To spin this out I don’t think any rose coloured glasses are needed.
The fundamental reality is that North Carolina might have been disappointing for the Democratic Party this time but it was still close. A controversial far right candidate might do well in the primary but they will lose enough in the general to not win.
I think that will be a stronger effect than any anti-incumbency bias in 2022.
Ditto Cruz in Texas in 2024.
It's true that in the 2020 race for the other NC seat, the Dem challenger was making it real for Tillis.... until his sexting scandal blew up.
Cruz, yeah, if his behavior in this crisis can't be made to stick in Texas voters' minds through 2024 then there's something really wrong with the Democrats. They should have one unit in the Dems' Senatorial Campaign Committee that does nothing but watch Ted Cruz operate and communicate.
Cruz is clever and glib and is loathed in the Senate by his peers (and by the House leaders) since early in his first term. He won't stay in his lane and thinks it's part of his job to help manage the House Freedom Caucus. But in 2018 the voters didn't care about all that inside baseball of Congressional protocols, so they stuck with the devil they knew. It wasn't lost on anyone though that O'Rourke got more votes than any Dem in the history of TX politics in 2018, and had enough pull downballot to cost the Republicans control of two courts, a raft of seats in their state legislature, and in Harris County 17 additional Black female judges.
As for the other Senate-side guarantor of an objection to the 2020 election (and the notorious power gesture maker before the Capitol incursion), Josh Hawley, I hope he's really finished. A no talent opportunist. Missouri was better served by McCaskill for sure.
I wonder if all these guys who voted for one or the other objection to the election in the wee hours on Thursday will end up over at Parler.
