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US Congressional Elections 2012: Scott Brown, Diviner of Ancestry!
enlightenedbum
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So there has been some desire to talk about non-Presidential politics and thus far we've mostly kept it quiet or created tangents that makes Jeff mad at us in the primary thread or the Obama thread or anywhere else we could find a flimsy excuse to talk about them. Let's instead make a thread to talk about things. First, the House. The House races are totally unpredictable, without a ton of huge news as of yet. Congress is incredibly unpopular, even more than it usually is. Whether that generates yet another wave election against the party in power (2 of the previous 3 elections have been with the other being an party in power wave driven by the President) is unknown at this time. It's entirely possible the House flips back to Democratic control and Nancy Pelosi gets her gavel back.
The Senate is where most of the news is so far. Democrats have a tough map to work with, as you can see. Dark blue = Democratic incumbent, light blue = retiring Democrat, dark red/light red correspond, dark green is Bernie Sanders running for re-election in Vermont, light green is Joe Lieberman retiring in Connecticut.
While it's conceivable the Democrats could take out one of the Maine twins or the Nevada/Arizona seats (Nevada is an R incumbent, but never been elected before as it's John Ensign's vacated seat), the most likely Democratic pick up is in Massachusetts. Where, today, Thomas Conroy dropped out of the race and endorsed Elizabeth Warren, which basically leaves the field cleared for her. Warren is a middle class advocate, chaired the oversight of TARP funding, fought like hell for the CFPB and likely would have been its head if Senate Republicans didn't HAAAAAATE her and it.
She makes the Democrats' middle class argument really clearly, basically like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htX2usfqMEs
She's also openly endorsed OWS and is in many ways wrote the intellectual foundation of what they did. She's also good on The Daily Show and generally explaining the financial meltdown in layperson terms.
She's running against Scott Brown, who the banks love. Conventional wisdom is viewing it as a proxy war for the larger issues of OWS style populism vs. the influence of bankers and as a hugely important race.
Use this thread to talk about the upcoming Congressional races, or just talk about how awesome Elizabeth Warren is.
The Senate is where most of the news is so far. Democrats have a tough map to work with, as you can see. Dark blue = Democratic incumbent, light blue = retiring Democrat, dark red/light red correspond, dark green is Bernie Sanders running for re-election in Vermont, light green is Joe Lieberman retiring in Connecticut.
While it's conceivable the Democrats could take out one of the Maine twins or the Nevada/Arizona seats (Nevada is an R incumbent, but never been elected before as it's John Ensign's vacated seat), the most likely Democratic pick up is in Massachusetts. Where, today, Thomas Conroy dropped out of the race and endorsed Elizabeth Warren, which basically leaves the field cleared for her. Warren is a middle class advocate, chaired the oversight of TARP funding, fought like hell for the CFPB and likely would have been its head if Senate Republicans didn't HAAAAAATE her and it.
She makes the Democrats' middle class argument really clearly, basically like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htX2usfqMEsShe's also openly endorsed OWS and is in many ways wrote the intellectual foundation of what they did. She's also good on The Daily Show and generally explaining the financial meltdown in layperson terms.
She's running against Scott Brown, who the banks love. Conventional wisdom is viewing it as a proxy war for the larger issues of OWS style populism vs. the influence of bankers and as a hugely important race.
Use this thread to talk about the upcoming Congressional races, or just talk about how awesome Elizabeth Warren is.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
enlightenedbum on
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I'm not very hopeful that we will retain the seats in New Mexico, North Dakota, or Virginia. :?
In 2010.
That, I think, was one of the lowest political moments in American history.
Sounds like something a witch would do
ugh, do you have to bring her up? although that whole thing helped greatly with this one small business in my home town. her shop is called the "soap fairy" and she does homemade soaps and things. So her board outside said multiple iterations of "I am not a soap"
great.
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
Well, have you ever seen her on a scale compared to a duck? I didn't think so.
Also at least we didn't burn her, so there are some historically worse moments, I think.
Some people bitch all the time about the other way regarding Congressional meaning Senate, I decided to appease them. I'll change it to "party in power" though, that is more accurate.
And yeah, this is the issue with crushing them horribly 2006, we get a fun map in 2012.
We'll have plenty of opportunities in 2016, though.
Montana will be rough, too. Rehberg's a douchebag, with the unfavorables to boot, but he's also been sitting in the House seat for a while and never had much trouble keeping it. Last I heard it was a toss-up, though obvious we're a ways out. Tester has his work cut out for him, though.
No idea what the House race there looks like, with Rehberg unassing the seat. Maybe the Democrats will take a run at it, but I doubt it.
I don't agree about that (and from the ads I see every night while making dinner, neither do the Chamber of Commerce and Karl Rove) - Rehberg's more or less kept his seat through inertia, and now he's the challenger. It doesn't help that he's done some stupid shit both professionally (attacking Pell Grants, pushing for more privatization of Interior lands) and personally (BUI), and he's got a bit of a reputation as a weather vane (think Mitt Romney, but dumber.) Meanwhile, Tester's done some big things here - the big one I can think of was pushing through the telemedicine systems for the VA here (which is really fucking big as this is a big state with just one VA hospital.)
Mostly I'm afraid it'll work.
And I don't think it will, because it's really fucking hard to play the outsider card when you've been in Washington longer than the incumbent. And he's got his name on quite a bit of stupidity as well. He's gone hard negative in large part because it's really the only route he can take, because there's no fucking way he can run on his own record.
Actually, it was explained. The producer of the ad pushed it to her as a way to put the controversy to bed.
This. If I could say confidently one person in politics is watching out for my interests, she's it.
I think the GOP makes some gains in the House if the Tea Party doesn't primary out some of their decent challengers again, and I think the Ds lose the VA and ND open seats and pick up CT and (hopefully) MA.
I think the overall map is something between 2008 and 2010, though - I think Campaign Obama will come back and get re-elected (especially if the GOP nominates anyone but Romney) but Congress will still be divided like it is today.
What controversy?
Polling in Virginia is pretty close and Webb wasn't exactly on the progressive end of the spectrum.
New Mexico had /very/ slim margins in the 2000 and 2004 general elections. Heinrich is polling better but I'm still wary.
I haven't seen any polling for North Dakota but I guess I really shouldn't be that worried about that seat since Conrad won it by such a huge margin in 2006.
That's why I called it a pick-up :P. Hopefully the new Senator will be a little less obstinate.
New York at least is a wash. They'll eliminate one upstate R seat and one downstate D seat. I know Weiner's is up, I think one of the Buffalo seats is the likely upstate choice. Maybe craiglist ab guy but I don't remember what's up with his seat currently.
Edit: Chris Lee's seat, but that was won by a Democrat in the special election so I don't know if that's going anywhere.
*not real, CFB blog meme
EDIT: I just checked, Google's #1 auto complete for "Craig James" is "Craig James killed 5 hookers." The second biggest Google problem in Republican politics!
He resigned the moment the scandal broke, and as mentioned, Democrat victory in a special election.
So my congresscritter basically switched.
Not surprised we're losing it though, the region has been hemorrhaging people.
The unspoken part is I hope Owens seat isn't gerrymandered into something he can't win, though his current seat might already be unwinnable without the help of the friendly Conservative party.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Doc Hastings right? The man has always been a colossal fuckmuppet who continually covered for people like Tom Delay when Hastings was the chair of the House Ethics Committee.