Photo credit: CNN

With just a few more hours until the 2024 election campaign season mercifully concludes, we are on track for one of the closest elections in U.S. presidential history if the polls can be believed. But some folks are not so sure about that, and are thinking in terms of "waves" and "landslides" that will deliver not just the White House but also the U.S. House and Senate. For example (just from the past few days):

• Donald Trump Now Set for Landslide: Forecaster Who Backed Kamala Harris
• The most accurate poll of 2020, AtlasIntel, releases their final battleground poll showing Trump winning all 7 battleground states
• Polls Show Trump Closing in on Blue Virginia and Minnesota!
• CNN Data Analyst: Trump on Course to Win Popular Vote

• Democratic Voter Enthusiasm Ahead of Republicans by Double Digits: Poll
• Women dominate early voting across the country and leave Trump's allies nervous
• Donald Trump Suffers Triple Polling Blow in Battleground States He Must Win

  [Miscalculating voter enthusiasm was a huge mistake by Republican analysts in 2020 also.]

Photo credit: Palm Beach Post

Early Voting

We've heard a great deal about how well the GOP is allegedly doing in Early Voting, even in heavily Democrat states like New Jersey, and it's being claimed that Early Voting is going to be the critical determinant as to which side wins once all the votes are in.

The only available facts about Early Voting pertain to the number of ballots requested and returned, which are normally broken down by party registration in those states which actually register voters by party. Until election day when the ballots are counted, there is no way to know who the early voters actually voted for in any race. Therefore it is nothing more than assumptions at this point regarding any of the following:


Assumption #1: "Republicans vote for Trump, Democrats vote for Harris, and we have no clue about independents but we'll pretend that we do." A related happy assumption is that there will be less defections among Republicans than Democrats; i.e. more Democrats are crossing party lines to vote for Trump/Vance, than Republicans who are voting for Cackles and Tampon Timmy. This could turn out to be an unfortunately specious assumption, though not a particularly impactful one.


Assumption #2: Independents are "breaking for the challenger (Trump, in this case) as they normally do". That's probably just an old wives' tale to begin with, and yet another possibly incorrect assumption. All states have a significant number of so-called independent voters, and in numerous states there are more such voters than either Republicans or Democrats. Most people are likely unaware of this fact. So even if Trump, for example, holds 94% of Republicans but Harris only takes 92% of Democrats, that minor difference is absolutely swamped by how the indies vote.

A good illustration of the above comes from 2016 exit polling. Hillary did infinitesimally better (89%) among Democrats than Trump did among Republicans (88%). Both candidates lost 8% of their party to the other side and the remaining 3-4% voted for neither Trump nor Hillary. For every White lower/middle-class Democrat blue collar worker who was attracted by Trump's populist messaging, one liberal suburban soccer-mommy "lifelong" Republican ran sobbing hysterically over to the left and so it was a wash.

Indies made the difference in 2016. Trump did better with them than Hillary, 46% to 42%, though it wasn't sufficient to win the overall popular vote. But it was sufficient to help put him over the top in the closest states. That was 2016; Trump lost indies by 13 points in 2020 (54%-41%), while both he and Biden retained 94% of their own party's votes. Polls in 2024 are all over the place as they flail around trying to figure out how this critical segment of the electorate is going to vote; their sub-sample sizes are normally much too small to draw any conclusions from.


Assumption #3A: Increased GOP turnout in Early Voting will not "cannibalize" their turnout on election day. They'll still have enough voters who are willing to "crawl over broken glass" to get to the polls, and therefore the extra turnout we're seeing prior to November 5th is mostly a bonus!

Assumption #3B: On the other hand, relatively decreased Democrat turnout in Early Voting will persist through election day because many Democrats are too lazy to get up off their fat asses and stand in line; if they don't vote early, they likely won't vote at all!


The amount of bullshit those twin assumptions contain for 2024 remains to be seen. Perhaps, by coincidence, all of these assumptions will finally be correct and those who pretended they "knew" it all along will get to say "we told you so!". That would be great.

In the past, when Democrats thoroughly dominated Early Voting, we were assured that the Republican surge on election day would counterbalance the early Democrat advantage, and then some. But it never came close to doing so, even though Republican voters were often instructed to wait -- and specifically avoid voting early -- because of the fear of turnout cannibalization on the big day, and something about Democrats knowing exactly how much fraud they would need to commit.

Put it all together and you can see that there's a substantial disconnect from:

"GOP is doing a little better in early voting (we up, they down!)"

to:

"WE GONNA WIN RED WAYVE BAY-BEE!!!"

The main value these early voting stats have is propaganda value. In prior years the media and other Democrats could crow about what a huge advantage their party had and how it portended eventual victory; this year Republicans are crowing about how they have narrowed the gap a little bit or, in some cases, more than a little bit. What does it matter? Basically, it doesn't. A vote is a vote, no matter when it is cast. Even, when Democrats get their way, ones which come in well after election day.

Photo credit: Twitchy.com

The 2024 Presidential Election:

As most observers have known all along, it's going to come down to the seven swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It's entirely possible that all seven will be decided by less than 5 points, possibly much less, and right now nobody knows for a fact exactly which way they are going to go. Maybe that's why they're called "swing" states.

Crackheads on the left are dizzily contemplating Harris winning. . . Texas! And Florida! And Ohio! And IOWA!

Their hopium-snorting counterparts on the right figure Trump has a damn good shot in. . . New Jersey! And Minnesota! And New Mexico! And VIRGINIA!

For another few hours they can still dream before the Methadone of reality kicks in. It will be just peachy if Trump can merely replicate what he did in 2016, by squeaking out razor-thin victories in enough of the swing states to get to 270. The Real Clear Politics recent polling averages show the following:

[As of 7:00 AM ET on 11/5]

• Trump up 2.8% in Arizona (11 EV)
• Trump up 1.3% in Georgia (16 EV) -- but Democrats are already working on the steal.
• Trump DOWN 0.5% in Michigan (15 EV)
• Trump up 0.6% in Nevada (6 EV)
• Trump up 1.2% in North Carolina (16 EV)
• Trump up 0.4% in Pennsylvania (19 EV)
• Trump DOWN 0.4% in Wisconsin (10 EV)

• Blowout fantasies notwithstanding, the pollsters aren't wrong about how close things are.
  
  Or are they?
  
  Nate Silver thinks they're not only wrong, they are outright lying. He doesn't say for whose benefit they are lying (it's for their own benefit, actually, so as to keep themselves relevant). So who does he think is clearly ahead?
  
  He says: Trump 55%, Cackles 45%. That's not an expected popular vote percentage (obviously), it's the probability of victory as Silver sees it. However just a few days earlier (October 23), Nate claimed "the election remains a 50-50 coin flip". Now he's angry at pollsters who say the same thing. Have things changed so dramatically since then? Has Trump really surged that much in two weeks?
  
  
  
  Real Clear Politics polling average as of 11/2: Trump vs. Harris (click image to enlarge)

  Trump has apparently improved his position, and it's not like a 55% chance of victory makes his election a mortal lock anyway. Presidential contests in the swing states really are likely to be nailbiters, regardless of whether Nate Silver objects or not. If the actual margins aren't quite as small as the pollsters are claiming and, for example, Harris wins and obtains a significantly greater number of votes than was expected, the pollsters will shed some crocodile tears regarding their lack of credibility. While at the same time gleefully accepting the outcome.
  
