If you’re a Kentucky voter who is sick and tired of Mitch McConnell, I don’t think it is all that likely that you will vote for him because you are also sick and tired of Barack Obama. It’s important to keep this in mind when you start talking about the danger for Democrats of a nationalized election. Whether Kentuckians like Alison Lundergan Grimes or not, they aren’t sick and tired of looking at her and listening to her speak. She’s a fresh face. If all other things were equal, she’d have a hard time beating McConnell, but things are not equal. Mitch McConnell is immensely unpopular in his home state.
Conversely, politicians like Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Mark Pryor of Arkansas are actually fairly well-liked in their home states. They both come from well-respected political dynasties, and people will vote for them who would never vote for Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, or Barack Obama.
It’s important to do historical and statistical research when you are trying to do intelligent political prognostication, but there’s no substitute in predicting who will win the election in, say, Alaska, than to look at the candidates. Do I think Mark Begich is about to get kicked out of the Senate? No. I don’t. I think he will be reelected. I think Pryor and Landrieu will be reelected, too. I’m less confident about Kay Hagan’s chances, but she has a good shot at winning another term.
When you focus too much on things like the average historic swing or the president’s approval ratings, you miss that the current iteration of the Republican Party is new and uncommonly radical. Kay Hagan’s opponent in North Carolina is billed as an “establishment” candidate, but he’s a lunatic by historic standards. And that actually matters.
Damn, Martin. With that kind of attitude you’ll NEVER get that job at Politico.
Perish the thought.
They warmed up their act when Carter was President. It was payback for the embarrassment of Nixon and what happened.
It grew and matured under the Clintons – before, they had left FLOTUS alone.
And, when their Newtonian Fuck-sicks started, it snowballed into an impeachment as pay-back for Nixon – even though the Democrats SHOULD have impeached Reagan AND Bush Sr, because what they did, far exceeded even Nixon’s crimes.
And now, Obama has had to live with constant attempts to take him down, and impeach him.
And, it won’t stop until the Republicans realize that they need to change their worldview, and view of their future role in America.
Republicans were ready to impeach Nixon too. They sent Barry Goldwater over to tell Nixon he was toast if he didn’t resign. They sent Goldwater because they knew Nixon would believe him.
That was the last time anyone tried to impeach a President on Constitutional grounds. Even the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, although politically motivated, was over the Constitutional question of whether a President could dismiss an officer who required the advise and consent of the Senate to be appointed without the advice and consent of the Senate to the dismissal. Pretty flimsy I think, but better than asking if the President lied about getting a BJ.
I used to live in Atlanta, and my mom lived in Asheville, N.C. for many years. There are a lot of good folks in North Carolina, and many have been upset at the hard right turn their state has made. Hopefully this will translate into voter turnout. But years of reelecting Jesse Helms can suggest it’s a tough race.
OT. Bad news for Scott Walker. The court has just released the John Doe documents.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/05/21/1301067/-Milwaukee-Co-John-Doe-Documents-Unsealed-From-Secr
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“When you focus too much on things like the average historic swing or the president’s approval ratings …”
Yes!
There are two possible pitfalls in focusing on patterns. One is that, if you comb through a mountain of data looking for a pattern you like, you probably will find it. Patterns can be detected even in random events, especially when the number of events taken into account is very large. But these patterns may themselves be random. More likely they are not totally random, they are just not as important as you’d like to think they are.
The second problem is that even significant historical patterns will not prevail when factors influencing those patterns change in meaningful ways. It’s just that it’s much easier to cite old patterns as precedent than to predict that factors x, y, z have really changed, or even identify the factors, until after the fact. And even then some will argue that it’s an outlier.
Like Rorschach inkblots, these “analyses” tell more about the observer than the observed.
Mitch McConnell remains, by some measures, even less popular than Barack Obama here in Kentucky.
He still won by 25 points on Tuesday over Matt Bevin, which means there were plenty of Republicans who dislike McConnell and still think he deserves to be in the Senate anyway.
Having said that, the Grimes/McConnell polls up until now have been very very close. With Bevin out of the way, I wonder now if any of the numbers will change.
Not to mention that Grimes’ father is a well known Kentucky politician.
Does it? Proof?
One bit of evidence: Obama won re-election in 2012 despite running while the economy remained mediocre to poor for the lower and middle classes, and after seeing his signature legislative achievement become fairly unpopular.
Romney’s statements, policy positions and wild lies were just too crazy for the majority of Americans. And the current trajectory of the GOP makes it likely that their platform will turn The Crazy up even higher in 2014 and 2016.