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Andrew Prokop Profile picture
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18 Oct, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Why it'll be so tough for Dems to hold the Senate:
1. The 3 red state Ds are more vulnerable than the 3 blue state Rs
2. Dems have 10 other senators representing states Biden only narrowly won. GOP has only 4 in narrow Trump win states (NC+FL) (cont'd)

vox.com/2021/10/18/227…
3. The 2022 Senate map is not on its face terrible for Dems — their problem is defying the historically common midterm backlash
4. The 2024 Senate map is really rough for Dems. The three Trump states Dems are up, and so are five other Ds in states Biden won by less than 3 points.
5. So if 2024 turns out to be a strong presidential year for Dems, they'll still have a tough time keeping WV/MT/OH seats.

If it's a bad presidential year for Dems, ~8 seats are at risk.

And if 2022 was good for GOP too, a 60-vote GOP supermajority post-'24 is plausible.
6. Can all of this be overcome? Of course. The better Dems do in key states (and overall), the better chance they'll have.

The point is they have to clear a higher bar for a Senate majority than the GOP does. And with so many more tenuously-held seats, Ds are at greater risk

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More from @awprokop

Andrew Prokop Profile picture
20 Oct
As @DavidCornDC notes, "leaving" the party to become an independent does not necessarily mean *switching* to caucus with GOP. (Dems have independents Sanders and King in their caucus already.)

So, unclear whether it would be a PR stunt or a true disaster for D Senate control
But the party switch has always been Manchin's ultimate trump card. I asked him about it several months ago, and he said: "I know I can change more from where I'm at. And I still believe in the principles of the Democratic Party that I grew up with."

vox.com/22339531/manch… Image
Is Manchin bluffing? Maybe! But the last 50-50 Senate, in 2001, fell apart for a very similar reason — moderate Sen. Jim Jeffords (R-VT) fell out of step with his party, and got fed up with high-handed pressure tactics. Image
Read 6 tweets
Andrew Prokop Profile picture
13 Oct
It was pretty remarkable that Senate Democrats went from 45 seats in 2005 to 60 seats in mid-2009. Just took two cycles and a party switch!
No party has had a one-two punch of Senate election cycles since. (Rs gained seats in 2010, 2014, 2018, Ds in 2012, 2016, 2020)
The long stretch of GOP *underperformance* in Senate elections is also notable.

Think of the number of states won by the pres. nominee as the "fundamentals" for Senate seat expectation. Ds have consistently done better than that since 2000, until 2020, which was right on target
Read 5 tweets
Andrew Prokop Profile picture
30 Sep
Response from the computer scientists via @charlie_savage @adamgoldmanNYT is basically: they thought the Trump/Alfa Bank thing was, or could be, real.

Some emails suggest they believed it, they say Durham quoted stuff out of context to imply otherwise

Link here: nytimes.com/2021/09/30/us/…
Legally it doesn't seem to matter (they haven't been charged with anything), but regarding the narrative Durham is trying to put out, it's an important distinction.

Were they trying to drum up a thin/bogus Trump/Russia tie? Or did they genuinely believe in what they'd found?
Read 4 tweets
Andrew Prokop Profile picture
16 Sep
Durham's indictment of Dem lawyer Michael Sussmann is a "speaking indictment." Is written with much detail to advance narrative that Trump was victim of foul play re: the "secret Russian server" story

washingtonpost.com/context/u-s-v-…
Durham’s belief, expressed in this indictment, is basically that Clinton supporters drummed up a thin/bogus Trump Russia tie, fed it to the FBI to get Trump under investigation, then had it leaked to the press to hurt Trump’s campaign.
But Durham does not say any of that is criminal.

The crime he alleges is a false statement made by one person involved, attorney Michael Sussmann, during a meeting with the FBI.

Alleges Sussman said he was not acting on a client's behalf, but that he really was.
Read 6 tweets
Andrew Prokop Profile picture
15 Sep
Newsom framing the race as himself vs. Elder was in part strategy, but it was also simple reality.

Republican voters flocked to Elder and made him and not, say Faulconer the preferred candidate. Elder really would have won if Newsom got booted.

vox.com/2021/9/15/2266…
That is: Republican voters chose to elevate a bombastic, polarizing candidate and hope he could squeak through the weird recall process, rather than someone who could have plausibly been actually popular in a blue state
And the takeaway is apparently that Elder is the frontrunner to be the GOP's candidate again next year... except in a head-to-head matchup with Newsom that he's far *less* likely to win.

So yes, not a great development for the GOP in CA

Read 4 tweets
Andrew Prokop Profile picture
15 Sep
This goes rather too far for me (it depends on the author!) but I do think the value-added from good reported political books is more often about added detail, depth, context, and an eye toward posterity rather than scoops
I have no idea what the "scoops" were in Woodward's "Obama's Wars" at this point but I referred back to it recently because it's a detailed, meeting-by-meeting reconstruction of the policy process that simply couldn't be done in ordinary reporting

vox.com/2021/8/18/2262…
But I do tend to be more skeptical of the headline-grabbing, big scoops that get spotlighted to sell the books.

George Tenet had a strong case that "Plan of Attack" exaggerated the significance of the "slam dunk" comment in convincing Bush to go to war newyorker.com/magazine/2007/…
Read 7 tweets

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