Some great news:
The Democratic majority is in increasing jeopardy in the Senate, according to the latest FiveThirtyEight forecasting model. The Democrats now have an approximately 20 percent chance of losing 10 or more seats in the Senate, according to the model, which would cost them control of the chamber unless Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, who is running for the Senate as an independent, both wins his race and decides to caucus with them.
In addition, there is an 11 percent chance that Democrats will lose a total of nine seats, which would leave them with 50 votes, making them vulnerable to a defection to the Republican Party by a centrist like Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut or Ben Nelson of Nebraska. On average, over the model’s 100,000 simulation runs, the Democrats are projected to lose a net of six and a half Senate seats, which would leave them with 52 or 53 senators. (Even though the G.O.P. primary in Alaska remains too close to call, that outcome is unlikely to alter the model.)
I simply can not believe people would vote for the lunatic party.
Trinity
As my grandmother used to say, “Common sense is not that common.”
ChrisS
Not sure what positions centrists politicians represent, other than give me what I want or I’m taking my vote to the other side of the playground. Fucking scumbags.
Chad S
I like Silver, but his projections are based on reid losing in NV(which looks unlikely at best for Angle), Rubio winning in FL(which also looks unlikely) and Paul surviving in KY(which looks like a coinflip). The dems probably lose 3-4 seats in the Senate at the end of the day.
4tehlulz
On the other hand, that means there is an 80% chance of holding it.
Considering the economy is in bad shape, those are pretty good odds.
cleek
now would be a good time for the Dems to start doing things that get the base excited. which means they’ll probably go on vacations and get caught in sex scandals.
some other guy
Lunatics will vote for the lunatic party. And, sadly, the lunatics are a lot more motivated (by their irrational fear and anger) than the sane are to turn out for midterm elections.
Not sure what one can do about it, either. It’s hard to get people excited to vote for the party in power while we suffer through the shittiest economy in 30 years.
henqiguai
Why ? You seem to have lost track of the sheer quantity of stupid populating our fair country. And neither common sense nor anything even approximating intelligence is required to participate in the public square.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Robin Carnahan is running as a conservative version of Claire McCaskill…that’s why she’ll lose to wingnut Blunt when she should be overwhelming him (my red Misery standards, ie. 2-3%).
She’s a poster child for why Dems are potentially gonna get hammered.
OTOH, I believe rumors of Blanche Lincoln’s demise are greatly exaggerated, despite what lofty bloggy pundits like Markos say. My brother’s heavily involved in AR politics and firmly believes she’ll win and he’s not one to look at bad news and spin it otherwise.
This is all about exciting the base and let’s face it, if you’re a hard core Democrat and see the likes of Robin Carnahan running a Blue Dog Democrat campaign, it’s hard to get off your ass and vote for her.
Stoopid fucking Dems.
TJ
You’re ignoring the fact that when the lunatic party was running things, most people were better off than now. Or thought they were. And that’s what they remember.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I really thought this country had hit its nadir of stupid in ’04/’05. It’s really fucking depressing out there.
roshan
Now that the country is jumping off the cliff, shouldn’t Obama fuck some chick in the oval office just to make sure that his presidency mattered?
El Cid
The absolute lunatic constant, as we know, is 27% or more, so, all you ever have to do is add another 23-24% of voters to those for the lunatics to win.
ChrisS
Apparently the Dems are running on a platform of not doing anything more about the economy and not touching social security except to cut the benefits because if they don’t, then they have to raise taxes to pay back all the funds borrowed from Fat Al Gore’s lockbox. The republicans are running on the democrats are fucking everything up that got fucked up on our watch but it wasn’t our fault and tax cuts will surely help and everyone likes tax cuts. The teapartiers are running on pure unadulterated crazy that will dissipate faster than ice in the Arizona sun once they get a taste of governance.
This is going to be fun year. I’m moving to Canada.
