GOP takes the Senate in 2010

Despite 2010 being classified as a Tea Party Wave, it was also a big example of what happens when a party can't control its nominating process effectively. A number of races were blown because comparably weak candidates beat the party leadership's preferred candidates that year.

Delaware: Mike Castle, the Congressman, former Governor, and Centrist/Liberal Republican would have handily defeated Chris Coons.

Colorado: Jane Norton, the Lieutenant Governor, would have beaten Michael Bennett.

Nevada: Sue Lowden, the State Senator, likely would have beaten Harry Reid if she'd won

Connecticut: Rob Simmons, the Centrist Republican, lost to Linda McMahon

California: Tom Campbell, the socially libertarian Republican who had already held State Office in the form of California Finance Director, lost in his primary to Carly Fiorina

So what if the GOP took the Senate in 2010?

How would this have impacted Obama's governing style? He already tried to pull a grand bargain on entitlements historically - would he have been more likely to do so here?

If the GOP takes the Senate, but does so via running a number of less-than-conservative candidates (by Tea Party standards), would the GOP civil was escalate sooner?
 
(1) I have always found it dubious that Lowden would have defeated Reid. Remember, it was Lowden, not Angle, who talked about "chickens for checkups"...

(2) Campbell had never won statewide elected office in CA. He lost overwhelmingly to Feinstein in 2000. By 2010, despite the nationwide Republican surge, CA was just too blue a state for a Republican to win the Senate seat. Maybe Campbell would have done slightly better than Fiorina's OTL ten point loss, but I'm not even sure of that.

(3) CT: Again, too blue a state IMO for the GOP to defeat Blumenthal. Maybe Simmons wouldn't have lost by twelve points, but he would very likely have lost. Simmons' own electoral record was not that impressive; he had won CT-02 by less than 55 percent in 2000, 2002, and 2004, and lost it in 2006.

IMO the only seats where a weak candidate cost the GOP a probable victory were CO and DE. Sean Trende has argued that even CO is not that clear:

"Ken Buck. This one is tougher. We can say that Buck’s problems were foreseeable. But would Lt. Gov. Jane Norton have won? The race was close enough that a candidate without Buck’s baggage probably would have carried the day. But let’s also remember that Buck won Independents by 16 points; there wasn’t a whole lot of room for growth there. Now maybe Norton would have kept more Republicans in line, and maybe she would have run better than Buck did with women (Buck lost them by 17 points). But then again, she might not have done as well with men, whom Buck won by 14 points. But this really does look like a “generic Republican” race here to begin with: The president’s job approval was 48 percent in Colorado on Election Day, and Bennett won 48 percent of the vote.

"Perhaps most importantly, Buck’s defeat could also be blamed on the GOP establishment. Remember, the GOP planned on running former Rep. Scott McInnis as its gubernatorial nominee, but he imploded under the weight of a plagiarism scandal. The only alternative candidate, Dan Maes, refused to drop out, and Republicans were left with a gubernatorial candidate who believed in a connection between bike lanes and an attempt to convert Denver into a “United Nations community.” This in turn led former Congressman Tom Tancredo to enter the race as an Independent, splitting the Republican Party and giving additional targets for Democrats to use to boost turnout.

"Buck probably cost the GOP the seat, but the goings-on in the gubernatorial race contributed to the defeat. And to be honest, Norton wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire in the primary..." https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/05/06/the_tea_party_revisited.html

The real reason the GOP didn't pick up control of the Senate in 2010 was not weak candidates--they had some, but so did the Democrats (notably in IL). The reason, as Nate Silver pointed out, was simply that unlike the House, only one-third of the Senate was up for re-election. https://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/are-democrats-overachieving-in-the-senate/
 
Yeah I would not look at California, Connecticut, nor Nevada as places where GOP threw away an easy race. Nevada perhaps could work if there was just a better candidate like Dean Heller. Jane Norton was certainly not it.

West Virginia could have been a surprise win if the GOP had nominated someone besides a perennial but probably not with Manchin still popular. Anyway, I think most realistic best case scenario for the GOP is a tied Senate with Biden casting the tie breaking vote.
 
Perhaps we're looking at this incorrectly. Let's give them Mike Castle and Delaware as we can all agree on that, I think. It's now 52-48.

It's worth noting that Simmons' military record contrasted with Blumenthal's scandal would have had a different dynamic. Simmons was also a better candidate, to begin with. Not to say he could have won, but Democrats would have needed to spend a lot more money in Connecticut with Simmons on the ballot. The same can be said of Colorado, Nevada, and California, even if you don't want to give wins there. Maybe those resources would come from Washington and cost Patty Murray her seat. Maybe Nevada would get less because Connecticut and California needed more.

You'd need to really track down how much spending the DSCC did during 2010 and for which races, but my guess is that you would find enough to argue that marginally better candidates in CA, CT, CO, and NV could have been enough to flip Colorado, Nevada, and Washington and give Republicans the majority.
 
FWIW, a Quinnipiac poll in August (well after it was revealed that Blumenthal never served in Vietnam) showed Blumenthal doing substantially better against Simmons than aginst McMahon: "Against each of his GOP challengers, Blumenthal still comes out on top. He leads McMahon 50%-40%, he’s ahead of Simmons 54%-35%, and he’s in front of financial commentator Peter Schiff 57%-30%." http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/qui...enthal-and-simmons-gains-on-mcmahon-in-ct-sen

What about Chris Shays then? He apparently polled pretty well in 2012.
 
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