The Briefing, Vol. XIII, Issue 46
Nov. 17, 2025
This week:
- Democrats face their own Tea Party moment
- Senate picture gives them a chance to put additional seats on the table
- Jasmine Crockett won’t announce her decision on a Senate bid until next month
Outlook
Democrats, buoyed by their better-than expected and decisive victories earlier this month, feel a burst of confidence as the midterm cycle begins. And in key states — Maine and Texas, in particular, although also Michigan — they appear to be at risk of nominating Senate candidates who are far-left, and in some cases also just weird.
Republicans would like to think to themselves Democrats are shaping up to have a Senate year similar to that of the Republicans in 2010, in which two or perhaps three winnable seats were left on the table (Nevada and Delaware especially) because of flawed candidates nominated over more electable alternatives out of Tea Party fervor.
However, here’s a note of caution: Republicans should be careful what they wish for. As this month’s off-year election should remind them, Democrats are going to enjoy a very favorable environment in 2026, as the party out-of-power nearly always does. The second Trump presidency has liberals in apoplexy, and angry people tend to vote, as long as they aren’t angered so much by their own party.
In other words, even if Democrats potentially nominate a few crazy Senate candidates, some of them might actually win.
Republicans should also remember the role that the 2010 Senate elections played in rebuilding their party after the total collapse of the 2008 presidential election. Despite the failure of conservative candidates like Christine O’Donnell and Sharon Angle in 2010, Republicans managed to elect several conservative luminaries to the Senate that year — Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Pat Toomey, and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), for example — who overcame seemingly “sure-thing” Republican candidates to get the party nomination. They then went on to build a substantially more conservative Senate majority in 2014 than they had prior to 2006, on whose basis today’s majority still largely stands.
Democrats still have a lot of problems to work out in their party. But they showed this month that they can still win sometimes by just papering them over. Their choices for Senate might lead them to disappointment, but they could also help them build a formidable movement in the long run.
Senate 2026
Maine: The Democratic establishment may be fumbling here, but not for lack of trying. According to a new memo, they see a winnable Senate seat in the Pine Tree state, with a generic Democrat winning by a nine-point margin. But they fear that left-wing extremism among their base is about to cost them a chance at winning it.
Impact Research, polling on behalf of the pro-abortion PAC EMILY’s List, has released a push-poll showing the controversial Nazi-tattoo-wearing Graham Platner (D) trailing Sen. Susan Collins (R) by nine points, 51 to 42 percent. But it is a push-poll, giving “balanced information” about the candidates before asking preference, including a paragraph of anticipated Republican talking points on Platner — for example, that he is “a self-described communist who said he was disgusted with the idea of America and that white people living in rural Maine are stupid and racist.” After additional negative messaging on Platner is given, Collins’s lead expands to 19 points.
The release of this kind of push-poll suggests a sense of genuine panic — that things are looking even worse for Gov. Janet Mills (D) than anyone realizes. Significantly, the polling memo that was released does not contain any information at all about Mills, the heavily recruited establishment favorite in the primary. All polling to this point shows Platner in the lead for the nomination, including a new poll from a far-left outfit, the Maine People’s Resource Center, although that poll also has Platner beating Collins, 45 to 41 percent.
North Carolina: In the state that arguably represents Democrats’ best pickup opportunity this cycle, former Gov. Roy Cooper (D) continues to lead the Republican frontrunner, former RNC chairman Michael Whatley, 47 to 39 percent, according to Harper Polling’s third survey of the race. The state’s electorate is trending Republican — registered Republicans now lead registered Democrats statewide by nearly 100,000 active voters, having overtaken them only after the 2024 election. But Cooper is the absolute best candidate Democrats could have recruited, with multiple statewide wins under his belt and running in a Trump 2.0 environment that will likely favor Democrats, just like the environment that helped them win such unexpectedly large victories earlier this month.
Ohio: Although Sen. Jon Husted (R) is widely favored, Republicans can’t take this one for granted. A poll commissioned by the Democrat-friendly Ohio Federation of Teachers puts former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) in the lead over him, 48 percent to 45 percent. There are a few strange things about this poll. One is that it was taken all the way back in mid-September — two months ago — but is only being released now. Why would that be? Is Brown in need of something to reassure donors?
Although it has to be taken with a grain of salt given that and the source, the poll is a reminder that there will be opportunities for Democrats to expand the battlefield and put more seats on the table during this election year if things go badly in the second Trump term — for example, if the economy suddenly takes a turn for the worse.
Texas: Republicans getting their hopes up about Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D) entering the U.S. Senate primary will have to hold their breath until Dec. 8, the filing deadline. She says she will not be making any announcements until then, although she will make her decision over Thanksgiving. Crockett effectively lost her seat in redistricting, meaning she will either have to jump to another or run for statewide office. She has every incentive to run — in fact, Republicans may have had this in mind when they configured the districts as they did. As we have said previously, Crockett would instantly bigfoot the Democratic Senate primary were she to enter, but she would probably lose a statewide general election.
