For a good summary of the races in 2008 and how they are shaping up go here:

http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2007/S ... races.html



Minnesota:

The Minnesota Democratic Party couldn't have BOUGHT a TV ad that will do more for their cause than the one that Vets for Freedom just bought supporting incumbant Norm Coleman (R).




The war is extremely unpopular in Minnesota, Coleman knows that, and has been trying to hedge his bets by supporting the President only lukewarmly of late so to not appear to be too far right in progressive Minnesota. This ad completely undercuts his efforts.

If that weren't enough, the ad is horribly produced, with a half dozen rather inarticulate and non-photogenic Iraq veterans appearing before a black background that is quite frankly kind of frightening. One Capt. Knox Nunnally can't seem to look directly at the camera (or is reading poorly positioned cue cards). It's actually creepily reminicent of the videos that show hostages communicating their captors' demands. One soldier states that he knows that Sen. Coleman has been under pressure "from people who are willing to accept defeat by al Qaeda in Iraq." Don't you mean "from" al Qaeda in Iraq? Don't we all WANT defeat BY al Qaeda in Iraq? Another says, "As people who have proudly wore the uniform..." I assume you mean "worn", right?

Whoever produced this ad, in addition to being completely out of touch with the views of the voters in the state in which this is airing, has managed to make his spokesmen look like ignorant cretins with zero social skills.

Bravo, Vets for Freedom. Bravo.

For a long time, the question has not been whether the Democrats would gain seats in the next senate, but which, and how many. Republicans are defending 23 seats (including both seats in Wyoming and Mississippi) while Democrats have only 12 to defend.

On 538's senate scorecard today, EVERY Democratic seat is rated "Safe Dem", with only two given less than 100% chance of being won by the Democrat. The Republicans, even 2 years ago, really only had two viable chances to win Democratic seats. One of those evaporated when Tim Johnson of South Dakota had his brain hemorrhage and excellent recovery (even SD Republicans weren't going to beat up on a guy in a wheelchair), and in the past few months, Mary Landrieu in Louisiana has pulled away from her challenger to now have a 98% chance of victory according to 538.

So which seats will the Democrats win? 538 ranks Virginia and New Mexico as 100% chance pickups. Mark Udall in Colorado (82%) and Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire (79%) seem pretty solid absent a nationally ground-shifting event. It's also looking increasingly likely that Ted Stevens's indictment and trial will insure the end of his long political career in Alaska.

But today, a new surprise! The North Carolina race between Liddy Dole and Kay Hagan has shifted DRAMATICALLY in the past month as the DSCC has unleashed a media blitz against Dole calling into serious question her effectiveness as a Senator, and even her bona fides as a North Carolinian. A series of polls in the past two weeks now show Hagan ahead by statistically significant margins, moving this to the 57% level. It was 49% just a few days ago, but you can't ignore a half dozen polls as "outliers".

The other race that 538 ranks as a slight lead for the Democrat is in Oregon (54%), where incumbent Republican Gordon Smith (and cousin of Tom and Mark Udall, future Democratic Senators from New Mexico and Colorado) is running a campaign that can best be described as "left of center". He is one of the more centrist Republicans left in the Senate, but he couldn't try any harder to distance himself from Bush and McCain than he is. IMO, Smith will hold this seat in the end, but I'd certainly not be surprised to find myself wrong either.

OK, if you haven't been keeping count, that's 7 Democratic pickups projected. But the fun doesn't stop there.

Minnesota is the one state in which John McCain has been outspending Barack Obama on advertising. Not coincidentally, it's also the one swing state where McCain is trending positively, but he's still over 5 points behind, depending on which polls you believe. Incumbent Norm Coleman (who squeaked into office on the Republican wave of 2002, and the tragic death of progressive hero Paul Wellstone) is holding a narrow lead over comedian Al Franken. Franken has slowly gained ground over the past few weeks, but it remains to be seen if there's enough ground left to be gained in the homestretch. IMO, another Democrat would be running away with this race, as Minnesotans really want to elect a Democrat to this seat, they just aren't sure if Franken is serious enough. Not that it stopped them from electing Jesse Ventura governor, but Franken will actually have to win nearly 50% of the vote to actually win this race. Personally, I think Franken will pull this one off, just a gut feeling.