  Even better for them: when 2028 rolls around these pollsters can be accused of having overstating Republican percentages in the recent past, instead of simply being shills for the Democrats. That would undoubtedly be a first in U.S. polling history, at least since the days of "Dewey Beats Truman!". It would remove a vital "crutch" ("ALL POLLZ ARE BI-USSSED TO THE LEFT!!1!) from amateur polling experts on the right. Let's pray it doesn't happen that way.

  
  

• By declaring so many tossups, the pollsters can't really be blamed if the result is slightly the opposite of what they predicted. Exactly how many decimal places are polls supposed to be accurate to?
  
  For example, the final Pennsylvania poll from left-leaning (to put it mildly) Quinnipiac College asserts that Donald Trump will win by 1% there (47% to 46%) with a margin of error of 2.1%. If/when it turns out that Heels-Up Harris wins PA by a small amount then Quinnipiac can hardly be roasted for inaccurate forecasting; a swing of, say, 2% between their poll and the final outcome is not remarkable and only the perpetually-outraged would say otherwise. Besides, if the phrase "President Harris" ever becomes "a thing", there will be a hell of a lot more to be outraged about than some minor polling variance.

Photo credit: National Review

The Senate:

The Democrats currently hold a 51-49 advantage, including the four so-called "independents" who march along with the Rats. If there is one certainty in the Senate this year, it is the Republicans picking up the West Virginia seat from the retiring Joe Manchin. Recent polling is somewhat sparse, but GOP challenger Tim Sheehy is supposed to be up by about 6 points against ultra-liberal Democrat incumbent Jon Tester in Montana and, along with everyone else who is already counting that chicken as having hatched, we'll agree that in 2024 Tester finally goes down in flames after a Senate career that was much longer than it should have been.

With those two seats in hand, it would be Republicans with the 51-49 advantage next year.

Next on the potential flip list is Ohio, a supposedly crimson "red" state (like Montana) which (also like Montana) has been electing a far-left Democrat to the Senate for far too long. This race is a tossup. Incumbent Sherrod Brown has won three times in the past, by 12 points in 2006, 6 points in 2012, and 7 points in 2018 (crimson red, my ass). But that was then and this is now. Brown is in a dogfight for the first time, with polls favoring him over Bernie Moreno by perhaps a single point. Brown's margin is slender, but he is ahead in almost 100% of the polls even including Trafalgar (R).

Photo credit: The Hill

It's not necessarily about voters actually supporting the dim-bulb Democrats in FL & TX; it's more about voting against the Republicans. Neither Scott nor Cruz are popular with anything more than the tiniest majority of the electorate in their states. Trump is going to win Florida and Texas and even though casual observers will be surprised to hear that a coattail effect might be required for Scott and Cruz, that very well may be the case. We'll say they both pull it out in the end.

Nebraska could be different (though it probably won't be), and that would be the biggest upset of them all. Trump will win Nebraska by an even larger percentage than Texas and Florida, but Fischer is claimed to be running so far behind Trump that she might lose her grip on his coat; she should hardly need such assistance in the first place. Trump is not universally popular in the Cornhusker state -- he is going to lose CD-2 (Omaha) again, and the electoral vote which goes with it; and the liberal GOP House incumbent in CD-2 (Don Bacon) is looking likely to be defeated by the slimy Democrat insect who's opposing him. Trump's support in Nebraska is enormous in the rural western two-thirds of the state, but is tenuous in the Lincoln area and underwater in Omaha.

And now for the potential good news:

In the House, Republican control is in serious jeopardy because of the number of toss-up districts they must defend, because of where the toss-up districts are located, and because of the dynamics of those districts including their partisan composition and the astronomical amount of "possibly" illegally-laundered "ActBlue" money Democrats are spending.

No, that's not the good news.

The good news is that in the Senate the situation is the opposite of the House in one important aspect: it is the Democrats who must do the defending in the marginal states. Those states are:

• Arizona (open; was Kyrsten Sinema)
• Michigan (open; was Debbie Stabenow)
• Nevada (Jacky Rosen)
• Ohio (Sherrod Brown)
• Pennsylvania (Bob Casey, Jr. )
• Wisconsin (Tammy Baldwin)

Photo credit: Fox News

As far as the likely outcome: as we have noted on numerous occasions, having only 51 or 52 seats is not satisfactory to give the GOP anything but nominal control. There are at least two Republican senators -- Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine) -- who are for all intents and purposes Democrats. They can continue to sabotage GOP efforts from within as the leadership would prefer; they can drop the charade and become Democrats; or they can go the "independent" route. Regardless, GOP "control" of the Senate will be largely illusory in every way aside from perhaps mathematics.

Current U.S. House breakdown by district
(Map created using mapchart.net)

The House:

As we wrote a couple of weeks ago, there are 40 (out of 435) House seats that can be truly considered as toss-ups this year, with perhaps another 25 lying near toss-up territory. The other 370 seats are just about 100% safe for whichever party currently holds them.

The current split in the House is, effectively, 221 Republicans and 214 Democrats; 218 is the magic number needed to have control, which means that a net loss of merely 4 House seats and it's "Say hello to Hakeem Homeboy" as the new Speaker of the House. And that means, assuming Trump wins the presidency, "Impeachment begins on day one!". It may sound incongruous that Trump could be elected while at the same time the GOP loses its grip on the House; that is not an unlikely parlay at all. When Trump "lost" in 2020, Republicans actually gained 13 House seats that November; it was as if Trump had coattails. . . but no coat for himself. This year could be the opposite, with a Trump win and GOP House losses.

Negative factors in the House:

• Republicans have far more marginal seats to defend than Democrats do.

• Republican candidates, on average, have less (sometimes much less) funding than their Democrat opponents.

• The most marginal seats are almost entirely (34 out of 40) in "blue" states which Trump is definitely going to lose, or in swing states which could go either way. Only six of the 40 are in states which Trump is going to win.

• ME-2, held by Jared Golden since 2018 when he won only because Maine has Rigged Choice Voting (RCV). RCV may save him again.
• AK-at large, held by Mary Peltola since 2022. Alaska also has RCV, and Peltola also may be saved by it.
• MI-7, an open seat vacated by Senate candidate Elissa Slotkin.
• CA-47, another open seat vacated by a Senate candidate (Katie Porter).
• WA-3, held by Marie Gluesenkamp Perez since 2022; she is facing a rematch with Republican Joe Kent.
• CO-8, held by Yadira Caraveo since 2022; this is a marginal district situated north of Denver.

