This fall’s menu in Senate sideshow

I hope by now you’ve managed to come to grips with the fact that we’re no longer going to have Jeff Sessions in our lives.

“It’s been a real adventure for me,” Sessions said in his concession speech this week, after he lost the Republican Senate nomination to a former football coach whose biggest campaign moment probably came when his bus caught on fire.

It’s a little weird contemplating Sessions now. Donald Trump’s treatment of him was outrageous, but if anybody’s going to suffer a political stab in the back, you have to be glad it’s the guy whose policies as attorney general ranged from keeping more people in prison longer to “good people don’t smoke marijuana.”

Tommy Tuberville, the football coach who beat Sessions, doesn’t seem to have any ideas beyond flexing his muscles and promising to do whatever Trump likes. Alabamians have no idea what he would do if Joe Biden was president, since Tuberville will never acknowledge such a possibility.

The nominee will go on to fight Sen. Doug Jones, the Democrat who you’ll recall won his seat in a race against a judge with a history of making improper advances to teenage girls. Tuberville will presumably be more of a challenge.

I guess we’ll have to chalk the Alabama primary up as a win for Trump, who assured voters that Sessions was “not mentally qualified.” (This was before the president gave that wild, rambling news conference in which he claimed Biden was opposed to windows.)

We’re deep into the Senate election season now, with primaries right and left, setting the stage for the Democrats’ attempt to take control of the majority in 2021. Everything is on the line — taxes, economic recovery, Supreme Court justices.

Let’s look at a few of the battles brewing. You’ll be able to discuss them with your friends over virtual cocktails.

In Maine, Republican Sen. Susan Collins is fighting for survival. You may remember Collins as the self-styled brave independent moderate who spends most of her working days caving in.

Moving west there’s Arizona. This is the one that could tip the balance for the Senate Democrats. The Republican incumbent is Martha McSally, who lost a Senate race in 2018 but then was appointed to the state’s second seat after John McCain died and his successor quit.

You could argue that she’s been through a lot. Everything, really, except being elected to her job.

We’re pretty sure McSally’s Democratic opponent is going to be former astronaut Mark Kelly, even though Kelly first has to weather a primary against someone named Bo Garcia. All we know about Bo is that his nickname is “Heir Archy” and he’s running as a write-in candidate. Really, that’s all. No campaign website, no nothing. But if you write in his name on your ballot, they’ll count the vote.

Do not be dispirited because some of the people running for high office appear to be phantom candidates from nowhere.

Think of it this way: It’s sort of inspiring how wide open the system sometimes is, as long as you don’t expect to actually get elected to anything.