What can Democrats do to fix their Senate problem?

[Roll Roons]

For all the complaining about Manchin and Sinema's refusal to get rid of the filibuster, the Democrats have really lost a ton of ground in the Senate over the past few cycles, and had serious trouble making up for it.

Between 2014 and now, the net change in the Senate's composition has been as follows:
+1 R: AK, AR, FL, IN, IA, LA, MO, MT, NC, ND, SD, WV
+1 D: IL, NV, NH
+2 D: AZ, GA

So why have they let themselves become uncompetitive in large swathes of the country? And besides abolishing the Senate or making DC and Puerto Rico states, what can they do to fix this problem?

[vitoNova]

Not win presidential elections. 

[S019]

I had made a map discussing a possible path to a D majority in the future:

 

Dems need 6 seats from.the tossups, which is doable honestly, if anything this map highlights Democratic failures in NC/FL and in Midwest states particularly PA and WI (though I expect WI to continue trending red and to soon not be on the path of least resistance).

[Storr]

A relatively obvious option would be to admit DC and Puerto Rico (and maybe Guam + CNMI if Democrats were feeling generous?) as states. While they're at it, they might as well split off Southern California for an additional two seats. It wouldn't be a true solution, of course. After all, Puerto Rico and the Marianas could easily end up electing Republicans.

I'm ignoring any changes to the Senate composition requiring Constitutional amendments, which will remain very unlikely for the foreseeable future. The likely best option would be to continue to focus on states that have been slowly shifting Democratic (as they did in 2020 with Georgia and Arizona). I don't see the Missouris or Indianas of the union electing Democrats to the Senate again anytime soon.

[Mr.Phips]

Not win presidential elections. 

Did that really help Dems in 2016 or 2000?

[I’m not Stu]

Break up California into many states.

[MillennialModerate]

Break up California into many states.

Then we’re in a delicate place with Presidential elections.

Anyway the only answer is DC & PR statehood. Other than that... no clue

[TML]

The establishment needs to stop coronating candidates in primaries. In recent election cycles many of their preferred candidates were cookie-cutter candidates and/or retreads/has-beens who ran consultant-driven campaigns without much regard to what people in their home states are really concerned about. Instead, a better approach would be to let the people in these states decide for themselves who the best candidates are without much influence from the establishment - this way the candidates who emerge from these truly competitive primaries could be better positioned in general elections.

[Padfoot]

I guess the "duh" answer is that they need to win over or win back rural voters.  With the exceptions of Florida and probably North Carolina I would characterize all of the states you listed where they've lost seats as "majority rural."  Having a message that appeals to rural voters makes winning in the Great Lakes much easier.  They wouldn't even need to win a majority of rural voters but they need to stop losing them by 20+ points.  I am not an expert on farm policy but I think they could win on a rural platform with the following planks that could tie into some of their existing causes:

1. Saving family farms from corporate takeover
2. Guaranteed farm wages (basically a minimum wage movement for farmers)
3. Rural jobs/infrastructure programs

[The Mikado]

Break up California into many states.

Then we’re in a delicate place with Presidential elections.

You could easily turn CA into, say, 4 totally safe Democratic states and they'd have more cumulative EVs than CA has now.

For a state to split you need both that state's government to initiate and Congress to approve. The big difficulty is no CA statewide politician wants to break up CA. Gavin Newsom doesn't want to go from running a "state" with more people than Canada to governor of the Bay Area.

EDIT: Because someone's going to bring up the Texas thing...Texas's state government has maintained for over a century that Congress' offer in 1845 that Texas can be up to 5 states is an ongoing valid offer TX can take advantage of at any time, and prominent TX pols from Cactus Jack Garner back in the 30s to Tom DeLay in the 90s proposed 5 state Texas ideas. Some skeptics claim that the 1845 offer was a one time use it or lose it offer and TX not doing it means it'd need to ask permission from Congress like anyone else. Texas splitting into multiple states would 100% go to the Supreme Court if it tried it.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

It rhymes with Ristrict Of Folumbia

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Break up California into many states.

Then we’re in a delicate place with Presidential elections.

You could easily turn CA into, say, 4 totally safe Democratic states and they'd have more cumulative EVs than CA has now.

For a state to split you need both that state's government to initiate and Congress to approve. The big difficulty is no CA statewide politician wants to break up CA. Gavin Newsom doesn't want to go from running a "state" with more people than Canada to governor of the Bay Area.

