I know we’re all focused on the criminal President Donald Trump.  He sucks all the oxygen out of any situation; it’s his biggest talent.  Even so, look away from such a big, orange, squalling baby. We need to think about the Senate a lot harder.  If the Republicans keep their Senate majority, Mitch McConnell will block everything, from legislation to the courts. Nothing will change. Democrats need to flip the Senate, too.

And the odds aren’t good right now. I know it’s early, but the FiveThirtyEight site estimates the odds of flipping the Senate to Democratic control at somewhere between 18 and maybe 21 percent.  That is, they estimate Republicans have a better than four in five chance of staying on top.  And if they do, Rep. Mitch McConnell will gleefully ensure the Senate remains the legislative graveyard.  He is Trump’s chief enabler and apologist, aided by every bad-faith apparatchik.

By comparison, the site estimates the odds of the Democrats holding the House at 86% (around 6 out of 7).  That’s good enough that I’m not too worried.  And while they’re not making Presidential estimates yet, since most polling puts the top five or six Democratic candidates all ahead of Trump, that’s promising, too.

But I don’t see the Democrats focusing as much on the Senate, and we should.  The Republican party has already demonstrated that no level of corruption is too awful for them. We know how much harm they can cause.  That’s why we all need to lever those Republicans out of power.  I like America as a liberal democracy and not a new Republican kleptocracy. We need to flip the Senate as much the Presidency.  Without that, every initiative that threatens Republicans will still die in the Senate. And kiss goodbye our hopes for an impartial judiciary.