Politico’s Jonathan Martin scooped that President Donald Trump, through intermediary Sean Hannity, pitched Senator John Fetterman on leaving the Democratic Party and becoming a Republican, offering “more money than he ever dreamed of” for a 2028 re-election campaign. Fetterman told Martin, “I’m a Democrat, and I’m staying one.”
But people can change their minds, and that has Democrats on edge. Flipping the Senate is already an uphill task, requiring—ostensibly—a net gain of four Senate seats in the November midterm elections with only one Republican-held seat in a state Donald Trump lost on the ballot. Now Democrats need five to be sure Fetterman can’t snatch the gavel out of their hands.
Net gaining five seats is not completely crazy. A Blue Wave is building, and the Senate map may be expanding.
The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter classifies seven Republican-held seats (along with four Democratic-held seats) as potentially competitive. North Carolina is now seen as the most likely pickup, deemed “lean Democratic.” Maine and Ohio are “Toss Ups.” Alaska is “Lean Republican.” The farthest stretches are Iowa, Nebraska, and Texas in the “Likely Republican” category. (Note that in Nebraska, the main challenger to the incumbent Republican is the independent Dan Osborn, who has the backing of the state Democratic Party even though he pledged not to caucus with either party.)
Other Senate ratings from The Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales expand the right edge of the map further, with Montana, Florida, or South Carolina included in their “Likely Republican” category instead of “Solid Republican.” Last week, the race in Kansas—a red state with a two-term Democratic governor—was shaken up with the entry of Rev. Adam Hamilton, a Democratic megachurch pastor. (Seven other Democrats are running, but Hamilton out-raised all of them combined after one week of campaigning.)
General election poll data in several of these states is scant to nil, but what is available is favorable to Democrats. In averages of nonpartisan polls sampled over the last two months, North Carolina’s former Governor Roy Cooper has a lead of 8 points over former Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley, Maine insurgent Graham Platner is up 7 points over incumbent Susan Collins, and Alaska’s former Representative Mary Peltola is ahead by 6 points over incumbent Dan Sullivan.
We have two Texas polls from April, with Democratic Texas state Representative James Talarico ahead of both potential Republican nominees, incumbent John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, by similar margins, albeit with his own level of support mostly in the low 40s. Up in Iowa, both primary candidates—state Representative Josh Turek and state Senator Zach Wahls—fare similarly against U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson, with the Republicans slightly ahead in a March poll and the Democrats slightly ahead in an April poll. Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, trying to make a comeback after losing his Senate seat in 2024, has hit a polling rough patch, trailing an incumbent in the last three polls by an average of about three points.
We have no springtime general election poll data for the other states mentioned, nor do we in Michigan, a Democratic-held open seat with an ideologically divisive three-way primary that has many Democrats biting their nails. And while Platner is looking good on paper, more than a few Democrats are worried that the often-unfiltered political novice with a checkered social media history can’t go the distance against a proven Blue Wave survivor like Collins.
The poll data we have reveals enough competitive states to give Democrats multiple paths to netting four, even five, additional Senate seats. In theory, Democrats could nominate flawed candidates who blow winnable races in Maine and Michigan, yet with a big enough national leftward shift, still win North Carolina, Alaska, Texas, Ohio, and Iowa to net a gain of four seats.
And that’s without considering what weird things could happen in Nebraska, Montana, or Kansas, because weird things happen in wave years. Consider the “Tea Party” year of 2010, when Republicans flipped Barack Obama’s home state of Illinois, deep blue Massachusetts (after Republicans first won the late Ted Kennedy’s seat in a special election), and several other Democratic-held seats, but missed opportunities with the one-time witch Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and the gaffe-prone social conservative Ken Buck in Colorado.
However, no path is a sure thing, and no lead is safe, far from it. Lots of things have to go the Democrats’ way, and that argues for limiting unnecessary risks. That said, Democrats lack consensus on what constitutes risk. In Maine, while some see the rough-edged Platner as someone who can’t be counted on to peel off moderates from Collins, others saw the elderly and politically cautious Governor Janet Mills as too similar to Collins and a poor choice to rally disaffected voters fed up with the political establishment, leading to her suspending her campaign.
As there is no way to adjudicate who is right before votes are tallied, a reasonable approach to mitigating risk—as with financial investing—would be to diversify the portfolio.
