Aug 21 2010
The US Senate Is In Play – Thanks To WA
The anti-government wave is huge this year – and it is aimed right at the Big Government Party (Democrats). The people who brought you Government Motors (GM), historically massive debt and deficits, painfully high unemployment and socialist medicine are in the cross hairs of America.
Charlie Cook has confirmed the House will, barring some major event, go to the GOP (more here). As will the Governorships. But the Senate has always been seen as too large a hill to take. The RCP 2010 Senate election map has over the year been drained of much of its ‘blue’ color as once safe Democrat seats moved from “likely” to “lean” to “toss up”. And now many seats have turned a shade of red as the voters continue to join the tide against DC and its arrogant snubbing of We The People.
Here is a snap of today’s map and it clearly shows GOP pick ups in DE, IN, PA, AR & ND (Click to enlarge) and are accounted for in the “44” at the top right in the graph. Â The GOP needs to win 7 out of the 8 races left to take the Senate.
Can they do it? In a historic wave election it is possible, and becoming more so each week. I think the map will give OH, CO, FL & NV to the GOP in the coming weeks. Â That would give the GOP 4 of those 8 seats. So where will the remaining 3 pick ups come from? My feeling is WI and CA are looking good too, since the governors’ races in these states are strongly GOP and the incumbents are polling in the mid 40’s. I think there are local coat tails in those states that will eject the Dem incumbent running for Senate. Once they pull the lever for a GOP Governor it becomes easy to pull it for a GOP senator next. That brings the GOP to 6 of the 7.
Which leaves one more state to pick up, and that state is turning out to be WA:
The first KING 5 Senate poll for the 2010 general election shows Republican Dino Rossi is actually ahead of Democratic incumbent Patty Murray, 52% to 45%.
In most polls leading up to this week’s primary election and on primary night, Murray was in the lead. Primary election results placed Murray 13 points ahead of Rossi, but Rossi splitting the Republican vote with Clint Didier who got 12%, and Paul Akers, with 3%.
The new K5 poll of 618 likely voters, conducted by SurveyUSA, is the first look at a Murray-Rossi matchup in November. It suggests that even without an official endorsement from Didier, many o f Didier’s supporters would choose Rossi over Murray. Akers has endorsed Rossi, but Didier is withholding his endorsement at this time.
This is a stunning turn around, but honestly not more than seeing CA, WI, WA, DE & IL seats in trouble in the first place. And months ago anyone who said CA, WI & WA would be in play would have been laughed at. Even with this scenario we have IL (which could go either way since it is the race between two damaged candidates). IL is the margin the GOP needs to replace a loss somewhere else.
And if CT becomes competitive again (and the trend lines show a huge drop off in support for the Dem candidate) the GOP’s job becomes just that much easier.
Addendum: About Didier and his attempts to remain relevant in WA after losing to Rossi – forget about it. Rossi better not bow down to a loser’s demands, or else he won’t have the spine to go to DC and do the hard stuff, like New Jersery Governor Christie. Didier’s followers better understand that the US senate is in play, and withholding their support is the same as giving the Dems the Senate and handing Obama enough power to keep hurting this country.
One man, nor one group, should hold this nation hostage to their demands. We are a democracy. If we haven’t learned that lesson over the last two years we are truly lost.
Even CQ Politics is seeing the possibility.
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000003725329
They seem to still think Crist can carry the day here in Fl but with all the flip flops and pure political pandering he is doing and his using of the Governors office as a campaign wedge many will tire of his game and think harder as the election nears.
Crist is trying to hold onto the Obama coattails for dear life which is something even Dems don’t want to be seen doing.
Alex Sink the Dem Governor candidate managed to sneak out from a fund raiser in Miami before Obama arrived.
Plus Bill Clinton has been here touting Meek the Dem for Senate which would pull from those Crist has been courting.
There just aren’t enough Democrat seats up for election this time in the Senate. Rasmussen is currently projecting the Dems with 50 seats and 5 tossups.
