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

    1. MA above AZ for sure and give the MA race a “tossup” rating.

      And ME without Snowe is “Toss-Up”, depending on the candidate.  And Likely R with Snowe.

    3. 1. ND (open, Safe R)

      2. NE (Nelson, Lean R)

      3. MT (Tester, toss-up)

      4. MO (McCaskill, toss-up)

      5. MA (Brown, toss-up)

      6. NV (open, toss-up)

      7. VA (open, toss-up)

      8. MI (Stabenow, Lean D)

      9. OH (Brown, Lean D)

      10. FL (Nelson, Lean D)

      —————–

      11. NM (open, Lean D)

      12. ME (Snowe, Likely R)

      13. NJ (Menendez, Likely D)

      14. WI (Kohl, Likely D)

      15. IN (Lugar, Likely R)

      16. TX (open, Likely R)

      17. VT (Sanders, Likely I)

      18. PA (Casey, Likely D)

      Everyone else is safe. I think only #1-4 actually flip, though. Which, of course, is just enough for a GOP majority.

    4. But if Snowe loses the GOP primary or ditches the party to run as an Independent, then the whole dynamics of that race change. If Snowe loses the GOP primary, I think ME-Sen goes to Leans D. And if Snowe goes Indy, she’ll be favored to win (though we’d have to see whom she ends up caucusing with).

    5. 1. Nebraska

      2. North Dakota

      3. Montana

      4. Nevada

      5. Missouri

      6. Indiana

      7. Virginia

      8. Massachusetts

      9. Maine

      10. Michigan

      11. Florida

      12. Ohio

      13. Arizona

      14. Texas

      15. New Mexico

      1. …. to political campaigns I make it a general rule to only donate to candidates I can vote for on election day. Since Vilsack decided not to take the easy route and instead do what is best for Iowa will be making an exception to that rule will be sending a donation her way.

    1. Maine was likely R overall with the aside that it becomes safe if she wins the primary.  If a tea partier beats her I think it becomes at least leans D if we run someone who’s not a Some Dude.

      And as far as Mass. I think a lot of Dems are underestimating how hard it will be to beat Brown simply because we don’t have any strong candidates lined up yet and I don’t think someone like Setti Warren could beat him easily.  Also, a lot of stronger candidates seem to be in a holding pattern so that could certainly change and would warrant an upgrade to lean R if we could put forward a unified front around a strong candidate and raise a lot of money.  Brown seems ot have made all the right moves so far.

  8. I can haz it?

    1. Most important state for maintaing control of the House and Senate?

    2. Current Dem held House seat most likely to flip in 2012?

    3. Republican incumbent you most want to defeat in 2012 (be realistic)?

    My answers:

    1. Florida

    2. Dennis Kuchy Kucinich (Ohio 10)

    3. Andy Harris or Dan Lungren

  14. Here’s my ranking:

    1. North Dakota

    2. Nebraska

    3. Nevada

    4. Missouri

    5. Montana

    6. Virginia

    7. Arizona

    8. Massachusetts

    9. Florida

    10. Ohio

    11. New Mexico

    12. Michigan

    13. Indiana

    14. Maine

    15. Texas

    All others I’m counting as safe.

    ND is likely R

    NE is lean R

    NV is tossup/tilt D

    MO is tossup

    MT is tossup/tilt D

    VA is lean D

    AZ is lean R

    MA is likely R

    FL is likely D

    OH is likely D

    NM is likely D

    MI is likely D

    IN is likely R

    ME is likely R, safe R if Snowe survives the primary

    TX is likely R

    At this point I’d say only 1-7 are remotely in play.

      2. she avoids a nasty primary, loses a close fight to a long time hated (by democrats and some indies) congressman and when harkin or latham retire she can run without being a usurper.  

      3. …Steve Israel told Vilsack in no uncertain terms that they’ll support Loebsack against her.

        And everyone showed Vilsack they’d support Boswell against her.

        She would’ve burned a lot of bridges by primarying an incumbent Dem.

        You don’t primary a scandal-free incumbent Dem who’s no worse than 50-50 odds of winning reelection anyway.  That’s the way to make enemies fast, and no friends.

