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%
February 20, 2008 04:06 PM UTC
23 Comments
It sounds too delicious to be true.
Bill is laying on the couch eating Fritos when Hillary walks into the room and tells him he needs to imply more that Obama’s support is strictly African American, and that voters who vote for Obama don’t understand reality.
Sounds like what we had here (but warmer):
story here
ARG’s latest Presidential approval poll:
Bush has a 19% approval rating – a drop of 15 points in a single month… Disapproval is up to 77%.
This can’t be right, but neither can the Reuters/Zogby poll showing an improvement in the President’s numbers based on a rosier consumer outlook.
Still, 19% sounds more like the number he should have had were Republicans not so Hell-bent on propping up their disaster of a “leader”.
Is Cheney still hovering around 9%, or have his numbers dropped too?
It’s an election year. And while each election is often portrayed as ‘the most important election, ever’ this one truly seems to be – at least for the Democrats. While the Democrats have majorities in both the House and the Senate, they desperately want to retake the White House.
Indeed, the election is a pivotal one – one that is being played out in the context of a very unpopular war which has the effect of galvanizing thousands of people who have not participated before particularly legions of young people.
A number of Democratic candidates join the fray, including numerous US Senators. And, for the first time Democratic voters have a chance to vote for an African American and a woman; they have a chance to choose among conservative and more liberal candidates; they have a choice of the establishment, old guard candidate and an insurgent candidate out of the US Senate.
The young and the first-time participants have for the most part and in huge numbers championed an insurgent candidate from the US Senate running against the establishment candidate. As the primaries and caucuses play out the race tightens. Other candidates drop by the wayside. The insurgent runs a highly effective grass-roots campaign.
Eventually the unthinkable happens – the insurgent becomes the front runner.
The establishment is stunned and their candidate fails to win the nomination.
But the bad news for the Democrats, the insurgent, while winning the nomination, goes on to lose the general election in a landslide. The Democrat carried only one state, Massachusetts.
It was 1972 Nixon v McGovern.
Out of this debacle, the super delegates were created.
But for that fact that I don’t consider Obama to be nearly so insurgent, nor Hillary nearly so “experienced” to have the same dynamic effect on the general election as McGovern did back then.
The super-delegates now are splitting, with somewhat more going to Clinton based on past support or expectations. There is little unanimity among them, and if the rest split in the same manner as the ones already committing, they will not provide the clear majority they were designed to create.
about how the super delegates are splitting this year.
The point is, that they were created not to follow the will of the primary voters, but to ensure that someone does not get the nomination who can’t win.
It may be, that this year, super delegates cast their vote for Obama because they think he is the strongest candidate. If that is what they beleive then that is what they should do.
I am just reminding that the point of super delegates is to go against the popular will when they believe it is necessary. If all delegates were simply to reflect the popular will based on primary voting, then the idea of super delegates should be abolished and we should go to winner take all primaries.
But that is not the current process, so the process should play out the way it was designed until it is changes.
McGovern was running against the war in Vietnam. Yes he had other good ideas but he was viewed as a one trick pony.
He also did a lousy job running. He flew bombers in WWII – that was one of the toughest jobs in the entire war. Yet Nixon painted him as someone with no understanding of war.
Obama is running as someone who will take us out of this mess, all of it from Iraq to the economy to climate/oil to healthcare. He’s a full-service change agent.
I think what we have here is more similiat to Lincoln who also ran as the non-establishment candidate who offered some great speeches and that was it.
JFK was at heart a brilliant and charismatic politician who held very conventional Dem policy views and whose core appeal was a vision of change–similar to Obama. His primary opponent LBJ was the wily veteran insider–similar to HRC.
