U.S. Senate
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(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
20%
Governor
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(D) Joe Neguse
(D) Phil Weiser
(D) Jena Griswold
60%
60%
40%↓
Att. General
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(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Alexis King
(D) Brian Mason
40%
40%
30%
Sec. of State
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(D) George Stern
(D) A. Gonzalez
(R) Sheri Davis
40%
40%
30%
State Treasurer
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(D) Brianna Titone
(R) Kevin Grantham
(D) Jerry DiTullio
60%
30%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd*
(D) Somebody
80%
40%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Somebody
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(D) Joe Salazar
50%
40%
40%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
January 22, 2018 01:31 PM UTC
47 Comments
Brave Sir Robin ran away.
Bravely ran away away.
When danger reared its ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled.
Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about
And gallantly he chickened out.
Swiftly taking to his feet,
He beat a very brave retreat.
Bravest of the brave, Sir Robin!
#Resistance
Gee, I wonder what LWNJs and RWNJs share in common?!? . . .
You'd have to ask R&R. He likes the term.
Well, since you asked…..
Both the RWNJs and the LWNJs are interested in posturing (to gin up the base and to raise money) and shun any attempt to find anything remotely resembling a middle ground. That does not mean that a middle ground will be found every time. But neither side is even willing to make the attempt.
Like it or not, the voters in this country (with some assistance from Vlad and the Constitutional Convention) have seen fit to deal this hand of cards (Republican president, Republican House, and 51 Republican/49 Democratic senators).
And unfortunately, it will probably remain that way for the foreseeable future. Trump's numbers are slightly up – even post-Shithouse remark.
The generic Democrat now leads the generic Republican in House races by only 8% instead of the 13% or 18% a week ago. A Democrat needs at least a 10% spread over the GOP candidate to overcome the gerrymandering effect.
The Senate races next year are even more problematic. Donnelly, Heitkamp, and McCaskill are probably history. Machin probably survives – just barely. Democrats may pick up Nevada and Arizona so we will end up with a 52/48 split again.
Jeff Greenfield had a good piece today on the difference between 2006 and 2018. In 2006, Rahm Emmanuel recruited House candidates who matched their districts. (Remember Heath Schuler? One of the great DINOs of all time!)
This time around, the DCCC is recruiting folks who will tow the party line as articulated by the LWNJs.
Keep the faith: Bernie will lead up into the promised land in 2020.
You have a bizarre usage of RWNJ & LWNJ equivalency.
The Republican Party has three wings: Corporatist/Plutocrat (aka Funders) and White Evangelicals, and Racist/Nativist (aka Voters). The Republican Party no longer contains ANY middle-of-the road ideas. It has been taken over by anti-science wackadooles, religious zealots, and racists. That RWNJ shit is all over the Republican Party; are there any non RWNJs left in the party. Oh, and it is 99% White.
The Democratic Party is a broad coalition of ideas that run the gamut from Social Democratic to Neo-Liberal, as well as a coalition of ethnic and cultural identities. Obviously, it is a Capitalist Party, certainly not Socialist.
Wildly popular Democratic policies include: Pollution regulations, Bank Regulations, Consumer Protection, Carbon Taxes and subsidies for Renewable Energy, Universal Health Insurance, Social Security, Cheap or Easy access to College, Universal Public Education, Government funded science.
Explain how any of these ideas are LWNJ rather than mainstream Liberal or Social Democratic? Are you saying that Social Security and public elementary schools are the thin edge of the wedge for communism?
Given the radical shift of the Republican Party to extreme right-wing positions, where would you actually define the middle?
It's the tactics that are similar, not the policy positions.
So you think asking nicely would have worked better? Depend on the mores of civil discourse and the traditions of the Senate and the House? Look to our President for inspiration on how to negotiate?
Not to belabor it, but you might consider not categorizing your Democratic allies as nut jobs. I sincerely hope that you are not out there doing voter contact. People tend to pick up on when you hold them in contempt.
Actually, where I live in Jeffco, many of the newer Democrats are former (moderate) Republicans who got tired of the RWNJs running their party.
They are people who do not support government-run health care. They think kids who go to college should have to contribute (invest) in their own education because they won't take it for granted.
They aren't interested in having LWNJs running their new party.
I lived in Jeffco for 5 years, worked the '08 election there, walked my precinct with Max Tyler and Chris Kennedy. I can guarantee that you have many more people whose views are closer to mine than you know. Jeffco went 59% for Bernie in the caucuses.
So dismiss your neighbors as "LWNJ"s if you want. Or, you could try listening to them to find out why they believe as they do.
Hillary, the moderate, finally embraced a version of "government run health care" and "government paying for college" – because the base demanded it.
Do you mean government run Health Insurance or government run Health Care or government regulated private insurance?
