Posted on 10/16/2018 3:53:09 PM PDT by TigerClaws
Hoo boy. Only two possible explanations for this that I can see, and they’re both bad for Dems. (And not mutually exclusive.)
1. Team Schumer is showing rank favoritism towards Chuck’s tri-state buddy Menendez, prioritizing his reelection above that of Democratic incumbents like McCaskill and Tester and Donnelly who are under severe threat in red states.
2. Team Schumer is performing triage, writing off McCaskill and Tester and Donnelly — and the Democrats’ hope of a Senate majority — as electorally dead and focusing instead on saving blue states that were supposed to be safe but maybe aren’t.
Bad day for liberals either way:
The Senate Democrats’ leading super PAC is set to spend $3 million in bright blue New Jersey in an effort to save Sen. Bob Menendez, who has struggled to put away a Republican challenger after facing a corruption trial last year.
Senate Majority PAC, which is controlled by allies of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), will use the cash to air a statewide ad attacking Menendez’s opponent, former pharmaceutical executive Bob Hugin, as an ally of President Donald Trump in a state where the president is deeply unpopular…
Menendez, who is running for his third term in the Senate and is the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, leads in most recent public polling of the contest. But Democrats fear his lead isn’t big enough in the face of the millions that Hugin has spent and will keep spending on the airwaves out of his personal fortune. Hugin and his allies have swamped Democratic spending in the race by roughly a 7-to-1 margin, $21.8 million to $3.3 million, according to a source that tracks media buys.
I’m intrigued that the Schumer brain trust is this worried about Menendez after the last two polls of the state had him leading by 10 and 11 points, respectively. Hugin might make Dems sweat there but Menendez will probably hold on. In the meantime, the three Dems I mentioned above are all either narrowly ahead or within the margin of error in their own races. Why wouldn’t the PAC prefer to gamble on them instead of on Menendez? You’d get much more bang for your ad buck in Montana, especially, than in Jersey.
All of which is a long way of asking if Schumer knows something about the trends in those states that we don’t. Even if McCaskill etc look dead in the water, surely Bill Nelson and Kyrsten Sinema still stand a solid chance of winning. Why not spend on them instead?
If in fact Democrats end up losing a bunch of races narrowly, their decision to renominate sleazy Bob Menendez instead of a fresh candidate with less baggage could be an underreported but potentially significant factor. Every dollar that Schumer and others are throwing at Jersey to prop him up is a dollar not going to a more competitive race. Presumably Democrats figured that even a weak incumbent like Menendez would have little difficulty in a deep blue state against token Republican opposition; problem is, they didn’t get a token. In Hugin they got a guy willing to bury them in spending in hopes of stealing the seat. Hugin may end up an unsung hero of Election Night by forcing Democrats to defend what should have been an unbreachable fortress, drawing resources away from more winnable states.
Their internal polls are probably telling them things which the publicly released polls don’t.
But you wonder why they would spend so much in New Jersey, when that amount of money would go a lot farther in other states. Or look at another way, why not cut New Jersey loose, and try to save Montana, Missouri, Indiana etc?
I’ve heard people say Heidi Heidcamp(sp) is a lost cause in North Dakota.
Chuck-U has earned his moniker. Sayonara to Red State Dems.
Great point!
Maybe it’s not just the GOP that doesn’t care about being in the majority. Big bucks from lobbyists, power, no pressure to deliver, just obstruction and delays, as long as they’re still in the Senate.
More evidence that there is no blue wave coming.
The would be really something if Menendez goes belly-up.
If that happens, it’s going to be a complete wipeout for the Dims across the board.
3. He’s buying Menendez silence. Crooks of a feather
I’m telling you folks, this Murphy scandal in NI could really kill the Dems cross ticket if the GOP would get on the ball.
Think Brodgegate except in lieu of ordering traffic on a bridge it’s prptecting a senior staffer from a rape allegation.
I’ve heard people say Heidi Heidcamp(sp) is a lost cause in North Dakota.
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She’s toast, Jim.
The publishing of “sexual assault victims names” without their permission will hurt Heidi in ND. And some of the women were not even victims! The Veritas video is hurting Mother McCaskill in MO. More stuff coming out every day. We really need Jeff Sessions to start arresting some of the Clinton gang. Nail them to the wall.
The Democrats are willing to do anything to protect a criminal who belongs to the Democrat Senate caucus. They need as many criminals as they can find.
A Dem loss in NJ would be epic, a total embarassment in a state supposedly not even in contention. 2
Moochelle told voters not to think, just vote. Apparently not everyone got the memo.
Schumer is NOT going to dump millions into a safe seat.
It therefore follows that Schumer believes the +10 prints for Menendez are wrong, because a pair of +10 polls indicates a pretty safe race.
This implies that Schumer is targeting the actual battleground - that the “toss ups” are largely lost to them and the battle will be fought at the Dems’ next level of depth - the “leans/likely” seats, which includes NJ.
So ND, MT, IN, MO, AZ, TN, TX, NV... and even FL are not better targets for his $3 million?
Boy, I would love to know what Chucky knows. I bet it’s very schadenfreudy.
How are McCaskill and Tester and Donnelly “all either narrowly ahead or within the margin of error in their own races” and also “dead in the water”? Why is interpreting those races as “safe Democrat” not his third possibility?
Hoo-sez Trump is so unpopular in NJ? Things have shifted since 2016.....and the ‘Rat fiasco of smearing Brett Kavanaugh.
Their internal polls are probably telling them things which the publicly released polls don’t.
But you wonder why they would spend so much in New Jersey, when that amount of money would go a lot farther in other states. Or look at another way, why not cut New Jersey loose, and try to save Montana, Missouri, Indiana etc?
Those internal polls are probably telling them that Montana, Missouri, Indiana are lost.
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