But let’s also be honest about the daunting nature of the task facing Democrats. Both Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have been, on average, two points more Republican than the country as a whole in presidential elections. As elections analyst Harry Enten has pointed out, since 1982 the president’s party has defeated one incumbent senator in 87 attempts in such races (GOP Sen. Lauch Faircloth lost in 1998). But in that election, President Bill Clinton’s disapproval was roughly where President Biden’s approval sits today. Maybe Johnson is a special case, and there’s always a chance he loses. But we should probably start with a strong bias against it happening.

The president’s party has performed better in open seats that lean toward the opposition in presidential elections, but even then they are just 3 for 35 in the past 40 years. Republicans won an open seat in Minnesota in 2002, while Democrats won the Indiana Senate seat in 1998 and held the West Virginia Senate seat in 2010. But these three pickups all involved some combination of strange circumstances (the death of Sen. Paul Wellstone shortly before the election in 2002), an extremely popular president (1998 and 2002), or unusually strong candidates for the opposition (Evan Bayh, Joe Manchin, and, arguably, Norm Coleman). We might posit that Fetterman qualifies as an unusually strong candidate, but that remains to be seen; his endorsement of Bernie Sanders and his health issues are potential minefields for him to navigate.

In any event, it isn’t impossible for Democrats to flip one of these seats. It would just be unusual, especially with a president whose job approval sits in the 30s, and we should treat the possibility as such.