  17. Here’s a fun political occurrence within an issue campaign instead a candidate campaign.  One of their staffers has gone rogue, and now supports marriage equality, and in a blog post he describes his work organizing the “Summer for Marriage” tour.  He was instructed to make the counter-protesters look as crazy and out of control as possible with one example of counter-protesters with their backs turned and giving the righteous ones the silent treatment being described as shouting down women and children.  This all lead to him being instructed to completely change gears for photo taking and make the crowds look as large as possible because NOM had gotten so many comments from people who said they really wanted to attend the rallies but they were too terrified of the counter-protesters!

    Inherently homophobic fears of scary gay protesters, but that’s some delicious political karma.

      1. I don’t care what talking points Matt Strawn and Branstad came up with.  I’m unimpressed.

        The GOP won’t have any higher turnout in 2012 in King’s holdover 18 counties with Vilsack running than they would have had with a sacrificial lamb running.

  23. I didn’t even realize until I wrote out 4/22 that 4/20 was two days ago. Good thing I was out of town or the smell of those Brown kids’ bongs would have been overpowering 😉

    Random: I had a dream a few nights ago where for some reason I came back to the states in early 2013 (either from abroad or from some weird void of nonexistence) to see that Mitt Romney had been elected president! understandably, I was extremely upset, and so I decided to look up YouTube videos of CNN footage or something to see how this had happened. So I saw a video of Mitt Romney at a campaign event, but everyone was calling him “Sidney” or something. and I was like, oh yeah, Sidney is Mitt Romney’s middle name (it’s not actually), so he must have successfully reinvented himself and gotten rid of his baggage by using a new name! and then I saw a clip of the Democratic candidate, and it wasn’t Obama, but rather Martin Heinrich. And I was really confused by how apparently, not only had Heinrich dropped out of NM-Sen to primary Obama, but he succeeded. and then my dream ended.

    Needless to say, I was very relieved when I woke up and still realized it was still 2011.

    Fortunately, though, my dreams have no predictive power (I once had a dream in 2006 or 2007 where Maryland voted R for president).

  24. The 26-24 Democratic majority in the Iowa Senate is the only thing keeping us from becoming the next Wisconsin or Ohio. Democrats lost six Senate seats in 2010, which is really annoying, because two of those should have been holds. Now there is very little margin for error in 2012.

    It seems that the new redistricting plan has created a lot of competitive Senate districts in the northeast part of the state. Democratic State Representative Nate Willems announced this week that he is running in one of those swing districts. Maps and other info about the district here. The seat includes Willems’ home town and also part of the Iowa House district he has represented since 2008.

    Some SSPers may recognize Nate’s name because he did a little political blogging in 2006 and 2007.

    1. Any Dem who held on to their seat in 2010 has to be considered pretty safe for the foreseeable future, unless a redistricting victim of course.  

  26. I know he has a home in Montana, but tester is the incumbent.  Jackson considered a run before, but thought he wouldn’t win in Montana because he is considered a native son of N.Dakota because he played highschool and college ball there.  

    I have no reason for thinking this other than Jackson is adamant he is retiring from coaching this year and he has shown interest in politics before and doesn’t strike me as a guy who will retire to a beach somewhere. He’s been to the White House twice with the Lakers, and have to imagine Obama might have put the bug in his ear.  He’s have all the money he’d need to self fund (he and his wife), has the name value in N.Dakota.

    Anyways I’ve been kicking this around in my head and decided to put it out so I can claim I called it.  And if it doesn’t happen, nobody will remember this anyways.  

  27. So far the only announced candidate is former Illinois senator Barack Obama.  He was elected in 2004 with great fanfare, but he inexplicably resigned from the Senate in 2008, and hasn’t been heard from much since.  Much as I like him, I don’t think Obama is a serious candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2012.  We’ll have to wait for the heavyweights to get in to really know what the field will be like.

  28. I read somewhere, probably in one of the articles about Christie Vilsack, that Iowa was one of two states to never elect a woman to Congress or to the governorship, what is the other one?

    I’m thinking of Mississippi, but I don’t know if that’s right.  

  29. …Happy birthday DavidNYC!

    And thank you for making this such a wonderful site, you’ve done what’s so hard to do in creating a fantastic niche in blogging.

  32. As much as they’re rather absurd, one is going to take place on May 7, and it seems to be somewhat more competitive this year than most.

    At the very least, the opposition (all parties other than the ruling PAP are usually grouped under “opposition” anyway) is contesting most, if not all constituencies this year, for the first time since (probably) the 60s.

