Let’s file away this Charlie Cook nugget for 2012:
Should the Senate end up with a 9-seat net gain for Republicans, or even eight, there will be immediate speculation about what Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Joe Lieberman, I/D-Conn., do. Both are up for re-election in 2012 and neither is likely to be oblivious to the fact that Democrats have twice as many seats at risk in 2012 and 2014 as Republicans. Whether the GOP captures a Senate majority this year or not, the odds are pretty good that they will have one in either two or four years. That kind of exposure is enormously important, particularly given the rarefied circumstances in which Democrats won some of those seats in 2006 and 2008.
For Nelson, who turns 70 next year, it’s hard to say what would be more difficult: seeking re-election in 2012 as a Democrat or winning a GOP primary.
This year, the party establishments had a tough time protecting party-switchers or iconoclasts in primaries. Just ask Sens. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., Robert Bennett, R-Utah, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.
If Nelson decides to run for re-election, he might opt to do so as an independent. Personally, I think retirement sounds pretty good. I hear he has a nice fishing and hunting cabin, which sounds particularly inviting given the war zone that the Senate has become. For Lieberman, he might have just found his sweet spot, running as an independent and sitting with whichever party is most hospitable. [italics mine]
Here’s Public Policy Polling two weeks ago:
There’s one thing Democrats, Republicans, and independents in Connecticut agree on: they want this to be Joe Lieberman’s last term in the US Senate. Only 24% of voters in the state say they would vote to reelect Lieberman in 2012 to 66% who say they will vote to replace him. Majorities of Democrats (72%), independents (63%), and Republicans (61%) alike say it’s time to swap out Lieberman for someone new.
If that’s Charlie’s definition of a “sweet spot”, keep me away from his candy dish. Unless all of Ben Nelson’s grey matter has been crushed under the weight of his ridiculous toupee, he won’t be switching parties. It’s an act of sheer desperation that works once, if you’re lucky.
valdivia
So I see that the way Cook and the other pundits will declare the Republicans winners even if they fail to take the Senate is to say they will take it next time? WTF?
How Cook has any credibility when he keeps predicting things that NEVER happen?
The Grand Panjandrum
This is more proof that Charlie Cook has become infected with what I call “Village Disease” after making regular TV appearances for the last few years. Somehow this insiderism seems to eat away at many of these guys ability to think critically and analytically.
Ben Nelson may be a big turd but he’s the Dems turd and probably will be for as long as he is in the Senate. He’s not right wing enough for the Nebraska GOP to survive a primary challenge. And his love of being in the spotlight by jerking around the leadership wouldn’t fly in the GOP.
WE ARE GOP. YOU WILL ASSIMILATE!
kommrade reproductive vigor
No way it works now. Unless the RNC invites all the teabaggers in America to a big party and serves Jim Jones’ Jungle Juice (original recipe). They purged Bob Bennett for insufficient loyalty to party ideals. Bob fucking Bennett!
No way in hell they’ll accept anything that once had a D after its name.
Ash Can
Why should I read any of the professional pundits when I can get far sounder and more astute political analysis just from a bunch of irreverent anonymous blog commenters (let alone the front-pagers)?
Tattoosydney
Why the fuck would Ben Nelson switch parties when he pretty much gets to fucking vote however he fucking wants anyway as a fucking Democrat?
cmorenc
The two for whom it would work are the twin Presidents from Maine, Snowe and Collins. Both could probably be reelected indefinitely by the voters of Maine, but both may have more trouble than they expect getting past a hard-right winger primary challenger next time around.
For them, going independent or jumping to the democratic party would make sense.
Allan
Charlie Cook continues to advance the lie that the Senate is divided between two parties, when all Americans know it is comprised of 100 preening narcissists who are only in it for themselves.
jwb
@The Grand Panjandrum: You are right, but have the causality backwards, I think. Cook knows perfectly well that he gets on TV when he makes predictions like this. He gets nothing for being accurate. Since he wants to make a living and TV helps him do that, he makes predictions like this. And at a certain point that whole process gets internalized (which is the point at which they are absorbed into the Village Borg).
