Nightmare Senate Scenario for Dems

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Leaving off PA as an opportunity state in 2018 is a big mistake. Anybody who thinks that Casey enjoys being Senator is out of his mind and a retirement is rather possible. In which case there are a number of GOP candidates that top the list of being solid competitors (Gerlach, Meehan, Dent, Cawley, Tim Murphy, just to name a few).

Frighteningly plausible. Hell, Toomey and Johnson could pull it out.

I'd like to see what a Johnson/Hillary Clinton voter looks like.

Maybe similar to a Gore/Santorum voter in 2000?

Santorum was a populist and friendly with the unions.
Johnson is a hardcore tea-partier that has nothing to show during his first 4 years as a senator other that partisan attacks and gridlock.

Santorum's record in 2000 was his support for welfare reform and tax cuts. When it is said he was friendly with unions, that doesn't mean that union leaders and Santorum would be locking arms. The leadership probably despised him. It means that he could get union members to vote for him even though he was a conservative (very much so socially) and also more often then not economically as well, against the wishes of the union leadership. This was because of his origins, and his rhetoric combined with the use of certain less central issues (minimum wage for instance. Toomey does the same thing, but his is reversed using small sub issues on the social side like guns and DADT repeal to move to the center, whilst voting 96% ACU).

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

It's possible, but unlikely.

The advantage for Democrats is that it's unlikely that the same party will have an awesome 2016 and 2018.

The party that does well in 2016 Senate races will likely win the White House, which means they'll probably not have a great midterm. That said, Republicans did so badly in 2012 that it won't take much to pick up seats in 2018. Democrats will be defending 25 Senate seats. Republicans can win only a third of the races, and they'll pick up three seats.

The map is not the biggest determinant as we have seen, it can limit (2010) or enlargen a wave (1980), but the fundamentals still control things. However in this situation, it is not like the GOP has anything left to lose in Class 1 as Dems have gained seats every cycle since 1994.  There are five double digit Romney states with Democrats (MT, ND, MO, IN, and WV) and five more sitting in winable swing states (FL, VA, OH, WI, PA if Casey retires). UT, WY, TX, TN, MS and NE are safe, AZ is surely likely GOP in a lower turnout midterm, leaving only NV (and Dean Heller is hardly a push over).

Since Wicker cannot be NRSC chair in 2018 as he is up (that is a rule no?), I hope that Moran is put back in charge again. Ensign came back for a second stint in 2008, though largely because no one else wanted the blame for that cycle.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Asigning a numerical limit on something occuring based partially off of 2008 (when the economy was collapsing) and 2012 where Republicans were taking on incumbents in most all Obama states makes little sense. Thompson and Allen did not run campaigns that were such that would have allowed them to win whilst Romney lost their states, but both the background to do so and could have done so had they operated differently. That is especially the case with Thompson.

Several of the 2016 incumbents have a history of running strong campaigns and correcting from mistakes as opposed to letting them continue (Rubio did so after his first quarter and after that, he went up like a rocket). The only one that doesn't is Johnson actually. Ayotte overperformed, Kirk held on in a very Dem seat in 2006 and 2008 (with Obama a top the ticket), Toomey managed to get the Lehigh Valley to vote for a fiscal conservative (and without the Santorum pro-labor flavored side issues) three times running. Rubio nearly got 50% in spite of a former Republican being on the ballot in a three way race and with having supported off shore drilling against the backdrop of the Gulf Oil Spill. Portman always out performed the ticket by several points in OH-02 and destroyed his opponent in the last three months in 2010. Likewise, Burr has taken his opponents to the cleaners in the last three months of two campaigns as well.

This is compared to Dole, Coleman, Smith (who ran as bad a campaign as Brown in 2012 if not worse) and the like? Partisanship is a reality, but assigning a hard rule about ticket splitting in 2016 based off of 2008 with its economic collapse and rather lackluster candidates is a bit of a stretch. Shift just a few points, maybe three and you have four Republicans winning in Obama states (Smith, Coleman, Sununu [it was like 52-46 no?] as well as Collins winning).