• NY-22, Brandon Williams was always in danger and the 2024 Democrat gerrymander in New York sealed his fate.
• NY-04, say goodbye to Anthony D'Esposito, who will have the distinction of costing the GOP two seats in 2024 (his own, and the adjacent one formerly held by George Santos).
• NE-2, liberal Republican Don Bacon, as mentioned above in the Senate commentary.
• OR-5, freshman Lori Chavez-DeRemer won in a fluke in 2022 but is likely toast now.
• PA-10, conservative Scott Perry won't be missed by the GOPe after being defeated by an ultra-liberal media bimbo.
• IA-1, moderate Republican Marianette Miller-Meeks is being overwhelmed by a flood of Democrat cash. Republicans could lose two of their four seats in Iowa, even though Trump should win the state easily. Probably the House loss will be just one seat (this one) at most.
• AZ-6, freshman Juan Ciscomani is too conservative for the GOPe and too liberal to suit actual conservatives. He could lose to a well-funded femiNazi, similar to the one Miller-Meeks is facing in Iowa.

Tags:

2024 House Senate Presidency Hope we're wrong about the House

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.

Tags:

2024 Senate Montana Ohio Michigan Pennsylvania

Photo credit: WFMJ

Although Republican Michael Rulli easily won (54.6% to 45.3%) Tuesday's special election in Ohio's 6th congressional district over Democrat Michael Kripchak, media liberals are gloating about the Democrat's "moral victory", which is something they do in every special election where their candidate isn't completely blown out of the water by the voters.

In this case, they have a minor point. This R+16 district routinely elects Republicans by 30-point margins, not mere 9-point margins. In extremely low-turnout special elections like this one, normal patterns do not always hold but they typically resume when more voters participate, as they will in November when these two Michaels will face off again. Customary GOP complacency and Democrat wishful thinking aside, there was no discernable reason for the closeness of the outcome in Ohio. Back in March, Rulli was engaged in a hotly-contested primary with fellow Republican Reggie Stoltzfus and one other candidate, however it was conducted in a generally amicable way with very little mud being tossed around; there should have been no lingering animosities from that contest.

Furthermore, while Rulli and Stoltzfus combined to raise and spend over $1.2 million in trying to win this seat, the hapless Democrat challenger raised only $22,000. National Democrats didn't invest anything here for the special election, and they won't do so for November either because they know they are not flipping any R+16 district. It would be the equivalent of the GOP winning a typical district in Massachusetts. And that ain't happening, at any price.

Photo credit: Nancy Mace/Youtube, Getty Images

Nancy Mace 1, Kevin McCarthy 0: In South Carolina, embattled Nancy Mace had an easier than expected time defeating Catherine Templeton, who was a sock puppet for disgraced ex-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Mace received approximately 57% of the Republican primary vote and thus easily avoided the runoff election which would have been necessary if she had failed to achieve 50%.

McCarthy and his well-funded allies created a political action committee (PAC) and spent over $2 million through that PAC for the sole purpose of exacting some revenge on Mace for her 2023 vote to topple the ineffective McCarthy from the Speakership. Tuesday's outcome does not necessarily mean that McCarthy and his minions are accepting defeat; it may just be round one.

As we noted previously, the liberal GOP establishment in this district (and nationally) are by no means averse to sabotaging primary-winning Republicans whom they loathe. Recall 2018 in this district, when Republican nominee Katie Arrington was repeatedly backstabbed by her own party, which caused her to lose the general election to a Democrat that November. The GOPe may repeat that tactic here in 2024, perhaps quietly working on behalf of liberal corporate DEI (Didn't Earn It) stooge Michael Moore -- or perhaps taking a more in-your-face approach and daring the good voters of South Carolina's 1st congressional district to do something about it. Moore spent a large sum to buy his win in the Democrat primary, and -- with some help from anti-Mace moderate/liberal Republicans -- is surely counting on raising a lot more. The anti-Mace PAC which was heavily involved in Mace's primary has at least $1 million remaining in the bank.

But it's still an R+7 district and Mace, though not exactly dominating on Tuesday, received more votes than both Democrat candidates combined. She's not perfectly safe for November, but Mace is certainly favored to win. She just needs to watch her back at all times.

Photo credit: Alchetron

The focus in Maine was on the winnable second congressional district which has been held by Democrat Jared Golden since his surprising "Rigged Choice Voting" victory in 2018. Maine voters (mostly Democrats) had just approved a ballot initiative implementing the RCV scheme which took effect in 2018, and those Democrats were delighted when Golden defeated incumbent moderate Republican Bruce Poliquin thanks solely to the provisions of Rigged Choice Voting; without that, Poliquin was the winner.

Golden is extremely well-funded by left-wing labor unions and the "Israel Lobby", and in the past he has done a good job of fooling the voters of CD-2 by faking to the center whenever necessary. The district is rated as R+6 -- that's not even particularly "marginal"; it's an outright Republican district. Trump won CD-2 in both 2016 and 2020, taking the electoral vote which goes with that victory. Alterations to CD-2 in the most recent redistricting were not significant.

As mentioned, Golden has become adept at fooling the voters; yes, he is in fact one of the more "moderate" Democrats in the House, which only means that instead of being 98% liberal he is normally merely 88% liberal. However this year Golden is running scared to an extent which he never has before. In 2024, Golden has broken with his party over 40% of the time on Party Unity votes and on "key" votes he has actually voted with the GOP a whopping 60% of the time. Golden has suddenly become a true moderate; of course the liberal media now considers him a "conservative", which like most everything in the liberal media, is gaslighting propaganda.

Golden was unopposed in this week's primary. His Republican challenger (pictured above) in November will be former NASCAR driver and racing champion Austin Theriault. Theriault, a freshman member of the Maine House, defeated fellow freshman legislator Michael Soboleski in what was apparently a real bloodbath of a primary. Theriault was endorsed by Donald Trump back in March, and he was in part financially supported by NASCAR team owners such as Rick Hendrick, Richard Childress and Bill McAnally.

Theriault also received contributions from some of his prospective colleagues in the House, including Austin Scott, Mike Turner, Gus Bilirakis, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Lisa McClain, Bob Latta, Nathaniel Moran and Tom Emmer. That's pretty much an All-Squish All-Star team. Or, more accurately, the Squish Team's triple-A minor league affiliate.

Anyone who can knock off the Golden Boy in November is OK with us now, but Soboleski was the true conservative in the race. He had comparatively little money and probably lesser name recognition, and Theriault thrashed him by 32 points (66.1% to 33.9%). We referenced the likelihood of that outcome at the end of a commentary which was posted three months ago.

One day after Theriault's resounding win, John Andrews (a member of the Maine House who served as Soboleski's campaign manager) blew a gasket, declaring:

"I've just resigned my seat in the Maine State House of Representatives. I can't be a part of anything that supports Austin Theriault. Paris [Andrews' home town in Maine] voted for Theriault. That made up my mind. I'm sorry, but I'm done standing up for anything in this community. I'm officially retired from politics. This absolutely disgusts me."

Photo credit: New York Times

In the Senate primary in Nevada, Trump-anointed Sam Brown, a moderate Republican, breezed past conservative challenger Jeff Gunter. Gunter was appointed as Ambassador to Iceland by Trump, but the ex-President typically opted for the "electable" moderate in this race instead of the true conservative. Pre-primary polls had indicated a potentially close finish between Brown and Gunter, but the current figures show 59.8% for Brown and only 15.1% for runner-up Gunter.

