2018 Election

There are a lot more unknowns about the 2018 Massachusetts governor’s race today than there were a month ago. The pundits, pollsters, insiders, and blogging profs can be forgiven for attempting to apply conventional wisdom to this popular parlor game, but when it comes to the potential toxicity of Donald Trump in 2018, we may have to recognize a new species of unknowns that would probably even befuddle Donald Rumsfeld himself. In the Age of Trump we may have to get used to grappling with “virtually certain unknown unknowns.”

Since Senators have been directly elected in 1913, most reelection attempts are successful in Massachusetts.  That's true around the country as well.  A full 90% of Senators seeking reelection were successful this past November.

Here at home, only one Democrat, Senator David I. Walsh has been defeated in a reelection attempt, though on two separate occasions. I’ve been thinking of Walsh while ruminating over a data point in the recent poll that finds only 44 % of voters think Senator Elizabeth Warren “deserves reelection.”