Then we get into the "dark horse" races, and "dark" may be the operative word here. In Mississippi, former Congressman Roger Wicker was appointed by current governor and former RNC chair Haley Barbour to fill the seat of former majority leader Trent Lott. Mississippi law requires that the seat be contested in the next general election, which is why there are two senate races there this year. As a side note, Wicker's former district (MS-01), a solidly Republican district that went for Bush by 25 points in 2004, was won by Democrat Travis Childers in a special election earlier this year.

The Democratic challenger to Wicker is former governor Ronnie Musgrove, as popular a Democrat as there is in Mississippi. 538 is listing this as a 77% chance for Wicker, and I don't think I've seen a poll putting this race any closer than 7 or 8 points, but even getting into single digits is quite a feat for a Mississippi US Senate seat. And then there's the "downticket" factor. Mississippi has the largest percentage of African-Americans of any state (around 37%), and it is quite likely that Obama will draw a significantly higher percentage of blacks to the polls than have ever voted in an election in Mississippi. I saw an analysis a few months back that showed how if blacks increase turnout by as little 20%, it could swing the state to Obama. The turnout would not have to be that large for Musgrove to defeat Wicker. Couple this with the (again) growing disenchantment of evangelicals with John McCain, and those Republicans sitting the election out could make this race a lot tighter than the polls have been showing.

A similar thing is happening in Georgia. 538 still lists incumbent Saxby Chambliss with a 93% chance of victory, but expect that come down in the coming week based on a couple of polls showing the race with as little as a 1 point lead. Obama has pulled his operation out of Georgia, but if this race gets tighter, I wouldn't be surprised to see him reallocate some resources from a state he is doing exceptionally well in, just to try to help downticket races.

Many races in the south have been tightening in the past few weeks with the economic crisis making front page news. The Democratic Party owned the south in the early 20th century, not only because of hatred for the party of Lincoln, but also because the Democrats espoused populist economic polices that appealed to poor working class voters. As long as they didn't try to give blacks their rights, the south was "solid".

But that was the old south, and the new south is coming to terms with its racist past, although it may take generations just as it takes generations for blacks to lose their feelings of being an oppressed minority. When times are good, or even just decent, Republicans have been able to dominate southern politics with their social wedge issues. But when times are bad like they are now, and the word "Depression" starts getting bandied about, working class whites start to remember that FDR did a LOT of good things for them back in the 30's, back before LBJ and Nixon and Reagan made southern politics first and foremost about race and other social issues (and non-issues). That, I believe, is what is being reflected in the recent polls.

The ultimate feather in teh Democrats' cap would be the Kentucky senate race, where Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is facing a legitimate challenge from a personally funded Democrat named Bruce Lunsford. The DSCC would love nothing more than to "Daschle" Mitch McConnell from his position in his party's leadership. I don't think there's much likelihood of that happening, but the one common thread in ALL of the races I've described in this post is that they are TRENDING BLUE.



So, thank you for reading this far. I got a little carried away.

Here's the big picture.

Right now the Democrats have a 51-49 advantage in teh Senate counting independents Bernie Sanders (yay!) and Joe Lieberman (boo!). I can't see any scenario where the Democrats take less than 5 seats from Republicans. That is enough to divest Lieberman of his committee chairmanships and boot him from the Democratic caucus.

My bet would be that the Democrats take 7 seats. A healthy gain, but not the magic filibuster-proof majority of 60.

In a perfect storm, and a storm is a-brewin', the Democrats could take 10 or 11 seats. 10 is teh real magic number because that gives them the Lieberman-less filibuster proof majority, and in addition to being able to claim a real electoral mandate on such a blowout (unlike Bush's phony mandate from 2004), they'd have the tools to actually use it.


And guess what? The map doesn't look much better for the GOP in 2010.

That Oregon race will be weird as usual. After the Packwood scandal the Oregon GOP imploded on the national level, but Brown keeps on surviving, and sometimes it felt like the state just wanted a token Republican in some statewide office.

the la races ballsack and whotnot

punkdavid u used to sign off


--PunkDavid

I have voted for Gordon Smith in the past, but not this time around because of his support of the bailout.

Mark Warner will win in Virginia easily.

This doesn't scare you in the least bit? If Obama wins, and they pick up 10 seats, then you have pretty much a single party in full control. What need would they have then, to reach across the aisle?

They need to implement policies that will not result in losing their power in two years.

And after the last 8 years, not much scares me about the power of government.

