Sunset for Florida Democrats - 2024 Edition?

How much to the Democrats hate their own losers?  Let's return to Florida to examine the evidence:

Democrat Val Demings gave up a safe House seat to challenge Republican Marco Rubio for his Senate seat in 2022.  Needless to say, she went down to defeat.  When Rick Scott's Senate seat came up for election in Florida this year (2024), Demings didn't even run for the Democratic nomination.  I suspect that Florida Democrats made it clear to her that she would not be welcome to make another try for a Senate seat.

Contrast that to the Republicans.  In 2002, there were two Democratic U.S. Senators from South Dakota - Timothy Johnson and Tom Daschle.  Johnson ran for a second term that year.  The Republican Senate nominee who ran against Johnson in 2002 lost, but in 2004 that same Republican got to try for the Senate again by running against Daschle, then the Senate Democratic leader, and this time the Republican won. That Republican is Fred Gwynne lookalike John Thune, now the second highest ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate.  This is just one example of a Republican U.S. Senate nominee who, having failed to get one of his state's Senate seats, simply tried for the other seat and succeeded; there are many more.  If there's a Democrat who lost a first bid for a Senate seat and then won his or her state's other Senate seat two short years later, I must have missed it.

How about gubernatorial candidates?  For this we can go back to Florida.  Jeb Bush lost his bid for the governorship of Florida in 1994, a great year for Republicans overall, against incumbent Democrat Lawton Chiles, but four years later, Jeb ran for the governorship of Florida against Lieutenant Governor Kenneth "Buddy" MacKay, Governor Chiles having been term limited, and won.

(MacKay never ran for elective office again, of course, but he did become governor of Florida when Governor Chiles died after the election but before Jeb Bush was to be inaugurated,  and so MacKay served out the remaining weeks of Chiles' term.  No one knew that Chiles would become and remain for thirty years and counting the last Democrat to by elected governor of Florida.  His death in office now seems prophetic.) 

This year, 2024, a double-surnamed woman named Debbie is taking on Rick Scott for his U.S. Senate seat.  No, not Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the woman responsible for Donald Trump - Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (above), an Ecuadoran-born academic administrator who served in the U.S. House of Representatives.  For one term.  She lost her seat in an upset in 2020. But she's well-spoken, she's telegenic, and she is a fierce advocate of reproductive rights in a state where such rights are severely curtailed and where a referendum codifying reproductive rights is on the ballot.  Mucarsel-Powell could win.

Or not.   It's a tossup now, and there is even talk about Kamala Harris upsetting Trump in Florida, but I have my doubts.  First of all, it's Florida.  Second of all, while Republican women - and some Republican men - might vote for the reproductive-rights referendum, they might do so without voting for Harris or Muscarel-Powell.   Third, Rick Scott, who ran a health care company that fraudulently overcharged Medicare for its services, has an undeniable and inexplicable talent for winning elections, having been elected governor of Florida twice and elected to the Senate over far worthier Democratic opponents.  Having crippled and/or ended the political careers of his earlier Democratic opponents, Scott is now poised to sign Mucarsel-Powell's political death warrant.

After all, as I've said, it's Florida.