Today is definitely the right day for a ganja break….
CA-Sen: President Obama was out in California doing not one but three separate fundraising events for Sen. Barbara Boxer. The fundraisers are expected to bring in between $3 and $3.5 million, split between the DNC and the Boxer campaign. But I can’t imagine it will be an even split, seeing as donation caps for party committees are more than ten times greater than for campaigns.
DE-Sen: WTF? Can someone please explain to me why, of all people, Chris Van Hollen – the chair of the DCCC – is helping to fluff Republican Rep. Mike Castle’s bipartisan cred? CVH is co-sponsoring legislation with Castle which is aimed at “responding” to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. The merits of the issue aside, why on earth give a gift like this to Castle?
PA-Sen: The primary is just a month away – so Joe Sestak finally has to blow his cash hoard on a crunch-time push against Arlen Specter, right? PoliticsPA says that their sources are confirming Sestak will at last go on the air with TV ads today, but doesn’t have any details on the size or breadth of the buy.
MI-01: Dem state Sen. Mike Prusi, who had been weighing a bid to succeed retiring Rep. Bart Stupak, says he won’t run. There are still several Dems in the mix, though.
Chicago-Mayor: After denying it for quite some time, Rahm Emanuel finally admitted to Charlie Rose that he would like to be mayor of Chicago some day – but that he wouldn’t challenge his “dear friend” Richard Daley.
Polling: Nate Silver points up an interesting issue with Rasmussen’s “House Effect.” Rasmussen defenders often argue that the firm’s likely voter screen produces more-Republican results because conservatives are more fired up this cycle. The problem with that claim is that Rasmussen does release one set of numbers that cover all adults and are not screened in any way: their monthly partisan ID tracker. And on this measure, too, Ras is six points redder than average. Nate offers a few guesses as to why Ras leans this way even without any screening.
My guess is that he wants to be promoted within the D leadership in the next Congress, which probably does mean having to kiss up to Beltway idiots who actually believe the Broder lie that Dems can’t win unless they pretend to be Republicans and love Republicans. His actions endorsing Case in Hawaii (which will almost certainly backfire in favor of either Hanabusa or Djou) and now doing this “bipartisanship” crap with a guy who will probably win one of our most competitive Senate seats really just confirms it for me. CVH wants a leadership job and he’s kissing up to the Beltway to get it.
Oh great, as soon as a Democrat even suggests or actually goes through with working with a Republican, you guys go off on a tangent again, wondering where CVH’s loyalties lie. Gimme a break!
And they end with an incoherent whimper http://www.citizenrecall.org/j… .
This was the second recall effort of the first openly gay mayor of a top-20 US city. The first time, I regularly saw people outside of local markets getting signatures.
The second time was reportedly more well funded, but I did not see anyone outside of local markets in at least in this (or nearby) Portland neighborhoods.
No word (yet) on how many signatures they got this time.
More power to them, one political party doesn’t hold the entire lot on good idea. It’s suppose to be about the health of the nation and not necessarily time to worry about politics when legislating. Good for Van Hollen and Castle.
I think Biden et al. are letting Castle finish out his career as a four-year senator.
It’s been a while since i’ve posted and I know were not supposed to talk policy but I can’t help but think that the one silver bullet the Democrats have is Wall Street reform. If the Republicans are portrayed as being defenders of the big banks and Democrats campaign for reform that the big banks are publicy opposed to there could be a turning point in what looks to be a crappy year for Dems. Also on Castle while it is good to see some bipartisanship it was a crappy move politically. You don’t hand bipartisan cred to someone who is looking for a promotion. Van Hollen being head of the DCCC should know better.
from the jaws of victory for the GOP. About a week ago he announced he was endorsing Ken Buck over Norton in Colorado. Norton has raised $1.8mil versus Buck’s $500k. Apparently it was due to Buck’s ability to win straw polls and the fact that he was going to dominate at an activist convention. So I can kind of understand this move, I mean sure it is the wrong move based on the probability of a candidate winning but hey Buck has raised some money.
Now Demint is endorsing Marlin Stutzman, what haven’t heard of him? That is totally understandable b/c he 125k in the entire first quarter of this year which usually makes a candidate a some dude when it is a Senate race. So if raises almost 400k in the 7 weeks he is in the race, how disappointing is 125k over 3 months? According to Politico, Stutzman has 70k in CoH, which, of course, means that he is a future conservative leader and worthy of an endorsement.
I am starting to think that Jim Demint was genetically engineered by a bunch of Democratic Party scientists to single handedly destroy the Republican chances in the Senate.
Per Taegan Goddard.
I hope McCain goes with him.