Mitch McConnell is suddenly hedging his bets

| 7:01 pm EDT October 16, 2018
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Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is so routinely dishonest, you can never afford to take him at his word. However, his actions do sometimes tip off what he’s really thinking, or what he expects might happen next. Accordingly, McConnell just gave away that when it comes to control of the Senate, he’s hedging his bets.

Publicly available polling, demographic, and voter data suggests that while the Democrats are likely to take control of the House, they face an uphill battle in the Senate. That’s mainly because, in a quirk of the schedule, there are a whole lot of Senate Democrats up for reelection, and just a handful of Senate Republicans. But now McConnell is making a move which gives away that he thinks GOP control of the Senate after the midterms is far from a given.

Mitch McConnell is pushing forward with a plan to to try to confirm several federal judges during the “lame duck” session between election day in November, and when the new Senate session begins in January, according to a new report from Bloomberg. There would be no real reason for McConnell to make this kind of lame duck move, which would invite major blowback and could backfire on him politically, if he were confident that he and his party will still control the Senate next year.

What may be most telling here is that Mitch McConnell is looking to put this lame duck session plan in motion now, rather than waiting three weeks to see if it’ll be necessary. What does he know that we don’t? Keep in mind that each party has far more detailed internal polling than what’s publicly available. At the least, this is a sign that McConnell isn’t all that sure the GOP will retain Senate control. And to answer your next question, yes, there are some tricks the Democrats can use to try to block his lame duck appointments – but let’s successfully get through election day first.