Friday’s Wall Street Journal featured a front-page piece with the headline, “GOP’s Hopes Rise for Senate Control.”
It laid out the the Senate politiscape for 2012 thusly:
The political arithmetic for 2012 shows what Democrats are up against. Republicans would need to gain just four Senate seats to win a majority.
Twenty-three seats held by Democrats or their allies are up for election next year, compared with 10 for the GOP.
And the Journal piece provided this handy chart, compliments of Cook Political Report:
Note that Massachusetts has a “Potential switch” diamond attached to it. The Journal adds this:
Democrats say their own prospects have brightened recently in some ways.
In Massachusetts, they are encouraged that Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor who was the force behind creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, recently took steps toward running against Sen. Scott Brown for the seat long held by the late Edward Kennedy.
To get technical about it, the Journal isn’t exactly saying Warren has a shot against Brown, but it is saying that others think Warren has a shot.
Hey, Doug Rubin: Does that count as progress?
Campaign Outsider 
I don’t care how smart or direct or whatever Elizabeth Warren is. She is a novice politician up against a guy with $10 million sitting in the bank 14 months before the election. She’s toast, and yes, that’s my official prediction. Brown’s campaign warchest is the reason that no other big name Democrats have entered the race.
Okay, Mike – first on your block with an official prediction.
I think she could make it a race, but as Michael suggests, the war chest gap would put her at a distinct disadvantage.
Oddly, or maybe not-so oddly, the potentially most successful Democratic candidate against Brown might just be Deval Patrick. He has the base and the organization in place, and has proven he can raise cash.
Not unheard of, as we all know, for Massachusetts governors to move on mid-term to fulfill ambition.
Deval’s too chicken, Mudge.
Worth noting.
Deval Patrick creamed an establishment candidate in the primary and then in the general. Here it is the general that is more important, but money does not buy you an election. Meg Whitman dropped hundred of millions of dollars in California and still lost. Granted people knew Jerry Brown, but still. Better example, Linda McMahon spent more per vote than any other race last year and lost against a well-known, but weakened and less than charismatic, Blumenthal.
All I’m saying is that money is not everything. It assures you of nothing. The reason lots of others may have passed was not the money, but because they’re hoping to grab Kerry’s seat if he becomes Secretary of State in Obama II. An easy election is more enticing than a cheap one, or so they may think.
Big difference when the incumbent has more dough, though, yes?
I wouldn’t rule Warren out just yet. She’ll have a lot of money, much of it from out of state, very quickly should she declare. And she certainly won’t “pull a Coakley” in the campaign. In a head-to-head race, it may well be Brown who’s toast.
Yeah, but $10 million? Not sure she can get that much. Plus, the stronger she looks, the more Brown will collect.
And the stronger she looks, the more she’ll collect. Definitely will be interesting.
We need a candidate that is in support of alternative energy and protecting the environment, not giving tax breaks to Big Oil. I ask all massachusetts independents who were fooled by Scott Brown to vote Elizabeth Warren.