This is Brown's second Senate run in two years; he finished second (by over 20 points) to Adam Laxalt in his 2022 bid to go to Washington. Laxalt went on to lose by less than 1% to incumbent liberal Democrat Catherine Cortez-Masto in the general election. Although the GOPe now demands complete unity behind Brown -- which is essential if he is to have any chance of defeating ultra-liberal Democrat Jacky Rosen in November -- Gunter for the time being is not willing to forgive and forget the nasty campaign waged by Brown and his establishment supporters.

Brown is absolutely a squish, which sadly may be the best we can do as far as a supposedly electable Republican in Nevada. He has a lot of money (but Rosen has all the money in the world) and all the right squishy endorsements, while his other primary opponents (Gunter and Jim Marchant) were backed by conservatives.

Brown's cabal cites Gunter's excessive conservatism and lack of name recognition as factors which would cause him to be defeated in November if he were the nominee. However the last poll taken in this race showed Rosen beating Brown by 14 points, "name recognition" and all; the last poll in which Gunter was included showed Rosen beating him by exactly the same amount, even though few people knew who he was. Winning the primary would have solved that little problem and helped him close the gap, while Brown will have to find some other excuse for his polling deficit.

This whole scenario, Trump endorsement and all, seems very similar to what happened in the PA Senate election in 2022 with "Electable Dr. Oz". There's no way that Eyepatch McCain 2.0 (Brown) can be as bad a candidate as Oz was, and Rosen couldn't beat a ham sandwich by 14 points in a general election, but....

Even if the GOP does close ranks behind Brown, this is still Nevada. As with Oz in PA, the likely upshot of all of this is that Brown's supporters will be able to console themselves on election night in November by claiming (obviously without proof) that Gunter would have lost to Rosen by even more. It should be close -- nowhere near a 14-point gap -- but the GOP's record in close elections in Nevada, where Democrats count the vast majority of the votes, isn't impressive.

Republican Joe Lombardo was allowed to win a close contest in 2022 because a Governor isn't nearly as important as a U.S. Senator and because Lombardo is a pliable squish presiding over a state with a nearly veto-proof Democrat legislature. Jim Marchant was not allowed to win a close election in 2022 because a Secretary of State is also more important than a Governor (Don't believe us? Then go ask George Soros.), and Marchant scares the hell out of the left with his vow to clean up vote fraud in one of the most corrupt states in the country.

We'll never know whether giving the voters "a choice (Gunter), not an echo (Brown)" would have won the Nevada Senate race in 2024, we'll only know that, barring a somewhat major upset, the "echo" did not do so. All good Nevadans -- including Gunter -- need to rally to Brown now (just like folks in PA held their noses and voted for Oz), regardless of how much of a squish he is, and see if what appears to be inevitable in November might be able to be altered. Standing on principle is nice, when possible, but Brown is the only option we have now.

Photo credit: Gateway Pundit

Speaking of squishy (or far worse) Senators: Lately we have been subjected to numerous articles in the "right-wing" media which have awarded Strange New Respect to drooling Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman. Fetterman, of course, is the combination of the characters of Lurch and Uncle Fester from the old Addams Family television show, and this cartoon character has been a U.S. Senator since defeating Electable Dr. Oz in 2022.

There's this from Townhall.com:

Red Pilled John Fetterman?, which starts out by comparing Fetterman to -- yes, really -- Ronald Reagan. It goes on, like all of these delusional screeds do, to echo Fetterman's claims that he is not a liberal, he is not woke, he's just a regular guy in a hoodie, etc.

Here's one from Breitbart:

Fetterman Rejects Progressive Label While Addressing Left-Wing Attacks

Golly, now he's under "attack" from the radicals in his party. A stroke, and now this? Poor guy.

Fetterman does concede that "eight years ago" he was in fact a "progressive", a label which he now rejects. He's not up for re-election until 2028, but apparently it's never too early to begin campaigning. One of the basic tenets of Democrat campaigns is trying to get ignorant voters to swallow whatever lies they are fed. That becomes easier with every repetition of the lie, and there's no reason for the non-liberal media to help the Democrats with their task.

The liberal puppetmasters, who send Lurch/Fester out there to parrot whatever script they've prepared for him, are rolling with laughter that people are buying this crap. Granted it is impressive that Fetterman can memorize even a simple script, what with his brain damage, and he wasn't any Mensa candidate even before the stroke.

He is all talk, and only talk.

It serves a purpose to have a "last sane Democrat" puppet to put on public display once in a while. The tactic goes back at least to Zig-Zag Zell Miller, through Joe Lieberman (on rare occasions) and then to grandstanding showboat Joe Manchin. Manchin is down to his last few months in office so they need a new one, preferably from a swing state. Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire and Wisconsin had no remotely believable (as "sane") Democrat Senate options, so the job fell to Fetterman.

Fetterman is a total fraud with his "I ain't woke no mo'" garbage. The next Senate vote he casts which defies liberal orthodoxy in any way will be his first one and that's no exaggeration. Talk is cheap. Get back to us when he shows up Chuckie Schumer even once by casting a critical non-liberal vote on an important issue. In the meantime, Republican voters (and authors) need to stop being so gullible.

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2024 U.S. House Senate Ohio South Carolina Nevada Maine Lurch / Uncle Fester

Photo credit: AP Photo/Susan Walsh

As expected, there was no drama in the Republican Senate primary, where former Governor Larry Hogan won the low-turnout contest by over 30 percentage points. The stakes were higher on the Democrat side, where ultra-liberal billionaire congressman David Trone, who represents western Maryland, faced ultra-liberal county executive Angela Alsobrooks, who hails from the deep, dark jungle of Prince George's County.

Trone got started in politics by taking advantage of his massive wealth and the heavy partisan Democrat gerrymander in Maryland's 6th district to purchase (at a cost of over $17 million) a seat in Congress in the anti-Republican year of 2018, and he held it by decreasing margins in the next two elections. The 96% liberal Trone tries to portray himself as a moderate every couple of years during his campaigns, and his idea of "fundraising" is to whip out his checkbook and calmly write a check for $10,000,000 or so to his campaign treasury.

In this Senate primary however, Trone really was the "moderate" candidate. But as a White male running against a black female, he didn't check any of the politically correct boxes which are so important in nearly all Democrat primary elections, and so he never really had a chance. Trone lost by approximately 54% to 42%, in what Republican strategists have classified as a nasty and divisive primary which they hope will have lasting effects through November; it rarely happens that way on the left, and surely won't be allowed in an election as critical as this one.

The backgrounds of the two candidates were not nearly as similar as their comparable liberal ideologies. Even as a rich guy, Trone is not simply a Democrat trust-fund baby. He became a billionaire by founding a successful business from scratch; at one time he really was a political moderate and even donated to GOP candidates. Alsobrooks, on the other hand, has always been on the extreme left and has spent nearly her entire career in the affirmative-action public sector, at the nexus of government and politics.

Photo credit: wamu.org

Hogan, from the staunch liberal wing of the Republican party, was extremely popular in Maryland during his two terms as Governor. Democrats were as thoroughly satisfied with Hogan as Republicans were, and they made only the most token effort to oppose his re-election bid in 2018. At his election-night victory party that year, Hogan predictably gloated about how his liberalism (as opposed to Democrat apathy) had enabled him to overcome 2018's anti-Trump "blue wave". He was at least partially correct.

