Get More Smarter on Wednesday (Aug. 12)

7 thoughts on “Get More Smarter on Wednesday (Aug. 12)”

1. Cook Reports calls the Carroll/Coffman race a tossup.  One of only four tossup races in the country.

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   1. Oops.  Cook has 4 Dem seats as toss-ups plus 12 GOP seats (including CO CD6) as toss-ups.  Yesterday at her grassroots kickoff, Morgan reported that the CD6 race is considered one of the top five competitive races in the country.

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      1. And Cook generally leans right.  Morgan Carroll's best chance will be to continue doing exactly what she's been doing…. ignoring the conventional "wisdom" of past failed campaigns.  We know that the Udall/Romanoff style campaign not only doesn't work but doesn't come close to working and, in fact, takes close numbers and makes them worse for the Dem over time.  Something completely different is not a guarantee of success but the same old thing is a guarantee of failure.  So far Carroll is off to a strong start. Let's hope, as it gets more serious, she doesn't let the "expert' ops steer her back in the proven losing direction.

         Focusing only on so called "women's" issues  to get the all important for Dems women's vote doesn't work because women are also people and care about all the important issues.  

         Focusing only on Coffman gottchas (he flip flopped, he lied) instead of substantive differences with him is a loser because most people assume most pols flip flop and lie as a matter of course. We may love to watch Coffman saying Obama isn't a real American, then apologizing, then apologizing for the apology, rinse repeat, but most voters couldn't care less about that stuff.

         Potential voters for a Dem candidate, forget the ones we'll never get anyway, care most about making a decent living, opportunity for themselves and their children to get somewhere, to have some security for the future, to see their rights protected and access to jobs, healthcare, a decent life improved. They don't want to see a few families with extraordinary wealth buying all the power over them and hoarding all the wealth their work produces. And that includes women voters who are sick of being talked down to by Dem pols as if the only things they can wrap their pretty little heads around are lady parts issues, school and day care. Yes, talk about those things but not just those things.

         I'm sure Morgan Carroll understands that and hope she insists on running her campaign accordingly no matter what the know it all ops who keep proving that, as far as understanding Colorado goes they're idiots, tell her.

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         1. At her grassroots kickoff event (well attended by about 60 people), Morgan rattled off a list of major legislative victories that she participated in during her legislative career.  She said 85% of her bills had bipartisan support, that she is proud of her record, and will run on it. (!)

            She also said her reason for running for Congress (which was not an easy decision) was she didn't want Americans to get used to this unprecedented level of partisanship, obstructionism and gridlock we've seen the past decade or so.  She feels Congress is the most important institution ever created and feels it needs to be protected.  I thought that was an interesting and thoughtful reason for her candidacy.  (Of course, she was much more eloquent than my paraphrasing.)

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2. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders asked the CBO how the budget sequester has affected the economy:

   Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) just gave Democratic Leader Harry Reid an extremely useful gift: he asked the Congressional Budget Office to estimate the effects of ending the sequester—the automatic budget caps imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act. The CBO response should help Reid negotiate a budget deal. Or it would, anyway, if Majority Leader Mitch McConnell really means it when he says he wants to govern.

   Easing those ceilings would lead to increased government spending, which in turn would lead to an increase in economic output and higher employment, the CBO said.

   "Fully eliminating the reductions would allow for an increase in appropriations of $90 billion in 2016 and $91 billion in 2017," CBO Director Keith Hall wrote in a letter to Sanders.

   If Congress reverses the limits in fiscal 2016, for example, the CBO said it could result in the full-time employment of as few as 200,000 more people or as many as 800,000 more people. If the same were done for fiscal 2017, the CBO said it could similarly add as few as 100,000 jobs or as many as 600,000 jobs.

   This would be a good opportunity, and a quite valid reason, for Senator Michael Bennet to convert from an Austerian to a Keynesian, to remove the Grover Norquist inspired economic language from his website, and to unabashedly support a true growth economy that values American Workers over Financiers and shovel ready jobs over shoveling bullshit on international trade.

   Alas, I have no hopes he'll actually do anything remotely sensible on the economy or on his campaign. And, despite all the time he's spent submitting bills to ban people like him from joining lobbying firms once they leave government, I am still convinced it's been his goal all along to be a senator only long enough to increase his value as a lobbyist to the $1 Million/per range. 

   Stupid politics by Michael Bennet? Yes. But not stupid planning….

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3. EMILY's is expected to announce their endorsement of Sen. Carroll? She's been touting it this morning, so I'm kind of guessing it's official.

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4. Koch suckers' (including that puss-filled carbuncle, Caldera) attempts to impose and maintain a right-wing propagandistic death grip on the JeffCo school board and its curricula makes national headlines again:

   http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/colorado-school-board-recall-proxy-fight

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