While West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema stood firm against the Democratic Party’s attempted demolition of the Senate, four vulnerable Democratic senators facing voters in 2022 signed on to escalating partisan battles in Congress on behalf of a Democratic power grab.
Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, and New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan all toed the line when Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer ordered them to kill the Senate filibuster. Democrats wanted to abolish the filibuster so they could nationalize elections and ban state voter ID laws, all the while insincerely accusing their opponents of perpetuating “Jim Crow on steroids.” All four senators joined in the farce.
President Joe Biden’s approval in New Hampshire is 15 points underwater. Hassan’s support is the worst of all four. She was among the 31 Senate Democrats who signed on to a letter in 2017 defending the filibuster, and that makes her look even worse. Hassan avoided a dangerous opponent in GOP Gov. Chris Sununu, but she is still just treading water, underwater with independents by 23 points. And that is an improvement from her numbers just a few months prior.
Cortez Masto, meanwhile, is facing a difficult situation in Nevada. Her most likely opponent, former Attorney General Adam Laxalt, has already won statewide. The Nevada Democratic Party was taken over by Bernie Sanders supporters who have no idea how to run it. The party also happens to be bleeding registered voters. In December, the Cook Political Report called her reelection race a toss-up.
Kelly and Warnock are both facing their first reelection campaigns in traditionally red states. Kelly is more unpopular than Sinema in Arizona and has now tethered himself to Biden, who is even more unpopular in the state.
Warnock was only able to win his election because former President Donald Trump convinced his supporters in Georgia to stay home. Like Kelly, he has done nothing to distance himself from Biden in his brief time in the Senate. Biden is 13 points underwater in Georgia.
All four of these senators have directly tied themselves to Biden, a serial liar and incompetent president who has failed in all of his major promises, and Schumer, a New York liberal who leads the Senate based on whatever Democratic activists demand of him. These senators won’t be able to hide those ties, and voters in their states will have a chance to remind all four what they think of Biden and the Democratic Party after a year of disasters.