Democrats had veto-proof majorities or very close to it in both houses of the Maryland legislature during Hogan's entire 8 years in office, and under those conditions -- see also Vermont and Massachusetts in recent years -- liberals often have no objection to an impotent figurehead Republican as Governor, if for no other reason than to have some handy Republican to take the blame from the media and the voters when Democrat legislative policies prove to be unpopular and damaging. Hogan's gubernatorial "success" notwithstanding, a U.S. Senate seat is a far more important prize than a governorship, and Democrats damn sure aren't going to show any apathy this time around.

The liberal media has been dutifully reminding folks in Maryland that Hogan is very much an "anti-Trump" Republican. Obviously they do this not to boost Hogan in the eyes of other Trump-hating liberals; instead it is a totally transparent attempt to damage Hogan with the solid GOP base -- those who support Trump. They're probably succeeding to some extent. Hogan's win in the Senate primary yesterday was far from unanimous, with 81-year-old frequent (but hopeless) candidate Robin Ficker surprisingly outraising and outspending Hogan by a substantial margin and campaigning solidly to Hogan's right, which isn't exactly difficult. Ficker received only 30% of the Republican vote. That's still 30% who voted against Hogan. Five fringe candidates combined to take another 8% of the vote.

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2024 Senate Maryland Hogan Competitive or pipe dream?

Photo credit: ABC News (from 6 years ago, so don't get excited)

Of course it's really quite far from being over, but not according to some rando with a blog which gets posted on a site called "American Thinker". Not deep thinkers apparently, but at least they are hopeful ones and they're on the right side.

The blogger references a recent Marist poll which shows Ted Cruz with a mundane 51% to 45% lead over celebrity Democrat challenger Collin Allred. As polling organizations go Marist has been reasonably accurate lately, but one poll taken 8 months before the election, which shows a 6-point lead for the good guy with nearly a 4% margin of error is hardly conclusive.

Or is it? The blogger declares that this poll "confirms that Mr. Cruz will win" and he advises the Democrats to spend their money elsewhere. They already are spending money elsewhere -- lots of it -- and do not need to concern themselves with economizing like Republicans often must do.

The poll "confirms" something? Pre-election polls predict (or try to influence) election outcomes. They do not confirm anything except perhaps that a race will either be close or a landslide or somewhere in between, and this particular race sure as hell won't be any landslide.

• Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington: 7,943,685 population as of 2022
• Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land: 7,340,118
• San Antonio-New Braunfels: 2,655,342
• Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown: 2,421,115

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2024 Senate Texas Going Purple Ted Cruz

Photo credit: WCMH-TV

The photo shows the three GOP Senate candidates, Larry, Moe(reno) and Curly, during a recent debate. Leftist Matt Dolan is the stooge who is positioned on the right. Moreno isn't really a stooge of course, but he's certainly surrounded by them here. Speaking of being positioned on the right, the gaslighting article which accompanies that photo was written by an ultra-liberal NPR media twerp and therefore reads like a Dolan campaign commercial.


The past: In 2022 in many important statewide elections, there was nothing to vote for in the Democrat primaries because their nominee had already been anointed. The same is true in 2024. That means Democrat party puppetmasters and Democrat voters are free to spend time and money influencing the outcome of Republican primary elections for their own benefit.

Like Nimrod Haley did during the brief time when she was supposedly a viable presidential candidate, other liberal Republicans like Matt Dolan are desperately seeking Democrat votes in their primary battles against actual Republicans. This is nothing new for Dolan, a left-wing state legislator who ran for the U.S. Senate in 2022 and is running again this year. In 2022 he begged Democrats to vote for him in the GOP primary, because otherwise he stood zero chance against Trump-endorsed J.D. Vance.

That tactic came closer to succeeding than it should have. In polls taken only a few weeks before the 2022 Ohio primary, Dolan was barely cracking double-digits in what was essentially a three-way race with Vance and Josh Mandel. Mandel, the former state Treasurer, had been a milquetoast candidate against Sherrod Brown in 2012 and Brown mopped the floor with him. That happened despite the fact that the Republicans actually competed on nearly equal financial footing with the Democrat, which has become quite an uncommon occurrence in contested states since that time.

With the help of thousands of Democrat voters and the endorsements of other liberal Republicans, Dolan surged in the final voting to over 23%, just a fraction of a percentage point behind Mandel. Vance of course won that primary, but with barely 30% of the overall vote. Vance didn't break the one-third mark even though he had the endorsement of Donald Trump and the endorsement of former primary opponent Bernie Moreno. Moreno had dropped out of the race in February of 2022, heroically sacrificing his campaign in order to avoid a damaging split of the conservative primary vote.

• Pro-abortionist
• Anti-gun
• Supported "contact tracing" and dictatorial powers for "health" officials during the plandemic
• Opposed arming teachers (or any armed security) in dangerous urban schools or ghetto-ized suburban schools
• Supports the Democrat vote-buying tactic of student loan "forgiveness"
• Supports "green" energy mandates
• Favors higher property taxes
• Favors taxpayer-financed handouts in corrupt ghetto areas under the guise of "neighborhood development"

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2024 Senate Ohio Moreno & the Two Stooges Win-win for Democrats

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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2024 Senate Montana Matt Rosendale Irate establshment Blundering endorsements

[The image is backwards -- the big money is, as always, on the left. The amount on the right is whatever Ronna McRomney at the RNC can spare from her lipstick and botox fund.]

Last week the Federal Election Commission released the 2023 year-end financial data which shows the volume of money raised and spent by each candidate for the U.S. House or Senate. Funds raised which have already been spent are not of particular relevance at this point; instead we focus on the much more important cash-on-hand figures.

Approximately 11 months ago we published a list of 59 congressional incumbents who, based on the nature of their districts and the closeness of their wins in 2022, are obviously the most vulnerable in 2024. On the Democrat side, three of the supposedly Vulnerable 29 have opted not to seek re-election. All of the 30 Republicans who are facing the toughest odds are seeking re-election, except for George Santos (NY-3) who was expelled from Congress last December. Lauren Boebert (CO-3) is running again, but in a different district than the one she currently represents, so those two seats are considered to be open for the moment (NY-3 won't be open after next week).

Let's look at how these incumbents are doing in the money department, and how serious their opposition is likely to be. The vast majority of the nearly 400 other House seats which are up for re-election in November are, as usual, not likely to be competitive. The financial data shown in the following tables is effective as of 12/31/2023. Campaign fundraising and spending will really kick into high gear later this year, but the data even as it stands now illustrates quite nicely how these races are progressing.

Democrat incumbents:

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2024 U.S. House Senate Democrat $ advantages

The headline is premature since no polls (yet) show what the title claims. But it's never too early for the liberal media to begin focusing their attacks on a Republican candidate, and tying one to Trump is -- they think -- a winning strategy. It usually is, but not always. Like just two years ago in Ohio, for example.