We have the VA hospitals which provide government run health care. We have Obamacare, which provides a regulated exchange to enable individuals to buy private insurance, and we have government run health insurance like medicaid and medicare.
You don't understand insurance and your definition of Nut Job is different from everyone else. No wonder you are confused… unless you are intentionally trying to confuse the issue.
I guess my point was that they’re both NJs.
As much as I sympathize with the uncertainty that the dreamers are dealing with because of our witless stable genius, the government is not a single-issue entity. Keeping the government open and running is the first and most important step of governance. And, when the government is closed, much more suffers from that childish stupidity than just the dreamers. (And, I don’t just mean reputationally, although that should be considered important, too.)
A pox on all the childish government shutdowners everywhere, regardless of their leaning. Yeah, I know, the GOPers perfected the Government-as-Sheriff-Bart-hostage-taking — fuck ‘em! (I hope Newt develops testical rot and his balls fall off — slowly and painfully.)
In an election year, especially, you better be the party that shows it can and will govern, not a rabble of suicide-bomber wannabes.
Klein (quoted below) got it right . . .
What's more confusing to me is when Diane Feinstein, Pat Leahy, Booker, Harris, Gillibrand, Bob Menedez, and Jon Tester became icons of the left.
Feinstein is facing a primary challenge from the left from the Latino state senate president. Menendez is looking for friends where he can find them.
I'm not certain I count as part of the "base" of the Democrats — but as a pragmatic, moderate, transaction oriented Democrat — I'm still hacked off with this cave in.
At the very least, there should have been a very, VERY public statement by Sen. McConnell about what he committed to BEFORE the vote in the Senate. I've been parsing what is reported as his statement, and still have no clue what it means. McConnell released a statement that said:
The caveat "assuming that the government remains open" suggests there cannot be another shutdown.
I don't understand the strategic or tactical decision to accept anything which does not have a commitment for actual legislation on DACA to be approved.
Democrats didn't cave on the shutdown.
Ezra Klein wrote about the deal:
I tend to agree with Klein's analysis. If the Republicans block a genuine DACA proposal, they will have a much harder time blaming the Democrats for the shutdown.
My primary complaint is that, whatever damage the shutdown was doing to Democrats in terms of public opinion, it was putting Trump in a box. Either he laid low so that his incompetence would not show, or he spoke up (or tweeted) and demonstrated his ignorance of the issues and his inability to negotiate. Can Trump golf during a shutdown while the troops are working without a paycheck? Can he fly to Davos and hobnob with the elites when average Americans can't go to national parks? I do not think he could have and that would have driven him mad(der). But, we may have another chance to interrupt his vacation schedule in three weeks.
Not to worry. Everyday the prez gets fabulous ideas from the ninnies at Fox & Friends and then tweets them to the world. He'll keep himself front & center, just you watch.
Klein's last point is worth noting as well:
What a pragmatic way to view it, MJ!
What a condescending response! Yes, I'm a practical woman. And even though you may consider me to be a "LWNJ" because I do support Sanders, Warren, and the slate of Presidential hopefuls Psuedo named, I know that my beliefs are not even close to your cynical definition of them.
I don't care about "ginning up the base and raising money". I care about policies and candidates who support policies that will actually make life better for people on this planet.
I think that Dems could have held out longer to keep promises to the DACA kids, and that they should have done so. Every day that passes without resolution on this, another 122 young people lose their ability to legally work in this country. That's the humanitarian point of view.
Here's the political view: Dreamers have friends and family who are citizens, and if lucky, may become citizens themselves someday. Why would any of these friends, family, or DACA kids trust Democrats (or Republicans) to do anything for them?
Not only that, but they have an opportunity to point up the Republican'ts' bad faith if McConnell doesn't keep his word.
Of course, we've seen Republican't bad faith for years, but it doesn't seem to matter.
CHIP funding passed for six years. The Democrats did get that, much to the dismay of the RWNJs.
DACA and the game of shithole-shutdown poker is not over. Here, I agree with the arguments posed by Ezra Klein that mama linked to. The next hand is dealt in three weeks.
Yes, the Democrats DID get the CHIP funded.
The stupid thing for the Republicans is that they even threw the CHIP chip into the pot, as medical funding for poor kids is enormously popular for white as well as non-white voters and Republican as well as Democratic states. I would suggest that the Republicans are relieved that CHIP won't be an election issue, so in that sense they were happy and relieved to make that minimal concession.
I assume that the DACA promise in the Senate will be broken; if not, that it won't even make it to a vote in the House; if so, it will be vetoed by Trump, and then the only solution is voter registration and the November elections.
The problem is that DACA is a racial/racist issue for the extremists who make up over 50% of the Republican primary voters, and they will want to die on that cross once again either in the Senate, the House or the White House.
