I’ve been working on the rest of the new issue of the Washington Monthly all day, and I’m pretty much set to roll it out tomorrow morning. I’ve kept my side eye on the news and it’s looking good. Plenty of tantalizing evidence that the bottom may fall out on down-ballot Republicans. I just hope the polls aren’t off in the Dems direction like they were in 2014. If they are, the damage won’t be sufficient. If, on the other hand, they’re underestimating the Clinton turnout machine and Republican demoralization, this could be a very good day we’re looking at two weeks from now.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Man, if the Democrats take the House somehow on election day, it’s going to be like fucking Christmas in November. Or maybe just like an early Thanksgiving?
Let’s just call it a mix of both.
Absolutely. I’m thinking of the photos from VJ day.
Agreed. Barring a late change in dynamics, Worst case appears to be 2012 margins, but best case is the 12 point margins that some polls are showing.
I’m hoping, with it being presidential year, that polling averages were off like they were in 2012, not 2014. That would get us closer to the 12 points…
Would it break the crazy? Perhaps not. But it sure would be nice to break the spine of the Republican party over our collective knee, kick ’em in the nuts and down a couple flights of stairs.
your future majority leader:
The race is practically neck and neck. It would be stupid for the Dems not to put some coin and some boots on the ground in Florida to push Rubio out of a job he never wanted in the first place. Of course the resources should have been left in place all along.
I’d want to see the overall polling in various states, know how much money is available and also assess how helpful/harmful each candidate is likely to be before assessing where funds should be spent. It’s not like any of us are going to be crazy about a Senator Murphy. Not if it cost us a Senator Ross or McGinty.
Always nice to have yet another reason to dislike Schumer. Sigh.
Start with finally ending up with Murphy as a candidate–how did that not satisfy Schumer?
I smell Democrats not wanting the responsibility of total governance (no one to blame but the own disorganization) at a point of a landslide victory.
“Not feasible because of budget constraints” on the eve of a historic landslide sounds pretty bogus to me. Schumer just doesn’t want to kill the GOP and have to own Wall Street support publicly–the Democrats.
And why not push to dump Grassley and McCain and give them the retirement they so richly deserve.
That’s the only thing I can see, too. Absolutely pathetic. He’s got a $20 million war chest and is cutting ads for himself. I don’t even know who his opponent is.
Maddow reported tonight that HRC and Kaine have about 70 fund raisers scheduled over the next 2 weeks. Appears they are getting money for those down ticket races.
Yep. Even better: Trump is done with fundraisers. Down ballot GOP candidates are on their own.
It takes 30 million to matter in Florida.
I have heard the private numbers are not as close as the public ones.
But the early voting numbers in Florida are AWESOME.
Clinton is +3 is Florida by public polling, and Rubio has strong name recognition. I’m hopeful but it would take a significant collapse for Rubio to lose.
What could be more self defeating than a ballot for Clinton and Rubio?
This guy wins because of superior name recognition? If that’s all it took to escape his comic record, it was clearly a mistake not to pay early on to increase Murphy’s name recognition. Schumer bails on the very candidate he wanted? A real partner there…
The story of Dems losing this one will be very interesting. I would have thought that Rubio had destroyed himself just with his quotes about lack of interest in being a senator.
What a mystifying state.
The fact is that most voters don’t really think about their choice; name recognition accounts for a large part of what party identification doesn’t. Just running for president (and being treated as a viable candidate) is enough to give Rubio a huge foothold in his senatorial run, despite his lack of accomplishments (and promise to continue failing in that regard).
Clinton’s lead in Florida trails her national polling number by three points, and Senate polling is not as strongly correlated to the presidential margin as it has been in past presidential elections — the delta is about 3 points (meaning a generic race in FLA would be a tossup) but there’s a ton of added variance.
Sucks, but who knows what the internals look like. It might make sense.
We just took care of early voting. Won’t really push Clinton over the top in my red state (unless hell has truly frozen), but it’ll help the overall popular vote. Plus there were some down ballot candidates locally as well as some ballot initiatives that were important to us. So it’s all good.
Under the scenario Booman sketched out earlier, where Republicans keeping the house forces the party to officially split, I might prefer they keep it by a slight margin. They’re going to retain veto power in the Senate almost certainly, and we still have some soft Dems in the House that won’t stand with the party on legislation that goes too far left, so it’s not like a House majority gives us carte blanche. But forcing the Republican establishment to officially side with Democrats to keep the government open, especially if Democrats start demanding some concessions this time, will keep the current earthquake in the party rumbling and probably induce their earth to open.
