Tag: Open Threads

What’s on your mind this weekend?

UPDATE (David): The Nashville City Paper’s political blog says that GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander is being talked up as a possible replacement for the departing chancellor of Vanderbilt University. If there’s any truth to this, that would make him at least the fourth member of Congress this year to be considered for a move into academia. SSP readers will recall that Reps. Meehan (MA-05), Hulshof (MO-09) and LaHood (IL-18) were the others, though only Meehan pulled the trigger.

So the question of course is, should Lamar! step down, who would Dem Gov. Phil Bredesen appoint to fill his place?

I believe in elections, and elections believe in me.

We here at the SSP hope everyone has a great Fourth of July holiday. We’ll be taking a vacation through the end of the week, so in the meantime, feel free to use this as an open thread.

See you next week!

(Bumped – promoted by DavidNYC)

I hope you all have a great weekend!

I’m very pleased to announce that we’ve smashed through our goal of 150 new contributions for Charlie Brown and Donna Edwards on the DailyKos/MyDD/SSP Actblue page. In total, we've collected 180 new donations for Charlie Brown and 188 for Donna Edwards. If you haven't made a contribution yet, get on over to the Actblue page and shake some action before the second quarter deadline passes tonight at midnight!

What have you got?

Sorry for the relative dry spell around SSP lately.  I just started up a new job this week with rather long-ish hours, but I’m still going to work blogging into my schedule.

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Discussion Items:

• MN-06: Dean Barkley, the former interim Senator from Minnesota following the death of Paul Wellstone in 2002, is openly mulling a challenge to wingnut Republican Michele Bachmann.  Barkley, a three-time Senatorial candidate under the Independence Party banner, says that he would only want to run in a two-way race as an independent with tacit DFL support.  Well, Barkley, who played the spoiler in two successive Senate contests MN-06 in 1992 and in the 1994 Senate race, is no Bernie Sanders.  His kind words for a Fred Thompson Presidency are not exactly inspiring, either.
• TN-Sen: DailyKos diarist R o o k has a great piece up commenting on the news that Mike McWherter, son of the popular former Governor Ned McWherter (1987-1995), is considering a run against Republican Lamar! Alexander next year.  I’d like to learn more about a potential McWherter candidacy, but I am heartened to hear that this low-radar race may not be given a pass.
• WY-Sen-B: I don’t know if the phrase “the best of a bad lot” is really appropriate here, because Wyoming’s newest Senator, John Barrasso, seems like just another far-right Coke bottle Republican, fresh from the assembly plant.  Still, it’s hard to fault Freudenthal for not picking an Abramoff crony or a bitter rival in Barrasso’s place.

What have you got?

(Bumped – promoted by DavidNYC)

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy.  Or so they say.

Anyway, let’s take a break from our usual weekly grind of horse race open threads, and instead turn to summer reading material.  What’s on your reading list this summer?  I’ve recently read The Thumpin’: How Rahm Emanuel and the Democrats Learned to Be Ruthless and Ended the Republican Revolution by Naftali Bendavid and World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks.  Both were excellent reads, but alas, only the former mentioned the Swing State Project in its text.

Despite everything, we’re still a democracy and we still have elections. Which ones are you thinking about?

First off, I want to apologize for the lax pace around here lately.  I hope that things will get a bit steadier soon.  But on to other business…

Today was amazing.  My girlfriend and I went to the Barnes & Noble at Union Square (NYC) and waited two hours to listen to Al Gore speak about his new book, The Assault on Reason.  The atmosphere was positively electric as Gore strolled in to a “rock star” reception and delivered a powerful speech on the corruption of reason, media and democracy in the United States over the last six and a half years.  Interestingly, former Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. was also present for the entire speech and received a friendly shout-out from the former Vice President.  And getting to actually meet Al Gore and crack wise about his awe-inspiring triple panel monitor was the cherry on top.  I must confess, I ended up as weak-kneed as the giddiest fanboy.

Now, if only we had someone like him running for President…

PS: When I asked, he replied that “yes”, he does indeed read blogs on a regular basis.

Did you know there’s an election coming up this week? Yep, on Tuesday, May 15th, the City of Brotherly Love will hold its mayoral primary. I certainly don’t have a dog in this fight, but hey, an election is an election. Swing Staters, is this the only game in town, or are there any other local contests going on this week as well?

As always, you can use this thread to talk about Philly (that’s “wiz wit,” Mr. Kerry), or any other races which strike your fancy.

P.S. Final request: If you haven’t taken the BlogAds reader survey, I’d be grateful if you would. And I promise, this is the last time I’ll ask!