Dysfunctional Republicans have a habit of shooting themselves in the foot via divisive primaries in critical statewide elections -- mainly because the liberal wing of the party will never back a conservative in the general election and will often actually work against one; lukewarm support like J.D. Vance got here in 2022 is pretty much all that a non-liberal GOP candidate can expect. The establishment, which controls the all-important purse strings, much prefers a liberal Democrat to a conservative Republican, and in '22 they got their way in critical Senate races in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Alaska, came close in Wisconsin and North Carolina, and only grudgingly made a token effort to help in Ohio.

This sort of fracturing and backstabbing is something Democrats never go for. First of all, they make certain that the field is clear for their chosen candidate in a Senate primary in any winnable state, thus avoiding the divisiveness. Then they support their nominees with the vast resources of their campaign finance money laundries. Deliberately sabotaging one's own nominees is idiotic, which is why only Republicans do that and not Democrats.

In a state which is not winnable for Democrats, like Missouri in 2022, they let the losers battle it out with their own money in the primary to see which one gets the honor of being stomped in the general election. They don't waste time or money on lost causes, while the Republican party, with its comparatively limited resources, starves winnable candidates in order to waste cash on ludicrously unlikely pipe dreams in places like Colorado and Washington (both of which were lost by two touchdowns), as they did in '22.

Also, the Rats do not care how outrageously liberal a candidate is and they quite obviously do not demand that only the most squishy centrist be their party's choice. If a supposedly moderate candidate can't beat a drooling liberal (see the 2022 Senate Democrat primary in Pennsylvania, for example) then the drooler is the nominee and the entire party apparatus immediately gets in line behind him.

Need proof? We've published this data before, but here again are the campaign spending figures for the swing-state Senate races in 2022. All figures shown are in millions of dollars:

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2024 Senate Ohio Bernie Moreno for the win!

Photo credit: Getty Images

The vote earlier this week involved "Denouncing the Biden administration's open-borders policies, condemning the national security and public safety crisis along the southwest border, and urging President Biden to end his administration's open-borders policies." Here is a link to the text of the resolution: House Resolution 957.

For those who've forgotten their high school Civics class (or "Social Studies", as the course has been known since being dumbed-down and geared mostly towards liberal propaganda) a House resolution like this one is not binding on anyone, is not a bill, does not go to the President for his signature and can not become a law.

It is merely all for show, which was the whole point.

Republicans thought they were soooo smart here (stupid people often believe they are smart; it's part of what makes them so stupid) and figured they would put 200+ America-hating representatives with a (D) after their names on record during an election year as supporting Dementia Joe's open border policies and his other border-related crimes. A brilliant political maneuver, eh?

Nope. Lucy pulled the football away and the party of Charlie Browns landed on its ass again. This stunt may actually wind up costing them seats in the House in November, by failing to capture several currently Democrat-held districts which were ripe for the taking.

• Nickel is not running for re-election in North Carolina because the GOP was finally granted its legal right to redistrict the state (which partisan Democrat judges had illegally thwarted in 2022 after mandating a Democrat gerrymander in 2020) and his district is probably more like R+8 now which would have made him a certain loser.
  
  
• Peltola won via Rigged Choice Voting in Alaska and because of an irrevocable fracture between the Palin supporters and Palin haters in the Alaska Republican party. Rigged Choice Voting remains and so does the Stupid Party. Early indications are that they are not any smarter than they were in 2022, and they're going to split the vote again and let the ditzy Democrat win another undeserved term.
  
  
• MGP won in Washington only because the GOPe refused to support conservative MAGA candidate Joe Kent after he defeated a Trump-hating impeachment RINO (incumbent Jaime Herrera-Beutler) in the primary. Kent is defiantly running again in 2024.

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U.S. House 2024 Senate Texas Ted Cruz vs. "NFL star" GOP saves endangered baby Rats

Photo credit: Getty

Amash started off in Congress well enough, building conservative credentials with his voting record and enhancing that "cred" by being kicked off of GOP committees in 2012 along with Kansas representative Tim Huelskamp and David Schweikert of Arizona. All three were ousted for being too far to the right to suit many of their more-powerful Republican colleagues, including milquetoast John Boehner who was Speaker at the time.

Schweikert is still in Congress -- at least for the rest of this year. He represents a very marginal and deteriorating district in the Phoenix suburbs, barely won in 2022, and Democrats are spending big to defeat him in November. They have a significant probability of doing exactly that.

Huelskamp proved to be such an irritant to the Republican leadership (he once attempted to unseat Crybaby Boehner from the speakership and replace him with Jim Jordan) that he was successfully targeted -- by Boehner and other members of his own party -- for elimination in the 2016 primary. Roger Marshall, who defeated Huelskamp in that western Kansas primary to the delight of the GOPe, has gone on to parlay his squishiness into a Senate career.

Wikipedia notes with approval that "Amash received national attention when he became the first Republican congressman to call for the impeachment of Donald Trump, a position he maintained after leaving the party". Amash abandoned the Republicans in 2019 to become a so-called independent, then flitted over to the Libertarian party before leaving Congress. Now he wants to be welcomed back into the GOP as their standard-bearer in a losing Senate election.

Amash is a gadfly who doesn't know what the hell he is or what he wants to be. Well, he knows he wants to be a senator all of a sudden but he isn't going to get that prize. And he knows he hates Israel, which really isn't sufficient to base a Senate campaign on although it might get him votes in Dearborn-istan.

He's just a charlatan who misses the attention and the payday he got when he was a self-important congressman -- especially the media adulation he received after he made clear how much of a "maverick" he is and how he hated President Trump enough to leave Trump's party and even to leave Congress. So now he's a darling of the media and others on the left, claiming to be a "principled conservative" though he is actually neither of those things.

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Michigan 2024 Senate James Craig Yes Justin Amash No

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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Montana 2024 Senate Matt Rosendale Impeach Biden Jon Tester Tim Sheehy

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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Senate 2024 Montana Ohio West Virginia Democrat mega-$$$$ advantage

Photo credit: The Hill

For a suddenly relevant blast from the not-too-distant past, here's an excerpt from our very own "Final 2022 election predictions" posted last November 7th:

If partisan control hangs in the balance, i.e. if Republicans end up with a 51-49 majority, the filthy whore from Alaska (who will win re-election easily), will sell herself to the highest bidder like all filthy whores do; that high bidder will be the Democrats. A la Judas Jim Jeffords 20 years ago, Murkowski will switch sides and give the Democrats control.

With the "red wave" petering out completely, there was no need for the dessicated crone from Alaska to pull a Jeffords at that time. However it appears that Murkowski along with other spineless weasels (Cornyn, Thune, Romney, etc.) now fear that the GOP might somehow take Senate control following the 2024 elections, and as always they would greatly prefer not to be in power -- at least not on the same side as those smelly conservatives, and especially not if taking control in January of 2025 is due to the fact that 1 or 2 more actual conservatives are elected next November. So Murkowski is hinting that she will bolt, and it's quite possibly not just a bluff.

She doesn't have to face the voters again until 2028, and Rigged Choice Voting in Alaska practically ensures her re-election just as it did in 2022.

The Democrats don't need to buy off this whore with their endless supply of geld -- she's already a millionaire -- but through their control of the media they can make her the greatest American hero since St. George Floyd; why, she would be single-handedly saving Democracy!!! They don't need to appeal to her greed; they can simply appeal to her gigantic ego and lust for power (or at least relevance).

