“I won.” — Barack Obama January 23, 2009 “Let me just say it this way, the Democrats will retain the majority in the House of Representatives. We have a huge — we have, what, 54-, 55-vote majority. We had a swing in the last two elections of 110 seats. We will — I am not yielding one grain of sand. We are fighting for every seat. But we are ready. And in the past when there have been these swings, it has been when people have not been ready. We’ve won our elections. We’ve won our special elections. We just recently took a seat that had never been Democratic since it was created at the time of the Civil War. So Democrats are ready. We are confident about what we have done for the American people. We have to get out there. We have been working hard, now we have to go out. We said we were going to do certain things, we did them, and now we have to go talk about what we have done.” — Nancy Pelosi February 28, 2010 “[W]e’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.” — Barack Obama October 25, 2010 Go vote, my friends. Go vote. Thanks, Erick
Originally posted here:
Good Morning. It Is Election Day.
When a deeply polarizing egotist leads an already-unpopular party, the only place to go is down, as endangered Democrats will soon realize. Some, having already learned the lessons of the Pennsylvania and Colorado Senate primary contests, are politely rebuffing–while others still downright rejecting–Barack Obama’s offers to join them on the campaign trail. Instead, they’ve got another president in mind: Bill Clinton, whose presence on the campaign trail translates to more enthusiasm among Democrats and Independents, according to a recent Gallup survey . Now, as I write in an op-ed for Fox News today , that must be a tough pill for Obama to swallow, otherwise he’d be a recluse for the next 5 days. Click below the fold for an excerpt. In a January strategy session with a handful of endangered incumbents, President Barack Obama took exception to the notion that brewing public opposition to his party’s landmark legislative victories somehow portended massive Democratic losses this fall. Republican-fomented speculation that the 2010 midterm election would mirror the 1994 midterm elections, which famously robbed President Bill Clinton of his majority in the House of Representatives, the president insisted, was greatly overblown. And unlike sixteen years before, the president told his concerned colleagues the “big difference” would be “me.” The problem for Democratic candidates, according to a new Gallup survey, is that their base prefers the man who presided over the last great Democratic electoral loss than the man likely to preside over the next. Fifty-three percent of Democratic voters say they would be more inclined to vote for a given candidate if the former President Clinton campaigned on that candidate’s behalf, whereas only 48 percent said the same of President Obama. Among Independents and Republicans, the margin between the two grew even wider. … In at least a dozen instances, the election efforts of high-profile House and Senate Democratic candidates are at least in part predicated on a rejection of the president’s administration and its increasingly unpopular domestic agenda. Barack Obama is so manifestly unpopular that voters–and indeed candidates, at least the honest ones–overwhelmingly prefer as a surrogate a man whose presidential tenure was marred by philandering and impeachment proceedings. And despite holding a 23-point advantage last year, Obama is now tied in a measure of approval with a man virtually chased from the White House in 2008 by angry villagers. If Democrats this year could have three wishes, the first, second and third would almost certainly be for Barack Obama to disappear and reappear as Bill Clinton. Or perhaps their third wish might be for Obama to reappear as Bush, under whom they performed quite well. Read the article in its entirety at Fox News. If you like it, I hope you consider tweeting the story with your friends. .
More here:
Uneasy Dems: Bring back Clinton! Or Bush!
That’s where we are now in the California Senate race. Babs Boxer’s campaign made an organized, coordinated effort to reach out to schools, supplying teachers with information to disseminate out to students telling them how to volunteer for the Boxer campaign. That is not in dispute. Boxer’s campaign has admitted to it and apologized for it. Of course, what they’re really sorry about is getting caught, and about Boxer having her toughest campaign of her entire career. That’s 28 miserably ineffective years in DC if you recall, voting the party line for the most radical elements of the leftist agenda. She’s so divisive she even started a fight about Ohio’s electoral votes in 2004. This is one of the more competitive Senate races in the country, and it’s part of the key battleground of five marginal seats held by Democrats that we could pick up, along with Nevada, West Virginia, Illinois, and Washington. Consider helping Carly Fiorina’s moneybomb today to keep her on the air and keep her shifting the polls our way.
See the original post here:
Babs Boxer: Desperate enough to encourage lawbreaking
By request, I’ve decided to take a look at just what kind of electorate the Public Policy Polling screening of Likely Voters seems to be predicting. To do this I will use recent PPP polls from two states: California , which went for Barack Obama heavily, and West Virginia , where Obama’s popularity has never been that hot. First, we look at West Virginia. I see two key stats: PPP says the state’s Likely Voters went for McCain 54-38 (MoE 2.8) and show a registration advantage for Democrats 55-35. The natural place to look for a baseline for these numbers was the wave for the Democrats in 2008, in the exit polling from that year . If PPP’s numbers look like those, or better, then PPP is projecting a wave for the Democrats this year, most likely. And so for the West Virginia Senate race in 2008, we see that the partisan breakdown per CNN was 49 D-33 R (MoE 3, if you believe Exit Polls are as random as we need them to be). So while the exit poll last time showed a D+16 registration advantage, PPP this time shows a D+20 registration advantage, seeming to project and even larger wave for the Democrats. Further if we check the Presidential returns for West Virginia, we see that the state went for McCain 56-43 (no MoE, as this is the actual result), or R+13. PPP shows the state going for McCain 54-38, R+16. So even more oddly, PPP seems to be suggesting a wave of Democrats who dislike Barack Obama. Schwa? Moving onto California, PPP shows Barack Obama winning 57-37, and Democrats with a 47 D-34 R-19 Other registration advantage. The actual CA result was 61-37 Obama, and the CA exit poll showed a 42-30-28 registration advantage. So PPP seems to be showing fewer independents, more Democrats, and fewer Republicans in California than 2008. And unlike WV, CA doesn’t even show any additional support for John McCain than the actual 2008 election. No anti-Obama, anti-Democrat, or even anti-incumbent wave at all, really. If you think that’s likely, then PPP’s likely voter screen should be accurate. If you don’t, then PPP’s results need to be adjusted mentally before being digested. And that’s not fraud, by the way, as some will say. That’s just an inability of PPP’s model to handle back to back wave years in opposite directions, which is a pretty minor failing of a model I believe. From Unlikely Voter .
Continue reading here:
Examining the PPP Likely Voter screen
It’s getting remarkably rough for the Democrats out here in California. Long, long time Assembly Speaker (and then after 1994 booted him out, San Francisco Mayor) Democrat Willie Brown has no confidence in any of the top Democrats , saying they have no ground operation at all. He applied that to Jerry Brown (Governor), Gavin Newsom (Lt. Governor), and Babs Boxer (Senate). The Chamber of Commerce is also pounding on the Democrats, pointing out that No Ma’am Boxer bounced 143 checks in the House Bank scandal. No integrity. No honesty. She’s a thief. Just one more reason we need to beat her and elect Carly Fiorina to the Senate. The Taxpayer Network is on the air against Boxer, and Carly’s got her fourth ad up, too: The ongoing ad campaign has tightened the race. I have the race rated 55/45 , nearly a coin flip. An apparent Internal poll has the race tied even at 44. With all of this, it’s no wonder that Carly has raised $1.4 million in the first 13 days of October. She can use more, too , because TV ads in California are awfully expensive, and they are critical in Carly’s turning this race around and getting herself in position to win. I’m in for $25 .
See original here:
California Senate Update
