Mark Plotkin writes in an op-ed for The Hill that former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon is the Democratic Party’s “unlikely new friend.”
Plotkin argues that Democrats will regain control of the Senate if Bannon follows through on his efforts to primary and defeat incumbent Republican establishment Senators with a slate of insurgent conservative candidates who adhere to the populist and economic nationalist issues that got Trump elected in 2016.
On the day after the 2018 midterms, “the new Democratic majority … would be instructed to write warm thank-you notes to its benefactor: Stephen Bannon,” Plotkin writes.
From Plotkin’s op-ed in The Hill:
Trump won West Virginia by a whopping 36 points and Indiana by a huge 18 points. Bannon wants to field not “establishment Republicans” but Republicans who fit his ideological mode. Moderate, nonpolarizing electable types need not apply.
Very likely, if Bannon has his way, the Republican incumbents could be defeated in a “Bloody Bannon” primary (Arizona, Mississippi and Nevada). That could produce a contested general where Democrats would have a decent chance to pick up three seats.
Couple that with the Dems holding West Virginia and Indiana. Keep in mind both Independents caucus with the Democrats.
Who knows, a political “Hail Mary” might arise soon, in which Roy Moore goes down to Democrat Doug Jones in Alabama this December.
There is a scenario by which the machinations of the “Bannon purge” would not result in adding GOP seats, but the absolute opposite would occur.
Democrats pick up a minimum of three seats, possibly four. The Republican Senate becomes a Democratic Senate.
Bannon would be happy, at least: Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would no longer be majority leader.
Read the rest here.
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