Regarding the 2024 Senate elections, the puppetmasters have little to fear in West Virginia where a moderate Republican will replace an allegedly moderate Democrat. But if the uniparty establishment loses control of the primary election in places like Montana and Ohio, leading to the nomination of right-of-center candidates like Rosendale and Moreno, and then loses control of the general election and those guys somehow get past all the obstacles in their path (vote fraud, overwhelming funding disadvantages) then they figure that spells DISASTER.

For the establishment.

Of course that's not true at all, with Mitch McConnell or one of his Bitches becoming Majority Leader and being as vigorous, forceful and effective a "leader" as Frank Luntz's boy toy currently is in the House.

Speaking of Kevin McCarthy, the current odds heavily favor him handing over the Speaker's gavel to the racist Democrat election-denier from Brooklyn when the next Congress convenes in 2025, so it would be nice to have the GOP control the Senate. It would be even nicer for them to actually accomplish something with that control, but probably the most we could expect is preventing President Biden, President Harris or President Newsom from being able to pack the Supreme Court. Maybe.

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Senate RINO Lisa Murkowski Mitt Romney John Cornyn Judas Jim Jeffords

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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Senate 2024 West Virginia Slam dunk Montana Ohio Arizona Wisconsin Wishful thinking Michigan Nevada

Photo credit: Brad Wilson

From the article: "Utah House Speaker Brad Wilson announced he was forming an exploratory committee 14 months before the scheduled primary. Utah needs a 'conservative fighter' who represents its values, not a 'professional career politician,' Wilson told The Associated Press in an interview at his real estate office in northern Utah."

In what clown world is Brad Wilson a "conservative fighter", or a conservative at all? Even if you aren't aware of his moderate (at best) voting record, here's another clue: he wouldn't be Speaker of the Utah House if he really was a conservative; the GOP caucus of squishes in the Utah House wouldn't support that any more than the U.S. House GOP squishes would support someone like Andy Biggs over Kevin McCarthy.

Wilson's probably not as bad as Slick Willard though, and at a minimum would do less damage in the Senate than Romney does. Should Wilson happen to pull off the upset, then as a freshman backbencher at least he wouldn't go sucking up to the hosts of the left-wing Sunday morning TV "news" shows in order to trash conservative members of his own party on a regular basis.

Even though this is allegedly rock-ribbed Republican Utah we're talking about, it is an open question as to whether an actual conservative -- as opposed to a RINO -- can even get elected statewide here anymore, as the Salt Lake City area is well on its way to becoming the "New Austin" (Texas) due to significant Californication and the massive influx of liberals from other states as well. Salt Lake County, which has finally flipped from true blue to Commie red, casts over one-third of the votes in the state.

Senator Mike Lee, an alleged conservative, is portrayed by Utah lefties as being well to the right of Jesse Helms (not even close), and in 2022 Lee barely cleared 50% statewide against a joke candidate who only got votes on the basis of not being Mike Lee, as opposed to anything positive. Lee was beaten by nearly 20 points in Salt Lake County.

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Senate 2024 Utah Mitt Romney Brad Wilson Salt Lake City

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?

We were told one year ago that the magnificent GOP sweep in Virginia in 2021 was largely the result of learning from the nationwide debacle of 2020 and having GOP poll watchers everywhere in order to minimize Democrat vote fraud. Furthermore, that "Virginia model" for ensuring election integrity was going to be implemented nationwide, and no longer would the Democrats so easily be able to commit massive statewide fraud in places like Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, etc.

Oops.

Like Trump's win in 2016, Youngkin's win in 2021 was very much a fluke and had little to nothing to do with suddenly vigilant Republican poll watchers:

1. Both Trump and Youngkin had the luxury of facing the single most repugnant and unpopular Democrat available at the time (Hillary Clinton, Terry McAuliffe).

2. Democrats took both Republican candidates less than 100% seriously and therefore committed just a wee bit less fraud than usual.

3. That overconfidence was costly to the Democrats, and still the Republicans just barely managed to win.

Pick whatever reason you like to explain the outcome (fraud and demographics are two good candidates), but 2025 in Virginia is very likely to look like 2020 did nationwide -- the glorious victory of 4 years prior is almost certain to be reversed. Youngkin of course cannot run again since Virginia prohibits consecutive terms for the same Governor.

As far as what happened in Tuesday's election, nobody aside from leftist media gloaters who are simply trying to damage Youngkin can hold him mainly responsible for the razor-thin GOP loss in a marginal state Senate district. But at the same time Youngkin is clearly no king-maker either, any more than Trump has been.

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Virginia Special election State Senate Glenn Youngkin

She'll still caucus with the Democrats, the Democrats control which committees she gets to be on.... this changes nothing except that we now have three liberal stooges in the Senate (Sinema, King, Sanders) who are all really Democrats yet call themselves "independent".

In reality, they are all as dependent on Democrats as they ever were, and in Sinema's case this is simply a calculated move (with full Democrat support) to increase her chances of re-election and nothing more than that.

Only the GOP's abysmal performance in the Senate races in 2022 allows this political transvestite to follow her "conscience" and pretend to leave the Democrat party. If Sinema was the deciding vote as to which party controls the Senate, this little charade would never have occurred.

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Senate Arizona Kyrsten Sinema Still really a Democrat

Sorry we've been out of touch for a couple of months (family issues), but here are some realistic predictions for what will happen Tuesday.

Tl;dr version for those with insufficient attention spans or an aversion to being realistic: the delusionals have worked themselves up into such a frenzy that even GOOD news -- Republicans going +15 or +20 and winning the House and maybe picking up a seat or two and perhaps taking control of the Senate -- will be viewed as major disappointments by those who actually believe outlier polls, people who reflexively add 10 points to GOP candidates in polls just because, and people who take ludicrous "predictions" by sources such as Newt Gingrich and Dickie Morris seriously.

Senate:

The most likely reasonable expectation is in the range of GOP -1 to GOP +1. This may sound unimpressive or pessimistic, but then reality IS normally more unimpressive than fantasy. It's not totally pessimistic either: we'll assume that Republicans hold their pair of highly endangered and marginal seats in North Carolina and Wisconsin, outcomes which are very far from certainties.

The most likely path to the -1 to +1 range is: Oz loses PA (which he will, after appearing to be winning substantially on Tuesday night) and the Republicans pick up either 0, 1 or 2 of Nevada and New Hampshire. An upset is possible but Walker will most likely lose in a runoff in Georgia, other races may be close-but-no-cigar (such as Arizona), and only if a 1994-style massacre of Democrats occurs is there any plausible chance for pickups in places like Colorado and Washington. Of the 2 Democrat-held seats which are actually tossups, Nevada is a better bet for GOP success than New Hampshire (even the right-leaning shills at Real Clear Politics have conceded that Bolduc will not win), and Nevada is pretty tenuous.

Final Senate note: if partisan control hangs in the balance, i.e. if Republicans end up with a 51-49 majority, the filthy whore from Alaska (who will win re-election easily), will sell herself to the highest bidder like all filthy whores do; that high bidder will be the Democrats. A la Judas Jim Jeffords 20 years ago, Murkowski will switch sides and give the Democrats control. If we want REAL control we need to get to 52 somehow.