ChrisWWW
Hard to blame the ignorant folks all around us. The economy is in the tank and they are going to blame the people in power for it. When you think about it, it’s actually pretty damn rational.
What’s not rational is that Democrats aren’t pushing for additional stimulus and are unwilling to even attempt to end the filibuster roadblock setup by Republicans. It has been a suicidal course of action for Congressional Democrats and now their political careers are dead.
slag
Yeah. Well. Maybe we should all try to…you know…actually do something to try to stop that. Or something.
toujoursdan
@4tehlulz:
Yup. Given the state of the economy, I expected far worse.
Frank
Considering that about 70% of the American is opposed to the community center/mosque being built in Manhattan and thus being against our first amendment and thus our constitution, nothing surprises me anymore. People have lost their f***ing minds. They get the government they deserve.
henqiguai
Strange WordPress games. This is a test, since there seems to be a blackhole in the ether(net) between me and Balloon-Juice.
cat48
A lot of people are desperate and desperate people do desperate things. The way the media is writing & talking about the election, I frankly don’t know why we even bother to have one. We should just pass the gavels now. The couple of Dems left should just have a seat in the back of the bus!
I’m only giving money to the DCCC right now. I just don’t want an impeachment b/c he’s not from America, not American enough, and of course he’s a secret Muslim working to undermine the US.
Nick
But we’re a left wing country!
Citizen Alan
In 2008, 45.7% of the American people voted for a demonstrably senile, warmongering psychopath who denied the existence of any sort of economic crisis, who had spent most of his adult life mooching off his rich wife, and who had picked possibly the dumbest politician in America as his running mate. That’s the baseline for American lunacy, now — 45.7%. From there, it’s only 4.4% to get a majority and fuck the whole world to death.
Rosalita
Believe it. I’m seeing lawn signs in CT for the Wrestling women running for Senate. Makes me ill.
Punchy
@Chad S: By the volume of GOP commercials being played in my area, I’d suspect the Repubs will take at least a dozen seats.
Meanwhile, as I type this, I see an ex-girlfriend on a TV commercial. Sigh.
Ed: I think Comrade Scott and I live in the same area, and I agree with him completely.
OGLiberal
The GOP base if fired up and the Dem base isn’t. So Dems lose the turnout contest among those voters. These base voters probably account for about 50% of the voters, maybe 60% because it’s the mid-terms. That leaves the other 40%, 30% of whom really don’t pay attention to politics. They know (believe) three things – the Democrats haven’t fixed the unemployment problem yet, they spent a lot of money but “where’s my share”, and Obama apparently hearts Muslims, blacks, and Mexicans. They don’t care that Republicans made this mess. They don’t know that the measures taken by the Dem kept our nation out of this depression because they didn’t get a job or a $400 tax rebate check in the mail. They don’t know or care that the GOP is insane and that many of the people the GOP is running are batshit crazy…they don’t pay enough attention to know this. They’re out of work or worried about being out of work and those fucking Democrats had two years to fix that problem and didn’t do anything but waste their time giving free stuff to brown people. And Obama plays too much golf and Michelle goes on vacation, also.
Doesn’t have to be true, doesn’t matter that 2-years isn’t nearly enough time to fix the mess the GOP create, doesn’t matter that the GOP actively prevented the Dems from fixing the problem – low info voters readily and easily digest messages like the one above….because they don’t fucking pay attention. So they figure, “well, let’s give the other guys another shot”, not realizing or caring that the other guys a) caused the problem, b) have no plans to fix the problem, and c) are mostly psychotic.
NonyNony
@Frank:
I’d be more sanguine about that fact if I wasn’t also getting the government that they deserve.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
I’m having a hard time believing Nate’s numbers: he has a 42% chance of Boxer losing to Fiorina. I think it’s an artifact of the likely voter models.