    That said, no one really does opinion polls here, so I can’t really get a good read on things.

  33. Is there any chance that Mark Zuckerberg becomes the David Koch of the left? He has the billions and billions of dollars, and he seems pretty cozy with Obama. I was wondering if anyone else had thought of that.

  34. He recanted later, but the damage is done.

    http://www.startribune.com/pol…

    Here’s the quote:

    “When you go to even a Burger King or a McDonalds and use your debit card, they’ll ask you to see your ID,” Zellers said sometime after 11 p.m. “Should we have to do that when we vote, something that is one of the most sacred — I think it’s a privilege, it’s not a right. Everybody doesn’t get it, because if you go to jail or if you commit some heinous crime your rights are taken away. This is a privilege.”

  35. I hope you guys remember to do a special thread that Monday night. 4 week ago, my country was grumbling about another election, the 4th one in 7 years. Now, we are seeing some really interesting developments, such as the real possibility of a Conservative majority government, and the socialist NDP taking second place.

      1. He’s begging for a “conservative” facebook rip-off to get major backing.  I mean every Republican politician has a facebook and the owner is out stumping for Obama?

        Seems like bad business.  Also isn’t all of Zuckerberg’s networth largely just on paper because it’s tied up in his FB ownership that isn’t easy to monetize  

          1. it’s still way too soon to talk about whether or not she will run for the senate, in a political sense. But that’s not a bad thing. Of course, the nomination is hers if she wants it, and she won’t have any problem at all raising money, which is probably the biggest concern. There will be a point at which we will need a clearer answer, in order to move forward and make plans no matter who the nominee is, but we aren’t even close to that point.  

      2. gave that money because The Social Network was coming out and he figured he would look like a big douche to a lot of people. Even that wasn’t the only reason he gave such a donation to Newark, it was certainly a big part of it.

        1. Where the Conservative won that had the Liberal and NDP candidate combined pull more of the vote.  

          Canada is 60-40 left of center, but gets a Conservative minority ever since the two parties on the right merged – that speaks for itself.  

          Liberals will bounce back once they get rid of Ignatieff.  

  37. I was wondering if there has been any polling done in NY-26 for the special election next month.  Does Hochul even have a shot or is it pretty much a foregone conclusion?

    1. I had an uncle tell me that I am the one brainwashed because I had the temerity to question his ridiculous assertions regarding union thugs and the national debt and so on. I also had him tell me what a great guy Scott Walker is.

      As I said to one of my coworkers via text soon after, it’s clear that I wasn’t born into the right family. I don’t care what my mom said about being in labor for 18 hours; I was switched at birth.

      1. I don’t want to get too far off topic nor do I want to get into policy, but there are really only two ways to fix Social Security: have more money go in (through higher taxes or more people paying in, for instance) or have less money going out. It’s decidedly different than, say, reforming Medicare. And while I could go either way on whether we should do it right now, I wouldn’t be surprised that actually getting a good deal done now would pay off politically.  

      2. We’re not getting payroll tax increase without something back in return to Tom Coburn–something painful most likely.  Washington has been trying to gut SS for years–there are few friends of the program on capital hill.

  42. Easter treat for all. A cousin at the family dinner told me about it tonight, I thought I would pass on the treat. Go look at the Donald Trump FB page. It is very funy. They have it open so anyone can post things. LOL, they are floating SOOO many conspiracies. People saying Obama stole the election via acorn and didn’t really graduate from Harvard. It cracks me up.  

    2. aren’t you?

      Maddow is often supportive of Democrats and Obama when many others on the left aren’t. Sure, she asks tough questions of them, but she’s not the type to say: “Burn it all down,” as I hear from time to time on the left.

      And I also have a feeling that Giffords is a good deal more liberal than you give her credit for. She voted for HCR (proudly, I believe; I remember reading her letters to the editor on it); she’s best buds with DWS and Gillibrand; she voted for hate crimes expansion, DADT repeal, Cap and Trade, Dream, etc. Heck, wasn’t she one of the congresspeople Olbermann contributed to when he got called on the carpet last year?

      1. Hillary Clinton being the most famous recent example. She, of course, got slammed as a carpetbagger, but perhaps another example is Al Franken, who succeeded Coleman but is his inverse: spent his childhood in Minnesota then moved away.

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