State of the Race, 2024: Republicans Are Choking Congress. Again.

House and Senate rating updates, with a movie we've seen before.

For the past eight years, the greatest enemy of the Republican Party has been the Republican Party. Ever since Donald Trump took the oath of office in 2017, the entire party has become addicted to running some of the worst candidates imaginable in the country’s most important races, year in and year out. While none have (yet) matched the alleged pedophile that was their inaugural Senate candidate of the Trump era, this hasn’t been from a lack of trying. From crank TV doctors to self-described aspiring werewolves to a man who looks like the DieWorkWear for skin suits, the party’s inability to nominate anything resembling a normal person has cost it countless Senate elections that they otherwise should have won.

I’m not saying this as speculation. It has been empirically calculated that if the GOP contested the past three Senate cycles with generic candidates—not even good candidates, just generic ones—they would have seven more Senate seats than they currently have now. Even after taking their national underperformances in 2018, 2020, and 2022 for granted, their current 49-51 minority could—should—be a solid 56-44 majority. Nothing should have been able to stop them from spending this year celebrating three straight years of blocking Biden’s agenda and mapping out their plans for a supermajority in 2025. But they aren’t, and it’s entirely because they cannot stop running psychos. Essentially all of the positive things that have come out of Washington over the past few years are a direct consequence of this, which is a fact that will never cease to amuse me.

Still, all good things must come to an end. Or, at least, they should. At the beginning of the 2024 election cycle last year, one of the few things that appeared to be certain was that the paper-thin Senate majorities wrangled together by Democrats in the 2020 and 2022 elections would meet their end come January 2025. The party, holding on to a margin of error of only one seat, faced a veritable buzzsaw of a map. Their dangers ranged from a nigh-guaranteed loss in West Virginia, generational challenges in Ohio and Montana, and an endless list of seats in states that leaned to the right of the nation in 2020. For Republicans, this should have been idiot-proof. It was idiot-proof. Even I, someone with no issues doubting the ability of Republicans to screw things up, found it hard to see how they could even blow the opportunity presented to them this year.

I may have underestimated them.

By itself, this article is a simple update of my personal ratings for the U.S. House and Senate over the next year. But it’s also part of a far larger story—one where Republicans have everything going for them coming into an election and end up blowing it for the dumbest reasons imaginable, over and over again. Although it’s a long way until the election and it might be a very high bar, the party could very well end up outdoing themselves this year. Here’s how 2024 could be on track to be the GOP’s biggest choke yet: a second straight election where Democrats, against all odds, retain their improbable Senate majority.

The Official Ettingermentum Senate Ratings Map, April 2024. No Tossups.