CA is a blue state, increasingly Latino. And there are several thousand ex-HP employees who hate Carly Fiorina’s guts and would readily volunteer to have her voted down. Boxer’s won against stronger challengers than Fiorina: a 42% chance of Boxer losing is way too fucking high an estimate.
steviez314
But Rahm hurt my fee-fees,so I’m staying home on election day to show him.
Nick
Most people in this country are fucking lunatics, you live in a red state John, you know this. It’s time for liberals to stop living in this dreamworld where everyone is secretly good and all we need to do is stand up for good. Most Americans are evil, vile, selfish people who occasionally show a moment of caring just to convince people they aren’t evil and vile (see Haiti). They give a few bucks to a charity and call it a day.
morzer
@Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan:
The economy is lousy, Republicans are enthusiastic, and HP’s Stealth Fuck-up is spending money like crazy. It’s not so hard to believe. Anyway, she can always send in the Demon Sheep Brigades
Chad S
@Frank: Thats not actually fair. While 65-70% oppose the mosque, the same amount believe that they have the right to build it there.
Nick
@NonyNony:
The left needs to really stick it to the American people. They’re never going to listen to reason.
I laugh at the class war idea because what liberals seem to forget is that the bourgeoisie has never won a class war without there being bloodshed.
Frank
@NonyNony:
I guess the difference is that I (and you) know that we will get a lousy Congress after the midterms. The majority of the clueless people don’t know what the heck they are voting for.
For example Angle in Nevada; how many of the people that intend to vote for her know that she wants to eliminate Social Security and Medicare?
JMG
I have felt since May that the Republicans would win both houses of Congress. Democrats have no one to blame but themselves. Polls show people dislike GOP but are still going to vote for its candidates. That means Dem failure on every level.
Cowardice never wins votes. Truth is, the Obama administration has revealed, mostly inadvertently, that the government is always in the hands of organized wealth no matter who you vote for. So why blame Dems for staying home. “We’ll drive your handcart to hell much more slowly” isn’t much of a slogan.
El Cid
@slag: Shut up hippie.
Chad S
@Punchy: Thats not going to happen. To win 10, the GOP would have to start knocking out Senators like Boxer, Murray, Feingold, etc. Thats extremely unlikely despite all the dem hand wringing which is going on.
Nick
@Chad S:
and yet they think they should forfeit it because it’s “insensitive”
The fake fake al
Lunacy aside, lets just consider basic competency. Always thought Americans valued the ability to lead and make steady progress, but clearly ideology now trumps good old Amer ingenuity and hard work. Too bad.
Bob
If the fucking Democrats, Blue Dogs, hold the Senate, I hope to god they do, it’s a small beer.
slag
@El Cid: Fuck off fascist.
(No offense. I just didn’t want ED Kain to feel singled-out.)
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
John, I keep telling you, and you keep not listening: the majority of the American electorate is stupid as shit.
On another topic: why and how has “eat a bag of dicks” become a frequent insult around here? Why is eating dick, one or more, presumed to be a BAD thing?
Well, I don’t mean actually CONSUMING dicks, but you know, putting them in one’s mouth and stuff and licking and enjoying the texture, taste and response engendered, should be cause for celebration to the eater and the eatee, so why all the homo-hatin’ negativity?
Carnacki
The golden rule. Those with the gold rule. Too many people let Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh do their thinking for them because being an informed citizen capable of independent thought is like an adult-version of homework. The infantalism of many Americans through much of what passes for modern entertainment has created a large mass of people who want politics as entertainment and incapable of understanding public policy. Those who let the Beck and Limbaugh listeners off for being victims of the rightwing noise machine are letting those listeners off the hook to easily. These people are not just ignorant. They’re willfully ignorant who prefer the illusion of a black and white world instead of the often gray-shaded reality. Efforts to inform them through phonebanking and canvassing rarely are effective and are often met with derision. Yet still some of us try. Too bad all that work often results in having to support the lesser of two weevils, as Capt. Jack Aubrey might say.
morzer
@Chad S:
Murray’s usually been in tight elections. Dino Rossi might well get over the top this time, if he can muzzle the teabaggers and capitalize on a bad economy.
