Politics Blog

in Bali.

— Jayson

Read it and weep – Red Sox fans.

— Jayson

Here’s the progression of Democrat power in the U.S. Senate ever since the high water mark of the FDR-era coalition:

68 seats - 1965.
61 seats - 1975.
47 seats - 1985.
48 seats - 1995.
44 seats - 2005.

That’s despite the Torricelli/Lautenberg switch, despite Bob Packwood’s resignation {cough}, despite Mary Landrieu bringing out the dead against Woody Jenkins, despite the Hollywood and Hamptons money bags, the Democrat cat & dog and felon blocs, and despite the fact the GOP literally gives away U.S. Senate seats – every single election cycle.

Furthermore, here’s a number you will not see if you garner your political analyses from legacy academics or trust-fund liberal media pundits:

14.

A grand total of 14 multi-term U.S. Senators have lost re-election bids since 1986, *inclusive*.

No, seriously, that’s true.

Only 14 multi-term U.S. Senators have lost re-election bids over the past ten election cycles, inclusive. Two of whom, in point of fact, were defeated not in general elections, but instead were ousted in their respective primaries.

Quite unlike races involving freshman Senators, betting against a multi-term U.S. Senator – Democrat or Republican – is not a way to get solvent, much less to get wealthy. The reality is that they rarely lose.

Good times. Bad times. High turnout. Low turnout. Scandals. Recessions. Wars. Peace. Loma Prieta. Hurricane Andrew. Firestorms. Impeachment. Bull markets. Bear markets. Mid-term cycles. Presidential years.

Doesn’t matter.

They very rarely lose. Merely between 0-3 times per cycle. But more often than not closer to zero. Which therefore means their re-election ratios are 90-100%.

Freshmen Senators, on the other hand, lose re-election bids quite often.

And open seats are open seats. They frequently change hands.

The media next year has to defend nine seats in which freshman Senators are up for re-election or for which no incumbent is running: WA, NE, FL, MI, NY, DE, MD, NJ, MN.

The GOP, on the other hand, only is defending five such seats: VA, MO, TN, NV, and RI.

Just keep all that in mind when next Summer rolls around, and the usual suspects rhythmically begin chanting the media is poised to re-take the Senate.

— Jayson

James Taranto explains why Democrats can’t stop the next Supreme Court nominee:

The GOP has 55 senators, so six of them would have to vote “no” to defeat a nominee. Coincidentally, that is the number of Republicans who voted against Robert Bork in 1987. But liberal Republicans were more numerous then. Today there are just three GOP liberals, all from New England–Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine–who seem likely to vote against a too-conservative nominee. Only one Bush judicial appointee, an Arkansas district judge named Leon Holmes, has ever received a negative vote from any Republican other than the New England trio. Virtually any nominee other than Judge Holmes, then, seems assured of at least 52 votes.

The Democrats could filibuster, a dilatory tactic that allows 41 senators to block a vote. This they did in 2003-04 to prevent the confirmation of a dozen or so appellate court nominees. But in May, under threat of the so-called nuclear option–a GOP maneuver that would have changed Senate rules to abolish judicial filibusters–seven Democratic senators agreed to a compromise in which they disavowed the filibuster except in “extraordinary circumstances.”

That exception carries the potential for mischief, but it is unlikely to be realized. Five of the seven compromising Democrats come from states President Bush carried last year, as do 11 other Senate Democrats. These senators are no doubt mindfulthat their former leader, Tom Daschle, lost re-election in November in substantial part because of his obstruction of judicial nominees. With constituents much more conservative than Mr. Schumer’s, they are far less inclined to do the bidding of extremist groups like People for the American Way. Thus red-state Democrats voted 13-3 in favor of Chief Justice Roberts, while more than two-thirds of blue-state Democrats opposed him. Anyway, if the Democratic compromisers do dishonor their agreement, Republicans can retaliate by going nuclear, vaporizing the filibuster forever.

— PoliPundit

This is very illuminating. Hat tip: Midwest Kay

— Lorie Byrd

Ian Schwartz has video of Mark Green on Hardball accusing the Bush administration of being corrupt. Chris Matthews asked him to back that up and Green, well, he backed up.

— Lorie Byrd