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November 2018 is fast approaching. There's 33 Senators who are up for reelection, and of those, 23 are Democrats. While some are in safe seats, CNN has weighed in on who they think is the most vulnerable and likely to lose their position. Their pick for the Democrats? Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO).

McCaskill was elected in 2006, and won a close election over Republican Jim Talent. She failed to garner over 50 percent of the vote, and initially appeared to be vulnerable in 2012--until Republican challenger Todd Aiken said some rather unfortunate things about a woman's chances of pregnancy resulting from a rape. Needless to say, McCaskill easily won that election.

Now she's up once again for reelection, and CNN is projecting that this could be the easiest seat for Republicans to flip in the coming year. While he hasn't declared candidacy just yet, Missouri's Attorney General Josh Hawley is considered to be a likely challenger for McCaskill, and, provided he doesn't make any absurdly stupid remarks about rape and/or sexual assault survivors, could very easily win the seat. Romney and Trump both won the state by sizeable margins, and the state is pretty reliably GOP, having reelected Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) last year despite an impressive challenge from Democrat Jason Kander.

Further, Missourians just don't seem to like her all that much. In the most recent Morning Consult rankings, McCaskill is one of the least-popular senators in the entire country, with just six of her colleagues scoring lower approval ratings than she did. That doesn't seem like a recipe for success.

It's interesting to note that of CNN's top-10 most vulnerable seats, the majority of those listed are Democrats--and the two Republicans may go down in primaries. If the Republicans play their hands right, Election Day 2018 could be a very productive day for the Senate.

Excerpt from:
Is This the Most Vulnerable Senate Democrat? - Townhall

ILLINOIS NEWS NETWORK

A Democrat running for Illinois governor is distancing himself from his own partys leader.

State Rep. Scott Drury, D-Highwood, blames House Speaker Michael Madigan for creating the environment that allowed Gov. Bruce Rauner to win in 2014.

"When we had control, we allowed our pensions to spiral out of control, we didn't do things that our base wanted us to do, Drury said. Rauner became the candidate of 'anything but Democrats'. In that way, Speaker Madigan was the Dr. Frankenstein who created the monster he could no longer control."

Madigan has served as Illinois House Speaker for 32 of the past 34 years. He recently became the longest-serving House speaker in U.S. history.

Drury was the sole Democrat in Springfield who did not vote for Madigan to retain the title of Speaker earlier this year. He argues hes the only one in the race with a track record of standing up to the Chicago Democrat.

"I believe that Speaker Madigan has hedged his bets with various candidates in this race, Drury said. Certainly the one who's resonating the most right now is J.B. Pritzker. But when you look at the facts and other candidates, certainly Madigan has his claws into [Chris] Kennedy and Daniel Biss as well."

Drury has unveiled a reform proposal that in part takes aim at what he calls the Madigan Problem.

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"First of all, we need to have term limits on legislative leaders, Drury said. We absolutely need an influx of fresh ideas and I think term limits on legislative leaders would get us there."

The proposal also offers Drurys solution to the states pension problem and would prohibit legislative leaders from holding outside employment. Drury says his plan does not rely on any further increase in income taxes.

"By looking toward generating savings, rather than finding new sources of revenue or tapping into revenue, we can immediately invest that money into bipartisan issues that people want, such as public education or health care," Drury said.

Drury says he doesn't believe Gov. Rauner is doing a very good job and actually has made the state worse during his tenure. Hes interested in attracting support from across the political spectrum, including among dissatisfied Republicans.

"I'm looking for anyone who is sick and tired of Illinois, Drury said. Illinois is a bipartisan mess and the only way we're going to fix that is by looking for candidates who have solutions to the problems and go past the partisan bickering and want to make honest changes. Not just changes that are politically beneficial.

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Madigan to blame for Rauner's election win, Democrat governor candidate says - Illinois News Network

A Republican state House candidate filed a motion to make sure the GOP primary isnt invalidated if the only Democrat in the race should be disqualified.

The motion, filed Thursday in Tallahassee by John Newstreet, president of the Kissimmee/Osceola Chamber of Commerce, and his attorney Wade Vose, seeks to make sure no substantive action is taken before Tuesdays Republican primary on a lawsuit claiming Democrat Paul Chandler cant legally run for office.

Newstreet is one of four Republican candidates, including Usha Jain, Bobby Olszewski and Bruno Portigliatti, facing off in a closed Republican primary for state House District 44. More than 3,000 people have already voted through early voting and vote by mail.

Only Republican voters can vote in the primary due to the presence of Chandler as a Democratic candidate. If there was no Democratic candidate, the Republican primary would have been open to all voters, Democratic, Republican and and independent.

But a lawsuit filed Tuesday by Charles Hart claims Chandler voted in Missouri in 2016 and does not fulfill the two-year residency requirement to run for office in Florida.

Wes Hodge, the Orange County Democratic chair, said he believed Chandler has been a resident since 2015 and would win the lawsuit. He also cited a state statute that would allow Democrats to replace Chandler on the ballot if there was a vacancy.

Newstreet, however, cited another section of the statute that states there is no vacancy and no way of naming a new candidate if a court finds a nominee did not properly qualify or did not meet the necessary qualifications to hold the office for which he or she sought to qualify.

