Senate in play

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With the prospects of a Clinton victory becoming more and more likely - even more so if one factors in access to early voting - it might be interesting to turn one's attention to another - and potentially more influential - political contest - especially in the long run.

The Republicans currently hold a 54-46 Senate majority over the Democrats (with Independent Angus King caucusing with the Democrats, and Independent Bernie Sanders pretending to be a Democrat)...

34 seats are up for election in 2016, 10 being Democrat and 24 being Republican. This fact alone leaves the GOP in a vulnerable position, as they have to defend more seats....

And to make matters worse for the GOP, several recent polls have shown that the Democrats are likely to reach at least 50 seats in the Senate - likely a result of the poor performance by Donald Trump in the last few weeks.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dem ... ref=senate
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls ... e_map.html
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the ... -downhill/

And as Clinton is projected to win the presidency, likely vice president Tim Kaine would thus get the tie breaker vote (as stipulated in Article I, Section 3, of the US constitution) in the Senate, generating a 51-50 Democratic majority in the Senate.

A possible reason for this development could be that "split-ticket" voting has been declining...


Source: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 ... -now-rare/

As demonstrated above (for the House, not the Senate, though) voters are now a lot less likely to vote for different parties in congressional and presidential elections than they were 40 years ago, which means that Donald Trump's dive in the polls will likely spill over on the Republican candidates for the Senate in November...

Anyway... the implications of Senate under Democratic control can be quite profound due to the number of Supreme Court justices likely to retire in coming years. Not only is Scalia's seat vacant.... Ginsburg is 83, Kennedy is 80 and Breyer is 78. Furthermore, there are rumours (so far denied by his wife) that Clarence Thomas is contemplating retirement as well...

... A president with a Senate majority would thus have an an almost unprecedented opportunity to influence the direction of the Supreme Court, by appointing 4 or even 5 new Supreme Court justices.

Please discuss.

This is why some Republicans have been urging their party to fund their nominee less and less, since concentrating on him misses out on everyone else (most of whom presumably have not actually been as reckless as he was, but he won't lose as much as they would if they held a seat)... the supposed rich buffoon doesn't even want to fund his own campaign, and even those around him can barely talk to him, apparently, so at this point it may even be game theory to be selective on who deserves the party's support... after all, as everyone noticed in the convention, the nominee cares only about himself, so why should any rational party reciprocate something unrequited.