Democrats have largely already done this. As much as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has faced criticism for recruiting Mills, who went on to run a lackluster campaign, few Democrats are complaining about his recruitment of Brown, Cooper, and Peltola—traditional candidates with proven track records of winning statewide. Schumer also stayed out of the Nebraska race, giving a clearer path to the independent Osborn, a labor leader and economic populist who was not at all in the Mills mold. Texas primary voters concluded Talarico—an economic populist who focused his ire on “billionaires” but not Trump—was a safer bet to win over red state swing voters than U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett, who regularly attacked Trump.
Primary voters in Iowa (on June 2) and Michigan (on August 4) have to decide how much additional risk to add to the portfolio. Turek and Wahls don’t have big issue differences, but Turek—a Paralympian from a red part of the Hawkeye State—is seen as having tacit backing from Schumer. Wahls is from Johnson County, a blue square, and is endorsed by Senator Elizabeth Warren. His claim to fame is that, as a teen, he went to the Iowa House and defended the right of his two moms to marry, and he has made his opposition to Schumer’s leadership a centerpiece of his campaign. The three candidates in Michigan, state Senator Mallory McMorrow, former gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed, and U.S. Representative Haley Stevens, are most notably divided over Israel and health care.
However that shakes out, Democrats must prevent Fetterman from defecting to the Republican Conference before his term ends in 2029, even though he has been driving them nuts by giving Trump political cover on Iran and the vanity White House ballroom project. Moreover, Fetterman has been a supporter of every military action taken by either the Trump administration or the Bibi Netanyahu administration, which has rankled not only the strongest critics of the Israeli government who want to cut off all military aid, such as Platner, but also “J Street”-style Democrats who are embracing conditional aid or limiting military aid to defensive weapons.
Yet a Democratic Fetterman beats a Republican Fetterman. As Politico’s Martin points out, Fetterman votes with his party 93 percent of the time, including on big legislation, as when he opposed Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill. Most importantly, if the midterms go well for Democrats, they will likely need Fetterman to at least retain his party affiliation so they can claim the Majority Leader post and control the Senate floor, allowing the chamber to conduct robust oversight of the Trump administration and to check Trump’s executive branch or judicial nominations.
If Platner is part of that majority, the two will surely clash. Platner’s presumptive nomination prompted Fetterman to ratchet up his disgust with the party’s left flank, going on Fox News and saying it represents a “small Communist takeover in Maine,” and telling a reporter, “If Maine wants an asshole with a Nazi tattoo on his chest, they get him.” Meanwhile, in an interview with Zeteo, Platner called Fetterman “the bane of my existence” and stressed how they are complete opposites on Israel. Democrats have long been a big-tent party, and this will be a testosterone-fueled stress test on the tent poles.
The trick for Democrats is to embrace the differences. Even Platner and Fetterman will agree a whole lot more than they disagree—for example, both support single-payer health care. And Democrats have muddled through intra-party differences before. They held the caucus together during the Biden Administration, when Senators Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin successfully resisted planks of the party’s agenda; they both became independents but didn’t leave the party’s caucus. They didn’t crack during the Barack Obama years, even though Democratic caucus member Joe Lieberman won re-election in 2006 as an independent when his support of the Iraq War led to a bitter primary defeat and campaigned for Obama’s 2008 opponent John McCain.
But too much disrespect can push a senator over the edge. In 2001, President George W. Bush wouldn’t agree to Senator Jim Jeffords’ request for additional special education funds, and Jeffords wouldn’t go along with a tax cut of Bush’s preferred size. Then the administration didn’t invite him to an event celebrating one of his Vermont constituents as a Teacher of the Year, and implied to a newspaper it might scuttle legislation to help his state’s dairy farmers. Shortly thereafter, Jeffords flipped control of the chamber by becoming an independent and caucusing with the Democrats.
Politico’s Martin reports that “Fetterman has become increasingly isolated” and until recently would “spend time between votes reading through his phone until [Republican Senator Katie] Britt came out to join him for meals.” But now, “Fetterman is spending hours with Senate Republicans in their cloakroom and in some leadership offices.” And he also “spends much of his time on social media” tracking closely what people are saying about him.
For Democrats, just as important as flipping Republican seats and holding Democratic seats on the ballot in November, is for their senators to bring Fetterman back into their social circles, and for their keyboard warriors to take it easy on the big guy.
At least until the 2028 Pennsylvania Senate primary.
