With President Trump primed to go after vulnerable Democratic senators in red states, it’s clear the country’s future hinges on the credibility of what political scientists call the Rich Miller Theorem.
The Dems have to hold on to all of these seats to have any chance of taking the Senate from the Republicans in November.
Miller concocted his theorem to explain why state rep Ken Dunkin, a Democrat, got whupped while state senator Sam McCann, a Republican, was reelected in the March 2016 primaries.
Yet McCann beat Benton with almost 53 percent of the vote.
“The real lesson here is you can get away with breaking from your party only if you’re standing with the people back home,” Miller wrote in a postelection column for Crain’s. “McCann did, Dunkin didn’t.”
Obviously, the embattled Democratic senators up for reelection in November aren’t from Trump’s party. But they’re the sort of nonideological, bring-home-the-bacon Democrats who have been able to appeal to Republican voters. Apparently, their greatest sin is they don’t bow at Trump’s feet—which, come to think of it, is no sin at all.