Why do I believe so strongly that Dreamers will be screwed?
Because Trump could fix the problem with a signature by reinstating the Obama-era rules. The fact that he doesn't means that the White Supremacists in the White House fully intend to break more things in order to play racial politics.
Bottom line, there isn't anything the Democrats can do about it except register more hispanic voters in Florida, Georgia, Texas, Arizona and California.
That may yet happen. The problem will be in the House. McConnell can allow the Senate to vote on the DACA bill and it will probably pass only to fester in the House.
I wonder what the Honorable Gentleman from the Colorado Sixth District will do if presented with a discharge petition…..
And Vox discusses the very problem of passing ANY kind of immigration reform.
I do not believe that there will be a DACA bill passed until the Democratic Party has a majority in the House and the Senate.
6-year funding for CHIP was already offered in the four-week CR that was just filibustered, resulting in the shutdown. The only thing that changed is that the CR is now for three weeks. They could have not had a shutdown and shutdown the government a week after they now can without a filibuster. That doesn't seem like three-dimensional chess to me.
Either the million-ish Dreamers are worth it or they aren't. At some point Dems are going to have to come down on one side of the fence.
So what do you think that the 'spineless Dems' should have done instead? What's a better outcome than getting six years for healthcare for kids and an up or down vote on Dreamers in 3 weeks. Where's the 'win' for America that you deem didn't happen?
I never called anyone "spineless."
A better outcome would have been six years' healthcare for kids and an up or down vote in four weeks, without any shutdown.
The Dems already had CHIP funding. They could have taken the four-week CR that passed the House, and included CHIP funding, and made clear that they would shut down the government if the fate of DACA folks wasn't decided by the 16th of February. Instead they went to the mat to get what they had already been offered, plus a meaningless promise from a senate leader who's already lied, none from the speaker, and a statement from the president's spokesman saying that he'll never sign Graham-Durbin. And now, the Republicans know the issue of the dreamers isn't a hill that Dems will die on. Of course, they already knew that, because the Dems have repeatedly cried, "no deal without the dreamers" and then made a deal.
I don't think that the Democrats lack the courage of their convictions. I think that they lack the convictions themselves. This sort of play can only succeed if the players have both courage and conviction. What the Dems largely wanted was #Resistance theater. They got that. The problem is that the empty suit in the White House is all theater, and does it better than they do.
Thank all those Jill Stein supporters in MI, WI and PA.
Would you still be mad at those voters if you knew that they had tried to vote (for anyone) and been intimidated or suppressed?
There were very effective voter suppression efforts in those 3 states, easily winning Trump his margin of victory.
MI In Michigan, exit polls also didn't match computerized vote totals. Several expert analyses showed Clinton winning MI, WI, NC, PA, and FL, according to exit polling. The Center for American Progress states:
Poll workers in Michigan incorrectly told voters that they needed to show identification to vote. While Michigan does have a voter ID law, it does not require an ID to vote; instead, voters have the option of filling out an affidavit swearing to their identity. There are no hard data on how many Michigan voters were improperly turned away for lacking an ID.
WI: In Wisconsin, according to the Bradblog elections and voting reporting site :
27,000 votes currently separate Trump and Clinton in Wisconsin, where 300,000 registered voters, according to a federal court, lacked strict forms of voter ID" as now required by state Republicans to vote there at all. "Voter turnout in Wisconsin was at its lowest levels in 20 years and decreased 13 percent in Milwaukee, where 70 percent of the state’s African-American population lives."
PA: In Pennsylvania, where Trump specifically called for his supporters to intimidate voters by "watching certain precincts", a judge refused to investigate or legally halt this planned intimidation.
Also in Pennsylvania, poll workers "mistakenly" asked new voters for driver's licenses. The PA voter ID law had been struck down, and new voters were allowed to vote with voter ID cards. Except – they weren't. How many voters were turned away at the polls? Recorded vote totals did not match the exit polls in Pennsylvania. We know that Republican politicians gloated before and after the election about the effects of disenfranchising black voters.
I can always tell when people are at a loss in an argument. Right wing guys bring up Hillary Clinton. Lefty guys bring up Jill Stein. It's called deflection.
I checked out Jill Stein in 2016, even went to hear her speak (she's good). Ultimately, I saw that Stein didn't have the experience to do the job, and showed unforgivable naivete in dining with Putin. So I voted for Hillary.
Stein's candidacy was only one factor in the 2016 election fiasco that got us where we are today. Deliberate voter suppression disenfranchised millions, Russian social media manipulation and hacking of voter databases influenced millions more, and HRC's own poor tactical decisions also cost her. But Stein has a face, and you can be mad at "LWNJs" in lieu of targeting Russians or Republicans.
Well, it's been a fun snow day. Back to the kiddos tomorrow. R&R, I won't be hassling you anymore about your biased language for at least a day or two.