Lincoln didn’t fit any mold-he was unique in my opinion. But overall he mostly had a track record as a one-issue candidate on assuming the Presidency: Namely thru the Lincoln-Douglas debates for his failed senate campaign, and his dissection of slave holding at the Cooper-Union speech, Lincoln had articulated a complete, specific, and logically consistent argument against slavery-more substantive than any body of thought on a specific subject from Obama. Yet he presented himself as a moderate who opposed only the extension of slavery to new territories on Constitutional grounds, not as a moral absolutist Abolitionist. (To his later chagrin, Lincoln also endorsed the Confed principle of nullification thru his outspoken oppositiion to the Mexican-American war while he was in the House.)
Another difference is that in 1860 the established Jackson Dem versus Whig party system was imploding due to the failure of the political establishment to deal with the slavery issue which was tearing the country apart–this time we are having a vigorous contest but totally within the structure of the Dem party, and the result may invigorate the party for a long time to come.
If not for the Viet Nam War that he inheritted and which his hubrus/etc. could not get him out of, I believe he would be close to Roosevelt (FDR) in what he was able to do domestically (and in just over one term).
I come from the generation that grew up with and reveres Jack Kennedy (Though Bobby would have been a better President and was the greater loss, politically for America), but ‘the heathen from Texas’ really was able to accomplish the New Frontier that Jack laid out.
It is impossible to know what might have happened, if…..
But I believe that Jack’s agenda was really accomplished because of Johnson.
For all of his flaws, Johnson was in truth a man of the people and believed fervently in the New Deal. Kennedy’s programs (and those that Johnson instituted beyond the New Frontier) benefitted America and its citizens but only because of Johnson’s skills AND committment.
Medicare, Medicaid, The Civil Rights Act, The War on Poverty, etc.
Without Johnson, we would not be talking about what we are today.
Once or twice a week I drive past my old hight school, the building itself abandoned until the figure out how to use it. I always look at the windows on the first floor in the NE corner where the announcement came over the PA about Kennedy being shot.
Seems like a forever ago.
I would phrase it that LBJ would have been a great president. It was the largest decision of his presidency and he consistently got it wrong.
To return to the context of establishment vs insurgent candidates and dealing with change-
I share with Roger D a great sympathy toward LBJ. I think his error with Viet Nam was not due to hubris–it was due to applying the outmoded historical model of FDR’s war between Axis and Allies (substitute West vs Reds) to what in Nam was really a post-colonial war of national liberation. So there LBJ failed to deal with change in his foreign policy.
Regarding Civil Rights and the Great Society, LBJ started with FDR’s model of govt-provided social safety net originally meant for middle class victims of Depression and extended it to the underclass–so again he started with FDR but then developed a truly forward-thinking adaptation to the changing domestic social environment. And there is no doubt LBJ’s legislative savvy was key in passing these programs.
JFK on the other hand, initially blundered in accepting conventional wisdom on foreign policy–e.g., Bay of Pigs, and entangling us in Viet Nam. He was also very stand-offish toward the nascent Civil Rights movement, because of political risk. But he showed he could learn from mistakes. His friends think he realized that Nam was a quagmire and would have ended it had he lived to a second term, and he recognized the power of Dr. King’s message and was moving toward alliance at his death.
In this context, which of HRC or BO will more effectively manage and adapt to change? Is HRC inflexibly bound by assumptions of conventional wisdom? Does BO have the tangible vision and the will to effectively implement change? Or do we really need them both together, complementing each other?
looks like they are endorsing Obama today. This will provide a much needed boost in Ohio and Pennsylvania for him.
also endorsed, as well as 4 more superdelegates (including one from Texas).
endorsement, those things will wreck you.
(yes it is a drink – probably only John Kerry has had one). Used to be a bartender.
Going international are we? Obama has a beer named after him in Kenya.
Apparently last night a Texas rep was on hardball and was terrible.
So on his website is his full statement which includes:
I had a brief moment of (nerd)panic. I’m fairly sure I know every Dem in the Texas congressional delegation. This had me thinking, who the hell is Kirk Watson?!
At least he’s willing to admit he made an ass of himself. That was pretty bad… Maybe this is why he got creamed “Beauprez-style” when he ran for Texas AG in 2002.
He just comes out and admits he totally shit the bed. I like that.