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**DECEMBER 7, 2022**
Kuttner on TAP
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**** The Added Benefits of Warnock's
Win
51-49 is far more powerful than 50-50-and provides some insurance for
2024.
Raphael Warnock's impressive win in Georgia not only gives the
Democrats crucial control of committees in the next session of Congress.
A 51-49 Senate will make it easier to run investigative hearings; it
removes the power of Republicans in evenly divided committees to bottle
up nominations; and it leaves corporate Democrats like Joe Manchin and
Kyrsten Sinema less power to block.
Warnock's victory also provides vital insurance for the 2024 Senate
elections, when the Democrats face an unusually rough year. Due to the
luck of the draw, the class of '24 includes at least four vulnerable
Democratic incumbents and no at-risk Republicans.
The vulnerable Democrats are Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Jacky Rosen in
Nevada, Jon Tester in Montana, and Joe Manchin in West Virginia. Kyrsten
Sinema also faces re-election and she could well be ousted in a primary
fight.
Of these, Brown has won three elections but by diminishing margins as
Ohio keeps trending more Republican. He was re-elected in 2018 with 53.4
percent of the vote. Unless Democrats have a very bad year, Brown is the
most secure of the vulnerable group. The others are shakier.
In Montana, Jon Tester had his best performance in 2018, when he won
with 50.3 percent of the vote. In his previous two elections, he failed
to clear 50 percent and won thanks to the presence of a third-party
candidate who drew off Republican votes. Tester is the sole surviving
Democrat in a state that had two back-to-back Democratic governors and
now has a Republican in Greg Gianforte.
In evenly divided Nevada, Catherine Cortez Masto squeaked through this
year, winning re-election by just under 7,000 votes. Jacky Rosen won in
2018 with 50.4 percent of the vote.
And then there is Joe Manchin. He is often the skunk at the Democratic
picnic, but the alternative is a Republican. In 2018, Manchin was
re-elected 49.6 percent to 46.3 percent for Republican Patrick Morrisey.
But for the presence of a libertarian, who pulled 4.2 percent, Manchin
might well have lost. Manchin will be 77 in 2024, and will be a top
Republican target.
Manchin seems to have failed to win his top legislative priority, his
side deal for expedited energy permitting, including the Mountain Valley
Pipeline, which would transport natural gas from West Virginia to
Virginia. His gambit of tacking this deal onto the defense authorization
bill
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failed.
Republicans will be eager to deny Manchin any kind of achievement.
Paradoxically, the Democrats' 51-49 margin makes them less dependent
on Manchin, but frees Manchin to be even less of a party loyalist when
he finds that expedient.
Note that all these narrow Democratic wins happened in 2018, the best
Democratic year in recent political history. If the Democratic
presidential candidate doesn't have coattails (Joe Biden, this means
you), or even worse, loses the 2024 election, all of them could go down.
One ray of hope: If the kind of Republican nutjobs whom Democrats were
able to defeat in 2022 run in 2024, things might look better. That sure
helped elect Warnock. You might think Republicans would learn from
Georgia, but never count out the stupidity of MAGA.
Warnock's victory at least provides some insurance. The Democrats
could lose one Senate seat and if they win the presidency they would
hold the Senate 50-50, with the vice president as tiebreaker as in the
current Congress. But they need a big presidential win and a good year
to make any of this happen.
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
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