“too far left” –> includes any New Deal style legislation at all
He appears to be a fairly typical Blue Dog DINO. Not someone I’d want forever, but hell we’re talking about Schumer or McConnell controlling the Senate agenda here. Pretty much anything not involving actual felony or pedophilia can be put up with for a while.
From the blurb on Wikipedia, Murphy seems to think climate change should be dealt with; he voted to authorize the Benghazi committee, but that’s just part and parcel of Blue Dog; he supports ACA for the most part, he wants Keystone but that’s not unknown for DINOs; supports normalization of Cuban relations and just generally appears to be a good center center politician; he doesn’t lie about the actual work experience but exaggerates his time on those duties. Not a good sign, but most people have done similar stuff on resumes.
I don’t know why they wouldn’t support him. Unless there’s something really slimy that no one can see without deep digging he almost has to be better than that POS Rubio.
Perhaps there is a tightness in the $$$? If so, maybe the unexpected extra $10M will help.
It does not matter if someone is a blue dog, or whatever.
Once again I will repost this Booman comment, which spells out what is at stake.
————————–
Below, I’m going to show you who will be the likely chairman of the various Senate committees, and even give you a couple of different scenarios.
Agriculture (also Food Stamps): Debbie Stabenow, unless Sanders opts to chair HELP instead of Budget. Then Sherrod Brown will chair Agriculture.
Appropriations: Patty Murry, unless Leahy decides he doesn’t want to stay on at Judiciary.
Banking: Sherrod Brown, unless Stabenow takes Budget and he opts for Agriculture, then Jon Tester chairs Banking.
Budget: Bernie Sanders, unless he’d rather chair HELP. Then Stabenow.
Commerce: Bill Nelson
Energy: Maria Cantwell
Environment: Tom Carper unless he wants to stay at Homeland Security. Then Sheldon Whitehouse.
Finance: Ron Wyden
Foreign Affairs: Ben Cardin
HELP: It’s Bernie’s if he wants it, otherwise it’s Bob Casey’s.
Homeland Sec: Tom Carper unless he wants Environment, then it’s Claire McCaskill’s.
Judiciary: Patrick Leahy unless he wants Appropriations, then Feinstein or Durbin.
Rules: Probably Feinstein or Durbin
Small Business: Jeanne Shaheen
Veteran’s Affairs: Richard Blumenthal
Indian Affairs: Jon Tester, unless he gets Banking. Then Tom Udall.
Ethics: Chris Coons
Intelligence: probably Mark Warner, but maybe Feinstein will chair again.
Aging: Claire McCaskill unless she gets Homeland, then Casey or Whitehouse of Gillibrand.
Yes, I know, a lot of scenarios that more or less good for progressives. Probably would rather have Sherrod at Banking than Tester and Sanders has a hard choice between chairing a Budget Committee that produces non-binding priorities and chairing the committee overseeing health, labor and education.
I can go more granular than this even, Mazie Hirono stands to oversee our Navy and Gillibrand our military personnel. Udall will probably handle appropriations for the EPA and Interior Depts, and Chris Murphy our diplomatic corps. Jack Reed will appropriate for Depts. of Education, Labor and H&HS.
Cory Booker will probably get a subchair on Commerce overseeing our Coast Guard and coastal waters.
If we were to win the House, you’d be truly amazed at the progressives standing to write our legislation.
You’d see John Yarmuth chairing Budget, Bobby Scott on Education, Frank Pallone on Energy and Commerce (including Gene Green on Health), Maxine Waters on Finance, Conyers back at Judiciary, Raúl M. Grijalva on Natural Resources, Eddie Bernice Johnson on Science, Nydia M. Velázquez on Small Business, and Bike-Caucus chair Peter A. DeFazio on Transportation.
These are the people who are empowered when Clinton wins the votes of enough Republicans to coattail the Dems back into congressional power.
If you think it will change the Democratic Party, you’re right. It will lead to the most progressive Congress in history.
————————–
That is Booman from a couple months ago. It’s not whether any particular democratic is progressive, or whatever. It’s that the committee chairs…those actually writing legislation, those whom have been waiting years and years for their chance, would be the most liberal group in history.
