(Alabama, two from Arizona, and Tennessee).

Only 1 seat is up in 2018

But I would assume when McCain hangs it up, the Governor would appoint somebody. I'm not sure what Arizona's laws are, but McCain's seat isn't up for re-election for 5 years

It's Arizona, so take that with a grain of salt. But she's been positioning herself as a moderate Dem since her election to the House in 2012. She's my rep. I've been disappointed in a number of her votes over the past few years, they do put her in a good place to run for this seat.

Read up on Kelli Ward, she's terrifying. She's the one who is going to be filling Flake's shoes in the GOP in Arizona.

beyond any hope.

I know I've mentioned this a half dozen times or more, but I scolded Chris Bowers on MyDD back in 2004-2006 that he had no idea what would transpire if both sides pushed from the outside ranks. It could only benefit the GOP, and not by a minor amount.

I'm still astonished that it was so difficult to figure out. You had to be a moron handicapper not to grasp where it would lead. Sure, we might have a handful of more progressive Democrats in the northeast. Big whooping deal. The tradeoff is dangerous wingnuts who can be elected virtually anywhere else. The public starts to accept their version as middle of the road Republican, not something to be scared of.

We are in the very early stages of this. As I've emphasized, moderates and complacency were our friends.

if the GOP can win with these unmitigated fuckwits, either our election system is already hopelessly compromised or it will be by the time the Trumpist assclowns finish with it

if they still hold both houses in 2018 and Trump remains president until 2020, i'll consider it direct evidence that Plato was correct about democracy being one step removed from tyranny

and installed Trump. We have to secure our voting system and take action to combat the serious and intense GOP propaganda machine.

Benjamin Franklin doubted we could keep a republic/ representative democracy. I guess he was right.

Benjamin Franklin, 1787: “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

Plato, ~380BC: "And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty"

i suspect Franklin was well-versed in the classics and had numerous reasoned doubts regarding the long-term health of the USA

So politics is a cyclical process, tyranny/slavery gives way to liberty, which then falls prey to tyranny again.

Looks like we know where we are right now in that process.

Perhaps this will release these senators from the need to be in lockstep with turtle boy. Maybe they can ignore the koch bros. Flake has always tried to at least appear centrist.

Was just watching CNN which I rarely do, and saw a former whatever from the thuglican party, and he said this is another win and another scalp for Bannon, taking down another establishment thuglican. He then went on to say that he just came back from North Carolina, and that there are people down there who are in line with the way Bannon thinks, and who want to re-open investigations on Hillary Clinton--probably concerning that bogus yellow cake uranium LIE, and whose to stop them?

As you said, Bannonites can theoretically win those seats in which Corker/Flake type thuglicans either leave or get knocked out of the Senate/Congress and replaced by nut job thumpers who'd LOVE nothing more than have more investigations into that nothing burger stories concerning Hillary/yellow cake uranium etc. Good God almighty, Dems are in trouble. It's bad enough that our voting stricture/apparatus is so flawed that I personally don't trust a "clean" vote in 2018 or 2020 thanks to continued interference from the ruskies and more thuglican gerrymandering, cross-checking, voter-id'ing and who knows WHAT else thuglicans will come up with to stop Democratic votes from being collected/counted, and how do we know that they won't make Dem votes "go missing," or get rid of Democratic votes all together. Even IF Dems find a message, find a great candidate, get people engaged to turn out, IF our votes don't count, aren't counted, go-missing, or the ruskies interfere in a different & more effective way, our goose as a party/country/world is cooked. And then I hear Democrats shooting themselves in the foot. Dems like Leon Panetta saying within the last few days that BOTH parties are dragging their feet and not cooperating with each other , then I hear former Pres. Jimmy Carter give talking points to the FauXXX Noose crowd and I hear they're running with his "The media is tough on tRump rhetoric" non-stop

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