NonyNony
As much as liberals like to bitch about Ben Nelson, it’s just a stone cold truth that he is too “liberal” for the rank-and-file Nebraska GOP voters to ever vote for. Nelson believes that government should actually govern and he believes in bringing home the bacon to his home state. He would have been right at home in Nixon’s GOP, or even in Reagan’s GOP, but today those beliefs make him a left-wing looney to the ‘base’.
There is no way in hell that Nelson switches parties and survives a primary challenge. If the Beltway folks thought that the primary against Specter was ugly, wait until they see what happens to Nelson in a GOP primary. It would be brutal and vicious. And, what’s more, it’s not like he has anything to offer the GOP as a party. Like Joe Lieberman, he’s better for the GOP as a contrarian Dem so that they can see “see, there are some Democrats who know this is a bad idea” rather than as a turncoat.
Beej
My guess is that Nelson is not going to run if the Dems can find a solid Senate candidate to replace him, not an easy thing to do in Nebraska. If he does run, I don’t think he stands a chance against Nebraska’s popular governor, Dave Heineman, who has been positioning himself for a Senate run. NonyNony is absolutely right that Nelson has become too liberal for the Nebraska electorate. Oh, and incidentally, mistermix, that hair is not a toupee. It is a living force with its own zip code.
CT Voter
That sentence is just a thing of beauty.
Thanks for the laugh.
And the imagery, unwanted as it is.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
Yeah, let me echo the sentiment about Utah’s own Mr. Burns, Bob Bennett being anything but an Iconoclast.
Know why Bob Bennett was thrown out? Because Utah has a moronic primary system where a small handfull of extremists and insiders have complete control over who gets nominated in an exclusive lobbying process. And then, that nominated person skates into office, because Utah will always vote republican, No. Matter. What. I mean, our republican govenor running for office has alleged ties to giving major road construction projects worth millions and millions to people who donated to his re-election campaign, (having to pay off the second place bidders with 62 million in a settlement when they cried foul)
When the democrat brings this up in the campaign, the democratic nominee’s numbers drop, because he’s “being too negative”.
Bob Bennett has towed the Repub line for years and years: you couldn’t find a more stable republican.
I feel like Ed Norton is going to show up soon and start yelling at everyone “Running around throwing everybody out of office, what did you expect to happen?” while we mourn over the corpse of economic growth and essential social services.
Steve
Lieberman, like Arlen Specter, did not switch because he thought it would be easier to win the general election; he switched because he had to. Specter never would have switched parties if he wasn’t a mile behind in the GOP primary. Lieberman, of course, had already lost a primary.
Ben Nelson, by contrast, has smooth sailing on the Democratic side, but he would be primaried by a “true conservative” in a heartbeat if he switched parties. Yeah, he might have an easier time winning the 2012 general election on the R line, but there’s no way he ever gets on the R line. Political parties don’t typically sit there saying, “hey, never mind all our loyal party members who have been waiting years for the chance to run, let’s recruit the guy from the opposing party and let him jump to the front of the line.”
Kirk Spencer
This is yet another example of why I’ve come to mistrust Cook analyses of the various races, and in consequence any analysis that relies on Cook’s work.
Despite being identified as pro-D, his predictions have been consistently off by a handful of points in the R direction for the past six or so years. I see no reason to think this year will be different.
As addendum, Silver’s analysis relies heavily on Cook (along with a couple of others), and even with that he’s got 50 to 75 races that are “competitive”. Pull everything two points D and the whole thing breaks heavily D instead of R.
Just think of Cook as a more subtle Rasmussen.
Chris G.
Where the hell is Cook getting a 9-seat gain for the Republicans?
Nick
Personally Nelson should retire. Yeah, we’d lose the seat, much like we’re going to lose Dorgan’s, but it would free up resources to win other seats, like Ensign’s or Kyl’s.