EDIT: Because someone's going to bring up the Texas thing...Texas's state government has maintained for over a century that Congress' offer in 1845 that Texas can be up to 5 states is an ongoing valid offer TX can take advantage of at any time, and prominent TX pols from Cactus Jack Garner back in the 30s to Tom DeLay in the 90s proposed 5 state Texas ideas. Some skeptics claim that the 1845 offer was a one time use it or lose it offer and TX not doing it means it'd need to ask permission from Congress like anyone else. Texas splitting into multiple states would 100% go to the Supreme Court if it tried it.

Funny thing is that California almost broke in two states, but then the civil war broke out and so congress never took any action on it.

[The Mikado]

Break up California into many states.

Then we’re in a delicate place with Presidential elections.

You could easily turn CA into, say, 4 totally safe Democratic states and they'd have more cumulative EVs than CA has now.

For a state to split you need both that state's government to initiate and Congress to approve. The big difficulty is no CA statewide politician wants to break up CA. Gavin Newsom doesn't want to go from running a "state" with more people than Canada to governor of the Bay Area.

EDIT: Because someone's going to bring up the Texas thing...Texas's state government has maintained for over a century that Congress' offer in 1845 that Texas can be up to 5 states is an ongoing valid offer TX can take advantage of at any time, and prominent TX pols from Cactus Jack Garner back in the 30s to Tom DeLay in the 90s proposed 5 state Texas ideas. Some skeptics claim that the 1845 offer was a one time use it or lose it offer and TX not doing it means it'd need to ask permission from Congress like anyone else. Texas splitting into multiple states would 100% go to the Supreme Court if it tried it.

Funny thing is that California almost broke in two states, but then the civil war broke out and so congress never took any action on it.

Yup. The Southern California state would've been solid R from 1948-1988 (voting Dem in 1964), a swing state in 1992-2004 narrowly won by Clinton, Gore, and Kerry, and a landslide D state from 2008-present. Rump NorCal in this world votes Dem in  1960,1968, 1976, and 1988 (maybe this pushes Nixon-Humphrey to Congress in this world), which it didn't in OTL, and is a mammoth D landslide state from the 90s onward.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

All D's have to do is win 218/217 seats and 52*48 Senate if D's can't win WI, or PA or NH, we don't deserve to be in the Majorities next yr, those states have 0 voter Suppression, the Southern states GA have voter Suppression and no GA isn't gonna vote D before PA and WI or AZ or NV, Fetterman and Kelly are up by 9 pts

[Non Swing Voter]

Break up California into many states.

Then we’re in a delicate place with Presidential elections.

Anyway the only answer is DC & PR statehood. Other than that... no clue

I think it's pretty easy to break up California into 3 or 4 states, all of them being solidly Democratic, and actually netting more electoral votes because they'd each have 2 senators.

[Meatball Ron]

DC statehood is the obvious first step, but the real answer is that Dems should really be able to win at *least* 2 total seats out of NC, FL, and TX.

The fact that the two former states have been really competitive at the presidential level but Dems haven't won a Senate election in either of them since 2012, is a failure on their part and problematic for their odds at holding the Senate.

As for TX, I'd want to see something like with AZ/GA, where its Senate seats come into play around the same time as its electoral votes do. Cruz should help expedite this process. It would be a shame for Dems if they're highly competitive in the state presidentially by '24/'28 but can't flip a Senate seat there until the 2030s.

I like S019's map quite a bit; I think it's the right way to think about it, though I may shade Wisconsin tan for now - holding one of the two seats there should be viable for another several years and may  not be meaningfully more difficult than flipping a seat in TX/NC/FL.

And then on candidate quality, I think TML is onto something. Cal Cunningham stands out as a great example of the wrong sort of candidate for Dems to be coronating (cookie-cutter, uninspiring) while Raphael Warnock feels like a success story / the inverse of Cunningham. I think Dems in NC have a much better shot with Beasley than with Jackson (yes - I understand that Jackson is better than Cunningham, and that NC's black population is lower than that of GA, but still) so hopefully the party stays neutral in that one. We should also be running Hispanic candidates in Florida (bonus points if Cuban or Venezuelan) - though I do actually think Demings is a pretty strong candidate (not going to win, but her odds feel more or less as good as anyone's in this particular state and year).