It’s been a rough week for Sen. Schumer, whose recruiting for the next Senate class isn’t going so well.
Wednesday, Rep. Joaquin Castro confirmed he will bow out of an electoral contest with incumbent Sen. Cornyn.
From the San Antonio Express-News:
U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro has decided not to seek the Democratic nomination to challenge Sen. John Cornyn, choosing instead to continue pursuing a fast-rising career in Congress focusing on security and border issues.Castro’s decision could pave the way for a contest in 2020 between Cornyn and Mary Jennings “MJ” Hegar, an Afghanistan war veteran who ran a strong but losing race for Congress last year and who declared her candidacy last week.Castro, 44, of San Antonio, announced his decision to stay out of the race in an interview with Hearst Newspapers.“Right now, I’m going to focus on my work in the House of Representatives. I’ve been doing what I feel is important and meaningful work here,” he said. “If and when I run for another office, it is likely to be something that takes me back home to Texas.”Castro is the twin brother of Julián Castro, a former San Antonio mayor and Housing and Urban Development secretary who is running for the Democrats’ 2020 presidential nomination. The identical twins act as chief political strategist to one another, and Joaquin has the title of chairman in his brother’s quest.His brother’s presidential campaign could have been helpful to Castro, creating excitement among Latino voters and national attention to the unprecedented effort of twins seeking high office.
Castro’s official announcement came about strangely:
If ever there was time to run, it’s now. Beto’s run planted seeds of a possible blue Senate win and plowed the electoral ground, now ripe for the harvest.
Earlier this week, Stacey Abrams, the sore loser in Georgia’s gubernatorial race, declined to run for Senate, saying she will “continue to watch how the national conversation around the presidency unfolds” and she has not taken herself “out of that conversation” of a possible presidential run.
Democrats will be hard-pressed to mount any serious challenge to take back the Senate without candidates willing to run. The new crop of candidates though seems more interested in being candidate 2,498 in the Democrat presidential primary rather than running for a race they stand some chance of winning.
Splinter, part of the Jezebel, AV Club conglom, lamented that “The Democrats Are Just Giving Up on the Senate,” and they’re not wrong. Though then digress into such thoughtful discourse as “the Senate sucks,” “it’s an archaic institution in desperate need of radical reform if not outright abolition.”
But anyway, back to Schumer’s troubles:
It’s not just Texas either. Two-term Montana Gov. Steve Bullock is reportedly set to announce a run for president that will not work, in a year where Republican Sen. Steve Daines is up for re-election. Stacey Abrams decided not to take on David Perdue in Georgia. John Hickenlooper passed on a chance to face the most vulnerable GOP senator, Cory Gardner, in favor of polling 1 percent in presidential polls and telling national audiences about the time he watched porn with his mom. And at this point, it looks like North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis’ biggest challenge next year might be in the Republican primary rather than the general election, where the DSCC still hasn’t found a Democrat willing to run. (Currently, the most high-profile candidate is three-term state Sen. Erica Smith-Ingram.)Unless all of these people running for president rather than Senate seats they can actually win have a collective realization that their efforts might be better spent elsewhere—and soon—the Democrats are essentially set to cede control of the Senate to Mitch McConnell until 2022, no matter what happens at the top of the ticket. That is a fucking disaster.
Disaster for Democrats, but I am here for it.
But when your party stake’s its future on tax returns and myths of collusion and parades an old wild-haired socialist and a gaffe machine with no concept of personal space as your front-runners, can you really blame the younger class from running far, far from what will be a ridiculous electoral loss? May as well spend that time hanging out on the sidelines, building fundraising infrastructures, donor lists, and waiting for the storm to pass.
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