News & discussion on house and senate races

As an American citizen I hold out the hope that the GOP will, at worst, reliquish control of the House but retain the Senate.

...
D'Amato, the voluble Republican who served 18 years in the U.S. Senate until he was defeated in 1998 by Charles Schumer, sees demographic change -- the increasing numbers of Hispanic and African-American voters -- as offering Democrats a growing advantage in party registration. Hispanics, of course, are also a growing part of the electorate in other key states, some of them traditionally Republican.

But he adds that "there is something broader than the Republicans falling on hard times, which they are." He notes that in New York, "after the tenure of a strong governor," the party that long held power often sees its organization fall apart. This happened to Republicans after Rockefeller's long run and to Democrats after Pataki defeated Mario Cuomo in 1994. With Pataki retiring, it's the Republicans' "time in the skillet," said Assemblyman Pete Grannis, a Manhattan Democrat.

[...]

D'Amato, normally a happy Republican warrior, is in a blue mood about November. "You have a foreign policy which is groping and a domestic (Mark) Foley scandal, so you have a lot of disaffected people and I think it's going to result not only in the Democrats taking over the House, but also with substantial numbers."

As New York goes, so goes the nation?

TN, where Ford would be the first Dem to win in over 25 years

On election day, I'll be voting while he'll still be sitting on his couch watching CNN and salivating over erroneous exit polls.

Actually, my ex wife who lives here on Long Island asks me each election for whom she should vote (she's not politically inclined but knows I am) and she casts the vote I would cast. Sorry about that.

It wouldn't be fair for me to bet a Canadian on the outcome of a U.S. election. I do know that the majority of Democrats are lying, sleazy bastards who are very well aware they couldn't possibly win an election by running on their actual, left-wing, America-hating agenda.

Consequently, they will stoop to the lowest levels to camouflage what they really believe and use any means available to tear down the opposition and gain power for themselves.

The weird Canadian guy reminds me of all the other post-modern pseudo-intellectual wannabes, for whom gibberish and grievance are 'argument'.

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

As an American citizen I hold out the hope that the GOP will, at worst, reliquish control of the House but retain the Senate.

Well that should be setting the bar low enough.

By now I'd be disappointed, I admit, if the Dems did not win the House -- but the Senate? Still seems a long shot. I'd still be highly surprised - pleasantly surprised, of course - if they make that one.

They're not gonna win Virginia, so they'd have to win both MO, where the race is a total toss-up, and TN, where Ford would be the first Dem to win in over 25 years and the first black in the South to win since Reconstruction. I hope he wins, of course, but I'm not counting on it - definitely not on both him and McCaskell winning.

What will the final numbers be? Don't know. Don't care. What I do know is that the majority of Democrats are lying, sleazy bastards who are very well aware they couldn't possibly win an election by running on their actual, left-wing, America-hating agenda.

Consequently, they will stoop to the lowest levels to camouflage what they really believe and use any means available to tear down the opposition and gain power for themselves.

This thread was supposed to be reportorial and non-partisan. I reckon I have no problem with it turning into the typical political thread. Nothing can be done to stop that anymore.

RI Senate: Chafee now down by 10, 49% to 39%

10 October

He prevailed in Rhode Island's highly watched Republican primary, but incumbent U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee (news, bio, voting record)'s road to November 7 looks to be an uphill one. The latest Rasmussen Reports election survey shows Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse leading the incumbent 49% to 39%.

When leaners are included in the total, Whitehouse leads by nine, 51% to 42%. The current results are similar to our previous poll which found the Democrat leading by eight points. The race remains in the "Leans Democrat" category for our Senate Balance of Power summary. [..]

It's worth noting the difference [..] in how the candidates are perceived by their respective party bases. Twenty-five percent (25%) of Republicans report "very unfavorable" opinions of Chafee and 32% feel very favorably toward him. On the Democratic side, 58% have "very favorable" opinions of Whitehouse and only 3% feel very unfavorably. [..]

Why our shift?

This is a sneak preview.
As we prepare ourselves to make political endorsements in subsequent issues, I can tell you unequivocally that this newspaper has never endorsed so many Democrats. Not even close.

In the 56 years we have been publishing in Johnson County, this basically has been a Republican newspaper. In the old days, before the Republican civil war that fractured the party, we were traditional Republicans. That is, we happily endorsed Jan Meyers for Congress, Bob Dole for U.S. Senate, Nancy Kassebaum for U.S. Senate; virtually every Republican state legislator from here, with a few rare exceptions; and most governors, although we did endorse the conservative Democrats George and Bob Docking and John Carlin.

The point is, I can name on two hands over a half century the number of Democrats we have endorsed for public office.

This year, we will do something different. You will read why we are endorsing Kathleen Sebelius for governor and Mark Parkinson for lieutenant governor; Dennis Moore to be re-elected to the U.S. Congress; Paul Morrison for Kansas attorney general; and a slew of local Democratic state legislative candidates. These are not liberal Democrats. They are what fairly can be described as conservative Democrats, and we can prove that in our forthcoming endorsements.

But I could not help but put in perspective a more global phenomenon that has led us to re-evaluate our traditional support for Republicans.

This change may come as no surprise to our most cynical conservative readers who would dismiss me (and others on the editorial board) as being a moderate Republican and, therefore, the same as a Democrat. To them, there is no difference.

But the shift, frankly, shocks me, because I have pulled the lever over and over since my first vote in 1968 for Republicans. If I was a closet Democrat, I must have hidden it well, especially from myself, since I always beat up on Democrats in my columns. I have called them leftists, socialists, and every other name in the book, because I thought they were flat-out wrong.

And, for the most part, I still do. I am opposed to big government. I have little use for unions. I never liked the welfare plans. I am opposed to weak-kneed defense policies. I have always been for fiscal prudence. I think back to the policies of most Democrats, and I cringe.

So, what in the world has happened?

The Republican Party has changed, and it has changed monumentally.

You almost cannot be a victorious traditional Republican candidate with mainstream values in Johnson County or in Kansas anymore, because these candidates never get on the ballot in the general election. They lose in low turnout primaries, where the far right shows up to vote in disproportionate numbers.

To win a Republican primary, the candidate must move to the right.

What does to-the-right mean?

It means anti-public education, though claiming to support it.

It means weak support of our universities, while praising them.

It means anti-stem cell research.

It means ridiculing global warming.

It means gay bashing. Not so much gay marriage, but just bashing gays.

It means immigrant bashing. I'm talking about the viciousness.

It means putting religion in public schools. Not just prayer.

It means mocking evolution and claiming it is not science.

It means denigrating even abstinence-based sex education.

Note, I did not say it means "anti-abortion," because I do not find that position repugnant, at all. I respect that position.

But everything else adds up to priorities that have nothing to do with the Republican Party I once knew.

That's why, in the absence of so-called traditional Republican candidates, the choice comes down to right-wing Republicans or conservative Democrats.

And now you know why we have been forced to move left.

I see the House of Representatives as going to the Dems. The numbers just aren't working for the Repubs.

I agree with what Finn seemed to be saying in his carefully chosen words about the TN senate race. Folks, when talking to the press or a pollster, will say that it makes no difference that Mr Ford is black...but when they get into the privacy of the voting booth...

We went through that here in Virginia when Doug Wilder ran and won for governor.