A Confident Harry Reid Says If the Election Were Held Today, Dems Would Keep the Senate

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ABC News Senior Washington Correspondent Jeff Zeleny tweeted Tuesday afternoon, “Asked if he feels Democratic majority slipping away, @SenatorReid tells me: “No.”

There’s more Reid confidence.

Alex Bolton, Staff writer for The Hill newspaper, tweeted, “Harry Reid says if election were held today, Democrats would keep control of the #SenateMajority.” Also, “Harry Reid says he will run for majority leader in Nov. if Dems keep the Senate. Won’t speculate on fallout if Senate flips.”

Reid isn’t basing his optimism and confidence in GOP unskewed polls, but rather reality. As Jason Easley reported earlier Tuesday, in addition to the path for Democrats keeping the Senate suddenly becoming visible, “Senate Democrats set another fundraising record in August. They are crushing their Republican opponents in fundraising, and find themselves in a much stronger position to keep control of the Senate than the experts predicted.”

The DSCC has $25.3 million in cash on hand and no debt.

Meanwhile, back in fantasy land where unskewed polls rule the day, the NRSC still believes in the GOP “wave”. They tweeted, “Putting Polls In Context: Why Undecided Voters Will Determine The Size Of The GOP Wave. http://bit.ly/1wAy2N3”

The “wave” is resting in the fate of the undecided voters (aka, the uninformed at this point as there is no way that anyone who is paying attention can be undecided – you either want a Congress that actually does something for the people or you think the Koch brothers are entitled to more taxpayer money):

History tells us that for every four undecided voters, one will typically vote for the incumbent, two will vote for challenger, and one will not vote. This history means that for every point the incumbent is short of the 50 percent threshold, they need 4 percent in the undecided category to make it up. If an incumbent is at 48 percent, they need the undecided number to be at 8 percent; an incumbent at 47 percent needs 12 percent, etc.

There’s even more bad news for Democratic incumbents, though. The political environment is bad for them. Some of them (like Kay Hagan and Mark Udall) have high unfavorables. At this very moment, undecided voters are just beginning to tune in, and between 60-70 percent are likely to end up voting for the challenger.

Is this the wave? No. Historically speaking, Republicans should be sweeping the Senate and picking up many seats in the House. They have the assistance of seemingly endless corporate dark money to boot, even though in actual money raised by humans, the Democrats win. So the fact that Republicans are struggling to take over the Senate is a story in and of itself.

Republicans love to spin narratives, so now we get the “GOP wave” as if it were 2010 and the people were being fooled again. There is not a wave of sentiment against Democrats right now, at least not in context with the historically poor polling numbers of Republicans. Everyone in Congress is taking a beating for the obstruction of the GOP, but not everyone is hated equally.

Republicans have nothing to run on except promising to impeach Obama if they take the Senate. This is a powerful get out the vote tool for their base, but the middle doesn’t want impeachment – they want jobs and things that help the average American…

… Things that the Democratic Party have presented in various forms of legislation, but have been stopped by Republicans. And this is really the GOP problem. They have no platform except misleading people with enough Koch money and throwing shade at President Obama. It’s hard to have a “wave” when you have no platform except enriching the rich via divide and conquer of the masses.

Sarah Jones

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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.

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