Washington Wednesday: Democrats face uphill battle

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 23rd of October.

Thank you for joining us today. Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Election Day is now less than two weeks away, but something like 20 million votes are estimated already to have been cast. If The New York Times is correct, that number means more than 10 percent of the vote is in, meaning the changes brought about in the 2020 pandemic election may be a permanent feature.

MAST: So many changes last election cycle gave rise to concern about election integrity, around voting machines, mail-in voting, and ballot harvesting.

So this time around, WORLD’s Washington Bureau has created an encyclopedia for how not to steal an election. It explains how things are supposed to work and where the lines are, so that if there’s election fraud, at least you’ll understand what happened.

EICHER: It’s worth checking out in WORLD’s election center at wng.org/election2024. You’ll find a nice collection of news and opinion, podcast and magazine features, and about halfway down you’ll find WORLD’s 2024 Encyclopedia of Election Integrity.

If you’re a political junkie I think you’ll love it. Even if you’re not, I think you’ll come away feeling a little smarter. So do check it out.

MAST: Alright, well, now for today’s Washington Wednesday, the balance of power in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

There are 34 Senate seats up for grabs. Taken together, the Democrats and the Independents account for 23 of them. That’s more than two of three.

EICHER: But Republicans have to hold their own if they expect to take the majority, and they’re facing challenges of their own.

WORLD Washington Bureau reporter Carolina Lumetta has the story:

CAROLINA LUMETTA: The current Senate chamber is one of the closest in modern history. Democrats hold a one-seat majority, but only because four independents caucus with the party. With two independent senators on their way out and an almost guaranteed seat flip, the party is scrambling to hold its majority together. While the GOP defends 11 seats this year, the Democrats have 23 on the ballot, and four of them are in the danger zone.

MARK WEAVER: This was always going to be a difficult cycle for Democrats.

Mark Weaver is a Republican political consultant based in Ohio. He has advised several statewide and federal campaigns, and he says there are three kinds of strategies the Democratic Senate Campaign committee needs to consider.

WEAVER: Job one is hold all of our members who are incumbents. Job two is win every open seat. Job three is go against the other party's incumbents wherever we can.

This year the Democrats must do all three. And it’s a more precarious position compared to the past several cycles that favored the Democratic Party.

STEVEN SMITH: This particular class of Democrats in the Senate have had a lucky streak of facing election or getting initially elected at a time that was good for the Democrats. And 2024 is the first time where the playing field seems to be more even.

Steven Smith is a political science professor at Arizona State University. He says Republicans are not only in strong positions to defend most of their 11 seats, but they have also set up strong candidates to flip seats. In Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, Republican candidates are within the margin of error to unseat longtime Democratic incumbents. In Montana, Democrat incumbent Jon Tester is roughly five points behind Republican Tim Sheehy. Here’s Sheehy in a PBS debate with Tester back in September.

TIM SHEEHY: Senator Tester has been in office for many years, but… he voted with Biden and Harris every single time it mattered, voted against all Supreme Court judge nominees that came from the Trump administration… The very structure of our constitutional republic is at stake this November. Control of the U.S. Senate is at stake November 5th.”

Smith says that while most incumbents in purple states try to distinguish themselves from national party issues and candidates, very few Democrats are able to do that this year.

SMITH: The Trump candidacy and his contest with first Biden and then Harris has so dominated political discussion and coverage for so long that it's very difficult for candidates to break away from that.

Margins in the Senate are already extremely narrow. Vice President Kamala Harris has been called upon to cast a record-setting 33 tie-breaking votes in the past three years. If Republicans win both West Virginia and Montana, they can reclaim the majority.

SMITH: If those two races, West Virginia and Montana, work out as expected, then the Democrats have to do exceptionally well everywhere else.

So in addition to defending toss-up seats, Democrats are targeting historically strong Republican seats to mitigate the damage, and they’re focusing on surprising areas.

DSCC: As an Emergency Physician I can tell you, Texas women are in danger because of Ted Cruz. I’ve seen 12-, 13-year old survivors of rape come in pregnant. … [Fade under]

This week, the Senate Majority political action committee made a multi-million dollar ad investment in Texas, where Senator Ted Cruz is running less than four points ahead of Democrat challenger Colin Allred. Vice President Kamala Harris is also planning to visit Houston on Friday to stump for Allred.

Arizona State professor Smith says while Democrats go after Cruz’s pro-life positions, the senator’s own track record may hurt his standing among moderate Republicans.

SMITH: Cruz has always been a bit of an outsider, bit of a firebrand, always trying to be a kind of anti-establishment, even at the expense of his own party. Well, that is testing his support among the more middle-of-the-road Republicans in Texas.

But Weaver says there are also demographic factors at play in both Texas and Florida that could make them more competitive this year.

WEAVER: Every month, thousands of Californians are pouring into Texas to move there for better government. And in reality, every month, thousands of New Yorkers and New Jerseyans are moving into Florida, as they have for decades, turning those states less red.

Republicans could also be facing a surprise in Nebraska, where both Senate seats are up for election due to a special appointment in 2023. Republican incumbent Deb Fischer is in a tight race with Independent candidate Dan Osborn, a military veteran and union leader. The Cook Political Report changed the race from “likely Republican” to “leans Republican” this week. Here’s Osborn at an ABC-affiliate townhall in Omaha.

DAN OSBORN: I’m frustrated with both sides catering to the extremes. We see them kick the can down the road on the farm bill recently, border bills. So it’s frustrating to me, and I think I’m really frustrated with the corporate agenda and the fact that Robin Williams, the late comedian, said it best when he said our politicians should be wearing Nascar jackets with patches of their sponsors, so we know how they’re going to vote.

The Republican Senate arm is now flooding the state with pro-Fischer ads and sending in colleagues like Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley to stump for her.

Osborn has out fundraised Fischer four to one, and says that if elected, he won’t caucus with either party. He’s pro-abortion and also pro-Second Amendment. If he wins, it makes 2025 gridlock that much more likely.

SMITH: Imagine that the Senate stays Democratic, but Trump wins the White House. He's going to get very little legislation through the Senate as a result. It would require that at least some Democrats support a Trump program or a Republican-generated program that Trump is willing to support. And it's hard to know where those votes would come from. The two most moderate Democrats, Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are leaving the Senate.

While the House of Representatives controls the first steps for most fiscal matters for the country, the Senate has more influence over a president’s administration. The chamber is responsible for approving cabinet appointments, ambassadorships, and judicial nominations all the way up to the Supreme Court.

WEAVER: Whether or not a second term Donald Trump has enough votes in the Senate to confirm his nominees, particularly his judges, really matters to the future of this country. And the same is true for Kamala Harris, who is going to want to change the slow direction of towards the right of the Supreme Court. So the jurisprudence of the federal judiciary is squarely affected by whether or not there's enough Senate votes to get stuff done, and I don’t know anybody who predicts that either party is going to have 60 votes.

Sixty votes is the threshold required to overcome a filibuster. Neither party has secured that number since the Democrats controlled the chamber under Jimmy Carter in 1979. Since then, the margins have melted away, and that gives the minority party more leverage to slow down the majority party’s priorities. Smith says even a power shift this year won’t change that story.

SMITH: Whether the Republicans gain control of the Senate or the Democrats gain control of the Senate, what's fair to say is that the minority is going to be obstructionist. And it’s going to be very difficult to get anything through the Senate.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Carolina Lumetta.

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