because he was not born in Montana and had only resided in the state for a paltry 16 years as of 2018. This "outsider" had actually served in the MT state legislature for 6 years (2011-2016) and in 2016 was elected statewide as Auditor.
  
  Following his defeat in the 2018 Senate election, Rosendale completed his term as Auditor and then ran for and won the statewide U.S. House seat in 2020. After reapportionment gave MT a second House seat, Rosendale was re-elected in 2022. Yet as recently as last year articles were quoting Republican sources -- who feared a Rosendale Senate run -- as being incapable of ever winning statewide in Montana despite the fact that he had done so twice already. The utilization of outright lies and dirty tricks in campaigns isn't limited to Democrats; liberal Republicans are allowed to resort to those as well, but only against a conservative.

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Photo credit: Matt Rosendale

Reacting only to the headline as opposed to what Rosendale actually said, the simple-minded are going to interpret this announcement as "Matt Rosendale thinks Joe Biden shouldn't be impeached!!!!"

However, what Rosendale actually said was this:

"I do not believe that you're probably going to be able to get an impeachment, a removal, of President Biden," Rosendale told Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business in late November.

"But I do think that if our Department of Justice acted in a legitimate manner that there's enough facts that are already laid out there on the table because of all the great work that James Comer has done that we can see that the Biden crime family has major problems. And I think the Department of Justice should be picking up a lot of this and starting to make charges and prosecutions"

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Photo credit: Greg Nash

Republican voters in Montana are clearly saying that the conservative alternative in the GOP primary is far more to their liking than businessman Tim Sheehy, the squish who is being pushed hard by establishment twerps like Steve Daines and Mitch McConnell.

This greatly upsets the GOPe, or at least forces them to work harder to rig the primary, because the establishment will always insist that a more liberal candidate has greater "electability" than a conservative one, and they spare no expense in fulfilling that prophecy anytime the voters defy them and select a conservative nominee instead of the officially-anointed moderate. Their backstabbing of conservatives doesn't always work, otherwise Liz Cheney would still be in office, and J.D. Vance would have lost in Ohio. But it almost always works.

Sheehy served his country with honor, runs a successful business, and I'm sure he routinely performs CPR on wounded kittens too. It's possible for him to be a great guy but still be a moderate squish -- and one who is actually less electable than conservative Matt Rosendale.

Sheehy is already facing the typical attacks from the left. You can rely on the fact that anyone who runs a business and who runs for office as a Republican will be hysterically assaulted for being an evil "millionaire" who "wants to raise YOUR taxes" and who "outsources jobs to China!" In other words, they'll claim he fits the profile of a Democrat.

These attacks don't in any way imply that Sheehy is a feared conservative; they just mean that since the GOPe simps favor him, he is very likely to be the nominee so the haters are getting an early start.

Recall that the #1 and only real "stopper" against Rosendale when he ran against Jon Tester and narrowly lost in 2018 was that he was a carpetbagger who had committed the mortal sin of not being a lifelong Montana resident. Apparently the voters -- who in 2020 elected Rosendale statewide in a high-turnout presidential election year -- have forgiven him.

Sheehy OTOH hasn't even been in Montana for 10 years yet, so by all means let's make the Rats' task even easier in 2024 by letting them use the same playbook from 2018. Sheehy is also being attacked for allegedly "lewd" and "racist" posts he made on Facebook years ago, among other things.

Of course Rosendale, if he is somehow the nominee, will be similarly attacked by the media and other Democrats just like he was in 2018, 2020 and 2022. He won the last two of those races anyway, and he has a good conservative political track record on which to run.

The difference is that, if Rosendale is the nominee, he will face not only a lack of support but actual oppostion from the squishes on his own side as well. The ones (like Daines & McConnell for example) who would rather Tester get another term & Democrats keep Senate control than risk some unwashed conservative taking that seat.

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Montana Senate 2024 Matt Rosendale Tim Sheehy "Electability"

Photo credit: Bloomberg Government

The first paragraph of the article, mainly telling us what we already knew:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, have been working for months to recruit the most electable candidates in must-win swing states to retake the majority next year.

"Electable" of course means "someone who is a moderate/liberal toady for Mitch McConnell, like Steve Daines is". The liberal Republican establishment is sticking to the lie that the only reason why the GOP isn't in control of the Senate today is because of all the supposedly flawed candidates who lost in states like Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania during the failed "red wave" of 2022. Add in other states such as Nevada which were ripe for a pickup and a couple more ridiculous pipe dreams (Colorado, Washington) and some lunatics seriously expected a GOP majority of something like 10 seats right now, 55-45 or so.

The party seeks to make sure that only approved Mitch Bitches get on the ticket for 2024, and no more "flawed" conservatives. When that strategy fails next November, the GOPe excuse will be that conservative voters didn't do their job and let the party down.

