Maybe, but if he voted for it, he might not have even made it past the primary. Buttigieg would have entered and probably would win the primary.
LOL, no. Indiana Democrats do not primary their incumbents; that's the GOP's thing.
To the OP; Donnelly's vote on the Republican tax plan will not be the deciding factor in the success or failure of his reelection campaign. There are a number of reasons for this, of which the most important are:
(1) The bill passed. It's a much harder task to rally righteous indignation against a futile gesture of resistance than a successful act of obstruction. Had the bill failed narrowly, the GOP could have run ads saying "Joe Donnelly was the Deciding Vote
TM to defeat tax reform," and
maybe that would have made some headway; as it is, "Joe Donnelly was the difference between a 52-vote victory and a 53-vote victory" is not the sort of argument that motivates undecided voters to turn out in midterm elections.
(2) The people for whom voting against TCJA is a deal-breaker weren't going to vote for Donnelly anyways. To be sure, Donnelly will need support from some self-described conservatives to win reelection next year; but the sort of ideological purists who will turn out to defeat a sitting senator solely because he voted against a particular bill the previous year would not be flying the other side's flag if Donnelly had voted Yes.
Basically, highly-informed, ideologically rigid conservatives will dislike Donnelly for this — but they were going to vote for the Republican nominee regardless of how Donnelly voted on this particular bill. For Donnelly's vote to "cost him reelection," you would need to see a decisive demographic who would otherwise have stayed home (or supported Donnelly) turn out to support the GOP, and in 2018, those voters are going to be few and far between, if not nonexistant.
This is much closer to the truth:
He would be much worse off if he had voted for it.
Poll
