If we are going to win back the Senate we need to hold all our current seats, including the seat of retiring Jim Jeffords of Vermont, and win at least six of the following races.
Allen, George- (R – VA) versus James Webb
Burns, Conrad- (R – MT) versus Jon Tester
Chafee, Lincoln- (R – RI) versus Sheldon Whitehouse
DeWine, Mike- (R – OH) versus Sherrod Brown
Ensign, John- (R – NV) versus Jack Carter
Frist, William H.- (R – TN) retiring (primary on August 3rd) versus Harold Ford Jr.
Hatch, Orrin G.- (R – UT) versus Peter Ashdown
Hutchison, Kay Bailey- (R – TX) versus Barbara Ann Radnofsky
Kyl, Jon- (R – AZ) versus Jim Pederson
Lott, Trent- (R – MS) versus Erik Fleming
Lugar, Richard G.- (R – IN) as far as I can tell, he is currently unopposed and the Dems have until tomorrow to file a candidate.
Santorum, Rick- (R – PA) versus Bob Casey, Jr.
Snowe, Olympia J.- (R – ME) versus Booman Tribune member, Jean Hay Bright
Talent, James M.- (R – MO) versus Claire McCaskill
Thomas, Craig- (R – WY) versus Dale Groutage
Our best chances are in Pennsylvania and Montana. We are currently leading in the Missouri race. After that, it gets very tough. He have a good chance of winning in Ohio and in Rhode Island. That gets us to five. We need one more. I’d love for Booman Tribune to have our very own Senator from Maine, but Olympia Snowe is a very strong candidate. Our best chance for a sixth seat looks to be in Virginia, although I have high hopes for the Nevada, Tennessee, and Arizona seats as well. Our chances in Utah, Mississippi, Wyoming, and Indiana are next to nil. But if you like any of the candidates, please consider giving them some assistance.
As you can see, we do not have the luxury of being puritans about these races. Several of our more competitive candidates are fairly far to the right. We have women running in Maine, Missouri, and Texas, and we have (very conservative) African-Americans running in Mississippi and Tennessee. In Utah, we have a self-described computer geek. In Wyoming we have a scientist that designed submarines and missiles for the Navy. Sarah Carter, the ex-President’s granddaughter, has a diary up at Daily Kos asking for contributions. She wants to make her Daddy look good with quarter ending tomorrow.
If you make a contribution to any of these candidates, and I hope you will, please add a few pennies so they know it came from the netroots.
Which candidate are you most excited about?
Well I can’t answer quickly which candidate I am most excited about, BUT I sure can answer quickly which candidate I am least excited about!
PA’s Young Casey who looks at control of women’s reproductive rights as in his religious province/control and not under that individual woman’s province/control! Just how really dfferent is this than the evil one he is running against???????????????????????????
Well, I figured the conversation would lead this way…
It’s hard to get to six without Casey though.
Yeh, and it is hard to get to be dead without dying. I am in no rush to experience either the dying process nor to experience the Casey process!
Any candidates you like?
When Spectre was running, Charlie Crystle originally was in the Dem primary against Hoeffel. Now there is a smart progressive candidate, so I like him. The current reality is not going to allow such candidates!
Anyway, I guess I have done my needed CASEY venting for now and will sit back and let this thread play out mostly without me! Sorry.
Charlie is a great guy. I had the pleasure of meeting him and working along side him on the Pennacchio campaign here going up against that idiot fuckwad Casey. Okay, I couldn’t resist that.
I want Claire McCaskill to beat the pants off Jim Talent. Just for maryb.
I’d rather not have him wandering around in my neighboring state without his pants, but otherwise I agree with you. Plus, Claire will/would make a terrific Senator. (She would have been a great governer, imo.) In the last few years, we’ve had a line-up of powerful women running things from Topeka to Kansas City, Ks., to Kansas City, Mo., and a bit beyond. They’re all still in place except for the miracle-working former mayor of KCK, Carol Marinovich, who left of her own accord and to wails of “doonn’tt goooooo.” Now we need to extend that capability into the national scene. Come on, Missouri, we’re counting on you.
Me too. I’d really like to see double or triple the number of women in the Senate. If we could just accomplish that, we’d have a lot less aggravation and, I suspect, less warmongering.