Here's a howler from the article, regarding Montana:

The establishment has "coalesced around former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy's candidacy while privately dissuading Rep. Matt Rosendale from throwing his hat in the ring. Sheehy has the backing of Daines and Gov. Greg Gianforte (R-MT), while Rosendale has the backing of the well-funded Club for Growth despite not being in the race yet. Party establishment has said that Rosendale's 2018 loss to Tester proves he cannot win statewide."

Then the party establishment consists of idiots, liars, or both. You see, Rosendale, who is a far more conservative option than Squish Sheehy, in fact DID WIN STATEWIDE in Montana in 2020, by nearly 14 points against a very well-funded liberal Democrat to boot.

The article goes on to note that the GOPe is "staying out" of the primary in Ohio -- because they can easily see that the right-ish primary vote will be split between Secretary of State Frank LaRose and MAGA conservative Bernie Moreno, allowing liberal state Senator Matt Dolan to prevail by getting the primary votes of many Democrat infiltrators who will never vote for him in the general. Why should the GOPe interfere when things are going so well for them? You should already be well aware of the liberal machinations in West Virginia, with the GOP backstabbing conservative Rep. Alex Mooney in favor of doddering moderate Governor Jim Justice.

Now back to the "bad candidate" lie of 2022. True that the quality of some of the GOP candidates was less than great (Oz leaps to mind), but it's also been true for a long time that the GOPe will ensure that candidates it doesn't approve of (conservatives) will not succeed in general elections, and the best way to do that is to fail to support those candidates with $$$$ and thereby concede massive financial advantages to the Democrats.

Check this out from the key swing state Senate races in 2022:

Arizona: D spending, $192 million; R spending, $15 million

Georgia: D: $326 million; R: $69 million

Nevada: D: $64 million; R: $18 million

New Hampshire: D: $42 million; R: $4 million

Pennsylvania: D: $76 million; R: $49 million

Even in states the GOP won (barely) in 2022, Democrats still had massive spending margins over their Republican opponents; the Rats made sure that their ultra-liberal Senate candidates in Wisconsin and North Carolina didn't have to rely solely on their melanin advantages, and therefore they also had far more resources to work with than Ron Johnson or Ted Budd. In Ohio, J.D. Vance was outspent by close to 300% (!), but then Ohio isn't supposed to be a swing state so the Democrats theoretically needed to pump in tremendous cash just to have a fighting chance. Ohio will obviously be a lot tighter in 2024 than it was in 2022, and this time all that Democrat cash will be critical.

Looking at the financial picture as it is developing for the 2024 Senate races, in every state where the GOP can even dream of making a pickup -- including West Virginia -- the incumbent Democrat is starting out far ahead in the money race. Even where there isn't a Democrat incumbent who is running again (Michigan) the liberals are still miles ahead in geld. With it still being so early in the campaign season, perhaps that's not the most meaningful way to evaluate electoral chances because incumbents always start out far ahead.

Oh yeah?

The loony left has at most only two semi-realistic possibilities of taking a Senate seat from the Republicans in 2024 and in one of those -- Texas -- GOP incumbent Ted Cruz is already trailing his dumb-as-dirt opponent in fundraising, and that trend is likely to continue through 2024. The Democrats are laser-beam focused on taking Texas because once it finally flips from true blue to commie pinko red, any Republican has a 0.0% chance of ever winning another presidential election. Since the Rats can't make their presidential candidate (presumably Biden, for now) attractive to Texans, they are sinking tons of cash into the Senate race in the hopes that the coattail effect will work up the ticket as well as down.

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Photo credit: Matt York, Associated Press

"The Hill", of all sources, contends that every one of the five most allegedly endangered Senate seats up in 2024 are currently held by Democrats! The five are: West Virginia, Montana, Ohio, Arizona and Wisconsin. We know that's hardly wishful thinking on the part of that leftist site, but are these pickups actually realistic or is this just a lot of crocodile tears to go with the veiled warning to Democrats to get busy doing whatever is necessary (wink, wink) to keep those seats, especially with Senate control at risk?

West Virginia: is supposed to be a slam-dunk pickup, perhaps with Joe "I've never lost an election in my life" Manchin deciding to keep his record intact by failing to run again and making the pickup a 100% certainty. The GOPe firmly supports moderate Governor Jim Justice and will do whatever it takes to prevent conservative Alex Mooney from getting the nomination. If Manchin really is as much of a "centrist" as some folks claim, the transition from Manchin to Justice in the Senate probably won't be very noticeable when it comes to their voting records.

Montana: The GOPe is rallying behind businessman Tim Sheehy, which probably tells you everything you need to know about this newcomer's politics. The question remains as to whether 2018 candidate and current congressman Matt Rosendale will enter the race. The Republicans lost Montana in 2018 for the same reason they lost West Virginia -- their candidate was attacked for the crime of not being born in the state (that plus some other Dirty Democrat Tricks, particularly in Montana). If Rosendale tries again in 2024 he'll do better than 2018, but he might be too conservative for his party's establishment.

