News & discussion on house and senate races

I think it is the fact that the midterm elections are approaching, and a few disgusted Republicans are realizing that when push comes to shove, they dislike the Democrats even worse than the president they're stuck with.

Ive been following these "generic Congress" polls for a few months now, Keltic. And they'd been largely stable so far, much like the CBS one still is. This discrepancy here is really quite unusual.

Could mean things are starting to happen, could mean the Gallup one is an outlier (even Gallup can have an outlier).

There seems to be a consensus building within the washington pundit community (for what that might be worth) that the "tidal wave" thing is quite likely.

I think you're making a mistake to attach any relevance to the so-called "generic" polls, as they're not proven to be reliable predictors of the outcome of an election, nor even reliable as a guide to how people actually vote.

blatham wrote:

There seems to be a consensus building within the washington pundit community (for what that might be worth) that the "tidal wave" thing is quite likely.

Could be a self-catalyzing pro-Democratic meme. I like it. Sure, my favorite scenario is a little wave, one that gridlocks Congress without replacing Republican domination with Democratic domination. But under current circumstances, I'll take any tidal wave I can get.

Real Wages Fail to Match a Rise in Productivity

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: August 28, 2006
With the economy beginning to slow, the current expansion has a chance to become the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages for most workers.

That situation is adding to fears among Republicans that the economy will hurt vulnerable incumbents in this year's midterm elections even though overall growth has been healthy for much of the last five years.

I consider this administration far more destructive and authoritarian than Nixon's was, and that was bad.

Riding the "macaca" wave
It's just one poll, it's within the margin of error, it's still a couple of months out, but ... Zogby says that Jim Webb has erased George Allen's double-digit advantage and taken a one-point lead in the U.S. Senate race in Virginia.

Well, Webb didn't do that. Allen did. John Zogby tells the Wall Street Journal that the turnaround in Allen's fortunes can be attributed to the "colossal political crackup" over Allen's "macaca" moment.

Overall, the Journal says, Zogby's polling shows that if the November elections were held today, Republicans would hold on to the Senate, albeit with a reduced 52-46-2 majority -- the "2" being Jim Jeffords and Joe Lieberman. Along with all the usual caveats, it's worth noting that the Journal's poll report doesn't include all of the states with Senate races this year. Among the strangely missing: Montana, where Democrat Jon Tester is in a neck-and-neck race with incumbent Republican Sen. Conrad Burns.

Other for-what-they're-worth prognostications:

Bloomberg's Al Hunt says that "barring an unexpected and big event," Democrats will win the House and have a shot at the Senate in November. "We have to go back to 1974 to find such a favorable environment," Hunt quotes James Carville as saying. "If we can't win in this environment, we have to question the whole premise of the party."

Stuart Rothenberg says Democrats shouldn't have to ponder that "it's making us sick just to think about it" question. "Our latest race-by-race review of congressional districts around the country convinces us that a Democratic wave is building and that the party is poised to take control of the House of Representatives in the fall," Rothenberg writes. "The only question now is the size of the November wave." Rothenberg's current prediction: The Democrats pick up 15 to 20 seats in the House, an increase from the eight to 12 seats he previously thought the Democrats would net. "Unlike previous cycles, when the burden was on Democrats to create upsets, the onus is now on the GOP to save at least a handful of seats before Election Day," Rothenberg says.

Brookings' Thomas Mann is even more bullish on the Democrats' pickup opportunities in the House. He expects Democrats to gain 25 to 35 seats in the House and gives the party a 50-50 chance of taking the Senate, too.

And speaking of 50-50 -- or at least 49-49-2 -- the Cincinnati Post's John Hall imagines a scenario in which the Democrats pick up just enough Senate seats to hand the question of party control to ... Joe Lieberman. Hall advises Ned Lamont supporters Howard Dean, John Kerry and Hillary Rodham Clinton to "get ready to genuflect in 2007."

Overall, the Journal says, Zogby's polling shows that if the November elections were held today, Republicans would hold on to the Senate, albeit with a reduced 52-46-2 majority -- the "2" being Jim Jeffords and Joe Lieberman.

Democrats Now Favored to Take Over DeLay's Old Seat

No, not Jeffords. Bernie Sanders will be the independent from Vermont.

Bernie Sanders believes that in the richest nation in the history of the world, all Americans should enjoy a decent standard of living. He believes that it is unacceptable that millions of people are forced to work for sub-standard wages and lack health care, decent housing and educational opportunity. He regards it as a national disgrace that the United States has, by far, the highest rate of child poverty of any industrialized country and a childcare system that is abysmal. He regards it as unconscionable that the United States remains the only country in the industrialized world which does not have a national health care system guaranteeing health care for all, and that millions of seniors lack the prescription drugs they desperately need.

Most of Sanders' energy has been devoted to issues that affect the needs of the people that government often ignores - working families, the middle class, the elderly, children and the poor. In a nation in which the wealthiest one percent own more wealth than the bottom ninety-five percent, and where the CEOs of major corporations earn 500 times what their employees make, Sanders believes that the middle class and working families of our country need all the help they can get.

*More information about Congressman Sanders can be obtained from his political autobiography, Outsider in the House by Bernie Sanders and Huck Gutman, Verso Press, 1997. Other books that describe his political career as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont and candidate for Congress are: People's Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution by Greg Guma, 1989; Challenging the Boundaries of Reform: Socialism in Burlington by W.J. Conroy, 1990; Socialist Mayor: Bernard Sanders in Burlington, Vermont by Steven Soifer, 1991; Making History in Vermont: The Election of a Socialist to Congress by Steven Rosenfeld, 1992.

released a radio advertisement that was a parody of "The Dating Game."

"Today's contestant, little Socialist Bernie Sanders. Crazy Bernie is a holdover from the Woodstock days of reefer and flowers," the ad began. "Bernie loves long walks on the beach with child pornographers and pedophiles, candlelight dinners with illegal aliens, cozy evenings by the fire with al-Qaida terrorists. … If you're an illegal alien, pedophile terrorist who performs partial birth abortions on 12-year-old girls without their parents' consent, then you and crazy Bernie are a match made in heaven."

That ad was denounced by Republicans and Democrats alike, and was immediately pulled.