2006 Senate Races
Jim Douglas has announced that he is not running for the Senate seat vacated by the retiring Jim Jeffords, Independant. With that, I hereby project Bernie Sanders, Socialist, the next Senator from the state of Vermont.
Actually, you can project something something interesting from this into the future. When Patrick Leahy gets around to retiring, and after Howard Dean’s stint as head of the DNC concludes, a Senate race between Howard Dean and Jim Douglas, his successor as Vermont governor. I don’t know what that means, or if it’s terribly dramatic in any way shape or form, but there you go.
The Nebraska Senate race brings us a curious side-story where Republican Senator — Chuck Hagel (R) has not endorsed the Republican challenger to Democratic Senator Ben Nelson. I suspect the same sort of chubby relationship that plagues Oregon’s set of Senators, where they’re not going to campaign against the other candidate and more or less want to work with the other candidate in perpetuality. (Beyond which, the state-level politics of Nebraska are devoid of ‘d’s and ‘r’s…)
I want Alan Keyes to be the Republican Senate candidate for the vacant seat in Maryland. Why not?
Some thoughts: The landscape looked terrible for the Democratic party going into the 2004 election. A whole mass of Southern Democrats were retiring, and all the tough Senate races were in red states. By election day, you got the feeling that even if Kerry won, he’s be having to deal with a Senate that was more Republican than it was before the election… which, I guess, is a nice little by-product of the Bush “Campaign to the Base” strategy.
2006 looks better for the Donkey than 2004 did. Looking on the list: I don’t expect Maria Cantwell to be facing any real danger, and the impetus of Nebraskans to demand a Republican instead of their most conservative Democrat is faded away due to the current configuration of the Senate. (I also point out that Harry Reid’s recent attempted “compromise”, rejected by Bill Frist, was aimed more or less specifically at Ben Nelson. Muse over this, and Frist looks even more obstinate.)
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BTW: I started a new blog on a completely different topic, not really sure how long I’d continue it or how often I’ll tend to it (very easily tended to, as it is low-maintenance). If you want to find it, you’ll have to look for it yourownself, or ask me for the coordinates.