“The key to Republican victory in 2022 is supercharged support from the MAGA base combined with the more passive disenchantment of a slice of the electorate that is downcast over the economy and COVID and not really thinking about Trump even if they don’t like him. The key for Democrats is to make it as hard as possible to straddle that divide. Trump will give them countless opportunities. The infrastructure bill is a cudgel that can be used in various ways against House Republicans who voted against it (think Rep. Young Kim in California) and those who voted for (think Rep. Malliotakis in New York). There’s a precedent for this. Actually there are tons of them. But there’s one that is particularly apt. Republicans stormed back into power in the 2010 midterm. But it took them until 2014 to recapture the Senate. There are a bunch of reasons.”

“But the big one is that in 2010 and to a lesser but still real degree in 2012 they kept nominating nutball candidates. Harry Reid won his last term in the Senate in large part because his campaign helped the GOP along in ditching a more palatable candidate for Tea Party yahoo Sharron Angle, who Reid defeated. Gov. Sununu’s decision not to run – which seems to have caught Republicans completely off guard – appears to be part of a pattern in which top tier GOP recruits are proving hard to convince, in part because being a Trump toady in a party-line vote Senate just doesn’t seem like much fun. Much remains outside Democrats control. But this isn’t one of them. Democrats – certainly everyone with any responsibility for campaigns – needs to spend the next twelve months working over, irritating, inflaming these fissures” – Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo.