151 thoughts on “Weekly Open Thread: What Races Are You Interested In?”

  1. good to see the NRCC pouring in money.  Dede doesn’t stand much of a chance in my opinion.  

    Of course, the best part is that the money from the CfG is going in there to work against the NRCC thus spending nearly triple the money from the right that we’re spending from the left.  

  3. You have to listen to this amazing eerie song, The title song of King Crimson’s breakout 1969 album In The Court of the Crimson King, an amazing song and a landmark spurt of creativity that helped establish and lead into development and the popularity of Progressive rock as a genre.

    Artwork from their 1969 album cover. I hope you enjoy it, you should, it is among my favorite songs, such an eerie and dark song with such fantastic images associated with it. I find it very inspiring in many ways, it is a rare transcendent song and it has a sort of timeless sound to it; it doesn’t seem dated at all. It seems to remind me a lot of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland for some reason.

    Thoughts? Any suggestions for what I should go for next week? Thinking a little Earth Wind and Fire for President Obama’s sake, lol.  

  4. It’s a swingy district (Obama probably won it, but Bush did, too) formerly held by a Democrat who resigned to take a seat on the state transportation board.  It includes all of Baldwin County (Milledgeville) and a sliver of Putnam County.  Baldwin County is like 43% black and is home to Georgia College and State University.  It can go any way, including to an independent.

    I’m liking what I’m seeing from our guy: http://www.darrellblack.com/is…

    I will work with the Democrats in congress and the governor to ensure that all Georgians can have access to affordable health care and that insurance companies will not be able to deny you for having pre-existing conditions.

    I’m committed to improving the economy and protecting the environment. Bringing green jobs to Milledgeville is an important step in not only improving the economy in the short-run, but also ensuring that our children and grandchildren have access to the natural resources that we enjoy in our region.

    (That whole thing deserves bolding.

  5. Bob Vander Plaats is ready to put up a fight against former Governor Terry Branstad in the GOP primary.

    Another Republican candidate, Chris Rants, is posting old newspaper articles about Branstad on his website. Rants is a former speaker of the Iowa House and has a reputation for playing mean. He’s probably mad because most of his potential donors recruited Branstad instead of getting behind him. He’s been publicly criticizing Branstad for weeks.

    Branstad will be roughed up quite a bit between now and next June.  

  6.  I wonder how much Palin will Go Rogue to help out Hoffman in the NY-23rd. Probably as Rogue as she did in her memoir called Going Rogue coming out Nov. 17th . She collaborated with someone (I forgot the name) who is a pretty accomplished Conservative writer. I wonder who wrote most of the book?

    Now there is another book called Going Rouge coming out also on November 17th. It is a complete takeoff on Going Rogue. In Going Rogue, the cover has a picture of Palin with a backdrop of a blue sky. Going Rouge’s cover has a picture of Palin with a stormy sky. The subtitle is American Nightmare. It is composed of essays exposing Palin for who she really is, an uneducated woman who wanted to ban books, thought we could have a war with Russia and did not even know Africa was a Continent.

    One more positive about Going Rouge: I wonder how many Palin supporters will mix up the two books, knowing how extremely perceptive and deep thinkers they are….

  7. oh what could have been, had he beaten McDonnell for AG in 2005.  That won was decided by like 500 votes if I recall correctly.

  8. that I have ever encountered:

    The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

    Judith Baker, 1998, famously won Denis Dutton’s Award for Bad Writing in Academics.

  9. This is my favorite race. I’m pretty sure it’s a D+3 district, about 20,000 more Dems registered than Republicans. Dent is a 3-term moderate Republican incumbent who managed to hang on in 2008 (Obama carried this district by a 10-point margin with 56% of the vote.) due to an exceptionally weak Democratic candidate Sam Bennett who somehow blew through 3 campaign managers and never quite got her organization together. Lehigh Valley Democrats are hungry for his seat. It was held by Pat Toomey prior to Dent. John Callahan is the popular mayor of Bethlehem, recruited personally by Joe Biden. He raised $345,000 since July – $115,000 more than Dent, though Dent has more cash on hand. Also, there is a libertarian candidate, Jake Towne who recently announced an independent bid. He is a teabagger and is one of the guys listed on the ThisNovember5th libertarian moneybomb site. I’d love to see some polling on this race, or analysis you may have to offer. I’m wondering if Democrats might be able to help split the Right, ala NY-23.

  11. I don’t want to count the chickens before they hatch, but I feel really good about this race. After Daniel Aubertine ducked out on the Dem side and the local GOP picked a moderate candidate that fit the district, I didn’t feel very bullish on our prospects here. That has all changed.

    Doug Hoffman is way too much of a wingnut to win this district. In the highly unlikely event that he wins this thing, there’s no way he could hold it in 2010.

