Someone posted it in the DEM 2020 thread. But this is thread worthy and worth bumping in a year and a half's time.
2021 Could Be a Nightmare For Democrats — Even If Trump Loses
2021 Could Be a Nightmare For Democrats — Even If Trump Loses
2021 Could Be a Nightmare for Democrats — Even If Trump Loses
By Eric Levitz @EricLevitz
Nightmare creature. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Winter has come. The air stings your skin as you shuffle toward the National Mall. But there are scattered patches of blue in the sky, and sunlight peeking out from behind a cloud. And the crowd that now surrounds you is alive with good cheer. Your fellow Americans are high off civic pride, or their proximity to future history, or possibly marijuana (your nose is stuffy, but you think you think can smell a trace of something skunky on the wind).
He emerges from the Capitol Building. The crowd goes wild. You join their cheer, but can’t make out your own voice above the din. And now you’re not even sure what it is their chanting. But you know their words are not your own. You look up at the nearest television monitor and there it is — that awful, orange face.
It all comes back to you in an instant, the flashing images in your mind alternating with the crowd’s chant, like light and darkness beneath a strobe lamp: LOCK HER UP; the Upshot’s needle swinging blue to red; LOCK HER UP; those last 10,000 votes in Waukesha County; LOCK HER UP; the headlines heralding RBG’s death right before Christmas; LOCK HER UP;Supreme Court Justice Sarah Huckabee Sanders; LOCK HER UP; the bombs already falling over Tehran; LOCK HER UP; the president’s face as he signed “The Voting Wrongs Act of 2021”; LOCK HER UP; Elizabeth Warren being led to a squad car in handcuffs; LOCK HER UP; and now, as they turn toward you, their red hats glowing in the winter sun, you realize that you are her, this place is a prison — and your sentence is another four years to life.
Liberals are well-prepared for this kind of “2021 nightmare.” They’ve been fearing it since November 9, 2016. To avert such a terror, they took to the streets in historic numbers the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration, and showed up at the polls en masse last fall. And they’re right to be afraid. Each day, Trump grows a bit more lawless, and the Executive branch a bit less willing to defy him. Another four years of judicial appointments would give the conservative movement a hammerlock on the judiciary for a generation. And in that time, Trump’s judges could rubber-stamp changes to election laws that further erode what remains of popular sovereignty in this republic — and the world’s most powerful nation would stumble four years closer to climate catastrophe.
Trump’s reelection would be a nightmare. But for Democrats, defeating him and winning the presidency in 2021 could be its own kind of horror show.
If a Democrat wins the presidency next year, there’s a good chance he or she won’t be able to do much of anything without Mitch McConnell’s permission.
A president in shackles.
Right now, the odds of Team Blue winning control of the Senate next year are slim, and getting slimmer. Democrats will need a net gain of three seats next November to wrest the upper chamber from Mitch McConnell’s caucus. And while Republicans will have 22 of their incumbents on the ballot in 2020, only two of those represent states that have leaned Democratic in the past two presidential elections — Colorado and Maine. Which is less than ideal, since winning Maine will (almost certainly) require beating Susan Collins, who has held her seat for more than two decades, and remains quite popular with her constituents (including many of the state’s Democrats). Thus, there is no reason to assume Democrats will be able to win the only two blue-state seats on the board. But let’s be generous and say they do.
Unless Alabama Republicans decide to make a theocratic ephebophile their standard-bearer again (which is highly unlikely), Doug Jones will be evicted from the Senate next November. In a presidential election year and an age of straight-ticket voting, even Roy Moore would have a decent shot of beating a Democrat in the Heart of Dixie.
Even with wins in Colorado and Maine, Team Blue would have only netted one seat, which means they’d have to flip two in light-red territory. CNN’s Harry Enten explains why that’s unlikely:
Beyond [Colorado and Maine], the Democratic pickup opportunities slim dramatically. Of the other 20 Republican-held seats up for election, 16 of them are in states that were 10 points or more Republican than the nation as a whole in a weighted average of the last two presidential elections. None of these races look competitive at this time.
The other four have leaned 5 to 10 points more Republican than the nation in a weighted average of the last two presidential elections: Arizona (Martha McSally), Georgia (David Perdue), Iowa (Joni Ernst) and North Carolina (Thom Tillis).
… Elected Republican incumbents are, at this point, expected to be running for all these seats, except for Arizona. Generally, incumbents tend to do better than non-incumbents. Even if the 2018 political environment were in effect (i.e. one where they won the national House vote by high single digits), the lean of each state in the 2018 House elections suggests that only Arizona (because McSally wasn’t elected) would go to the Democrats.
In other words, even if Democrats win the national popular vote in a 2018-esque landslide, chances are they’ll come up at least one seat short. And did I mention that the party’s best prospective Senate candidates in Georgia, and the “reach” states of Texas and Montana, have all ostensibly decided to launch far-fetched presidential campaigns, instead? Or that Joe Manchin is seriously considering resigning his seat to run for governor in West Virginia, in which case, Democrats will effectively need to flip five seats after they (almost certainly) forfeit the Mountain State and Alabama?
Anything’s possible, of course. Democrats could find stellar candidates in every quasi-competitive state. Far-right weirdos could win GOP primaries in all the right places. Millennials could show up at the polls in 2020 in unprecedented force, and remake America’s electoral math in their image.
But odds are, if a Democrat moves into the Oval Office in 2021, he or she will be faced with a Republican Senate. Which means that he or she will not have the power to appoint any Supreme Court justices or, in all probability, left-leaning federal judges of any kind. And do you really think Senate Republicans are going to help President Elizabeth Warren install her preferred leaders atop the Treasury or SEC?
Imagine a Democratic president who isn’t just too weak to advance any of the ambitious legislation she promised her base, but also to rebalance the courts or effectively implement her regulatory agenda. Might this dampen Democratic voters’ enthusiasm for electoral politics when the midterms come around?
I'm not trying to hear any excuses not to vote next year.
go ahead and keep ignoring black issues...
