It’s not a question of how many Senate seats the Republicans will lose but how many. Thanks for that little summary of the contested races. I don’t much care for the likes of Collins or Dole, but it would hurt to lose people like Cornyn, Roberts, McConnell, and my own Senator Sununu.
It’s gonna hurt, period, but it’s the difference between a modest loss (say, 3 seats) that we could reclaim in another cycle, or a ghastly loss (11, or 14 if the apocalypse strikes) that would be so bad it would take 2 decades to recover from.
1958 was the worst year in the 20th century for the GOP in Senate losses (not even 1936, in which we had the lowest numbers of members since the party’s founding did we lose as many). We entered into the election with just a 2-seat difference (49-47, sound familiar ? Like out 51-49 margin currently) and by the time the dust settled, we lost THIRTEEN seats, dropping from 47 to 34 (amongst the Dem winners was a 3-term House member named Robert Byrd, who beat the last Republican elected Senator from WV).
The Dems gained 15 seats (because of the Alaskan elections, which sent 2 more Democrats), leaving them with a virtual 2/3rds majority, 64 to 34 (98 seats until the Summer of ‘59 when Hawaii was admitted - which would add 1 seat each for both parties, to 65D-35R). Not from 1958 until the 1980 elections did we ever eclipse the 47 seats we held at that point (indeed, we were in the minority from the death of Sen. Bob Taft in the Summer of 1953 until January 1981). Think this country could last 27 1/2 years of Senate Democrat rule today, nevermind 40 years of House rule ? We’ll be a third-world dictatorship by then.