Here’s How—and Where—It Could All Go Wrong for Democrats

The Surge is your weekly political sanity check: What matters, what might, and what’s just political theater. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, a politics newsletter that was glad to be reminded that we need to find a rich person to pay off our $100,000 in credit card debt if we’re ever going to get that ambassadorship. So … any takers? The air had a crisp autumnal smell of politics to it this week. The Surge has pulled its giant foam finger saying “DEBATES” out of storage, because friends, it is debate season. Wonder what Ken Paxton thinks privately about anything? You’ll probably learn about it through leaked audio soon. We take a look at the looming Senate Democratic leadership race (there won’t be one) and observe Trump taking a warning shot at two of his top political advisers. Let’s begin, though, with a look at the Senate map, and the state it might all come down to. What matters now: Will Senate control all come down to Maine? In January, after Democratic former Rep. Mary Peltola announced she’d run for Senate in Alaska, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer gave a series of interviews about how he’d landed “the last piece of the puzzle” toward retaking the Senate majority. The path he laid out ran through Alaska, Ohio, North Carolina, and Maine. “We couldn’t have better candidates,” he told Semafor. While some new opportunities for Senate Democrats have since entered the fray—Iowa, Texas, and Kansas—it’s still those four states that represent the core pathway. And by our reckoning, it’s the bluest of those four states, Maine, that represents Democrats’ biggest hurdle. Republicans at this point have effectively ceded the North Carolina Senate race to Democrat Roy Cooper, with both the Senate Republicans’ super PAC and GOP candidate Michael Whatley’s campaign itself pausing their advertising. (Note: Cooper does still have to win more real-life votes than Whatley in the election for this concession to become official.) Alaska and Ohio are hardly in Democrats’ column already. But Ohio Democratic Senate candidate Sherrod Brown has consistently posted polling leads against a weak opponent in Sen. Jon Husted. And just this week, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, one of the top election forecasters, shifted Alaska from a “toss-up” race to “leans Democratic.” Which brings us to Maine. Oh, Maine. RealClearPolitics’ polling average shows Democratic candidate Troy Jackson with a 1-point lead over Sen. Susan Collins—but with significant variation between individual polls, and in a state where Collins tends to outperform her polls. The list of reasons why Democrats should take this seat without much struggle is limitless. Briefly, though: It’s a blue state in a blue year where the Republican president is heinously unpopular. Trump has picked a stupid trade war with a country abutting Maine, with which it conducts significant amounts of trade for daily goods. Mainers need heating oil, and heating oil costs are through the roof. But there are two reasons why the race is on a knife’s edge. The first is that Jackson is not running against a generic, hapless Republican, he’s running against Susan fucking Collins. The second is the long tail of Democrats’ candidate drama. When Schumer gave those interviews in January about how “we couldn’t have better candidates,” he was referring to his personal recruit, Gov. Janet Mills. But, as one member of Graham Platner’s team told us when they were being criticized for not having properly vetted him, Schumer’s vetting of Mills missed that she was 78 years old and didn’t want to run. The rest of the story we’re all familiar with: Platner built a movement, and then imploded personally, leaving Jackson as the warm body to fill the ballot line. As our colleague Ian Prasad Philbrick wrote in an excellent piece about the race this week, “now the party is stuck, trying to win an election Platner shaped with a candidate who has to shoulder much of his predecessor’s baggage but lacks many of his talents.” It would just make too much sense, and be so dang Democratty, to fall just short of Senate control by failing to beat Susan Collins for the 900th time, with the best chance they’ve ever had to do so. Too much sense, too neatly choreographed. So maybe Democrats will get it done after all. What we’re keeping an eye on: Will any of these debates matter? Feeling a little under the weather? That’s because you’ve got debate fever, suffering reader. We’re at that point in the calendar where people across the country (well, us, since it’s our job) need a C-SPAN multi-view feature to keep up with all of the jabs; the digs. Do any of these debates matter? As much as we’d love to play it cool and laugh off the notion that anything matters, well, they sometimes do! Republicans lost a Senate seat in Indiana in 2012 after their candidate discussed in a debate what qualifies as “legitimate rape.” South Carolina Sen. Darline Graham quite nearly lost her primary a couple of months ago after saying she didn’t know anything about foreign policy. And if we’re remembering correctly, a 2024 debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump had a substantial effect on that race. We didn’t notice any blow-ups of such magnitude in the debates we watched this week. Our main takeaway from watching Senate debates in Georgia, Maine, and Michigan was how they reinforced the state of each race. Sen. Jon Ossoff is cruising to reelection in Georgia against Rep. Mike Collins, and it’s so easy to see why: With perfect poise and discipline, he delivered banger after banger against his opponent. (For example: “If John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club.” The kid’s a killer.) In Maine—a viewing experience that shaped our perspective of this race in the lead entry—Troy Jackson had all of the advantages in the world but struggled to get his answers out clearly, while Collins, always perfectly prepared, was at no