Senate candidates should be good fits for their state

Dan Osborn isn't "giving" Nebraska

I’m a big fan of Dan Osborn. That time he ran an ad claiming his Republican opponent was anti-Trump because she called for Trump to drop out in September 2016 after the Access Hollywood scandal? Priceless! That time he overperformed Kamala Harris by 14%? Amazing! But I can’t help but feel like he’s wasted on Nebraska.

What’s wrong with Nebraska? Well for one thing, it’s too red. Harris lost it by a little over 20%, while Osborn lost by a little over 6%. Ideally, if you’re running a maverick Independent campaign for Senate that’s capable of running 14 points ahead of the Democratic nominee, you should be doing it in a state that’s bluer than R+14.

Less well-studied however, is the fact that Dan Osborn’s working-class populist shtick is particularly good at flipping back less-educated voters who used to vote Democratic, and Nebraska just isn’t that kind of state. Today, Nebraska is bluer on a Presidential level than it’s been in decades. The ideal Independent candidate for flipping Nebraska is … I don’t know, a Mitt Romney type? I think you need someone who is more right-wing economically, they love that stuff.

When you look at how Osborn’s coalition partially turns back the clock to Obama 2012, it’s easy to see that he would’ve been a much better fit for a state that Obama won e.g. Iowa or Ohio. This isn’t to say that it’s bad that Osborn ran in Nebraska, he is from there after all, and he did a lot better than any non-Republican has done in a long time. But we should be asking, given that the Osborn playbook obviously works for a certain type of voters, why aren’t Democrats pursuing it in states where it would actually succeed?

The unfortunate answer is that the states where an Osborn-style candidate would do best are also states that have elected Democrats recently enough that the local Democratic parties still operate under the delusion that they can win elections by running liberal candidates in neutral political environments (I say this because Sherrod Brown and Josh Turek may well get over the line this year, but ideally Democrats wouldn’t rely on an insane Republican President sending gasoline prices to $4.50 in order to win these states).

It’s no coincidence that the three cases of an Independent coming at all close to winning a Republican Senate seat this century have been in Nebraska, Utah and Kansas, states that haven’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in 20, 56 and 94 years respectively. Democrats in those states apparently have a better understanding of what it looks like to lose permanently.

Currently you’ve got Democrats in Montana refusing to back Independent Seth Bodnar, even though their odds of winning in such a red state are slim-to-none. Montana is another state that’s better-suited for an Osborn-style candidate than Nebraska, but alas they had a Democratic Senator until two years, so they don’t yet realize how bad it is.

Essentially, we end up with Dan Osborn in Nebraska as our standard-bearer for the concept of moderating to win Senate seats, not because he’s the greatest candidate of all time or because Nebraska is particularly winnable, but rather the opposite: because he’s left-wing-populist-coded enough that the base can stomach him, and because it’s been long enough since Democrats won in Nebraska that they’re willing to try something else. Imagine if Democrats treated trying to win Senate seats as anything other than a last resort!

This whole predicament kind of reminds me of NIMBYism. NIMBY local politicians “support” building more housing and Democrats “support” taking control of the Senate from Republicans. But the proposed apartment complex needs to be at least 80% affordable, and the proposed Senate candidate needs to be at least 80% progressive. Also the apartments have to be beautiful according to some architecture board’s definition of beauty, and the Senate candidate has to be a working-class populist according to some ex-Warren staffer’s definition of working-class populist. Oh and some neighborhoods just aren’t right for more housing, i.e. the ones where it’s actually needed because housing costs are so high. And of course, some states just aren’t right for moderate Senate candidates, i.e. the ones where a moderate Senate candidate could actually win.

The end result is mostly that no housing gets built and no strong Senate campaigns are run in red states. Occasionally some new townhouses will go up, and occasionally Democrats will let an Independent try their luck in an R+20 state. But it’ll be a weak half-measure, a vague hand wave in the direction of actually doing something.

If that sounds depressing, I sure think it is. But the optimistic angle is that we can do so much better. Dan Osborn outran Kamala Harris by 14%. There are 62 Senate seats in states that are R+14 or less. Dan Osborn is great, but he’s not the best possible Senate candidate you could find. And Nebraska is not the best state for his particular issue positioning. Taking back the Senate is actually pretty easy if Democrats try to do it, they just have to actually try.