Governors:

Maryland and Massachusetts are already foregone conclusions to flip from R to D and another significant possibility to do the same thing is Oklahoma. In the end, we'll guess that Stitt wins by an extremely small margin and holds Oklahoma for the GOP.

Among currently D-held seats, Pennsylvania is a lost cause but we predict the Republicans will pick up Nevada; however it better not be too close because Republicans almost never win close elections in Nevada.

Sadly, MAGA heroine Kari Lake will lose in Arizona simply because she cannot be allowed to win; she's too good. If she somehow slips through the cracks in Katie Hobbs' Fraud Machine (it's so cute that people think the Rats can't cheat because "Weer Wotching" more closely than in 2020) and ekes out a win, Lake will not be allowed to govern. Remember Evan Mechem? Lake will be Evan Mechem 2.0. The Democrats, the Democrat media and the RINO elites in Lake's own party will see to it and are probably already preparing for it by fabricating the Kari Lake version of the "Steele Dossier".

All other seats will probably be status quo though there is a decent opportunity for Tim Michels to defeat soyboi Tony Evers in Wisconsin. Republicans will blow it in Kansas, which should have been an easy pickup, and the Oregon pipe dream will turn out to be a pipe bomb as support for the "independent" Democrat who was splitting the D vote has evaporated, and her supporters have flocked back like sheep to the nutzoid D candidate. It was fun while it lasted and the final outcome will be close, but this is Oregon. Other states -- notably New York -- will be much closer than they usually are, but all realistic odds favor Democrat holds in that state and in Maine, Minnesota, Michigan, New Mexico and Colorado. Will Illinois flip, as some seem to believe? That's precious.

House:

The realistic floor for the GOP is somewhere around +10, and that's sufficient to take control but as mentioned above would be considered a crushing disappointment if that's all we get. If we see less than +10, or worse yet we see panicky Democrat predictions of gains coming true, then we know that Democrat fraud is working better than ever.

A sensible outcome without going too far overboard with the purely wishful thinking is GOP +15 to maybe as much as +20 (I know, I know, that's STILL a massive downer); anyone who truly believes, despite no evidence whatsoever, that +50, +75, +100 is viable, will need to up their meds starting Wednesday.

Newly created seats in Florida, Texas (1 of the 2 new seats), Montana and Colorado will go our way, offset by GOP reapportionment losses in places like New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan and West Virginia along with D pickups of new seats in states such as Oregon and North Carolina. Florida will be the biggest win for our side, as the delegation goes from 16-11 in our favor to 20-8. Arizona might see a pickup of 2 House seats for the GOP even as both statewide Republican candidates are being frauded out of their wins.

Democrat incumbents (through defeat on Tuesday, or retirement, or redistricting) will be ousted in Wisconsin, Tennessee, Georgia, New Jersey, Ohio (Tim Ryan's old district), perhaps Iowa. There are possibilities of capturing marginal tossup Democrat-held districts in Alaska, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Nevada. There are lesser chances, but still possible pickups, in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, Maryland, and a few others. Ideas of GOP seizures of numerous endangered Democrat seats in places like Illinois and New York are nothing but illusions and not even a single pickup will result (well, maybe 1 at most) absent a "red wave" of enormous proportions.

There are only 2 GOP-held seats which are in any real danger of being lost -- unless Democrat "ballot harvesting" fraud in California claims a whole bunch more, as it did in 2018 and very well might again in 2022 -- and those 2 are Mayra Flores in TX-34 and John Gibbs in MI-3. Both are in tough fights, and Gibbs in particular will go down to defeat as the GOP establishment abandoned him the moment he defeated Trump-hating weasel Peter Meijer in the primary. As always, the GOPe would greatly prefer a liberal Democrat to a MAGA conservative.

If we have to pick a specific final number in the House, we'll go with lucky +13. We'd be delighted to be wrong about some of this (particularly Kari Lake) but we prefer predictions based in reality rather than fantasy.

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U.S. House Senate 2022 Take back the House But not the Senate

By what is surely just a remarkable coincidence, the polls which the liberal poindexters at FiveThirtyEight.com allow the public to see -- at least the ones from sources those poindexters consider to be "highly rated" -- all favor the ultra-liberal candidate. So just because us unenlightened proles have never heard of the leftist poll-takers at the University of North Florida doesn't mean they're wrong.

Still, Florida is not a slam-dunk Republican state by any means whatsoever, and even Governor DeSantis is going to have to work hard (he is a major target and is in no way going to simply cruise to re-election) but given the low quality of their Democrat opponents both Rubio & DeSantis should be moderately favored. At most.

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Senate Florida 2022 Not safe GOP?

Photo credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

The states are Colorado and, even more ludicrously, Washington. The plan is to launch some tepid ads in which the Democrat incumbents are revealed to have voted "with Joe Biden" on nearly 100% of all issues. Surely that will convince liberal voters in those two states to come to their senses and vote for Republicans! If you were expecting some ads which would be a little more hard-hitting than that, then you are not familiar with how the GOP does things. Anything effective would be "controversial" and the NRSC, like the RNC, always runs screaming from "controversy".

In a tidal wave election Republicans might have a slender chance of an upset in Colorado, but Washington is a lost cause and has been for years. If the election was simply a beauty contest, Tiffany Smiley would win against Patsy Murray by about 99%; but as it is she will probably lose by 10-15 points. Now watch the NRSC -- even as they are being heavily outspent all across the board by the Democrats -- brainlessly waste money on hail-Mary pipe dreams in Colorado and Washington and at the same time failing to spend sufficient money to try to hold very shaky but quite winnable Senate seats in North Carolina, Wisconsin.... and even Ohio.

The Democrats smell blood -- and an unexpected golden pickup opportunity -- so they are funneling an enormous amount of bucks into the Ohio Senate race, while the supposedly favored (but not actually favored) GOP candidate is woefully underfunded and basically off the air at this time.

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Senate 2022 GOP wasting money Washington Colorado

Photo credit: Getty Images

The leftists at 538 are only just now realizing that Democrats are favored to keep the Senate? Oz is toast in PA and always was, so that's minus-1 for the GOP and the loss is not likely to be offset with a Walker victory in Georgia which was supposed to be (and may still be) the most likely Republican pickup. But "most likely" still doesn't mean "likely" whatsoever. Assuming all other incumbents win too and open seats are held, that means a 51-49 Senate with the GOP on the short end.

If any other seats flip, the reality is that it's much more likely to be R to D than D to R. Wisconsin, North Carolina and maybe even Ohio are not slam dunk retentions for Republicans. Things are not 100% safe even in Utah (!) or Missouri depending on who wins that state's primary next week, however sanity is still favored though not guaranteed to prevail in both of those states in the end.

Aside from Georgia, Senate seats in Arizona and Nevada are the only plausible flips in the good direction; anyone thinking of adding New Hampshire, Colorado, etc. to the list can dream on. But don't forget Alaska, where Tshibaka (R) beating Murkowski (RINO) -- if that actually happens -- should count as a Republican pickup even though it technically isn't.

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Senate 2022 Democrats retain control Pennsylvania Georgia