    This race shows the GOP that they cannot control the teabaggers. I hope Hoffman outperforms Dede Scozzafava if only to encourage the far right to get involved in contested primaries next year. If we can get “moderate” Senate candidates like Mark Kirk or Kelly Ayotte to move to the right and throw their money away in contested primaries, it would be a dream.

  12. Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

    Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

    Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

    Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

    Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

    Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

    Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

    Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

    He was my North, my South, my East and West,

    My working week and my Sunday rest,

    My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

    I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

    The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

    Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

    Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

    For nothing now can ever come to any good.

    W.H. Auden, makes me think of the upcoming election for Marriage equality in Maine…

  13. Not seriously nervous, but his hype and support in the political chatter world is rising to the point that if it translates to real votes, Owens could have a 2-way fight after all.

    I know, I know, DeDe’s support is not likely to crater quite enough to let Hoffman sweep the center-right coalition.  And Hoffman’s and CfG’s TV ads have openly bragged about Hoffman’s conservatism, which doesn’t win over the nonpartisan middle.  The odds clearly are strongly in Owens’ favor.

    But a lot can happen in the last couple weeks of an election, and if Hoffman’s surge continues at some point real voters could start to catch the bug.  Passion, when it’s there, matters in a special more than a regularly scheduled election, and Hoffman is the only candidate of the three whose supporters have any.  I just hope the odds win out and that passion doesn’t spill over at all outside the conservative base.  It helps that Hoffman himself has no personal appeal, that his rallying cry is built around ideology.

  14. We all have pretty solid ideas on what’s going to happen in NY-23, NJ-Gov, and VA-Gov.  Polling has been relatively consistent.  In Maine, it has followed the same pattern as California, people are in favor of keeping gay marriage well before the election, but as the overfunded smear campaign develops, the polls tighten have tightened.  

  15. This week Corzine pulled into the lead on both Real Clar Politics (run by Republicans) and pollster.com after being down in the polls most of the year. CQ politics has rated this race a tossup and so has SSP. Investors on intrade.com now give Corzine a 63% chance of winning re-election which is almost a 20% jump from where he was last month. In addition every poll says New Jersey is a dead. We also need to keep in mind that every democrat including Corzine in 2005 has outperformed their poll numbers and the GOP has not won a statewide election since 1997. I’m not saying that Corzine is going to absolutely win but a fair rating for this race would be tossup. However, Corzine-NJ still remains under lean takeover on Rothenberg Political Report. Rothenberg even wrote an article about how everyone think this race is a tossup but that Christie will win. This race is a tossup and I think that it is rediculous that Rothenberg is refusing to acknowledge that.

  16. In a race that needs more attention, the Seattle Times endorses the crypto-Republican Susan Hutchison a little over a week ago: http://seattletimes.nwsource.c…

    This terrible news, combined with polling before the endorsement that had Hutchison up 47-42 over Democrat Dow Constantine, makes it seem that one of the most liberal counties in the country is about to be governed by an evangelical batshit conservative. 30% of Democrats and 50% of independents are being tricked by her lack of a public service record and name recognition, they have no idea what they are getting into.

  17. A Bleeding Heartland reader claims Iowa Senator Brad Zaun, former mayor of Urbandale (a heavily Republican suburb of Des Moines), is ready to run against Leonard Boswell in IA-03. Boswell underperformed the top of the ticket in 2006 and 2008, so this may be a race to watch, but I would still give Boswell the strong edge. Zaun is little-known outside the Des Moines suburbs.

  20. http://www.politico.com/news/s…

    Some interesting findings:

    – They plan on spending $200-300K in the final week-and-a-half for Scozzafava, and the ads will focus solely upon her vs. Owens.

    – GOP strategists see a path to victory for Scozzafava, and not one for Hoffman.

    – Perhaps this isn’t new news, but Hoffman cannot even vote in this election; he resides in another district.

  22. Do not go gentle into that good night,

    Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

    Because their words had forked no lightning they

    Do not go gentle into that good night.

    Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

    Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

    And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

    Do not go gentle into that good night.

    Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

    Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    And you, my father, there on the sad height,

    Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

    Do not go gentle into that good night.

    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.  

  23. This is Papa John Kolstad.  I would like to clarify:  I am not running as a Republican.  I am running without party affiliation.  The Minneapolis Republican Party (very different from the high profile Republicans we are all used to hearing from) have endorsed me.  I am also endorsed by the Minneapolis Independence Party.  I was first asked to run by members of the Green Party. (They can only endorse actual party members so that party cannot endorse me.)

    This election has been overshadowed in the media by coverage of hopeful candidates for next years election for Governor.  The media has decided that it, not the people of Minneapolis has the responsibility to decide what candidates are viable or not. My website http://www.papajohnkolstad.com explains my issues.

    Papa John Kolstad

  27. I think the thread spammer always strikes on Monday mornings.  Either way, thanks for the cleanup on aisle 5 mods!  Appreciate it.  

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