OH-Sen 2022: So you’re telling me there’s a chance

[MT Treasurer]

FYCK ANOTHER OPEN SEAT

I’ve been writing to Grassley's office and BEGGING him not to retire since November, and now this.

[MT Treasurer]

i think dems might get 60 seats at this rate. must be tough to be a republican these day, huh

"Portman saw the writing on the wall, which is why he retired. Grassley will probably follow suit soon enough."

In all seriousness, I actually hope Grassley retires as well because I wouldn’t put it past the DSCC to prioritize both races over, say, NC.

[MT Treasurer]

In a Biden midterm, a state that voted 4 points to the right of the nation is rated as "lean D" and one that voted 13 points to the right is "lean R". This is kind of ridiculous; are they expecting this to be a D+9 year or something:?

These people are very bad at their jobs. Like I said before, the only reason they have IA as Safe R is because they’re assuming that Grassley will run again. Watch them downgrade it to Lean R when he retires (clearly more competitive than NV/NH).

[MT Treasurer]

!!!!!! Awesome.

https://twitter.com/lizmwalters/status/1353785683371028482

YES! Iowa is no. 2 if Grassley retires, Liz.

[MT Treasurer]

Maybe those 'Trump +<10 state Senators' aren’t actually retiring because they don’t think they can retake the Senate but because they (a) have little desire to serve in the current GOP for another six years and (b) (rightly) think it’s safer to retire in a Republican-leaning midterm year?

[MT Treasurer]

Dore would lose (and lose badly), but not because of his "ideology."

[MT Treasurer]

Dore would lose (and lose badly), but not because of his "ideology."

Nonsense. Are you suggesting that Sherrod Brown’s retail politicking is not based on pure policy? Union members in Ashtabula county would like to have a word with you, as their Trump/DeWine/Brown votes show a clear ideology geared towards helping the working class rise up against the powerful elites and their blue checkmarks on Twitter. I would’ve thought someone from a Trump/Tester/Daines state would understand the perfectly consistent ideology of good, hard-working small town folk, and their concerted effort to put only people invested in the working class in Washington, and cleanse it of its stain of elitism and end the domination of the ruling class, but I guess you’ve fallen victim to the nefarious wealthy outsider pro-lobbyist propaganda of New Jersey Greg and Maryland Matt.

Unfortunately, my county/precinct is immensely elitist , a corporate elitism which is slowly but surely rubbing off on me, even though I grew up in a #populist town. I just don’t understand these people, not anymore...

[MT Treasurer]

I think too many posters in this thread are underestimating the Democrats' chances at flipping this seat. I think the Democratic Party in Ohio has a strong floor of at least 46% to work with -- all of their candidates in 2018 for state executive offices got at least that much. In the 16 races for the U.S. House, the Democrats collectively got a little over 47%.

I don’t think anyone denies that OH Democrats have a somewhat high floor in massive Democratic wave years (of which 2018 was one), although I still disagree that Cordray's showing was the D floor in OH.

And I think the GOP is going to have poor voter turnout in 2022, because of Trump emphasizing his belief in massive voter fraud, causing a sizable portion of the GOP base to stay home out of distrust in the integrity of the election system.

There is literally zero evidence of this, to say nothing of the fact that Trump has made it clear that he will help the party retake Congress. He might not actually campaign for Republican candidates that much, but he’s not encourage his base to stay home.

Also, even a GA-type 'drop-off' in R turnout wouldn’t be enough to make OH or IA competitive.

Plus, we don't know yet who will be the two nominees, or where will Biden's popularity be at by October 2022.

The last time the party holding the White House picked up an open seat in a state it lost by nearly double digits in the last presidential election in a midterm election was... when? IN-SEN 1998 probably comes pretty close, but that’s pretty much it. It’s possible for Democrats to gain Senate seats if 2022 indeed turns out to be an 'atypical' midterm, but they’re not flipping anything beyond WI/PA/NC.

[MT Treasurer]

Mandel's Twitter feed reminds me of when I was a ninth grader and wasted half my summer break getting a rise out of people on YouTube together with my buddy. He should really leave this whole 'trigger the libs' thing to Ron Johnson, who doesn’t even need Twitter for it.

As for him being another potential Akin, it’s worth noting that MO Democrats in general had a history of outperforming the top of the ticket substantially in a way that OH Democrats haven’t, even when there was no Akin involved — compare OH-SEN 2016 and MO-SEN 2016, two races in which both Republicans were 'establishment' insiders/notably different from Trump in terms of style/branding. I agree that Republicans have a lot better options than Mandel here, but on the other hand, you’d rather run the 'weakest' realistic (so not Vance) nominee next year than play with fire by putting them up against Brown in 2024.

[MT Treasurer]

Recently, I caught up with a friend who is a native Ohioan and works for a Republican member from Ohio. FWIW, he's convinced that Ryan would beat either Mandel or Vance.

Called it:

I already foresee and simultaneously nominate "Mandel loses before Sununu/CCM" as the worst "battleground take" of this entire election cycle.

