Why did Senate Republican campaign chief John Cornyn tell me last night on CNBC that it is numerically impossible for the GOP to retake the upper chamber this November?
I asked him about this twice, and he stayed with it. It came out sounding defeatist. Sort of like General Patton telling Ike, “We will never get to Berlin.”
In fact, it is numerically possible.
And more to the point, it is politically possible.
There are 18 Democratic senators up for grabs.
Right now, the GOP is in excellent shape to take Illinois (President Obama’s seat), Delaware (Vice President Biden’s seat), Nevada (Harry Reid’s seat), and North Dakota (Byron Dorgan’s seat). So that’s four. It would give them 45 seats. So they need six additional seats out of 14.