well, look at this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_Alaska,_2010

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_election_in_Alaska,_2016

in 2010, Murkowski lost her primary to Joe Miller, a tea party candidate who challenged her from the right. she was barely able to hold on to her seat with a write-in campaign, but only because she had strong fundraising and name recognition (her father was senator and governor of alaska for a combined 24 years).

in 2016, her right-wing nemesis Joe Miller ran again, this time as a libertarian and got almost 30% of the vote to Murkowskis 44%. (the rest was split between the actual democratic nominee and the woman who challenged him from the left and ran as an independent.)


so even as things stand today, around 30% of the Alaskan voters prefer candidates who are significantly to the right of Murkowski, while she won her last two races with just 40-45% of the vote. if she alienated just every fourth voter from her base, she'd already be in a world of trouble. and if she was the decisive vote that spoils the golden opportunity at a strongly conservative Supreme Court, we can safely assume that she would indeed lose at least one in four voters of hers.


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tldr: no, she will not sink Kavanaugh's nomination. she would probably vote against him if there were ~10 other GOP senators doing the same, but not if she would be the decisive swing vote along with Collins.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 9 2018 08:17pm

now that I think about it, this might also allow Collins to cast a "just for show"-vote against Kavanaugh, fully knowing that he'll get nominated nonetheless.

Lol. Cant the g.o.p only lose 2 votes? Or is it 3.

As soon as Kyl gets nominated to replace McCain, the GOP will be back at 51 senators. They can then afford one dissident, and confirm Kavanaugh with 50 votes plus Pence as the tiebreaker.

so you don't believe me when you I Murkowski is more likely to vote against then Collins? Murkowski has more of a reason to vote against KKKavanugh IMO...

Murkowski and Collins SHOULD both vote against but Collins will cave i'm 99% sure, she already got duped twice within the past year, time for a third.

I haven't followed the centrists dems either, do we know how Manchin and the likes are voting?

Manchin et al probably want to vote for him to build their centrist credentials, hence, if there is a majority for him among GOP senators, so that he would get nominated irrespective from Manchin, then he will vote for him as well. I'm not so sure about the case where Manchin would be the swing vote though. Say Collins and Murkowski reject Kavanaugh - in that case, Manchin could provide the decisive vote to confirm him nonetheless. But I really dont think he'd do that, because he'd then be guaranteed to lose the more liberal parts of his base. Which exists even in WV.

definitely will be the most interesting supreme court nomination in my lifetime BY FAR.

I think he gets in, but I'm not willing to say it's 100% yet.

you have to ask yourself if the GOP's members are willing to risk not getting a win in 2020 for POTUS. if they lose the senate in 2018 they're looking at a stonewall from the dems on any other nominations. Perhaps even if the POTUS wins in 2020 they could be senate-less from 2018-2024 and then we get another liberal justice.

I don't think many are willing to risk that, but perhaps they are.

its not even noteworthy. the same thing happens every time

Democrats cry, republicans nominate anyway. the one nominee under bush was the interesting exception

they're not losing the senate in 2018. there's no way, that would be a HUGE choke.