Heinrich has the backing of national Democrats and seems to be an able politician. He survived 2010 without much effort despite representing a swingish district.
And with Obama dominating the state he will have a much more favorable terrain this time.
Yes...that theory worked very well in 1984 for the 5 open seats that the Republicans whlost. It was almost 6 as McConnell barely held on.
What are you talking abot? The gop only lost 3 seats that year; only. 2 were incumbents, and more importantly there was only a net gain of one.
Hmph, I should rephase, all 5 weren't open. There were open seats in:
West Virginia (Rockefeller)
Tennessee (Gore)
Massachusetts (Kerry)
and of course the 2 incumbents in
Iowa (Harkin)
Illinois (Simon).
The fact that Reagan won all these states certainly did not lead to us winning the Senate seats, not make much headway in defeating Democratic incumbents.
In Massachussetts and West Virginia, Republicans didnt even make a serious play for those seats. In Massachussetts, they nominated a nobody who lost to Kennedy by 22 points two years earlier and in West Virginia they nominated a nobody. Those two races were only close because of Reagan's landslide.
In Iowa, the Republican incumbent had a lot of personal problems and I dont know what happened in Illionois.
Again, politics were also much less polarized and you had less straight ticket voting the way you do now.