2017 US Senate: D-52, R-48

Still basking in the glow of last night's Green Town Hall on CNN, and not ready yet to crown another Jackass O'Day, let's check in for the first time this cycle on the latest US Senate projections.

Not burying the lede: it's a very tight contest.  Electoral-vote.com, my personal favorite, and Election Projection both give the GOP 51 states for a slim margin to hold control.  The difference in methodology is that E-v.com doesn't have any toss-ups; they jut throw the states up daily based on the very latest polling.  (Only if a poll shows a tie do they acknowledge that in their revised projection.)  They also count the Senate's two independents, Bernie Sanders and Angus King, as Democrats because that's who they caucus with.  So today they rate it 51-49 while E-P has it a more accurate 51-47-2.

Update (8/19): Note how E-v.com changes day-to-day.

Larry Sabato has it tied 47-apiece, with 6 states -- NV, IN, OH, PA, NH, and FL -- going either way.  Charlie Cook thinks it's 47-45 Republicans, with 8 tossups.

Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight.com has projections from early June that give the Ds "three to four seats", and they need four to wrest the majority away from the Republicans (on the increasingly-safe assumption that Hillary Clinton is the new president).  His latest report, still two weeks old, is more encouraging as the polling suggests that a few Senate Republican candidates are in danger of being caught in Trump's undertow.

Update (8/19): Enten's piece from 8/16, titled "GOP's chances of holding Senate following Trump downhill" eluded me, but reinforces his and (and my) premise.

Several of the links above profile the specific state races and link to polling and such.  I'm not ready to get that granular; there'll be plenty of time in September for things to flesh out a little more clearly in many of the states where it's close now.  Ohio is going right down to the wire in both the White House and Senate contests anyway.

Your interactive toy is at 270towin.com, and here's my best guess today: D-52, R-48 with NV staying blue and WI, IL, IN, PA, NH, and NC flipping blue mostly on the strength of Clinton's surge in the swing states, and AZ, MO, OH, and FL remaining red.  (Wisconsin's and North Carolina's Dems should also benefit a couple of percentage points from the court-ordered relaxation of their restrictive voter/photo ID laws, as is the case in Texas ... subject to last-gasp litigation outcomes.)

Click the map to create your own at 270toWin.com

The real people's mandate for President Clinton will be if she has a blue Senate and a blue House to work with, as Barack Obama did in his first two years.  The crisis exacerbated by one of the nation's five largest health insurers removing itself from the state-mandated Obamacare exchanges suggests a simple fix: the public option.  But history tells us that Clinton will not fight any domestic battle she cannot be assured of winning.

Excessive gerrymandering means a Democratically-controlled House still looks just out of reach.  But due to the Trump Train's derailment, Dems are dreaming big.  Good on 'em for that, but some swift and direct action will be necessary if their dreams come true.

A public option is one thing that could make me feel encouraged about Clinton's first term.  The other would be more diplomacy and peace and a lot less war.  (I probably shouldn't dream too big.)

Stein rises, knives come out

The reason the smear got called out early is because the smear, sadly, got traction.   CNN, hosting tonight's town hall with the Green Party ticket, had to do the responsible journalistic job and report on it and the other silly attacks listed there.  But if this is the best Jill Stein's detractors -- most of them being the crappiest of conservative corporate Democrats, mind you -- can do, it's a pretty weak case against voting for her ... except in the vanishing number of swing states.  Which Texas will not be (sorry, Charlie).

What we see here with the 'cranks' and 'kooks' business is the logic dictating that Hillary just might need that 2% to carry Texas, so we'd better beat harder on the Greens.  (Two percent is about six times the amount that Stein drew here four years ago.  Democrats have a better shot at peeling off Harambe's 2%, or Deez Nutz's 3%.  I'm just saying.)

Downballot digression: throughout the Lone Star State we see the lousiest of the lousy who show on our ballots representing both sides of the conventional aisle, as we believe and as we know.  It took them over a dozen years and a few election cycles, but the TDP finally figured out that if they just fill up the all the lines, the ignorance of straight-party voting would enable them to stand the best chance of knocking the Greens off the ballot and absorb what is left of the actual left in Texas into their collective.  Consequently you have a circumstance this cycle where an appellate court candidate who is all but invisible makes a stand against the Green who got the most statewide votes two years ago, 10.45% (without a D opponent).  Neither of the two women -- Betsy Johnson (D) and Judith Sanders-Castro (G) -- are exactly favored in their respective bids for the Texas Criminal Appeals Court against Scott Walker.  No, not that one.

Scott Walker, the failed presidential candidate and Wisconsin governor, wasn't on the (Texas GOP primary) ballot. But Dallas-based criminal defense attorney Scott Walker is vying for a seat on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The Republican barely campaigned before the March primary. His opponents weren't even sure he was running, and he didn't give any interviews. But he still dominated the first round of voting, winning 41 percent in the four-person race. Many credit that to his recognizable name; voters who make it that far down the ballot sometimes pick a name that sounds familiar. But Walker sees it differently. He told The Texas Tribune (after he won the runoff in May) that he spent "a lot of time praying about this election."

“I believe God heard my prayers," he said. 

Glowree Be!

So watch the CNN town hall tonight whether you have an open mind about an alternative to "lesser evils" or not, livestream or in the company of others, follow the Twitter feed -- look for a hashtag like #GreenTownHall or something similar -- and laugh at the putzy snark attempts by Democrats who can only win something every four years (fortunately for them it's the big enchilada; you know, "SCOTUS" and all that), then try to imagine what it would be like electing a female president who would stave off our looming environmental apocalypse, stopped our country's all-but-endless wars, eliminated student debt by telling the Big Banks to eat it, and advanced a jobs program based on an update of FDR's New Deal.  Then ask yourself how crazy that would really be.

Why, it's almost as crazy as this.