Vanan Murugesan

So, but again, when you're the incumbent and you're having defend a really bad political environment,

It is harder to turn your challenger into to create a referendum on the challenger.

It's not impossible.

And Ricketts has some deep pockets and has even his own money, potentially, if he chooses to use it.

His father, TD Ameritrade, at least a piece of that version of the company before it merged with some other aspects of it.

But there's some deep financial pockets there.

But I think this political environment presents Osborne an even stronger opportunity to win than the presidential environment did, right?

First of all, presidential turnout in Nebraska made it even harder for him, I think, to overcome.

But the other thing that is still going to be a difficult thing for him to overcome is this idea of, well, if he's running against Ricketts, it means he doesn't want Republicans to control the Senate.

So by default, Dan Osborne, does that mean you want Democrats and Chuck Schumer to run the Senate?

How he answers that question and how he answers that question throughout the campaign is going to matter a lot in his ability to win.

If I were in his shoes and I kept getting asked that question, so which party are you going to caucus with?

He goes, look, I don't – the easy answer is I don't want Donald Trump running the Senate and I don't want Chuck Schumer running the Senate.

I know when I get elected, I'm going to pull together the true independents of the Senate, Lisa Murkowski –

Angus King and whoever wants to be in this independent caucus.

And I'm going to try to start an independent caucus.

And we're going to make the two parties make their case to us as a group as to which party ought to run the Senate.

And.

I think short of a response like that.

There's Osborne's going to have a hard time convincing maybe somebody who's not a big Ricketts fan, maybe not a big Thuner Trump fan, but doesn't want to see Chuck Schumer in charge of the Senate.