NEW: Third Senate Dem Calls It Quits

Rats. Sinking ships. Some disassembly … inevitable. 

Conventional wisdom around midterms usually has the party in the White House losing steam as voters correct for overreach. So why have three Senate Democrats already announced their intent to retire ahead of the 2026 elections? 

Jeanne Shaheen made the surprising announcement this morning that she would forego a fourth term, following Tina Smith in Minnesota and Gary Peters in Michigan. Shaheen probably would have had a decent incumbent advantage in New Hampshire — and Chris Sununu had already passed on challenging her:

Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire will not run for re-election in 2026, bringing an end to a long and singular political career and further complicating Democrats’ efforts to regain a majority in the Senate.

Her decision not to seek a fourth term will immediately set off a high-stakes race in a state whose voters are famously fickle. Last fall, New Hampshire voters supported former Vice President Kamala Harris for president and elected Democrats to Congress, but they also voted for a Republican governor and expanded Republican majorities in the state legislature. …

Among the Republicans already considering a run for Senate from New Hampshire next year is former Senator Scott Brown, who represented Massachusetts for one term and later relocated to New Hampshire. He came close to beating Ms. Shaheen in 2014 and went on to become ambassador to New Zealand in Mr. Trump’s first term.

The state’s popular former governor, Chris Sununu, a Republican, has said that he will not run.

He said that before now. One has to wonder whether Sununu will reconsider now that he wouldn’t have to face an incumbent, which makes it more likely for him to win. The NRSC could step up its recruitment efforts in that direction with Shaheen out of the way. Sununu is hardly MAGA, but he’s popular with New Hampshire voters. Brown would be a better fit with Trump but a tougher sale with the electorate that would have to send him to Washington. 

The big question now is why three Senate Democrats with multiple elections under their belts are deciding to call it quits now. None of the three are exceptionally old, especially in Senate terms; Shaheen is by far the oldest at 78, but Senators routinely run for new terms even in their 80s. (Smith just turned 67 last week, and Peters turned 66 in December.) Neither is this a case of musical chairs in safe states for Democrats; they should be able to keep the seat in Minnesota unless Republicans can recruit Tim Pawlenty, but they have lost significant ground in both Michigan and New Hampshire. Losing incumbents in those seats portends real disaster for a party that needs to gain four seats next year to take back the Senate, and where they already face a big problem in holding Jon Ossoff’s seat in Georgia.

What makes this even more interesting is that Shaheen is bowing out even though Trump will still have two more years left in his presidency at the midterms. Her retirement statement acknowledges that it was a “more difficult” decision because of Trump’s whirlwind first two months. So why not stick around to fight Trump, rather than retire and run the high risk of giving Trump even more political support in the upper chamber?

Three theories come to mind, none of which are mutually exclusive:

• Health issues: I certainly hope this is not the case for Shaheen, whose health has seemed pretty solid over her tenure. If she’s retiring, let’s hope for a long, happy, and healthy retirement for Shaheen. A health issue would explain why she’d get out now, though, and would certainly be an honorable choice on her part under those circumstances.
• Pessimism over Democrat leadership: Need we explain this? If Shaheen thought Democrats would be competitive and productive over the next decade, she’d stick around to be part of that effort. The collapse of real leadership in the party — as exemplified by the Joe Biden cover-up, the Kamala Harris switcheroo, and the embarrassing spectacle last Tuesday night makes the Democrats’ leadership and intellectual bankruptcy all too clear. Smith and Peters had already checked out before Trump’s speech to Congress, but one has to wonder whether that was the last straw for Shaheen.
• DOGE Killing the Funding Pipelines: I have argued for the last few weeks that DOGE has exposed and has started to dismantle an American Adscam. The slush funds set up in the federal bureaucracy had sent a firehose of money to progressive activists through NGOs, with the $2 billion to Stacey Abrams out of Joe Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act” the most telling exposure so far. If that money dries up — and much of it already has — then Democrat incumbents on any kind of bubble will find their re-election efforts much more difficult. Perhaps Shaheen sees the writing on the wall and chooses to check out now.

It could be all of the above or a combination thereof. There could be other reasons, too, which again need not contradict these. Maybe she’s really tired after 50 years in public service, which would certainly be understandable — but the reasons for that exhaustion could very well listed above. 

Whatever the reason, Senate Democrats have at least two real problems on their hands with these incumbent retirements. They could still win with new candidates, but the money and organizing necessary for competing in what had been relatively safe incumbencies will deduct from efforts elsewhere to challenge Republicans. Democrats’ cratering approval ratings — David will have more on that next — will also drag down recruitment and organizing across the board, but perhaps especially in Michigan and New Hampshire. The rush to the exits also makes all of these problems more obvious and paint Democrats as more desperate. And as Morrissey’s First Axiom of Dating and Politics instructs, Desperation is not an aphrodisiac.

Update: On #3, let’s not forget the imminent dismantling of ActBlue, too. I’d guess that they acted as a laundry for those NGOs and slush funds that DOGE is dismantling, but there are other funding streams that went through ActBlue whose absence would cripple Democrats further. However, the most likely immediate outcome of the fall of ActBlue is that a replacement will be quickly constructed.