40 seats currently held by Democrats are not up for election this cycle so there is no possible way the Democrats could end up with less than 40 seats. 7 seats are considered “solid” for the Democrats so that brings to 47. So if they lose the three seats that are currently considered “leans Dem” *and* they lose all 5 “tossup” seats, *and* the Republicans take every single one of their races, it could possibly end up R 53, D 47 but that is the best possible case. 50-50 is a very good possibility as is 51-49 either way. It is 2012 when a huge number of Democrat seats are up for election.
I am really nervous about Rubio and Perry’s odds as the Democrats are really pouring tons of money into Texas and Florida. I have to wonder about the tipping point where pouring money into a campaign has no effect. Harry Reid may have reached that tipping point.
Politico’s article about the WH’s strategy change with ObamaCare from “cost savings and benefits” to “we’re improving it!” seems to have the same tipping point, much like their “anti-Bush” and Bush’s failed policies with their withdrawal of the recent DNC video ad “Are you with us or with Bush?” question.
I think that from here on out, no matter what they say or do will change the constituents’ minds as the majority of the voters are angry enough to have already made up their minds.
Crosspatch, that brings it back to where the Republicans were just a few years ago and they were useless because they still had too many Rino’s. But at least, that will put a stop on those really bad legistation. Hopefully, there will be no more “stimulus-like” bills.
Ya think the WH will agree to the repeal of these many really bad bills after November? If the Politico article is right about the WH considering a repeal of ObamaCare, then that might change the color of the lame duck session to no new bills.
At least, can I hope for a no new bill lame duck session?
Don’t worry about Perry – White is a nice guy, but he doesn’t have any broad based support anywhere but Houston. And Houston isn’t enough to win the state.
As far as repeal – there are other ways to kill a program, mainly by refusing to appropriate any money to enact it and by cutting important pieces out of it, like the mandate. Once the mandate is gone, the whole program collapses.
Regarding the senate – it would be very nice to take it just to wipe the smile off Chuckie Schumer’s face, but taking it doesn’t add all that much more this session than getting the House be itself. Here’s why: Obama can still veto anything that is passed, so a Republican House and Senate couldn’t enact anything but watered down Dem proposals no matter what. The best that a Republican Senate could do would be to block some of Obama’s more outrageous appointments.
I hope you’re right that the rest of Texas will hold up for Perry. There are so many anti-Perry Republicans and conservatives in Houston that refuse to vote for Perry no matter how much we tell them the importance of their vote towards Perry. Perry made too many mistakes in the past that some of them still have memories.
The supporting argument of ObamaCare is that this has to be better than the status quo health care insurance system. The problem is that we cannot go back to the status quo health care insurance system. Plus many insurance companies have started to lay off people. Plus health care costs have risen so much this year already. I am expecting to see our premiums going up for next year.
Getting the House be itself…I thought it might be wise if the House would simply try to enact the Repeal bill even if Obama vetoes it. Why? Because that will demonstrate to the Americans the seriousness of their legislation future in restoring our country back to the founding principles.
I’m perfectly happy to tip the Senate to even a weak Republican majority just to block Obama’s appointments.
AJ, some local knowledge…
(Courtesy of the WA Grange) WA now has a top-two election system. The good news for Rossi is that there is no third-party candidate to allow a protest vote, the only option is to ‘stay home’ (in quotes because WA now mostly votes by mail). Didier’s tantrum is classic eastern WA GOP idiocy…there’s a 7:2 population disparity, Eastern WA and Seattle proper cancel each other out, the Pugetopolis suburbs (Pierce, Snohomish, Kitsap, Eastern King counties) carry the state. Didier’s big complaint is abortion in a state where (IIRC, wasn’t here then) it was legal BEFORE Roe v. Wade. With all the other things going on, it’s just plain stupid to make that your gripe. Rossi, while establishment is solid on tax and spending (it was the basis for both his Gubernatorial campaigns).
