Senate Democrats, aware of the dead weight that Donald J. Trump has placed on their vulnerable Republican colleagues, can taste a reclaimed majority.
But just as Senate Republicans blew their chances in 2010 and 2012 before finally taking control in 2014, Democrats find themselves hobbled by less-than-stellar candidates in races that could make the difference in winning a majority.
In Pennsylvania, Katie McGinty, a relatively unknown former federal official who has never held elective office, is ahead in polls but lags Hillary Clinton’s large lead in the state. In Florida, a nasty primary between two flawed candidates could harm the Democrats’ chance to unseat Senator Marco Rubio. […]
Florida’s Senate Democratic primary this Tuesday pits a bombastic, populist liberal, Representative Alan Grayson, against the establishment’s pick, Representative Patrick Murphy, in the kind of showdown that analysts expect to see in the party’s future.
“Democrats are going to have their own Tea Party moment in 2018,” said Jennifer Duffy, a senior editor and Senate analyst for The Cook Political Report. “I don’t think they are going to put up with the party dictating who their candidates are.”
The issue was highlighted this year when Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont found considerable success by running against the sort of incremental liberalism of President Obama and Mrs. Clinton.
Read more at the New York Times.