Nick
@JMG:T
I’d be willing to believe this if I saw progressive really taking on the aristocracy outside of politics, but instead they just sit around a bitch. If I saw real skull cracking on the part of those on the ground, I’d believe they really thought politics isn’t working so something else to.
But it just seems to me that Dems you speak of want to get raped in the ass and whine about it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@steviez314: I enjoy mocking firebaggers as much as anybody, but really don’t believe disaffected liberals are the problem here. The usual midterm bias (old, white, rich, rural), a shitty economy, and the usual problems with the media are the problem here. I think in that order, too.
James E. Powell
To its core supporters, it isn’t the lunatic party; it’s the Real Americans party. And to a significant chunk of the independents, it’s the “bring your anger to us” party.
The problem isn’t with the lunatic party; it’s the fact that the president and the Democratic Party aren’t offering any explanation for how we got where we are nor any vision for where we go from here. The Republican policies of the Bush/Cheney junta put the economy where it is. But you would never hear a prominent Democrat say so. Doing so might offend feelings.
Joe Biden’s response to Boehner was good. But it he said it once and the message is never heard again. The Republicans would have the message repeated across the spectrum of the media for two weeks. And they would use the harshest language possible.
Nick
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: 22% of Pennsylvania Democrats are leaning toward voting for Pat Toomey…do the firebaggers mean to tell me they’re doing this because the public option didn’t pass? And even after their candidate won the Democratic primary?
Liberals have no power in the country nor the party because they’re only a small percentage of both. You can mock me all you want Nobody, but this is a ridiculously right wing country. Liberals aren’t going to change this with pretty speeches attacking Republicans and standing up for “what’s right”
Punchy
@Chad S: Its a Rass poll, but Feingold is behind (or at least a statistical dead heat).
Perhaps you live in a bluer state; where I live, the dislike/distrust for Dems is palatable everywhere I go. A lot different and much more acute than 2 years ago.
Sad_Dem
The lunatics won in 1980, 1984, 1988, 1994, 2000, and 2008.
From Iran/Contra to TARP, with plenty more in between to show anyone who’s watching what they are up to.
Frank
@Chad S:
That’s the same argument Sarah Palin uses. “They have a right to build it there, but they shouldn’t”.
cleek
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim):
thanks to TBogg, the proper phrasing is now “eat a bag of salted dicks”.
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
John, remember that we haven’t even reached Labor Day, which always used to be the start of election season, because it’s when voters begin paying attention. To suggest that Pennsylvania, Colorado and Nevada are gone is just nutty– most voters still aren’t familiar with Angle and Toomey.
(To a degree, people who frequent political blogs are like the Village.)
Also, you can’t talk about this stuff in the aggregate. In 1994– when they were pushing a unified platform– OK. But this time we have a bunch of largely unconnected races.
In Delaware we have the Obama Administration taking the incumbent and then the best two candidates not running. (Also true, to a lesser degree, in Colorado.) Both Indiana and North Dakota are DINOs that were there for unique reasons (and, in both cases, the guy bailed without letting people know the seat would be opening).
And then you have places like Ohio and Arkansas, where the party apparatus worked really hard to nominate a candidate who had no chance of winning the general.
I’d make a bad pundit, because I often do find that politics is pretty much local. Trends do emerge from a cycle, but it’s often a case of Halperin and Broder just extrapolating stuff that emerges from their asses.
morzer
@Nick:
20% of Americans self-identify as liberals. That ain’t a majority, ain’t peanuts either.
ChrisWWW
“We’ll drive your handcart to hell much more slowly” isn’t much of a slogan
@JMG:
Exactly! Democrats aren’t even showing supporters there is any fight left in them. Instead of pushing non-stop for economic relief, they are reacting and caving to conservative concern trolling on sh*t like this Mosque and cutting welfare.