There is a statewide initiative on the November ballot to establish a (state) income tax (none right now). Like most things Democrat, it’s a tax-the-‘rich’ plan (>200K ind/>400K joint), but really a Trojan horse, since the legislature can readily change the terms after two years (and generally does when it’s to their benefit…see the fate of the last couple of Tim Eyman budget-limit initiatives). Sitting home could be very costly for the tea party types. My sense is that Didier’s endorsement is a rapidly depreciating asset and not worth pursuing as almost all of those votes will go to Rossi.
[…] withdraw warrant; Update: One charge remains – hotair.com 08/21/2010 Hmmm. more… The US Senate Is In Play – Thanks To WA – strata-sphere.com 08/21/2010 The anti-government wave is huge this year – and it is […]
Every dollar Democrats sent to Texas for Mayor White is wasted.
Gov. Perry will win Houston Republican hold outs on the strength of a single word — Redistricting.
It is the same reason I’m going to vote for Governor Good-Hair. >Hack Pow<
Two places to watch are in the Senate are Connecticut and West Virginia.
The Lady Senate Candidate from WWE has a positive taste for media political combat I have not seen since Mayor Giuliani was running for re-election in NY City.
The open seat in West Virginia is in coal country and the Democratic governor there is very vulnerable on that point due to his political brand.
And the more it looks like Republicans are going to take the Senate, as well as the House, the greater sense it will make for WVA to tactically vote Republican in the Senate to limit the certain damage to the state from losing Byrd to the government payroll side of the ledger.
That Dem governor has astronomical approval numbers … over 80% last time I looked which admittedly was a couple of months ago. Still, he is wildly popular with the people there.
lurker:
Well, they were mistakes in the opinion of those particular Republicans, but if they stay home and let the Democrat win, they have made a humdinger of a mistake themselves. What if they had some guy they just loved, but some other Republicans decided to sit home and pout, would they appreciate that? Selfish short sighted people.
If Crist somehow manages to pull this one out Rubio will have a lock on the Bill Nelson seat when it comes up in 2012.
Just closing the gap in the Senate by 5 or 6 would make it almost a pure deadlock chamber since 60 votes would be almost impossible to come by without being real bipartisan legislation.
We need 53 in the senate to overcome those who vote with the dems. I believe this is actually possible: CA, WA, WI, FL, NV, are going to go our way, imho, along with CT and WVA.
It is no time to be meek or timid. We HAVE to get this done. We ALL have to watch every single vote and be alert to fraud all across the country.
I had a chance to drive from boise all the way to the coast through Oregan a couple of year ago.
What a beautiful state! Camped in one of my favorite sopts in the world.
Sad that it is full of leftist “fruits and nuts” along the coast. Obomo signs were everywere.
Even if this election is a vindication, the country has reached a critical mass of lazy slackers, leftist stooges and mind numbed “progressives.” About them what can be done?
Meanwhile the nation continues to bleed its vitality over two un-necessary nation-building adventures. Viet Nam Part II and Part III.
George, yes, your replacement is worse, but I still don’t miss you yet.
They are gone now, and the Obama stickers are coming off the bumpers too. On a recent trip from San Francisco to San Jose, I saw ONE Obama bumper sticker. I also saw one Tea Party sticker and one Obama Lied sticker.
oneal lane You cannot possibly , in good faith compare Iraq or Afganistan with Vietnam; not in terms of casualties not in terms of what was accomplished. Unless by that statement you mean that you believe the press lied about both of them.
It looks like my take on Linda McMahon’s WWE style taste for media political combat being a winning feature for her 2010 Senate candidacy has been spot on.
Moe Lane is seeing the star bursts of panic from the Democratic Media Complex in Connecticut:
http://www.redstate.com/moe_lane/2010/08/23/doom-declared-in-ct-by-journal-inquirer/
==============================
DOOM declared in CT by… Journal Inquirer.