I’d trade Nelson’s seat for Snowe’s (who’s also up in 2012)
Tom Q
My brother saw Cook at a FedEx event in late 2007, during which he proclaimed there was Absolutely No Chance of anyone but Hillary being the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee. In the Spring of 2006, he predicted the GOP had a firewall that would prevent Dems taking control of either house of Congress. And he’s been pushing “there’s no way the Dems hold the House” since summer of ’09. The common thread? All were predictions made way early, and all were what the GOP narrative preferred. Even his ultimate prediction of Obama winning the ’08 election — fairly obvious by the time he made it — was grudging, along the lines of “Things are so bad, voters are willing to try anything, even this black guy”. I don’t see what he does to get labeled Dem-favoring.
I don’t know why he sees 2012 as so bad for Senate Dems. Only Webb, Tester and McCaskill had close margins among the freshmen. If Obama’s headed for defeat, yes, they’d be in danger. But I (and many others) believe Obama will instead be in line for a solid victory, which will boost all members of his party.
Sentient Puddle
Cook was considered respectable at one point, wasn’t he? Was he actually good at one point and since gone downhill, or has his analysis always been this vapid and nobody really bothered to call him on it?
Also too:
@Kirk Spencer:
Yeah, this is the big reason why I think Nate’s House forecasts overshoot. Cook, Rothenberg, and the like just seem way too eager to call any given seat a toss-up, or buy into the Republican wave narrative when they call leaners.
Sentient Puddle
@Tom Q:
Well, part of it is that, if I’m counting right, there are just nine Republicans up for re-election, and in a pre-pre-game analysis, the only states that look like they might be possible pick-ups are Nevada, Maine, and maybe Arizona. So it’s not so much that 2012 will necessarily be bad for Democrats so much as it’s that they have a low ceiling.
Tom Q
@Sentient Puddle: Democrats looked at this year much the same, since it was the class of ’04 coming up for re-election, where the GOP had done really well. Some events intervened (Obama’s, Biden’s, Salazar’s and Hillary’s seats being vacated, and Bayh/Dorgan retiring), but the reason this year instead turned difficult for Dems is the national climate (arguably the main reason for Dorgan’s exit as well). If 2012 is an Obama re-election, the field will tilt Dem despite the number of seats in play.
The problem I’m having with Cook –as my earlier post indicated — is his recent propensity for calling things way early, before we can possibly know the national climate, and always seeming to see brighter days for the GOP.
Kirk Spencer
@Sentient Puddle: Yep. There’s a thumb on the scale effect in polls predicting LV turnouts leaning heavily R. (I saw one, don’t recall which, that predicted 50% of the voters self-identifying as R and 25% as D, with the remaining I’s being divided per the R/D split.) That in turn gets picked up by Cook et al, who then apply the enthusiasm polls and push the predicted lean a bit more to the R.
For giggles I went through Nate Silver’s list of competitive races and used a very old-fashioned test: median of polls in the last 30 days. Ignore money on hand, ignore district lean, ignore everything else. Now the only polls listed for all but one of the races were LV and I’ve already noted the problem there. Even with that the R’s only get 35 seats.
I think the D’s will hold the house. I think that when they do we’ll hear incredible screaming about ACORN, er, somebody who got a bunch of illegal votes. I expect the obstruction to increase even more than it already is. I expect the fanatics to step it up two or three more notches.
That’s what we’ve done in the past, anyway. Sometimes that pushes up to a catastrophic event, which in turn sometimes causes everyone to step back but once in a while gets worse (civil war). Usually, however, the sheer insanity of the fanatics is enough for most people to take a step back. I’m hoping…
Mac G
After the Cornhusker Kickback episode, Nelson’s approval ratings were in the 20’s. Western Nebraska makes it difficult for a Dem to win state wide but Obama did win the Omaha electoral vote and came close to winning the the Lincoln one without having campaign offices in a college town. The Democratic party in Nebraska needs Nelson to go so someone can make real democratic arguments in elections. He has destroyed the spirit of the party in the state.