Thanks for being a good sport and not going nucular on me.
Would you still be mad at those voters if you knew that they had tried to vote (for anyone) and been intimidated or suppressed?
Your myth about suppressed voters is about as real as Trump's myth about illegal immigrants. Each of you needs a tale to gin up your base.
Nice attempt to change the subject and protect the left wing nut jobs who couldn't soil themselves by voting for the Impure Hillary when Jill Stein offered herself as an "alternative."
While my politics lean towards the left, I have to admire the right wing's ability to focus on what it wants and do anything necessary to achieve it. The left wing, not so much.
Voter suppression is real. Don't ask me, ask Barack Obama and Eric Holder. Ask the NAACP. Ask the Brennan Center for Justice. Ask the Southern Poverty Law Center. I'm not going to put up links because I'm short on time, and you've now demonstrated that you don't open or read them, anyway.
Colorado, with our all-mail ballot elections and same-day registration, is the "gold standard" for free and fair elections in the US. Thanks, Angela Giron – another person you'd undoubtedly characterize as an LWNJ.
Other states are not so lucky.
Mj, you seem to be conflating two things: voter suppression and voter idiocy.
Voter supression is real, vicious, and fascistic in both intent and result.
But voters who voted for jill stein, by definition, weren't supressed. They were just stupid. By possibly electing trump, their motives weren't fascist but their results were.
They fall into the category that Lenin called "useful idiots."
Russian social media manipulation and hacking of voter databases influenced millions more
And yet Clinton STILL won the popular vote, despite such a questionable claim as this one.
I read that the anti-immigration hardliners in the white house (Miller, Kelly, and Short) were to blame for the President's backing out of the Senate deal on CHIP funding.
So yes, there was a bipartisan deal. It even included funding for the Great Wall. But then Trump backed out. At least, we're back to zero on the "fucken wall", as former Mexican Presidente Fox calls it.
I see it as more of a revival of the art of negotiations. Maybe Dems were lousy negotiators this time but negotiations mean people speaking with each other. If they keep negotiating then maybe they will get a better outcome next time. Personally I think helping the next generation of Americans is priceless and Republicans won't get credit for reviving CHIP.
I can't respond to this with anything other than incredulity, so I'll leave it there.
Should I apologize for being optimistic about dealing with the devil? My long held position is that you don't have to act like a Republican to get along with them. In my own family, I have relatives who are good people but they voted for a bad man. I hated them for a while but now think that they are good people who voted for a bad man.
The funding for CHIP was in the House version … but so were some cuts to community health centers (and some other bells and whistles). This round, as far as I can tell, was ONLY CHIP, and everything else on health care remained status quo.
The only change I'm aware of, besides the date, is a bit providing back pay to furloughed workers.
Here's the full text of the changes made by the Senate:
The furlough pay I mentioned was passed as a separate "correction to the enrollment" of HR 195.
Not really bothered by the Dems decision today. They are playing long ball and with some patience it might just pan out. Ezra's analysis seems spot on. We move on from the shutdown so the focus can now be on McConnell's (and Tweetolini's) promise of a vote and "bill of love' for DACA. If Turtle and the Tramp renege, it will be very public, very much noticed and not forgotten in November.
Agreed. The huffin and puffin might be good exercise for some but the art of a deal involves give and take. But wait there is more. Trump was largely irrelevant in the deal making (senators worked it out) which is a good deal. He signs or is the bad guy. But wait there is even more. Repubs have to cobble together another resolution in three weeks. Pretty soon, they are going to be out of hostages. 8.9 kids get health care for the next six years. I'm good with that for now.
The Rethugs will include in any DACA "negotiations" their standard laundry list of demands, not just funding for Trump's Folly.
So get ready for banging and clanging pots and pans for more B9 Bombers!, more Battleships!, more nuclear grenades for our troops! Only Barefoot and pregnant women!
If it isn’t clear, my position is that while we shouldn’t stoop to using the GOP’s horrible tactics, we need to make sure whatever compromises need to be made to get humane legislation passed, we also must make it clear to the voters that paying that terrible price would not be necessary if more Democrats are elected this year.
Where was the "base" when Schumer and his fellow Dems were losing the PR battle? What PR battle you say? The battle where the Dems were portrayed as caring more about illegal aliens than the military and vets.
Moral of the story is simple: if you want something bad enough, don't make a half-assed attempt to get it. And don't leave your leadership flapping and hanging in the breeze. Kinda makes me think there won't be a "blue wave" in November because the Dem base didn't learn its lesson about the perils of complacency in 2016. Good womens' marches, by the way. Will those actually turn into turnout? We'll see.
That's the goal, anyway. Get women engaged now and then get them to caucuses and assemblies nationwide.