Ohio: The GOP doesn't even appear to have a viable candidate. State Senator Matt Dolan is a liberal who got barely 20% of the vote in the 2022 Republican Senate primary, most of those votes coming from Democrats; Bernie Moreno is trying to paint himself as the MAGA candidate a la J.D. Vance, and will probably get a Trump endorsement if he can demonstrate a substantial lead in the polls. Ohio is not the solidly Republican state that the hopium addicts wish it was. For proof of that statement look no further than Sherrod Brown's past electoral successes, including 2018 when we were assured that Brown was toast because Trump won Ohio in 2016. Oops.

Arizona: Republicans can always count on a fair election in Arizona of course (LOL) but even if that really was the case their only hope here is for a 3-way race between the slimy "independent" incumbent (Sinema) a really slimy Democrat congressman (Gallego) and whoever the GOP nominates; that way the Republican could win with merely a plurality of the vote, and a plurality is probably the best they can do in this state these days. Some believe that Kari Lake will be back for a repeat of 2022. She was too good to be allowed to win then, and the same applies now. Whether it takes threats, bribes or both, Independent Sinema may not even choose to run for re-election, clearing the field for the Democrat nominee to very likely prevail next November.

Wisconsin: Rebecca Kleefisch, who would probably be Governor right now if it weren't for Trump's misguided and ineffectual endorsement of proven loser Tim Michels in 2022, would be a very good candidate and former Milwaukee County sheriff David Clarke would be good as well. Unfortunately, the GOPe is far more interested in millionaire candidates who will spend their own funds and not waste the apparently limited amount of cash the party has to throw around this cycle ("Pleez send us munney!"). Better still for the GOPe, the typical millionaire-type candidate often tends to be a squish although in this case Wisconsin venture capitalist Eric Hovde is described as a "conservative activist", at least by those on the left who hate him. So maybe he's not bad, but any Republican starts off as a clear underdog here.


Other possibilities, but don't hold your breath: There's Michigan, where incumbent liberal Debbie Stabenow is retiring in 2024 and will likely be replaced by well-funded liberal congresswoman Elissa Slotkin. There are a lot of GOP possibles to take her on, but none of them are serious threats to win. Except perhaps former Detroit police chief James Craig, who tried to run for Governor in 2022 but made the rookie mistake of having Democrat operatives in disguise gather signatures for him, which were deliberately falsified and Craig was kicked off the primary ballot at the last minute, leaving nothing but a field of underfunded and outclassed twerps on the Republican side. Hopefully he'll be smarter this time around.

Then there's Nevada, where the current Democrat Senator barely got 50% in 2018 against former Republican incumbent Dean Heller, who ran screaming to the left in a failed effort to keep that seat. The string-pullers on rare occasions allow the GOP to win a close election in Nevada (e.g. 2022 Governor) when the Republican candidate is acceptable to the left. If Sam Brown or Jim Marchant becomes the Senate nominee: (a) either one would make a great Senator, therefore (b) that is not going to be one of the few times the puppetmasters will allow the Republicans to win a statewide general election in Nevada although the result would likely be close. The GOP could simply nominate an eternal loser such as Adam Laxalt or Danny Tarkanian again, at least that would remove any suspense regarding the outcome.

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Photo credit: Thom Bridge, Independent Record

This bill has not yet become law, but Democrats are already howling with outrage because Republicans in Montana are attempting to craft an election law which exactly matches the ones used -- to great Democrat benefit -- in states such as California and Washington. Except this time the benefit, tiny though it may be, would accrue to the GOP. Hence the hypocritical outrage from the left.

The idea is to make the November, 2024 U.S. Senate election a 1-on-1 race with no interference from minor party candidates. Tester has won three times previously, with percentages of 49.2% in 2006, 48.6% in 2012, and 50.3% in 2018. In all 3 cases, the candidacy of a Libertarian was engineered in order to cost the GOP candidate enough votes to lose the election. It worked perfectly twice, and even in 2018 when Tester finally got over 50% the Libertarian eventually discovered how he was being used and manipulated, and he withdrew from the race and endorsed the Republican. But he bailed out too late to affect the outcome.

There remains the little matter of determining who the GOP nominee will be in 2024. The filing deadline is still 11 months away so there's plenty of time, however no serious Republican has as yet entered the race. One or both of the state's U.S. House incumbents (Zinke, Rosendale) probably will file. So too may some others who already hold statewide office.

Because there will be only one primary ballot instead of separate ones for each party if this law passes, Democrats will not so easily be able to utilize their effective scheme from 2022 in which leftist voters invade the Republican primary (as they did in Colorado, for example) to try to help the weakest candidates prevail.

Even with one or more good candidates running for the GOP -- preferably only one -- liberals may resort to old tricks such as placing bogus "conservatives" on the primary ballot in order to split the right-wing vote and ensure that the most liberal of the big-names becomes the Republican nominee; this obviously creates as much of a win-win scenario for the left as possible. Democrats won't have to sabotage conservatives all by themselves; the GOP establishment will be happy to take charge of that particular task.

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Senate 2024 Montana Jon Tester No more Libertarian assistance?