I’m hoping MN can help with this. We have a woman, Amy Klobuchar, running against Rep. congressman Mark Kennedy for Mark Dayton’s seat. She seems to be doing well, but I haven’t seen any polls.
I think it’s astounding that this “free country” still can’t wrap it’s fucking head around allowing any two people to get married if they fucking please. And chroist, can we get a woman into the Oval Office to run this shitty country of ours? It’s astounding that those “bass ackwards” countries all across the globe have women in the top positions but we can’t manage to do the same.
Looks like McCaskill could use some green.
Anyone interested in the race, with some extra green to spare, can contribute online at Claire’s website. She’s close to her fundraising goal — a few $20 contributions could help.
And it would be nice if she could pass her goal since Talent started out with so much cash on hand.
Many moons ago, when I lived in KC and was involved with environmental groups there (we’re talking the Reagan-Bush I years, folks, so my memory may be a bit hazy), Claire was a lowly state representative or state senator, and I recall her as a friend of the environment back then at least. Nice to see the cream rise to the top.
How is he different?
He has a D behind his name.
That means that him and five of his other friends with D’s behind their name replace other folks with R’s behind their name, we get to start picking committee chairs.
Ted Kennedy gets to be committee chair if Casey wins. That means a lot.
Sell your soul in the name of political pragmatism, and what have you? No soul!
Booman, thanks for posting this list and the links. None of the senators from my state are in play this time, so this information will assist me in figuring out who I want to support with my limited resources.
There are already a couple that I know I don’t want to help (Casey, Radnofsky), but it is easy to write people off. I want to figure out who I can feel best about backing. This information will be most useful.
Most interesting is race involving NYBri, Brian Keeler, here in NY. His is the district directly north of mine so I will be unable to vote for him.
But of course his is not a senate race.
Pass the clothespin; I get to vote for Ford. But at least cats everywhere will breathe easier.
This morning I would have to say that when your Dad is Jimmy Carter and he starts putting up diaries about you on a very popular political blog and you have only begun to fight……..Look out. This morning I would say that I’m most excited about Jack Carter! His daddy has so much class too! I will never forget the speech he gave during the run up to the Iraq War attempting in vain to wake people up to what was about to happen. I cried watching it! My husband was going to war and so few people “got it”. He lives forever in my heart after that day and gratefully my husband still lives on planet earth with us too!
We Get Casey! I suppose it is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, but it’s just barely better than permanent blindness……just fucking barely…..so barely you almost can’t even see it!
I haven’t followed many of those races, but Brown is someone I know has exhibited solid liberal values in the past. I don’t think I need to go into detail again how deeply in contempt I hold Casey, as well as the National Party traitors who elevated him. I think he will lose, and he will lose badly. Santorum is a better campaigner, he’s got a solid ground team, he’ll whip up his base while Casey continues to disparage the Democratic base, and now his buddy Dubya will come roaring in with lots of FEMA money to help repair the damage from the current flooding.
The Dems won’t really take back anything until they learn to offer real alternatives, and I suspect many of the names on that list are various versions of Republican Lite (like Testor and Ford).
You are aware that Rick Santorum makes a fool of himself on a regular basis and is trailing Casey by 28 points?
I mean, where do you get this analysis? Santorum is not running a good campaign, he is becoming an embarrassing joke.
we’ll see.
Predictive polling tells us almost nothing. It’s little better than throwing runes or scattering chicken entrails. Santorum has a deep and enduring base, a base that he is pandering to. He WILL get federal $$$ to help clean up the current mess from the floods, LOTS of them. He’s by far a stronger campaigner and speaker.
You live there, and I’m sure you’re seeing more of the day to day than I am, but watching from this remove I feel pretty confident in my prediction. Add to the previous paragraph the following truths:
Booman, I know that you’re fully on board with the “lesser of two evils” school of thought. I even understand it. Christ, I voted for Clinton TWICE, and effin’ Kerry. It’s gotten us nowhere, and serves only to solidify rightwing gains. I understand where you’re coming from, but we’ll see come November who’s right.
you never give me any credit Madman. “Fully on board” is a slap in my face. How much did I write about Pennacchio and trying to raise the protest vote, despite pressure to be a good soldier?
