Bob is running in the special election called to replace Rep. Weiner after, well, delicacy prohibits me from finishing that sentence in the way that it deserves. Anyway, the election in question is next month, and is already surprisingly close, this early out. Turner’s Democratic opponent David Weprin is only leading 48/42 in the latest Siena poll, which frankly demonstrates a startlingly weak lead in | Read More »
Ted is an old friend of the site and the RS Gathering: he spoke at our first one, and he spoke today as well. We talked briefly afterward: Ted’s site is here.
The basic system in the United Kingdom is what’s known as ‘first past the post:’ essentially, whoever has a plurality of votes wins. Plurality wins are in fact somewhat typical results in parliamentary systems, given that parliamentary systems tend to spawn viable third and fourth parties like rotten meat was once believed to have spawned flies*; but it can be a problem when one side | Read More »
Mind you, Sean’s not saying that Obama’s in bad re-election shape, either: he’s currently scoring the President at essentially 50/50, with the slightest edge against the man. But he’s definitely out to demolish some of the current Democratic talking points. Short version (and this is only Part One): The popular correlation between incumbency and re-election falls apart if you look at it too long; If | Read More »
This is a preemptive post: the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board and the DA’s office for Milwaukee County is will be having a joint press conference Monday afternoon at 2 PM local time about a “significant investigation.” Given that the DA for Milwaukee County is a Democrat – and given that the election results for Milwaukee County have not yet been certified – there has already | Read More »
The DCCC confirmed to Politico that WI-08′s Steve Kagen had his ad buys canceled; the usual face-saving excuses were made, but the two-term Congressman is a dead man walking (with some help from Reid Ribble). Also, it looks like AR-02′s Joyce Elliott has been likewise abandoned: I don’t think that that one’s really hit the radar yet, probably because it was an open seat and | Read More »
I just got sent something that was pretty garbled, but the gist of it is: the Hill’s reporting on at least 10 House races. Of them, 2 have the Democrat ahead and the others have the Republican ahead. Or possibly it’s 22 races, and the GOP is ahead in 19, Democrat ahead in 2, 1 tie: as I said, what I got sent was a | Read More »
So Rep. Barney Frank (D, MA) has told off progressives: he insists that they must only attempt to mount primary challenges to ‘conservative’ Democrats in districts where the Democrats have a lock on the seat anyway. If they don’t, well, apparently the response then is to suffer – or perhaps move: Rep. Frank didn’t say so, but it seems a logical enough alternative. No, really, | Read More »
Sean Trende over at RCP finds something interesting going on with minority polling. The basic numbers at the heart of what may or may not be an important trend are these: the exit poll numbers for 2004/2008. 2004 2008 Voters GOP Dem GOP Dem African American 10 89 5 93 Hispanic 44 55 29 68 As Sean notes, how these numbers shake out in future | Read More »
The NRCC has drawn up a map of all 435 Congressional Districts, separated them out by state, and linked each district to the website of either the incumbent Republican that represents it, or the Republican that will be challenging the incumbent Democrat in November. Note that in cases of contested primaries without an incumbent (like, say, FL-05′s) the NRCC is explicitly not taking sides by | Read More »
Stuart Rothenberg is having absolutely none of this preemptive excuse-making that the Democrats are starting to indulge in. You seem the conventional wisdom is now congealing into the notion that of course the Republicans were going to have a great year in 2010, and it was absolutely silly for anybody to think that it was ever in doubt that this would happen: …Indeed, on Monday’s | Read More »
Wait: I’ve seen this movie before. At the end of July 2006, I remember being… fairly optimistic about the Congressional elections. Oh, I knew that there were going to be problems. It was year Six of a Presidential administration, and the Other Side was kind of fired up. And, sure, the economy was slowing down a bit – we were all the way down to | Read More »
Joe Biden opens his mouth: “I don’t believe, the president doesn’t believe that the Tea Party is — is a racist organization. I don’t believe that,” Biden said. “Very conservative. Very different views on government and a whole lot of things. But it is not a racist organization.” (Via Outside the Beltway; H/t: Instapundit) If this seems surprising, it shouldn’t be. The NAACP has a | Read More »
(H/T: Instapundit) A fascinating bit of trivia for people out there: if you’re a Democrat, and you go keep telling a group of folks- in this case, Wall Street and other wealthy New York Democratic donors – that they’re unmitigated scum who need to be drained of every drop of their dirty money if they want to avoid being lynched by an angry Mob led | Read More »
Primary’s in a week: Steve’s in the homestretch. Steve’s site is here. Crossposted to Moe Lane.
Just to be clear, this is the Brian Walsh who is the political director of the NRCC, and not the Brian Walsh who is the communications director of the NRSC. We spoke for a bit on the recent past and the rapidly approaching future: To expand on the third question a bit: sites like Reverse the Vote also exist to assist the eventual Republican candidates | Read More »
There’s a lot of interesting stuff in this John Dickerson article on what last night’s results really mean, but this last paragraph is probably the one that needs to be most referenced: The night showed just how limited Obama’s political power is. He said he’d work all-out for Specter, but he didn’t campaign for the senator in the final days. That may have been a | Read More »
It’s going to hurt the Democrats quite a bit this election cycle: The one exception to this bad Democratic news is blacks. They continue to approve of the president at near-unanimous levels. But blacks midterm turnout is also traditionally low compared to white and older voters. Blacks were 13 percent of the vote in 2008. But blacks were only about 10 percent of the vote | Read More »
To evoke Terry Pratchett, what I’m going to be looking for is a candidate who I think will actively try to ensure that tomorrow is going to be pretty much like today. Liz Cheney (via Gateway Pundit) has some thoughts about whatever person we stick with the 2012 cleanup job is in for: I’m personally not all that interested in talking 2012 until we’re done | Read More »
So Rep. Anthony Weiner of NY – who is understandably upset that the Democrats were not able to take advantage of Mayor Bloomberg’s revealed weakness in yesterday’s election – made a somewhat passive-aggressive suggestion that the administration spent too much time on Jon Corzine and pretty much no time at all on Bill Thompson. Such things are inevitable in the aftermath of a lost election, | Read More »
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