Nick
@James E. Powell:
this is bullshit because Democrats have been doing that all the time. Every week, Obama’s speech is this. How many times can he say “they drove the car into the ditch and want to keys back?” Others, from Barbara Boxer, Joe Sestak, Alan Grayson, Anthony Weiner, Kirsten Gillibrand, Michael Bennet, Lee Fisher, Alexi Giannalious, Russ Feingold, and Harry Reid have used the same phrasing, this week alone.
Republicans OWN the media, the media keeps the message alive. They bury the Democratic message immediately after it comes out
Kryptik
I’m about this close to wanting to completely disconnect myself from politics if only for my own sanity. Because I’ve become totally convinced that our country is irreparably broken and nothing we can do will fix it. There are just too many goddamn lunatics and lunatic enablers, and just downright gullible dipshits these days, that I’ve just…plain fucking given up.
kay
@4tehlulz:
That’s what I thought when I saw it. I figured it would be worse.
geg6
I love America.
But, damn, do I despise Americans.
Nick
@morzer: More people think Obama is Muslim than identify as liberals. What does that tell ya?
MattR
@Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim): It is because it is an insult with a funny visual.
And speaking of, is it true or urban legend that the reason that the word “faggot” got transformed from meaning a bundle of sticks to being a gay slur was that when they were burning witches and homosexuals, the witches were tied up to a stake while the gays weren’t even worthy of a stake and were thrown on the fire with the other faggots?
morzer
@geg6:
Nice house, shame about the inmates?
Mark S.
Do we really only have a 12% chance in Pennsylvania?
And I agree with the other commenters that there isn’t a 20% chance of losing the Senate. The Dems would have to lose every single competitive race and get upset in Cali or Wash. I’m not that pessimistic.
ETA: By other commenters, I mean Chad S.
slag
@JMG:
Yeah. Well, it’s a good start. Because the slower my handcart goes, the easier it will be for me to turn it around.
Democrats in DC may be assholes but you’re being even more of one right now. The useless prima donnas don’t fall far from the Hill.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Nick:
I’ll disagree with that. I think this country, the fluctuating electorate, is ill-informed (that’s the most diplomatic way of putting it). Rightwing sloganeering is simple and makes superficial sense. In a war between bumper stickers and Paul Krugman columns, when the bumper stickers are presented as valid arguments by smart people on TV, bumper stickers will often, not always, win.
ChrisWWW
“You can mock me all you want Nobody, but this is a ridiculously right wing country. Liberals aren’t going to change this with pretty speeches attacking Republicans and standing up for ‘what’s right'”
@Nick:
Agreed. The best way for Democrats to win this and all future elections is to become indistinguishable from Republicans.
Nick
@ChrisWWW:
they aren’t the ones setting the narratives, they’re just responding to it.
Kryptik
@Nick:
Thing is, I don’t even fucking by that it’s a right wing country, at least on the merits. When you actually get on the damn issues, stripping away the bullshit, there IS a significant tilt toward the liberal.
The problem is that Republicans are so much goddamn better at politicking and selling themselves, that the moment the word ‘liberal’ or ‘Democrat’ is attached to something, all of a sudden people recoil and go ‘Oh, I don’t want that, that’s LIBERAL!”
This isn’t a right wing country on it’s merits. The problem is that merit doesn’t fucking matter anymore.
beltane
The irony is that those who vote Republican on account of unemployment will see their unemployment benefits vanish with the wind. Soon schadenfreude will be the only pleasure left in this country. Americans have very few resources available to them when times are bad. Our communities are generally weak and cruel, our family structures are also weak, and the dominant form of religion here is a weird, hateful, materialistic bastardized Christianity. This country has long been based upon the promise of unlimited economic growth; in the failure of this promise, there is nothing but bile to fall back on.
