CO-04 (Special Election) See Full Big Line

(R) Greg Lopez

(R) Trisha Calvarese

90%

10%

President (To Win Colorado) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Biden*

(R) Donald Trump

80%

20%↓

CO-01 (Denver) See Full Big Line

(D) Diana DeGette*

90%

CO-02 (Boulder-ish) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Neguse*

90%

CO-03 (West & Southern CO) See Full Big Line

(D) Adam Frisch

(R) Jeff Hurd

(R) Ron Hanks

40%

30%

20%

CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado) See Full Big Line

(R) Lauren Boebert

(R) Deborah Flora

(R) J. Sonnenberg

30%↑

15%↑

10%↓

CO-05 (Colorado Springs) See Full Big Line

(R) Dave Williams

(R) Jeff Crank

50%↓

50%↑

CO-06 (Aurora) See Full Big Line

(D) Jason Crow*

90%

CO-07 (Jefferson County) See Full Big Line

(D) Brittany Pettersen

85%↑

 

CO-08 (Northern Colo.) See Full Big Line

(D) Yadira Caraveo

(R) Gabe Evans

(R) Janak Joshi

60%↑

35%↓

30%↑

State Senate Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

80%

20%

State House Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

95%

5%

Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
November 26, 2014 07:24 AM UTC

Wednesday Open Thread

  • 23 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

"Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what's going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?"

–Will Rogers

Tweet
Share

Comments

23 thoughts on “Wednesday Open Thread”

    1. NY Times has a story about the Tea Party being re-energized over immigration and threatening to eat their own young (and old) within the GOP.  One threatened target (the young) is Marco Rubio for supporting the immigration reform legislation.  Another target (the not young) is John McCain for the same reason.  Their fantasy challenger for McCain is P/T Arizona resident and former Alaska Guv Sarah Palin!  There's poetic justice……he created this mess and now it threatens to destroy him!

      1. This is the second best thing I've seen today. That Vickie Marble wasted no time putting her back paw in her mouth again was the best; but this is close

  2. Boehner feels that "President Obama has turned a deaf ear to the people that he was elected … to serve."

    By a 78-21 percent margin, voters favor allowing immigrants in the U.S. illegally to become citizens after they meet requirements such as passing a background check.

    1. Actually the fall of Rome came long after the Senate had lost any real power in the Imperial Rome that, over time,  pretty much erased the old Republic and for a variety of reasons that had nothing much to do with the Senate, but it sounds good.

  5. More election post mortem: Progressive policies won, Democratic candidates lost

    Sen. Bernie Sanders and members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus tried to get Democrats on message throughout the year. Elizabeth Warren wowed the crowd at Netroots Nation in July, where she outlined a platform centered on economic populism but also including progressive social, environmental and political reforms.

    (Warren came out for Udall, but it was probably too late by that time. -z)

    But the memo never got to most candidates, consultants, party chairs and leaders. And the results were devastating—not just at the federal level but in the states, where Republicans grabbed governorships and eleven new legislative chambers. Midterms are usually rough for the party of the sitting president, but the 2014 defeats ran deeper, and in many cases will be harder to reverse.

    At the root of the problem is a delinking of politics from policy. Increasingly, Democratic candidates in major contests run as “brands” carefully constrained to make a lowest-common-denominator appeal that is satisfying to campaign donors and insiders in Washington but that makes little sense to voters. While GOP candidates rage cynically against “elites” and “crony capitalism,” Democrats peddle pablum. As such, they don’t excite even their own base. What excited activists were those initiative and referendum campaigns; indeed, some of the biggest rallies I witnessed during the 2014 campaign were organized by backers of minimum-wage hikes and “Move to Amend” campaigners for an end to corporate influence on politics and policy. They were right to be excited: they were on their way to big and meaningful victories because they were fighting for big and meaningful—as well as popular—proposals. That’s a lesson Democrats should ponder, because as Stephanie Taylor of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee reminds us: “When elections are about nothing, Democrats lose.”

