Is the Crisis Putting the Republican Senate in Jeopardy?

[catbyte]

If you look at history, Trump isn't the only politician who the crisis could take down.


By JEFF GREENFIELD

06/06/2020 07:00 AM EDT

It’s a question as obvious as it is critical: How will the trio of crises—the pandemic, the economy, the demands for racial justice—affect the 2020 race for the White House. But in Washington, there are other implications that could matter almost as much to the direction of national policy, chief among them the Senate.

In many ways this is a question equal in importance to the outcome of the Presidential race. Just picture Trump without a GOP Senate to rubber-stamp his Supreme Court picks—or a President Biden forced to fight Mitch McConnell for every inch of ground.

What do these varied ills bode for the Senate? As it turns out, history has some powerful answers to this question—and they leave Republican partisans with a strong case of agita.

As a general proposition, when the nation is in a state of crisis, things do not go well for the President’s party. When a war becomes a quagmire (Korea in ’52, Vietnam in ’68), when the economy craters (1980, 2008), voters look for a different leader. Far from a “retreat to safety” or a “rally round the flag” sentiment, there is an instinct to show the people in charge the way to the exit. (George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004 may be a counterexample, but it took place in the broad wake of anxiety over the attacks of September 11—three years before the election—and before the baleful consequences of the Iraq War were fully clear.)

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https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/06/crisis-republican-senate-jeopardy-304278

[Thomas Hurt]

1. If Mitch is that concerned, he should be reaching out to Pelosi for another impeachment hearing.

From the beginning I was thinking that the only way Trump was leaving before the election was if the GOP Senators were fairly certain that their seats were in danger. I had not really occurred to me that idiots could wait too long, and some lose their seats and the WH.

tsk, tsk.