Oct 15 2010
Why Reid Lost His Seat Last Night
I was switching over to the Reid-Angle debate last night and it was such a bad performance by Reid I could not make myself sit through it. Reid was tired and rambling and in a ‘why am I even trying anymore‘ mood. Which is exactly why I think he put the performance in that he did. He knows his numbers have never gone over 45% in months, therefore he knows he is an ex-incumbent walking.
But I think it is worse than that. As one of the top 3 Democrat leaders in DC, he has insights into how this race is shaping up, which must be the reason for his zombie-like performance. He has seen what is coming and he is totally resigned to the apocalypse. He had all the mannerisms of a man heading to the gallows: robotic and rote statements, unfocused eyes, mentally elsewhere.
Reid knows the Democrats destroyed themselves the last two years. He sees things like this all over the country:
Reliable GOP Source: Hey, you can’t print this, but we just had a poll come back saying that [House Democrat who everybody figured was pretty safe] is down 20.
[Jim Geraghty]: Well, that’s swell. But why can’t I use this?
Reliable GOP Source: We don’t think the Democrats know this guy is this much trouble, so we don’t want to tip them off.
A major Democrat incumbent down 20%! When they probably should be up 20%? We just a little over two weeks out and there should be the shift of the last few days coming soon. And no one should assume the pollsters are even close with their turn out models. It is completely possible the wave building is so large the statistical models are barfing like crazy. Because, even Nate Silver knows at 2% chance of happening – it can happen.
“He had all the mannerisms of a man heading to the gallows: robotic and rote statements, unfocused eyes, mentally elsewhere.”
I’ve never seen Harry Reid do anything other than that.
Angle landed a good shot when asking how he raised his personal fortune on a Govm’t salary – he claimed he had a “career” as a private lawyer where he got rich.
That is a lie. He only had a couple of years without a govm’t job in his entire life, and those periods he was always running for something. The most likely source of his money was the time he spent as head of Nevada’s Gaming Commission, and you don’t have to guess too much to say who would have been funneling some big under the table payments to him.
Oh, and there’s the dirty land deals, where he flipped vacant desert for 10 – 1 returns or better. No, those weren’t payoffs – that’s just crazy talk!!!
AJ,
You need to go see this Glen Bolger blog post on a recent NPR poll:
http://pos.org/2010/10/key-congressional-races/
Stan Greenberg makes the point that these are heavily screened voters, so even the less interested ones are likely to vote. I’m a little more skeptical, and it underscores the hard road the Democrats have on motivating their voters. If they succeed, they’ll hold their losses down below 50, and if they fail, the losses will cross over the 50 level and could be huge.
There were 58 seats that we tested in both June and October. In June, the GOPer led 49%-41% in those seats. Now, the GOP lead is smaller – 47%-44%. But again, these are mostly incumbent seats and, aggregated, the Dem is both losing AND below 45%.
Incumbent and open seat polling is not created equal. Undecideds tend to break against the incumbent, while open seat undecideds tend to split more evenly. Undecided voters in the 86 Democrat seats aren’t too fond of the President – he has just a 35% approve/55% disapprove rating. They are also very pessimistic about the direction of the country – 15% right direction/77% wrong track. The pessimistic voters – wrong track – break 66% GOP/23% Dem on the ballot. These undecideds will break more to the GOP than to the Dems.
Married White Men must be trending Republican, in the same sorts of percentages that blacks do (90%/10%) over all for Democrats, to get these NPR poll numbers.
A 15 Oct 2010 IBD/TIPP poll pretty much confirms that point, See:
Likely women voters do prefer Democrats retaining control of Congress over a GOP majority by 47%-42%, a five-point edge. But men favor Republican rule by 17 points: 55%-38%.
http://blogs.investors.com/capitalhill/index.php/home/35-politicsinvesting/2136-gender-bender-gop-leads-democrats-by-17-points-among-men
Since that was an “All men” category, it included African-Americans who are 9-to-1 Democrat and mostly unmarried…
This has huge implications.
None of the weak for reelection 1st time 2008 House, 2nd time 2006 House Democrats or 1st time in 2012 2006 Senate Democrats have faced a normal election cycle, let alone an opposing partisan wave election of the magnitude we are now seeing in the polls.
This means all the 2006 and 2008 House Seat gains the Democrats made in are goners either in 2010 (or in 2012, with Obama at the top of the ticket.)
The Democrats gained something like 73(?) House seats in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles combined and seem set to lose most now, with a few more Democratic House Seats outside these wave elections besides.
Structurally, this also foretells a real Democratic blood bath in the 2012 Senate races as red state “Wave Election Democrats” come up for re-election. At a mini9mum it will be similar to the blood bath Republicans took in the 1986 mid-term, when weaker “Reagan Wave” Republican Senators came up for election.
This Phenomenon of “Weak Partisan Wave Election Candidates facing Opposing Partisan Wave Election” is what most of the political pros are severely underestimating for 2010.
Reid is now claiming that Angle lied when she quoted Reid as saying “This War is Lost!”
Poor Harry – he never heard of YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyDOAmJYFFA&feature=player_embedded
How heartless of her to repeat the words he actually said!!!
“Reid is now claiming that Angle lied when she quoted Reid as saying This War is Lost!”
How could Reid be so disconnected from reality? Even I remember him saying this – it was a big deal back then! It was all part of the anti-Iraq war theme being pushed by the Dems against Bush.
“Man up” Harry!! – Heh.