You should have seen the Casey staffer I ran into at the Crashing the Gates book signing. They know damn well where I stand. The dude tried to tell me that Casey had some kind of epihany on gay rights and everyone deserves a second chance. I just rolled my eyes at the guy and said “puh-leeze”.
Do you want debate analysis or strategy? A straight analysis shows Sanoturum as the most doomed incumbent on record, ever, since the beginning of polling in 6th-century BCE Athens.
Not only is less popular than the Dallas Cowboys around here, who also have their diehard base, but he has to contend with both Rendell at the top of the ticket and Bush’s deep, deep unpopularity in the swing districts here.
He’s totally fucked. I’ll be shocked if he wins, and the harder he tries the more insane he appears. Casey isn’t lighting any fires under people’s butts, and he lead will shrink. He’s not a great campaigner, but he’s not offensive (personally) and he comes off as a nice, sane, guy.
He won’t make any huge gaffes. Santorum can be counted on to make many.
But, if nothing else, it will be Big Ed Rendell that will get the base out to vote, and they ain’t voting for Santorum. We’ll see a larger than usual drop-off from the Governor to the Senate, but that is about it. The National Review seems to think the drop-off might not be so great.
That’s just analysis. I am no fan of Casey. I’m a fan of Pat Leahy, however, and would like to see him running the Judiciary.
well, I meant “fully on board” in the vote for the party candidate, whoever it is, as opposed to my “purist” insistence that people vote for beliefs, not party affiliation. No insult was intended.
I place NO creedence on polling. Polling is a psuedoscience at best. It can be influenced so much by sample size, population polled, wording of questions, weight given to certain statistical analysis … seriously, it’s crap. To have a good statistical analysis of anything, you need a truly random sampling of a uniform data set, and I would assert that this is nearly impossible with political polling of the small samples generally used. The social “scientists” who jigger their crap numbers with all manner of statistical witchery can shine their turd all they want, but it’s still gonna be a pile of shit. Exit polling is generally understood to be more accurate than predictive polling, as it often has larger data sets, and it’s measuring something concrete that has ALREADY happened, rather than trying to measure some future event that can change depending on how you describe it.
I find the reliance in the party, and many blogs, on PREDICTIVE polling to be very funny, especially since they are so dismissive of EXIT polling when the question of vote suppression/theft comes up (you excluded of course … you’re one of the few community blogs discussing the ongoing ballot crisis).
I could be completely wrong, but all of this talk about how much trouble Santorum is in reminds me A LOT of similar talk about Dubya in ’00 and ’04. We all know how THAT turned out. I stand by my prediction: Santorum will win, by 4 or 5 percentage points.
Maybe it is because my father made his living in marketing research, but I have a lot more faith in the accuracy of polls. You don’t need to call more than about 800 people to get a decent poll result for PA. And 28 points is pretty decisive.
Santorum is getting McGovern numbers and he is the incumbent. That’s shocking. His little WMD stunt isn’t even reflected in the polls. He’s fucking doomed.
As for voting for the candidate no matter what, I never said that.
You look at the list above and give me 6 senators without Casey. Make your case. Where should we put our efforts for 6, so that we can let Ricky have another 6 year term?
marketing research for a product is more likely to have uniform and random samples than political polling. We’re ALL, to one extent or another, consumers if we live in this society, and grouping people by geographic region and broad income catagories provides a much more statistically observable population/data set. The same goes for sampling television audiences (and even those are under assault by advertisers b/c it’s so hard to accurately count some populations).
Politics is MUCH muddier, especially as it’s practiced now. The language to describe political beliefs has become so muddied by decades of debased rightwing propaganda and lazy activist groups that it’s all but meaningless. That people like Markos, Clinton(s), Schumer, Webb or Casey could be described as “liberal” or “progressive” would be laughable if the words actually had any meaning. The same goes for “values” or “patriotic” or or or or ….
How do you take a statistically valid sample when there is no language with which to ask the questions?
Voter turnout will be key, and polls do not tell us much about that this far ahead! Santorum’s base will be there. Will Casey energize that many Dems??
the light per blog. Can you ease up just a little bit on the enthusiasm?
I’m all about the darkness.
I recognize you now! You have been deliberately scaring the shit out of me since I was about five years old!
damn, now I feel like ARMANDO! The coven is sure to throw me out now!