Posted by Moe Lane (Profile)
Monday, August 23rd at 12:00PM EDT
2 Comments
I don’t pretend to be familiar with Connecticut newspapers, but judging from this article the J-I must be a Democratic-leaning one: there’s a palpable sense of angry disbelief that… that… that Linda McMahon could possibly be wrecking Dick Blumenthal’s smooth ascension to Countrywide Dodd’s Senate seat. I mean, the author’s saying stuff about Blumenthal that I might hesitate to write, given that he’s – for now – still leading outside the margin of error:
Blumenthal is an even weaker candidate… gives an impression of total obsequiousness as a candidate… A politician who has no respect for himself… A politician who runs away from his party, his president, and his own record… caught in an embarrassing fairy tale about his combat service in Vietnam… this performance was an award winner for political malpractice and tone-deafness…some sort of independent… The man is so afraid of losing that he is headed for a self-fulfilling prophecy par excellence… Democrats in Washington and Chicago, calculating ways to hold the Senate should send their money to Delaware or Pennsylvania or Colorado… Unless Blumenthal gets a guts transplant, this race is gone; this candidate is hopeless, doomed, toast.
Bolding mine. I never thought that I would see a Democrat in Connecticut say that about a Democratic candidate for Senate in 2010 not named Dodd. At least, not before Labor Day.
>snip<
It looks like Charles Cooks report that 18 Senate seats are in play is moving the MSM to cover it’s collective anatomy with its declining viewer base.
See:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/the-line/-15-california-democratic-cont.html?wprss=thefix
The simple truth is that over the past six to nine months, the Senate playing field has expanded to the point where there are now (at least) 15 races where a party switch is a real possibility — if not a probability.
Most of that expansion has benefited Republicans, who have effectively taken advantage of a national playing field tilted in their favor to take previously non-competitive races like Washington and Wisconsin and put them on the target list.
Democrats have a few more opportunities as well — most notably in Kentucky where ophthalmologist Rand Paul’s (R) uneven campaign has created an opening for state Attorney General Jack Conway. (An independent poll released Thursday showed the two in a statistical dead heat.)
All told, the Cook Political Report now rates a whopping 18 races as either likely to switch, leaning switch or straight tossups. The Rothenberg Political Report ranks 15 races with the potential to switch sides.
Texas is going to go so Republican this election cycle that you will have to drill 5,000 feet to find Democratic voters:
http://blogs.chron.com/txpotomac/2010/08/obama_approval_rate_in_texas_d.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+houstonchronicle%2Ftxpotomac+%28Texas+on+the+Potomac%29
Obama approval rate in Texas drops to 34 percent
President Barack Obama’s job-approval rating has dropped to 34 percent in Texas, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll released this afternoon.
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Lone Star State voters are more hostile to Obama than the rest of the country. The president’s national approval rating stands at 47 percent, according to Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll.
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Very few Texans are neutral about Obama. Sixty-five percent of the state’s voters disapprove of his performance, leaving just one in a hundred Texans on the fence about the 44th president.
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With Obama’s ratings so low, it’s no surprise that Gov. Rick Perry is hanging on to a 49 percent to 41 percent lead over Democratic challenger Bill White in the same Rasmussen poll. That reflects little change since the last Rasmussen survey, which showed Perry ahead, 50 percent to 41 percent.
Everything that isn’t heavily gerrymandered Democratic, and some of those districts, will flip Republican this year on how unpopular Obama is.
Watch the Gulf Coast Democratic heartland districts. The oil drilling moritorium is as popular there as a case of AIDS, which matches Obama’s poll numbers.
Obama’s “war between the states” environmental development policies are going to reap a huge cross state political backlash when Republicans take control of the Congress.
Some Texas political types are speaking subrosa about trying to remove or limit the exemption for state income taxes from the Federal income tax code.
Grrr…this wasn’t supposed to be in italics:
Everything that isn’t heavily gerrymandered Democratic, and some of those districts, will flip Republican this year on how unpopular Obama is.
Watch the Gulf Coast Democratic heartland districts. The oil drilling moritorium is as popular there as a case of AIDS, which matches Obama’s poll numbers.
Obama’s “war between the states†environmental development policies are going to reap a huge cross state political backlash when Republicans take control of the Congress.
Some Texas political types are speaking subrosa about trying to remove or limit the exemption for state income taxes from the Federal income tax code