    That helps explain Udall's loss. Our other senator is next to test these theories, and, even if he doesn't know it, Michael Bennet's campaign has already begun, courtesy of Republican Mitch McConnell:

    The under-the-radar moves less than three weeks after the 2014 midterms and a month-and-a-half before McConnell takes over for Harry Reid makes clear the brutal reality in front of Republicans: Their majority could be short lived.

    …

    “You can start too late, but never too soon,” McConnell said in an interview in the Capitol hallways last week, citing the words of the late Happy Chandler, a former Kentucky senator turned commissioner of baseball.

    Last week, McConnell summoned all 24 Republicans up for reelection in 2016 to a morning meeting at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which was even attended by potential 2016 presidential candidates like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has said he wouldn’t run for the White House and Senate at the same time. At the meeting, McConnell and Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, the new NRSC chairman, made a blunt declaration to their colleagues: Reelection, they said, starts now.

    With the NRSC’s new executive director, Ward Baker, and the deputy executive director, Kevin McLaughlin, the two GOP operatives made a presentation of how much campaigns have changed since the senators last ran in 2010, even noting iPhones were just a couple years old back then and iPads had just come on market. They implored their candidates to begin a heavy fundraising push immediately, and tried to tell them on what to expect in the ad war.

    …

    In the 35-minute discussion, the GOP leaders and top operatives also urged Republican senators to immediately hire their own pollsters, consultants and staff, given there will be a major competition for operatives with the crowded 2016 GOP presidential primary about to take shape. If there are certain staff who need training, they said, the NRSC was prepared to help groom them.

    “Members need to begin to do the things to tool their campaigns differently, to understand the significant change in resource needs,” Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said, recounting the message from the meeting. “And now is the time to begin to think about the mechanics of the campaigns.”

    Bennet was given a special task this last election due to his last electoral win that gave us the Bannock Street project. But Democrats had other weaknesses that diminished the effect of a technical ground game: mixed messages, fear of being associated with the president, and a policy vacuum left by poor support for the ACA, stupid adherence to failed and unpopular economic policies and the chronic and destructive triangulation employed against the very voters that put them in office. 

    Bennet has about 'til the new year to decide if he's going to continue to use the same losing strategies or adjust to an electorate that won't support principle-free Democrats who constantly ignore their base. I'm afraid he doesn't have the guts to change and I'll being writing another "told you so" diary in late 2016. The lessons seem obvious from the election just concluded, but some people seemingly don't want to take heed, or responsibility, for any of it.

    1. This goes all the way back to Reagan who won when polls showed majorities opposed to his policies and in favor of Dem policies. Thanks to Dem cowardice in messaging the low info voting majority has no idea they're voting for pols who stand against them.

      There is no reason why Dems can't compete in the messaging arena . They just don't.  Rs have the guts to strut their stuff even though it's all a load of discredited crap and Dems are too afraid of them to tell the truth. Instead of pointing out how, for decades, conservative polices have been completely discredited failures they go along and try to come across as almost as conservative on (totally failed) economic policy as the Rs. It's pathetic.

       

        1. Would be a good start. Unfortunately Dems apparently don't want to mention any areas except social issues on which they differ from Republicans. Are they still afraid of being called pinkos if they point put how conservative economic strategies have been huge failures for the overwhelming majority going back decades and how the policies Dems favor are the ones to get us out of the hole conservatives have dug for the 99% and the ones the public say they want in polls?  

          News flash; the younger voters they need to energize don't remember the cold war and how we're all supposed to be scared of commies under the bed. Now it's Islamist terrorists. Don't these people go to the movies or watch any TV? The zeitgeist has moved on.  

          Minorities they need to energize know they've been getting screwed but have only seen Dems follow the R lead or accept bad bargains on stupid austerity, enrich the rich so it will trickle down policies.

          As soon as Dems grow a pair they can energize the young and minorities and the conservative nightmare will end.  You raise participation of those groups by just a significant number of points, not even hugely, and Rs are toast in every competitive state with demographics making more states competitive all the time. It is the economy, stupid and Dem policies are demonstrably better for the economy so why run from it?  Shout it from the rooftops as loud as the right shouts their bull. 

