re: #8 Love-Child of Cassandra and Sisyphus

All it takes is one Democratic Senator to either die in office or otherwise be removed, for the whole enterprise of the Democrats to collapse.

Actually, no. Only a handful of the Ds would pose problems if they ceased to be among the living. Sherrod Brown would be a problem, for instance, because DeWine could make an interim appointment. Bernie and Leahy, too, because the VT governor is also a Republican(*). And Kelly and Sinema, of course, and Ossoff and Warnock, and the NH delegation, and Manchin.

But those are the exceptions. Most of the Democratic caucus comes from states with D governors, and there’s NC with two R senators and a D governor who could name a replacement if one of them keeled over.

“Removed” isn’t an issue - that can only happen with a supermajority vote of the Senate itself, and that’s obviously not going to occur when the majority is at stake.

What’s more, the average age and health of the Republican delegation is pretty bad, so the odds would suggest it’s more likely we lose one of them at some point in the next year and a half. Some would be immediately replaced with Republicans until a special election in 2022 (or 2024, depending on state law), but the laws in other states call for special elections sooner. And we know some of those seats could be winnable - if Ron Johnson runs home to his masters in Moscow, for instance, we could win that seat in Wisconsin.

Which is to say: yeah, anything could happen - but it could happen in either direction. Maybe we get stuck with a 49-51 D minority for a couple of years (but at least the 51 Rs still can’t get any shitty judges through as long as Biden’s not nominating them), or maybe the odds go the other way and we end up with a 51-49 D majority that’s not hinging on Manchin or Sinema to pass things. And Manchin as the 51st vote is almost infinitely less powerful or consequential than Manchin as the 50th vote.

(*But while the governor of VT is a Republican, he’s a New England Republican and not one of the crazies, and flipping the Senate to Republican control would be a political death sentence if he pulled the trigger on that.)