.
ummmmm…Nalbar? Did you actually read my original post? I said that Murphy wasn’t great, but didn’t appear to be any worse than other some Democrats in the Senate, and I said that control of the senate was worth most anything up to actual felony or pedophila.
Sheesh, between you and Voice, why bother with nuance?
It’s very possibly his reply was a tacit agreement, with some more specifics to strengthen your comment for all those who are reading this thread.
That’s how I took it.
“The most progressive in history” basically makes me want to laugh it weren’t so wrong.
Really? More progressive than the Congress that passed the Great Society, Medicare, Medicaid and the voting rights act?
SERIOUSLY?
He thinks 300% interest on pay-day loans for poors is peachy, too. But so does DWS and probably Chuck Schumer.
Unfortunately, 300% IS peachy. I had to get my daughter out the clutches of those bastards. They were charging 695%.
Talk about bloodsuckers.
695%
! Holy crap.
Fuck it. I hope for a win. I actually believe, with Bernie as budget chair, we’ve got some opportunities coming. Fix Obamacare and the college tuition reform Hillary and Bernie compromised on would be big. Add that to court appointments and that’s real change.
When I first saw this new Megyn v. Newt twitter trauma, it didn’t make sense to me (the magnitude of it) – but then it hit me. I’m not the one it’s supposed to have an emotional effect on. The whole kerfuffle is taking place within the conservative movement. Similarly, check out Amanda Carpenter. We in the frog pool have hated, feared and laughed at all these people – I can see that Carpenter’s IQ is twice Hannity’s, but I consider them both to be evil jerks whom I hate, fear and laugh at with equal fervor. But now half them are hating, fearing and laughing at the other half, and vice versa.
The GOP is getting divorced. The Cheney-Kristol-Frum camp has irreconcilable differences with the Trump-Palin-Drudge camp. They’re not going to be able to kiss and make up after this. And Fox News is like the traumatized teenager who can’t handle mom and dad’s fights.
He tried to slut-shame Kelly on her own show. It’s like the GOP is breaking up and you can see fireballs screaming past. Good times.
irony too rich.
Unless you presume a slut must be female (unnecessarily restrictive imo), Newt’s one of the sluttiest ever.
I can’t square the current margins in Texas and some other red states with anything less than a 10 point win.
But then I look at other states and it looks more like 6 -8. Red states break GOP and blue states break dem. This was a fundamental mistake many made in 2014. The polls weren’t really wrong in 2014 so much as they were misunderstood. Kansas, for example, virtually ALWAYS breaks for the GOP.
The state numbers from 1996 to 2012 suggest looking at the swing in battleground states:
Florida (+4, swing of about 3 from ’12, implies a margin of 7 nationally)
North Carolina
CO – lead of about 9 (I don’t use partisan polls) implies a 7 point lead
VA
MI – +10, implies a 4.7 national lead
NC – lead of 3, 5 point swing from ’12, implies 8.7 national lead, though the NYT methodology suggests a bigger lead
OH – Tied, swing o f-2.5, implies a 1.5 national lead
PA – lead of 6, implies a national lead of about 4
VA – lead of 8.5, implies national lead of about 9
WI – lead of 7.5, implies a national lead 4.5
There is no secret here. Clinton runs about even with Obama in the Midwest, substantially ahead of Obama though in FL, NC, CO. She runs well ahead of Obama in red states, more than usual.
On the whole that looks to me like a 6-8 national point lead. BUT I still think it goes higher because she will significantly outperform Obama in large red states and in many blue states.
Haven’t run the numbers – still in China. U.nclear how the midwest versus south trends balance out nationally
Just got an email touting Obama’s endorsement of Associate Justice of the NC SCOTUS Mike Morgan. You wanna talk coattails commitment.. my electoral memory only goes back to Gore/Lieberman but this seems unpredecented..
“The Supreme Court race in North Carolina is pivotal. Key issues including gerrymandering, civil rights, coal ash, school vouchers and many others have come before this court. We need judges with a track record of reviewing cases and acting in a consistent, impartial manner. Judge Mike Morgan will serve North Carolina well on the N.C. Supreme Court.”
Between Our Revolution, the Clinton ground game which I’m proud to be part of, and PBO’s efforts, I can’t wait to see what happens Nov 8.
Thank you for sharing this information.
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