          Oh and if it's because Dems, from Obama down, still really believe they shouldn't be too critical of R policy because what the public wants more than anything is civility and for everybody to be nice then how do you explain the popularity of Rs who enthusiastically spew hate against all Dems and Dem policy and not only refuse to compromise with the Obama administration but refuse to treat our President with even the tiniest iota of civility?  Dems are never going to "nice" their way out from under the bullies they hand over their lunch money to. They need to wake up.

          1. Bluecat rocks again!

            I'd like to point out, in support of your thesis that Dems turn out for economic reasons, that in Pueblo, which ran counter to the "Republican wave" in the last election, neither the House, Senate, nor County Clerk candidate ran on the abortion or gay marriage social issues, although these were obvious and part of the candidate platforms.

            They ran on job performance and economic issues. And they were elected, against Republican opponents including George Rivera, Brian Mater, and Victor Head.

          2. Another electoral drubbing, another reason to move rightward

            I have a sneaking suspicion that some of Colorado's Democrats justify this by telling themselves, "Except for the social issues, I'd be a Republican, so there can't be any reason to not vote like a Republican on economic issues."

            1. Obama's got nothing to lose and there's not much love lost between him and congressional Dems so it looks like he's got the veto pen all ready and waiting this time. Too bad it had to come down to this. Obama's as much to blame as the congressional Dems who don't like him much but now, he's the only one who doesn't have to worry about another election or about hanging on to the Senate for his last two years. Water under the bridge. He apparently is finding all that pretty freeing. I wish the Obama we've been seeing since the last election could have been the one we got back in 2008. But these next two years could be pretty interesting.

    1. What the hell is a middle-of-the-road Republican?  Gerald Ford was the last one, by my count.  There are three factions in today's GOP:  conservative, ultra-conservative,  and Troglodyte.  

  7. An amusing New York Times magazine article, "Chris Christie Is Back." Although maybe not the most amusing passage:

    There is a theory in presidential politics that electorates will gravitate to the candidate who represents the biggest departure from the incumbent, especially if they have grown weary of that incumbent. “That’s the argument people make to me about why I should run,” Christie told me during one of our conversations. “They’re like: ‘No one could be more the opposite of Barack Obama from a personality standpoint than you. Therefore, you’re perfect.’ ” Yet one of the more compelling aspects of a Christie candidacy would be his ability to start an overdue fight within his own party. In 2012, Mitt Romney never took on the G.O.P.'s far right, which has more than its own fair share of bullies. He was content to run right in the primaries, tout his “severe conservative” stripes and hope it would not end up costing him with swing voters in the general election. (It did.) In a brief period of reckoning after the 2012 election, Republican leaders spoke of their need to expand their shrinking base and appeal to Hispanics, African-Americans, women and younger voters rather than bow to unrelenting hard-liners. Christie could be the candidate with the best shot of pulling this off. “Christie’s strength is that people think he is being straight with them,” said Tom Kean, a former New Jersey governor and one of Christie’s political mentors. “If he kowtows to anyone, and people stop believing that he’s saying what he means, he’s going to kill the brand.”

  8. Happy Thanksgiving. There's really no need to hit the stores that screw up the holiday for their employees. Sale prices later on will be just as good.  It's just hype and chaos. Who needs it?  

      1. I've never shown up. I can't think of anything I'd like to do less than participate in needless shopping hysteria. While recent years haven't be kind in that several family members who used to come are no longer with us and we don't need to host any overnight guests for the weekend, when we did, nobody would have considered going Christmas or Hanukkah shopping instead of hanging out together. I feel sad for those who think the best thing to do with their family time is  to go get jostled in crowds for no good reason.  We're having Thanksgiving dinner with family and tomorrow spending the day hanging out with friends and making a serious dent in the leftovers. Hope everyone has a Thanksgiving and Black Friday as nice as that. Signing off to finish cooking the stuff I promised to bring.

Leave a Comment

Recent Comments


Posts about

Donald Trump
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Lauren Boebert
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Yadira Caraveo
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado House
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado Senate
SEE MORE

220 readers online now

Newsletter

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay in the loop with regular updates!