point caught off guard. In Michigan, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed was, as ever, perfectly eloquent, charismatic, and cocky, but took repeated hits against some of his more left-wing positions, such as single-payer healthcare. Republican candidate Mike Rogers, meanwhile, consistently race-baited El-Sayed. In an illustrative example, Rogers described his opponent as “bought off by Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaida.” But since no one in these debates parsed the meaning of “rape,” declared that they don’t know anything about the world, or fell asleep during their answers—things of that nature—we’re not expecting any major shifts from these. What you can, should, must ignore: Anything questioning whether Chuck Schumer will be Democratic leader next year. You may have heard chatter about Democratic leadership in the next Senate. You may even have heard murmurings that Chuck Schumer, who lost standing in the party in last year’s government funding battles, might have his work cut out to remain as leader. This is nonsense. So long as Schumer runs for leader again, he will be the leader. If Schumer actually does flip a net of four Senate seats and retake the majority, it would not just ensure he gets another term as leader—it would be his finest political feat, period. If he comes up just short, he’ll be fine, as it’s not like some other leader would have found better recruits in states like Alaska, Texas, Iowa, or Ohio. And if the night goes catastrophically for Democrats and they pick up no seats, or even lose a couple, well, that just lowers the number of senators Schumer would need to win another term—to 23, 24, 25. Schumer does indeed have that many friends within the Senate Democratic caucus. Now, a good question for next year is whether Schumer, 75, chooses to take the opportunity time has presented him to step down after the next Congress, following 12 years as leader, or run for reelection and spend two years dragging the caucus through the messy politics of his own primary. But again: a good question for next year. More soot from the depths of Hades … · Trump chastised two of his top outside political hands, Chris LaCivita and James Blair, on social media after a story ran about how they were doing some consulting for a pro-Russian political party in the Balkans, threatening to fire them if he discovers anything untoward. Trump’s reaction makes no sense at first. Since when does he care about conflicts of interest or people in his orbit getting paid by pro-Russian factions? What’s happening here is that Trump put LaCivita and Blair in charge of his midterm operation, the midterm operation is not going well, and he’s mad at them. He’s reminding them who their meal ticket is. · In other Trump posting news this week: He has nicknamed South Carolina Democratic Senate candidate Annie Andrews “Annie Trannie.” Yes, oh yes, it is newsworthy that the president of the United States is using this slur. Zooming out, though, it’s even more newsworthy that he’s turning his attention to Andrews at all. He posted the slur while reiterating his endorsement of Andrews’ opponent, Sen. Darline Graham. Trump also plans to hold a campaign rally in South Carolina before the midterms. And the top Senate Republican super PAC is now spending $5 million in the state to shore up Graham’s position. Just a reminder: This is a statewide race in a state where Trump beat Harris by 18 points. If the midterm polls are overstating Democrats’ position heading into November, well, the GOP’s internal polls must be, too. · We don’t want to single out retiring North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis. There’s a bad incentive system out there in which those who at least wrestle with whether to confirm a bad nominee get more criticism than those who don’t apply critical thinking at all. But Tillis, in promoting his new book, has described his deciding vote to confirm Pete Hegseth as Defense secretary as his “biggest regret.” He added, though, that “based on the data I had at the time, I’d do the same thing again.” What other “data” did he need? Hegseth was a weekend television co-host who had published a book the previous year titled Here Are the Ways I’d Be an Asshole If I Ran the Military (paraphrasing). Prior to that, he had mismanaged running a charity, had been married 47 times (estimating), and faced serious accusations about his drinking and treatment of women. And this man was nominated to lead the American military. It wasn’t a tough decision. · The Atlantic reported that Trump was having his people draw up plans for attacks on Iran before the midterms, and shortly thereafter, Trump posted that “we will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd.” This is an interesting way for the commander-in-chief to tie his own hands on the use of force for a set period of time. It also overtly concedes that the war timeline is being dictated by the political calendar. Last, it reinforces that he probably does have plans for after the midterms. · We’re just tickled by how every day or so, some new audio of Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton at a private event leaks. You can set your watch to it. That doesn’t mean that what he’s caught saying is particularly interesting, though. When he said that every Republican candidate’s numbers dropped after the GOP midterm convention, that was simply true. When he said that it’s “the war, it’s gas prices, it’s diesel” dragging his candidacy: Ding, ding, ding! When he said that “making some reasonable cuts to mandatory spending—you’re gonna have to do it”—well, yes, that’s the Republican Party position and one that the GOP legislated on just last year with its cuts to Medicaid and SNAP. Did he say anything truly new at this fundraiser, like that he thinks James Talarico is a pretty good guy or that he enjoys wearing dresses when mowing the lawn? We await the next clip … Chuck Schumer Democrats Elections Senate Susan Collins The Surge Maine 2026 Midterms