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

  2. So I’m DEFINITELY keeping up with NV-Sen & NV-03. I was VERY pleased by today’s Razzy results. If they show Harry Reid slightly ahead, then I’d say hs in a good position to start the home stretch & Dina Titus is probably also in a good position. (As I explained in an earlier thread, and Jon Ralston has also talked about, Harry’s & Dina’s political fortunes are VERY much tied at the hip.

    I’m actually on my way to see Harry tonight at the “LGBT for Harry Reid” meet & greet, so would you like me to say howdy for y’all? 😉

  3. …this is my first post in quite awhile. i’m out on the north fork of long island right now. any thoughts on tim bishop? i see LOTS of signs for randy altshuler and chris cox. just saw a pretty good ad on local tv for bishop. i love this area and would hate to see it go gop.

  5. one advantage is who they’re electing.  Dick Morris and Erick Erickson predict (yeah, i know, i know, they’re idiots, but still…)that republicans will once again shut down the government and they win.  I believe the former, but not the latter.  imagine if that happens and angle, buck, mcmahon, and especially paul all sneak out from under mcconnel’s eye and get on the air.  how do you think the public will view republicans as they cheer about government shutdowns as people lose their benefits, jobs, etc in quite possibly the worst time imaginable?  That’ll just drive their numbers down further.

  7. This may have been done already I do not know. Pick any two people to be your representatives in Washington. Two Senators and one Congressman. No one from your state. For me it would be Bernie Sanders and Barbara Boxer for Senate and for Congress it would probably be Chet Edwards.

    Round Two Open Thread Topic

    Basically the same question except pick two senate candidates and one congressional candidates running this year to be your Senators and Congress member. No incumbents. For me it would be Jack Conway and Joe Sestak for Senate and probably Hanson Clarke for Congress.  

  12. A Blunt is beating a Carnahan in most recent polling, this is troubling to say the least.  Is anyone else trouble that we aren’t running a MO-9 which has some fairly blue college towns or do we take the approach of the less candidates, the more resources to spend on other races?  

  13. The half a billion egg recall becoming an issue in these campaigns (see also here). Our outstanding Democratic candidate for secretary of agriculture, Francis Thicke, has called out the incumbent for doing nothing to inspect the feed mills that were the source of the salmonella outbreak.

    The biggest opportunist of the week is Brenna Findley, Steve King’s longtime chief of staff who is running for attorney general against a 28-year incumbent. All year she’s been talking about how we need a more “business-friendly” AG, but she’s trying to get mileage out of the egg recall now.

  14. Well it’s not really a game but it is somewhat interesting task. Go to the Rasmussen Reports Face Book page and click on ten random people who “liked” the page and tally up what political party they are. You can usually tell by looking at their likes, if not just put that you couldn’t tell. I’m not saying anything about their reliability but it is just interesting to look at. I would link the page but I am worried that it would put my personal FB info on there, not sure if it would or not so I’m not going to try. Sunday night I will average all of the results to see Rasmussen’s fans political leanings.  

    My Results of ten Rasmussen likers

    Republicans- 7

    Couldn’t Tell- 2

    Democrat- 1

    So what did you get?  

  18. While I highly doubt this happens, but lets just say for arguments sake that the bottom completely falls from under the Democrats and they lose 60 to 70 House seats.  Unlikely, but possible if things got bad enough.

    Under such a scenario, which House Democrats do you think would become vulnerable to being swept away in such a wave?  

  19. looked at VA-09, and found Rick Boucher (D) beating Morgan Griffith (R) 50%-40%.  And that’s even with their still-funky numbers among young people, with Griffith winning the 18-34 age group by a 49%-37% margin.  (That’s with an 11% margin of error, though.)

  24. ringing endorsement of anyone who ever served in the NY State Legislature:

    In the Assembly, there are not enough real contests. And in New York, that means one thing: the Democratic Party has given some of Albany’s worst legislators a free ride. Here’s the only solution: vote against the incumbents.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09…

  25. Obama down 6 in gallup and Rasmussen from what I’m sure is an absolutely horrid sample from last night… Everyone’s on vacation, except the old “Obama is a muslim” coots answering the phones.  That’s going to probably cancel out any gains we made earlier in the week with the generic ballot… we simply can’t catch a break!

