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.

Bye Bye Bob

Here's an update on the New Jersey primary election, which takes place two weeks from today.

As you likely know already, the state's senior U.S. Senator, Robert Menendez,  is on trial for a ton of corruption charges that I would prefer not to go into again here.  Since I last commented on him, Senator Menendez has announced that he will not run in the stet primary for renomianton to stand for re-election to the Senate as a Democrat.

He is threatening to run as an independent. 

Well, that takes a big weight off me!  I was going to register as a Democrat just to vote against him in the primary to get rid of him once and for all, but now he's saved me the trouble.  Now I can stay an independent myself, though if he runs as such, don't expect me to vote for him in November.

The inevitable Democratic nominee is likely to win this fall, but if Trump is President again, that nominee may not serve long, as a presidential declaration of martial law will render Democrats in Congress moot . . . or worse. 

Schiff In Gear

U.S. Representative Adam Schiff, who prosecuted Donald Trump in Trump's first impeachment trial in early 2020, is now an announced candidate for the U.S. Senate from his home state in California in 2024.

Having been kicked off the House Intelligence Committee by Speaker McCarthy, he has nothing else to do.

Schiff and fellow California Democrat Eric Swalwell were both expelled from the House Intelligence Committee, Schiff for having "openly lied to the American public" (to quote McCarthy) about proof of Trump's efforts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and for lying about not knowing the anonymous individual who made the original allegations (no evidence of that) and Swalwell for being involved with a Chinese national who was most likely a spy (whom Swalwell dissociated himself from the second he was informed about this individual).  Schiff is very popular in California for his crusade against Trump and is a darling of the anti-Trump media for his crusade for preserving the Constitution, so he should be a formidable candidate in the "jungle primary" in June 2024 that will pit all wannabe senators of both parties against each other for the two ballot positions in the general election.

Schiff, however, has two obstacles.  The first is that Katie Porter, an Orange County congresswoman, is also standing for election to the Senate.  The second is that incumbent Senator Dianne Feinstein, despite being 89 year old, has not announced her retirement yet.

My guess i thateht November 2024 election to the Senate from California wil lbe a POrter-Schiff contest, as Feinstein is likely to retire or be retired, and in this scenario, I'd give the edge to Porter because . . . she's a woman.

After all, it is California . . .