Patty Murray has been a staple in the Senate representing the Evergreen State since 2010. She has previously served as the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, is heavily financed by labor and teacher unions, and has donated some of her excess campaign cash directly to the DSCC earlier in the year, believing she was in a cakewalk to reelection this November.

Murray is facing the best Republican candidate for the Senate anywhere in the country this cycle in Tiffany Smiley. Multiple senior people on the Hill have told me if she were a candidate in a red state, she’d be up by 10 points. Regardless, she is a very dynamic and charismatic presence that is hits the sweet spot on education, energy, and crime by offering a recovery and reform agenda.

Washington has always been, however, along with California and Oregon, among the very most liberal states in the Union. No national pundit or pollster has this race on their watch list…yet. So why am I talking up this contest? A Trafalgar poll came out last week that got very little attention because it was released around Labor Day weekend. It showed Murray ahead, but only by three points among a survey of likely voters, not registered voters. Trafalgar, of all the polling outfits, has been among the more reliable in the last couple cycles, so it’s not something to just easily dismiss as an outlier.

The last poll previous to Trafalgar in Washington among likely voters, admittedly sparse because the assumption has always been Murray was untouchable, was an Elway poll in mid-July that had Murray up 20. We’ll get to the why this huge drop may be possible in a bit, but first, a couple more data points to note. Murray first was elected to the Senate in 2010. In that blanket or nonpartisan primary, Murray garnered a little over 670,000 votes. Flash forward to 2016. In the same blanket primary system, Murray earned over 745,000 votes. Now move to this year, where Washington’s blanket primary was held on August 2, right in the window where Murray’s numbers would be crashing from the +20 to the +3 polls, Murray only received 557,000 votes. That’s a 25% falloff from 2016. Now the big question – why? I’ve got three possible explanations.

1. Tone deafness – Murray is as much a puppet for teacher unions as any member of the Senate. While they have tons of money to throw around, parents have found their voice again in the wake of the pandemic, and Murray has consistently come down on the side against the parents. The most recent example was Labor Day weekend when Murray faceplanted on CNN’s State of the Union with Dana Bash and refused to admit locking down schools was a mistake, even knowing what we know now.

2. Crime/economics – Murray is going to be the top of the ticket of offices voted for this November. Fair or not, she’ll be held responsible as a proxy of Biden/Democratic policies. Nationally, Civiqs has the right track/wrong track as of September 11th at 25/66. In Washington, again a progressive enclave, it’s at 30/61. That’s not a great place to be if you’re an incumbent. Neither is consistently being underwater on the Congressional generic ballot, currently favoring Republicans by four.

3. The Red Backfire – or so Rasmussen Reports is calling it in their latest Biden job approval poll, which shows Biden still upside down 45-53, stuck there for the last couple weeks in the wake of the President’s ill-advised Independence Hall screed set to lighting you’d see in the opening scene of an episode of The Man In The High Castle. But the tell in the Rasmussen poll is the effect of the Biden speech on independents and swing voters. By a margin of 58-38, indies want Biden to knock the anti-MAGA rhetoric off and get back to work. Harvard-Harris also had a poll this week showing 56% of respondents hated the Biden speech. The President may be trying to light a fire under his own base, but he’s alienating the center in the process. This is mirrored somewhat in a new poll out of Trafalgar, showing Biden upside down on job approval, 39-55. But with independents, Biden has fallen to a new low, 35.5-58.5. It’s also interesting to note that in that new Trafalgar poll, the Congressional generic map has moved back towards the GOP, now up 5.7% again. In short, the coattail effect of Joe Biden is helping to smother Murray in the same way it’s affecting every other vulnerable Democrat.

I know we Republicans have held out hope before in Washington when Dino Rossi ran. This time feels different. The landscape in 2010 did revolve around backlash at the jam down of Obamacare, and Republicans picked up a ton of seats. But we didn’t also have 8.6% inflation, skyrocketing crime and drugs, increased homelessness, wokeness in schools, and an open border all going on at the same time.

So even though this is certainly a longshot, let’s play this out a bit. Assume for the sake of the argument that Trafalgar is onto something and Smiley does close the gap and wins in November. Can you show me a scenario where Patty Murray goes down in Washington and Michael Bennet holds on in Colorado? I sure can’t. If those two go down, can you show me a model where Catherine Cortez Masto holds on in Nevada? Not likely. That would be three flips out West, and we’re not even discussing Blake Masters in Arizona all of sudden within two points of Mark Kelly. And that’s before we look to the eastern side of the country.

You know deep down John Fetterman isn’t going to make it across the finish line first, right? You understand his policies are not in line with Pennsylvania, and he’s just physically incapable of discharging the duties of the job to represent the state? I hope and pray he recovers from his stroke and heart attack. I wish him a long and happy life. But the fact remains he has no business being in this race for Senate, and more and more Pennsylvanians are recognizing this daily.

And then finally, Georgia. Three of the most recent polls out of Georgia have Governor Brian Kemp pulling away from Stacey Abrams by well outside the margin of error. The spread currently is 7 points, and it could reach double digits by Election Day. Can you show me whom exactly is the Kemp/Warnock voter, because I don’t think that Georgia voter exists. Herschel Walker will win that race, and I don’t think it will be that close by the time we reach November.

The Manhattan-Beltway media elites would have you believe that the prophesied red wave has receded, that there’s not going to be much of an impact at all on Democrats. I’m here to tell you that if my sources on the Hill and my hunch are correct, we could wake up on November 9th not only with the largest Republican majority in the House of Representatives in 100 years, but we could also see Republicans in control of the Senate by at least four seats, five if Masters comes through in Arizona, six if Maggie Hassan goes down to Don Bolduc in New Hampshire.

Realism would dictate that nothing will go as well as you hope and it’s better to be prepared to take maybe a net one seat win on November 8th if you can get it. But the optimist in me is seeing the data, the optics, trendlines, and how much Democrats from top to bottom are floundering down the stretch, and it’s hard not to get excited about the prospects.