Nate at 538 has the Senate races moving even more towards the Dems, if you can believe it. He now has 8 Dem takeovers more likely than not, and 2 more moving in the right direction.

Here is the change since my last post on Monday Oct. 6. (Oct 6 win % -> Oct 14 win %)

VA 100 -> 100
NM 100 -> 100
CO 82 -> 91
NH 79 -> 83
AK ?? -> 58 (I think Stevens may have gained a bit of ground here since last week, but I don't think he'll come back from THIS)
NC 57 -> 66
OR 54 -> 63
MN 45 -> 55
MS 23 -> 40
GA 7 -> 23


If the Dems get Mississippi or Georgia, that makes 60 including Lieberman. If they get both, its 60 without him.

Elizabeth Dole (R) has been running these ads against Kay Hagan saying that she is too tied to big oil (she owns some stock in some company that owns stock in oil wells). Then last week, I got a mailing from Dole that says Kay Hagan is against drilling and is too restrictive on the oil and gas industry.

I fucking hate Dole!! She's the Joker!!

When is Lieberman's spot up for an election next?

4 years? Senators serve six year terms.

2012, I believe. After he pulled a Zell Miller, something tells me he's not going to be in the Senate after then.

Someone suggested this, and I thought it would be a good idea for McCain. If he wins, appoint Lieberman to somewhere in his cabinet. The governor of Connecticut is a Republican, and she could replace Lieberman with another Republican to gain incumbency.

If McCain were to win, I have no doubt that would happen. It's perfect in every way.

There's been talk amongst leftys about what Republican Obama might nominate in order to try to get to 60 votes in teh Senate, but that's not going to happen because I'm sure that no Republican Senator would be willing to be the one that gave the Dems a filibuster-proof majority.

An interesting side-note to teh McCain idea, the Governor of Arizona is a Democrat. The law here says that she must appoint a Republican to fill McCain's seat, but it doesn't say which Republican. Many people have talked about Jim Kolbe, the moderate Republican who retired from House District 8 last year, who may be interested in a short Senate term to top off his career. Kolbe is also openly gay, which always gave the GOP fits when he was in office, and that's always a nice thing. Another option would be to appoint a very unpopular wingnut whom she herself or Attorney General Terry Goddard could beat in an election in 2010.

I don't know. It was mostly Republicans that voted him in this time.

On November 7, Lieberman won re-election on the Connecticut for Lieberman line with 50% of the vote. Democratic challenger Ned Lamont garnered 40% of ballots cast and Republican Alan Schlesinger won 10%. Lieberman received support from 33% of Democrats, 54% of Independents, and 70% of Republicans.

I dunno, one third of Democrats is a pretty large number.

Well, the guy was a Democrat after all. Pretty low if you consider that.

And you should see teh polling in the state since then. Independents and Democrats who voted for him are by large margins sorry they did.

One week out, and things are beginning to become clear.

Democrats will pick up Senate seats in:

Colorado
New Mexico
New Hampshire
Virginia

Democrats will almost certainly pick up seats in:

Alaska
Oregon
North Carolina

These are the races to watch on election night:

Minnesota. Al Franken has a narrow lead over incumbent Republican Norm Coleman. Polling is complicated by the presence of a strong third party candidate who is pulling over 10% in most polls.

Mississippi. Appointed Republican incumbent in his first Senate election faces popular Democratic former governor in a Democratic year. Couple that with the fact that Mississippi has teh highest percentage of African Americans of any state and teh Democratic ticket is topped by the first African American with a realistic chance to win the Presidency, and this race, which shouldn't be a race, becomes a race.

Georgia. Similar demographic considerations to Mississippi, and a national Democratic trend, help this race become tighter than it might otherwise be. The DNC and DSCC also have strong incentive to beat draft dodger Saxby Chambliss in his first reelection bid after he painted triple amputee Vietnam Veteran Max Cleland as unpatriotic and sympathetic to Osama bin Laden in the 2002 election.

Kentucky. Probably the longest shot that the Dems can actually consider a legitimate target, the DNC and DSCC are working hard to knock off Senate Minority Leader, and filibusterer extraordinaire, Mitch McConnell.


If the Democrats win 2 of the last 4, they have 60 (including Lieberman). Winning 3 of 4 gives them the ability to put old Joe in a burlap sack and dump him in the Potomac.

Is Liddy Dole really in serious trouble? B will probably go through some really good beer a week from today.