I do see Mandel underperforming generic R by a fairly noticeable margin, i.e., turning what should be an easy double-digit sweep into a high-single digit, at the absolute worst a mid-single-digit win, but he’s not losing in 2022. Vance is a moot point because he’s not going to win the primary (even Mandel is far from a sure thing, but obviously a far more likely winner than Vance).

[MT Treasurer]

I actually think Mandel is seriously misreading the Republican electorate if he thinks this is the stuff he needs to go all in with excessive, performative, and hilariously unnatural-sounding/insincere pandering. It’s like he just read a transcript of Pat Buchanan's 1992 RNC speech and thought "yes, Pat Buchanan talked about culture wars, and culture wars are what propelled Trump to the presidency, so this is what my party's base wants to hear in the year 2022."

He’s just not very good at this, and I’m even less confident about him winning the R primary now. I mean, "Judeo-Christian values"? Seriously?

[MT Treasurer]

I mean, candidate recruitment has (unironically) been very (and surprisingly) disappointing for Republicans this cycle. They’re extremely lucky that the environment is so favorable to them because I very much agree that this is one of those seats which would have been winnable for Democrats in a second Trump midterm, especially with the current field of candidates.

It’s funny because I think 'weak' Adam Laxalt is actually the strongest GOP recruit this cycle. OH and PA have just been disasters, and NH and AZ were also disappointing.

[MT Treasurer]

Vance should win the general, but it probably won’t be by much more than Trump's margin even in a R wave. My early prediction is 53-44 or so, a very underwhelming result in a year like this. I also think he would have been in real danger of losing the seat in a D-leaning (and potentially even neutral) year.

[MT Treasurer]

It really wasn’t hard to see this coming, and GOP primary voters, Trump, and Rick Scott (for categorically refusing to involve the party apparatus in primaries) all deserve part of the blame here — you’d have to go back to 2012 to find a group of Republican candidates this prone to throwing away extremely winnable Senate races in a year in which a 'windowless basement' strategy would already do the job. Anyone with a modicum of experience/paying even minimal attention to these candidates could have told you months ago that people like Vance or Oz would substantially underperform generic R in a general election, although even I didn’t exactly expect Vance's campaign to be literally non-existent (honestly something of a first).

This race is quickly turning into Blunt vs. Kander 2.0, except the Republicans this time benefit from neither incumbency nor Presidential year turnout.

I thought of that analogy today, actually — fun coincidence. In Blunt's case, I don’t think incumbency was a net advantage, however.

[MT Treasurer]

I get IA/KS 2020 vibes from this race, but the fact that it’s even being seriously discussed does not bode particularly well for GOP prospects in places like WI and PA.

The fact that this race is "being seriously discussed" has little to do with the fundamentals of OH or any dramatic change in the national environment and everything with JD Vance being an absolute joke of a candidate who can barely be bothered to campaign. This race tells us nothing about WI.

[MT Treasurer]

Oh come on, surely you all know not giving a s*** about other people is totally “populist”, right? I’m still not moving this race from Safe R, but Vance is really lucky that this is a Democratic midterm and that Ohio has trended so far to the right.

And xing, don't you know, a neoliberal establishment republican like John Kasich or Rob Portman would do way worse than a #populist like Vance, right ? /s

"Only Trump could have beaten Hillary in 2016"

[MT Treasurer]

In a D+0.5 to R+4 year there is no way a Democrat is going to
come that close nevermind win in a state that is R+2 to R+9

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_Senate_election_in_Missouri

Elections are about actual people, not numbers.

[MT Treasurer]

In a D+0.5 to R+4 year there is no way a Democrat is going to
come that close nevermind win in a state that is R+2 to R+9

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_Senate_election_in_Missouri

Elections are about actual people, not numbers.

You of all people are saying this? Wow maybe Ryan will win!

Not sure why you singled me out (although I appreciate living rent-free in yet another person's head — you’re the third one today, actually), but I’ve never been a believer in uniform/linear shift, nor do I believe that elections are predetermined by PVI. My position is that in the vast majority of cases, it can be assumed that both sides will run a reasonably competent campaign, which will then usually lead to underlying 'fundamentals' such as state lean/trend, demographic composition of the electorate, and overall national environment tipping the scales one way or the other.

This, however, is not one of those cases. Here, we have a largely dysfunctional campaign and an extremely inept and entirely unappealing candidate who is reliant on outside groups to do the job/messaging for him — his own campaign is practically non-existent! We had a somewhat similar case in OH-SEN 2016, with the lopsided advantage being in favor of Republicans in that race, so it’s not like there is no recent precedent for this. It is entirely reasonable to argue that the underlying 'fundamentals' are too strong for campaign quality to make the difference in terms of binary outcome in the Ryan vs. Vance race, but I’d certainly urge people to move away from repetitive, simplistic, and frankly lazy approaches to elections like "NV is inherently inelastic/Titanium Lean D because it’s urban and always narrowly voted D in the past" or "OH is a Trump +8 state, nothing else even matters." I say this as someone who believes that Vance will win (even if by a very embarrassing margin, with Ryan leading for most of the night).