A better analogy would be Blanche Lincoln. Nelson pissed off the Democratic base and the teabaggers right will not vote for him again because of the D in front of his name.
The Nebraska Governor would beat him by 25 points. And no way Nelson wins a GOP primary in Nebraska. Cook is a moron.
Sentient Puddle
@Tom Q: Well, true, but I think the 2006 map is a closer comparison than the 2012 map. Democrats still had a majority of seats to defend in that year (like Republicans do this year), but it wasn’t as lopsided as 2012 will be. I’m not entirely that the figure of nine Republican seats sank in. That’s just a little over a quarter of the seats up for grabs.
And as a point of comparison, the seats I didn’t list: Wyoming, Utah, Texas, Indiana, Tennessee, and Mississippi. Except for Texas and maybe Tennessee, not even the most irrationally exuberant Democrat would think that they could make these races competitive.
Steve
@Tom Q: Generally speaking, 6 years after a wave year is always difficult. Bear in mind, freshmen like Bob Casey and Sherrod Brown may have won by a lot, but they’re still in purplish states and may face more credible opponents than the incumbents they defeated. Resources are also spread more thinly because you’re defending more seats. Not that I disagree with your general sentiment, mind you.
Roger Moore
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
Though, of course, that would also do away with the whole motivation for switching parties in the first place. Get rid of the teabaggers, and the Republicans would instantly be a tiny rump of a party and the Democrats would have massive majorities in both houses of Congress. There wouldn’t be any percentage in switching parties if the Republicans couldn’t win an election among the remaining population of former Outer Wingnutistan.
Tom Q
@Steve: I’m certainly not arguing for a cakewalk in ’12, either. But one reason Senate wave elections tend to get reversed is they’re frequently held in opposite-leaning environments. I.e., the GOP 1980 pickups came in a GOP presidential win, which favors the GOP, and six years later they faced re-election in a midterm, which favored the out-party Dems. But the nine Dems who won in that ’86 election were luckier, as they ran for re-election in the Clinton ’92 victory, so they were able to hold on. It’s a matter of luck, sometimes. (Jesse Helms had the great fortune of running in the Nixon landslide, the Carter midterm and the Reagan landslide — he didn’t face a tilted-the-other-way electorate till he was, like it or not, an institution)
The Dems of ’06, presuming an Obama re-election, have the advantage of, for a second time, running in an environment that goes their way, which would help offset the numerical handicap.
Tom Q
@Sentient Puddle: I grant the numbers. But the point is, the GOP has to find enough vulnerable seats among all those Dem incumbents to make the kind of move Cook seems to think is inevitable. I’m sure there will be people trying to make the case for fringe seats being at risk — as they did this year with Boxer, Murray, Gillibrand, etc., before their polling numbers stabilized — and we’ll hear about how Menendez, Whitehouse and Klobuchar are in jeopardy. But, realistically (and, again, this all assumes a stong Obama turnout-driven win — a GOP win alters the map utterly), I think it comes down to those few tightly-won seats in purple states, against the few vulnerable GOP seats in Dem-possible states you mention. And I think those would lead to at worst a near-wash.
KCinDC
If Cook is going to consider reelection prospects for Ben Nelson and Lieberman (we’ll put aside how realistically your view of the consequences of a party switch are), then how can he not also consider prospects for Snowe, Collins, and Scott Brown? None of those three seems likely to survive a Republican primary in the current atmosphere, and Cook’s assumption seems to be that the current atmosphere will persist through 2014 and beyond (and why not? obviously 2010 is exactly like 2010).
Randy Paul
I have never understood why anyone refers to Cook’s reports as non-partisan. In February 2000, I was attending a convention in Shreveport, LA and Cook was a speaker at a luncheon at the convention.
All Cook did was trash Al Gore; calling him a “son of privilege” and acting as if he was entitled to be president. Not a single negative comment about Bush, just trashing of Gore.