Claire McCaskill Finds Herself In A Lose-Lose Situation

Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) was gifted a second term in 2012. If you read the Kansas City Star this morning, you can see she won’t be so lucky in 2018. As they describe it, McCaskill finds herself in a classic lose-lose situation. Missouri is trending heavily toward the Republican Party, which means the senator should be looking for opportunities to work with Republicans. Yet at the same time the Democratic Party base has never been more hostile to bipartisan Democrats:

“The Missouri senator can ill-afford to oppose too many of the new president’s choices — not in a state that swung solidly to the real-estate tycoon by 19 points in November. McCaskill will need some of those votes when she runs for re-election next year. And if she approves too many of them? Well, there goes McCaskill’s Democratic base. That’s what you get for representing a swing state that doesn’t swing quite like it once did.”

Now McCaskill faces her biggest challenge yet. The nomination of the tremendously well-qualified Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill Justice Scalia’s Supreme Court seat will focus attention on how she votes to a greater degree than any other vote she takes. According to Real Clear Politics, because McCaskill is up for re-election in 2018, she has an added incentive to vote for Gorsuch:

“At the heart of Democrats’ dilemma is an unusually challenging Senate map ahead in 2018, which will feature 10 of their incumbents running for re-election in states where Trump won. Were Democrats to block Gorsuch for months to come, their obstruction could begin to impact those frontline races.”

McCaskill’s actions will certainly be under a microscope in the coming months. Yet appears no matter what she chooses to do, she’ll piss someone off.