  26. http://stateofthestateks.com/2…

    “A spokesperson for Wink Hartman confirmed Saturday the former Fourth District Republican candidate is considering re-entering the race for Congress. Hartman would fill the spot on the Libertarian ticket left open by David Moffett, who has dropped out of the race for health reasons.”

    Hartman self-funded his primary bid to the tune of $1.5 million, so he could definitely make some waves if he jumped into the race. And, of course, this would be great news for Raj Goyle.

  27. It’s an internal poll though.

    A Mellman Group poll of 400 likely Second District Democratic voters shows Kuster with 47 percent support, Swett with 24 percent, and 29 percent were undecided. The Mellman Group polled for John Kerry’s campaign in the 2004 New Hampshire primary.  

    http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

  28. anyone know a site where you can find polling averages without a specific pollster? For example if I wanted to see what Obama’s average approval rating was without any Rasmussen polls or NC Sen without any PPP polls.  

  29. when the new electoral map for 2012 will be announced?  I want to play with the new map with each states new electoral votes.

  31. Will cut off weak members to focus on a firewall strategy…

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09…

    I’m sad to see Pirello and Markey on the possible cut list… but, you gotta do what you gotta do.  I’m glad that the DCCC is at least a competent organization.  If anyone can pull this off, they can.  The DSCC… well, that’s a different story altogether.

  33. Races where I’d be surprised to see Dems win (30): AR-01, AR-02, CO-04, IL-11, IN-08, KS-03, LA-03, MD-01, MI-01, MI-07, MS-01, ND-AL, NH-02, NY-24, NY-29, OH-01, OH-15, OH-16, PA-03, PA-07, PA-08, PA-11, SD-AL, TN-06, TN-08, TX-17, VA-02, VA-05, WA-03, WI-07.

    Races where I’m not sure (16): AZ-01, AZ-05, CO-03, FL-02, FL-08, FL-24, IL-14, IN-09, IA-03, NV-03, NH-01, NM-02, SC-05, TX-23, VA-11, WI-08

    Touted races where I expect Dems to win (31): AL-02, AZ-08, CA-11, CA-47, FL-22, GA-08, ID-01, IL-17, IN-02, KY-06, MA-10, MI-09, MO-04, NC-08, NJ-03, NM-01, NY-01, NY-13, NY-19, NY-20, NY-23, NC-11, OH-13, OH-18, OR-05, PA-10, PA-12, TN-04, VA-09, WA-02, WV-01

    Safe: Everyone else.

  34. Races where I expect Dems to win (4): DE-AL, HI-01, IL-10, LA-02

    Races where I’m not sure (2): FL-12, FL-25

    Touted races where I expect Republicans to win (3): AL-05, CA-03, PA-15

    Safe: Everyone else.

  35. http://blog.timesunion.com/opi…

    Between this and the NY Times endorsement, I’m getting more and more weary of this race. Schneiderman is probably the one Democrat in this field that I simply couldn’t vote for, and I think the hit-and-run incident will prove politically-toxic for him vs. Donovan.

  38. We’ve all been working on CA and their district lines and having quite a bit of fun with it.  If Brown wins, I imagine there is going to be immense amount of pressure on the CA Dems from the national party to really draw some beautiful lines for us.  With myself thinking more and more that we’ll lose the House, I think that makes it more and more likely of getting some gerrymandered awesome in CA.

    (This has been mentioned before in terms of Pelosi pushing for it so she can keep her Speakership but I think it could become much more of a chorus with national dems coming down on CA to get us another four Congresscritters.)

  41. This is one race I’ve been getting down about especially, because this should be ours to lose with Portman having a past of destroying Ohio’s economy.  But 2010 may fuck us good here and Im wondering how many people here think this race is a goner.

    Fischer needs to run as the outsider and paint Portman as a douchebag DC insider and make him a hypocrite for being the Budget Director and running deficits while saying they hurt the economy.  Fischer can easily set up Portman to answer in a way that he can make this response.

    The Brunner factor just makes the whole race hurt that much more.  Waste of the start of a fabulous career for her and a wasted piggybank for a candidate already facing a crap year in a swing-state.  Governors making better WH material anyway honey!

    3. seems like a far-flung fridge (fff) to me, especially against a popular many term at large rep.

      also, anyone care to enlighten on the etymology of the triple f?

