Striking Silver

Democrats clinched the Senate majority for the 118th Congress late last night with Democratic  U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto winning a second term and narrowly edging out Republican challenger Adam Laxalt.  Laxalt is the grandson of the late and revered U.S. Senator Paul Laxalt, who served in the same seat Senator Cortez Masto now holds (from 1975 to 1987), but he's hardly as august; he supports the rigged-election theory that Trump won the 2020 presidential election and he based his entire candidacy "the radical left, rich elites, woke corporations, academia and the media" were "taking over America."

Voters in the Silver State rejected Laxalt's raging paranoia, and Democrats struck Senate-majority gold.  

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee put a good chunk of its money in defending vulnerable seats like Cortez Masto's, limiting its  efforts at flipping Republican seats to just one - outgoing Senator Pat Toomey's seat in Pennsylvania (which Democrat John Fetterman won). By gambling on Nevada (see what I did there?), the DSCC was taking a grave chance, sacrificing potential pickups in states like Ohio, where Democrat Tim Ryan ran a great campaign but couldn't get the DSCC to give him a cent.  He lost to venture capitalist and memoirist  J.D.Vance, who campaigned on the same fear-based platform Laxalt had espoused.  If Cortez Masto had lost, Democratic control of the Senate would have been decided in the coming runoff in Georgia, and as that already happened in 2020, no one really wanted to go through that again.  

I'm still ticked off about what happened to Tim Ryan in Ohio, by the way, and I'll get to that later. 

If At First You Don't Succeed . . .

Harry Reid still can't shake noted crazy lady Sharron Angle in his bid for a fifth term in the U.S. Senate representing Nevada, and his wussy performance in their only debate demonstrated why Reid's election in 2010 may be more unthinkable than Angle's.

I once thought the only way Harry Reid would win this election was if Sharron Angle were to say something incredibly vicious, insane or offensive on the campaign trail. But I can't think of anything incredibly vicious, insane or offensive that she hasn't already said. Until today, when a tape of Angle making vicious, insane and offensive comments to Hispanic high school students about her stand on illegal immigration surfaced. Angle insisted that she did not know the men in her TV spots about the issue were Hispanic - she insisted that her ads were misinterpreted as pinpointing Latinos as the source of controversy over immigration - and tried to make case that it can be difficult to pinpoint someone's ethnicity. "You know, I don't know that all of you are Latino. Some of you look a little more Asian to me. I don't know that," she told the students, who responded with what was described as "a flurry of gasps and whispers."

And she might still win, because Harry Reid is hated that much in Nevada. But you know something? If she loses, you can expect her to try again for a Senate seat. Because if John Ensign, Nevada's other senator, chooses not to seek re-election in 2012 - and, given the marital scandal he's involved in, he just might choose so - Angle, should she lose this year, could conceivably go for Ensign's seat and win it.

Why? Because Republicans don't quit trying for elective office. They just keep trying. Look at John Ensign himself. He lost his own bid to unseat Harry Reid in 1998, so when Nevada's other senator, Richard Bryan, chose not to seek a third term in 2000, Ensign ran for that seat and won. Likewise, Jon Thune in South Dakota tried unsuccessfully to unseat Senator Timothy Johnson in 2002. So he went after Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle in 2004 and defeated him. This year he's running for a second term virtually unopposed. Good grief, look at John Raese in West Virginia. As I noted, he opposed Governor Jay Rockefeller for a Senate seat in 1984, and now he's back to win Robert Byrd's seat in a special election, the most competitive Senate race in the Mountain State since that 1984 election.

Oh yeah, I think noted failed businesswoman Carly Fiorina is going to fall short of her bid to unseat Senator Barbara Boxer in California. But should that happen . . . well, if I were Dianne Feinstein (up for re-election in 2012), I'd watch my back.

Because that's what Republicans do. They keep going back to the voters until they hit pay dirt. And not just would-be senators. Former Indiana Republican senator Dan Coats is running to get his old seat back, now that Senator Evan Bayh is leaving, and he's going to win it easily. And this isn't restricted to Senate elections. Richard Nixon came back in 1968 after having lost the Presidency to John F. Kennedy to win it against Hubert Humphrey. Ronald Reagan and George Bush each made unsuccessful bids for the Republican presidential nomination before winning the nomination (and the Presidency) on their second tries. With few exceptions, Democrats have not been so tenacious. They mostly get one chance for elective office, and one strike is usually out. Second tries for, say, the Presidency, lead nowhere. Ask George McGovern. Ask Richard Gephardt. Ask Albert Gore. On second thought, don't. He actually did win on his second try, but his victory was stolen. And national Democrats were so scared of Hillary Clinton, they were ready to draft him for a presidential run in 2008. So he's an exception to the rule that losing Democrats go away quietly. Actually, he's the exception.

If Angle loses, she'll be back. If Carly Fiorina loses, she'll be back. I wouldn't even rule out Linda McMahon resurfacing to challenge Joe Lieberman in 2012 if she loses her Senate bid in Connecticut. But when Massachusetts Democrats bring up names of possible challengers to Scott Brown in 2012, Martha Coakley's name likely doesn't come up.

Unless they're contemplating intraparty suicide.