He wrote he had concerns a sore loser in the GOP primary may try to argue that if Chandler is disqualified, and Democrats are not able to name a replacement, the closed primary results should be thrown out and an open primary held in its place.

Newstreet stated he welcomes confirmation by Hart, a longtime and well-recognized Republican activist, that he does not support, and affirmatively opposes any future attempts to retroactively invalidate the validly conducted Republican primary election scheduled to be concluded in only 5 days.

He also asked the court not to disenfranchise thousands of Central Florida Republican voters.

slemongello@orlandosentinel.com, 407-418-5920 or @stevelemongello

Lawsuit seeks to disqualify Democrat candidate in House race

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State House candidate: Don't invalidate GOP primary if Democrat is disqualified - Orlando Sentinel

Republican strategist Karl Rove says Democrats only have themselves to blame for their ongoing struggle to organize themselves, even in the face of a Republican Party that has failed to deliver on its big promises.

Rove said even as President Trump struggles with a low job approval rating, Democrats are dividing themselves, in some cases by insisting on unpopular positions.

In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Rove noted that West Virginia Gov. Jim Jordan switched to the Republican Party last week after saying Democrats "walked away from me."

He noted that Sen. Heidi Heitkamp was forced to vote in favor of a methane regulation that her state's industry opposed because of pressure from "left-wing advocates."

"Progressive intolerance was also evident last month after the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Rep. Ben Ray Lujn, announced the committee would fund pro-life Democratic House candidates," Rove wrote.

But after Lujn announced that, left-wing groups criticized him, and led to dissent from Howard Dean, the party's former chairman.

Rove said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has pressured Democrats to back a single payer healthcare system or lose support from his supporters during the 2016 campaign.

"This trend points to a broader problem for Democrats: their lack of a credible, unifying, positive message," Rove wrote.

"That leaves Democrats with a platform that entirely consists of furious resistance to President Trump," Rove wrote. "Yet their message of obstructionism has been wholly ineffective so far."

Rove said Democrats should be focusing on ways to appeal to middle America, but said he doubts that will happen because "out-of-touch ideologues and radicals have such an iron grip on the party."

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Karl Rove: 'Progressive intolerance' preventing a Democrat comeback - Washington Examiner

In a special election on Tuesday, the Democratic Party maintained control of an Iowa House district that President Donald Trump won by a large margin in November.

Democrat Phil Miller, a 65-year-old veterinarian and president of the Fairfield school board, defeated Republican Travis Harris by about 9 percentage points in House District 82, which covers a southeastern stretch of the state.

Millers win to replace five-term Democrat Curt Hanson, whose death in June sparked the special election, would not ordinarily be notable.

But the district picked Trump over Hillary Clinton by some 21 percentage points in November, prompting Democrats to hail Tuesdays win as a major victory.Miller also bested then-PresidentBarack Obamas winning 2012re-election marginin the district by about 7 percentage points.

DLCC is putting Republicans on notice tonights victory in a district Trump won by 21 points just last fall is a testament to Democrats strength in deep red districts, Jessica Post, executive director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said in a statement Tuesday night.

Millers win shows that rural Iowans are rejecting an agenda that prioritizes the wealthiest at the expense of hardworking families, Tom Perez, Democratic National Committee chairman, said in a statement Wednesday morning.

The DLCC contributed $50,000 to Miller and sent their regional political director to help get out the vote and advise on strategy.

The DNC hosted get-out-the-vote phone-banking for Miller from its Washington, D.C., headquarters. In July, the central party body also increased its monthly contribution to state Democratic parties to $10,000 a one-third increase over its 2016 investment level.

Phil Miller/Facebook

Miller ran on a platform of making health care more affordable, increasing education funding and boosting worker pay. He emphasized his deep roots in the community as a veterinarian who helps many local farmers keep their livestock healthy.

Andrea Phillips, first vice chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, suggested to HuffPost that the Republican-controlled legislatures passage of horrible bills had produced a backlash. Iowa, which remains under unified Republican control, gutted public sector collective bargaining rights and defunded Planned Parenthood earlier this year, Phillips noted.

Its looking more and more like what happened in 2016 was people who were feeling left behind and disaffected by the system wanted to shake things up a little bit, Phillips said of Trumps strong performance in the district. But now theyre able to see what the policy effects of that are and both at the national level and the state level theyre not happy with that.

Miller may have also benefited from an unforced error by Harris. The GOP candidate ran an ad attacking Miller for a school board vote allowing transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice. But Fairfield is still reeling from the June suicide of a transgender teenager, so it is possible the ad hurt Harris more than it helped.

In a series of special elections since November, Democrats have had more success at the state level than in congressional races. In addition to maintaining control of the seat in Iowa on Tuesday, Democrats have flipped four Republican-held state legislative seats that went heavily for Trump. The upset outcomes include victories in the New York and New Hampshire legislatures in May, and a pair of wins in the Oklahoma legislature in July.

Not all of the results were favorable for Democrats on Tuesday. The party failed to flip two GOP-held Missouri legislative districts in special elections, one in the House and one in the Senate. Democrat Michela Skelton was nonetheless able to win 48 percent of the vote in her failed bid for Missouris 50th House District. Democrats did not contest the seat in 2016, but Trump defeated Clinton there by 21 percentage points.

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Democrats Hold Iowa State House District That Went Heavily For Donald Trump - HuffPost