  46. SSP theater presents to you Jerry Brown’s first ad. If you watch closely you’ll notice Jerry Brown is trying to position himself as a centrist in this race instead of a full on liberal. Which is smart, since this race is going to be won by who can best appeal to independents and soft/conservative Democrats.

  48. This came up the other day in a different thread and I couldn’t let it go.  So I tracked it down by hand, wasting what surely would have otherwise been a valuable time in my life.  There is 1 senator and 27 House members.  Dems lead 1-0 in the Senate and Republicans lead 16-10 in the House, with Independent Gregorio Sablan of the Northern Mariana rounding out the field.  Anyway, here are the graduates of the school of hard knocks serving in Congress:

    SENATE: Mark Begich (D-AK)

    HOUSE: Trent Franks (R-AZ), Elton Gallegly (R-CA), Grace Napolitano (D-CA), Gary Miller (R-CA), Brian Bilbray (R-CA), Bill Young (R-FL), Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), Phil Hare (D-IL), Dan Burton (R-IN), Tom Latham (R-IA), Steve King (R-IA), Rodney Alexander (R-LA), Mike Michaud (D-ME), Candice Miller (R-MI), Harry Teague (D-NM), Gregorio Sablan (I-NMI), Yvette Clarke (D-NY), Jose Serrano (D-NY), John Hall (D-NY), Sue Myrick (R-NC), Bob Brady (D-PA), Paul Kanjorski (D-PA), Henry Brown (R-SC), Zach Wamp (R-TN), Solomon Ortiz (D-TX), Doc Hastings (R-WA)

  49. After Nov. 2 should we be seeing reports of retirements, people considering 2012 races, and pres exploratory committees? I know Martinez announced his retirement in Dec. 2008, was that early, or is that typical?

    1. It’s even more unbelievable when you consider that WA-02 is home to Western Washington University, a bastion of liberal thought if there ever was one. They all get back to school in two weeks or so for fall quarter, and they vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

      And Koster is as anti-choice as anyone possibly could be. Take any given issue and Koster is extreme right, similar to many of our favorite Tea Party Senate candidates across the country. Unfortunately Larsen hasn’t done a great job so far of associating Koster with that craziness.

  50. how many congresscritters, governors or senators, sitting, or recently vacated, were first judges?  of all the establishment methods of attaining elective office, judge seems to be a relatively rare one.  

    1. is not going to win this district, or if she did, it would be very close. (at least if the election were today) In 2004, she won it with 53% against George Nethercutt, who did not run a wonderful campaign. Now she faces Dino Rossi, a better candidate, in a Republican year.

      Rossi won WA-02 in 2004 (50-47), but lost WA-02 in 2008 (52-47). I expect it to be very close here, with Murray doing worse than Gregoire’s performance in 2008, but better than her’s in 2004.

      A common theme among statewide Democrats is to do worse than their statewide totals here.

      Rossi’s candidate strength could pull Koster over the line.

  52. On a New Orleans news station, their political analyst said that it is “Cao’s race to lose”. I wonder if everyone is believing that poll that he put out, or seeing some other polling? I know Cook recently moved this to toss-up, so maybe he saw some polling too?  

  53. I recommend this excellent DailyKos diary to all of you.

    Some illustrative quotes:

    The reason this is happening is the recession, and the perception that Democrats are not doing enough to fix it. There is a feeling that Democrats tricked people into thinking that they were going to make big changes to the country, and then failed to make those changes.

    You might think this is an unreasonable criticism, that the Democrats are doing the best they can, and that they never said they were leftists. I can understand that point of view, and it makes a lot of sense. But let’s look at what millennials are dealing with in this economy, and it might not seem so unreasonable.[…]

    Now, these are some of the problems that are affecting young people.

    The unemployment rate among young people is[…]52.2 percent[….]

    Tons of people are graduating from high school and college, and they are finding that they can’t find jobs.

    And they have tons of debt that they need to pay[….]

    There is also a very large number of uninsured young people[….]

    This all adds up, and creates a lot of stress and disillusionment. It makes you want to ignore politics completely. Because it seems like neither party is making any serious effort to solve all of these problems.

    What are people likely to do when they think the Democrats are unable to solve problems? They will either stay home, or vote for the other party…

    Toward the end of the diary is a list of things the Democrats could do to make young people enthusiastic again.

    What I like so much about this diary is that it brings the large-scale politics down to the human level of the special kind of misery that is afflicting the younger generation and how that is affecting their political views and actions.

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