As progressives beat down the doors of Democratic organizations to run for office, Republicans are having the opposite problem. A demoralized GOP base, particularly in affluent suburbs, is also depressing their candidate recruitment efforts for the Senate, writes the New York Times:
Republican anxieties run deeper than just the House. The gloomy environment has hampered their recruiting in a number of Democratic-held Senate seats, alarming the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, according to Republican officials who have spoken to him, who insisted on anonymity to describe those conversations.
Joel McElhannon, a Republican strategist in Georgia, said intraparty wounds from the presidential race remained raw in areas Republicans badly need to win, making it difficult for them to turn out their voters.
“It makes it hard to energize the broader Republican base when there are still these unresolved conflicts,” said Mr. McElhannon, predicting: “You’ll see it in various suburbanized districts throughout the country.”
The path to flipping the Senate in 2018 is nearly impossible for Democrats: They need to pick up three seats in a cycle when they'll be defending 25 seats (including those of two independents who caucus with them), while the GOP defends only eight nine seats. But GOP Senate leaders surely hope to pad their slim two-seat majority and some people have pondered whether they could pick enough seats to reach a filibuster-proof 60. Failure to recruit good candidates in competitive districts could seriously hamstring those efforts.
And frankly, anything that "alarms" Mitch McConnell is cause for celebration. He's the walking, talking epitome of everything that’s gone wrong in American politics.