Zuzu's Petals
So John –
Time to start putting up a couple of Act Blue pages?
MattR
It is interesting that I came to this post after reading this one at TPM that talked about how a Joe Miller win in the Republican primary Alaska might actually put that seat in play
FlipYrWhig
@Chad S: I’ve been very surprised at Nate Silver’s probabilities. He’s the expert and he backs up his stuff, but is it really _that_ unlikely to pick off R-held seats like New Hampshire, Ohio, and Missouri? And Toomey 88% likelihood over Sestak? And Buck 69% over Bennet? And Rubio pulling it out by a whisker over Crist? That last one, no way, because if it’s looking close at the end Dems will abandon Meek to pull Crist over the finish line. I mean, Nate Silver knows, which makes me very nervous. But some of those numbers seem aggressive.
beltane
@Kryptik: The Democrats should test their messages on chimpanzees. Most people have absolutely no critical thinking skills; if you want to win elections you must engage the primate mind.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MattR: at the very least, the RSCC will have to spend money they most likely wouldn’t have with Murkowski (OT: Why does TPM flog Rasmussen polling so hard? this has been driving me nuts for hte last few weeks).
wengler
I still don’t think that the Democrats despite themselves will lose majorities in either House. The problem is that with lessened majorities comes even more gridlock. It will be nigh near impossible to pass ANYTHING through the Senate when one fence-sitting douchebag becomes 7 or 8 Party Of No empty suits.
Republicans are nihilists that believe in destroying the American economy in order to rule the ashpile that will result from that. Democrats as a party are on the fence as to whether the economy should be destroyed in order to save the wealth of the 1 percenters. We as a people are in a really shitty place, mostly due to the fact that we used to be adult producers of manufactured products, but instead threw that away to become infantile consumers of Chinese manufactured products. Obama couldn’t change this if he tried, which is good because he’s not even trying.
Midnight Marauder
While Nate’s analysis is always top-notch, what I think is missing is an appreciation of just how self-destructive, vulnerable, and precariously situated this crop of Republican candidates are. If you take the big time races, people keep digging up more extreme rhetoric from Sharron Angle and Rand Paul keeps getting excoriated by newspapers all over Kentucky. More importantly, even though Silver writes
it was the first and only time he held a led against Toomey in any poll and (surprise, surprise) it was produced by Rasmussen. For the most part, he’s been steadily eating into Toomey’s lead while picking up solid endorsements and watching Toomey do his “Please Stop Calling It ‘Privatization of Social Security’ Because It Hurts My Feelings” dance. Not to mention that this sounds eerily like the knock on Sestak back in the primary, when anyone who knew anything about his campaigning style was aware that he was waiting until the home stretch to really go after Specter. I suspect it will be much the same with Toomey on the issue of Social Security privatization.
Furthermore, Jack Conway is already polling dead even with Rand Paul and Conway hasn’t even gone on air with any advertising yet. People are actually beginning to find out who Russ Johnson is and that he is beyond batshit insane, so I expect things to improve for Feingold rather soon. And so it goes across the board.
I just can’t buy into these notions that the Democratic Party’s hold on the Senate is in serious trouble. This crop of Republican candidates is just incomprehensibly disastrous.
Nick
@ChrisWWW:
That’s not what I said and you know it.
But even so, notice how Walt Minnick and Bobby Bright are polling better than Carol Shea-Porter and Joyce Elliot. Depending on where you are in the country, the best way for Democrats to win this and all future elections is to become indistinguishable from Republicans.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@James E. Powell:
This. Look at often you see Boner on cable news. Always.
Now look at how often you see Biden on cable news. That is what’s wrong with the Dems these days.
Nick
@Kryptik: @Jim, Foolish Literalist:
We’re not talking over each other here. If we had a much more educated, informed electorate, we wouldn’t be a ridiculously right wing country. But we don’t and until the American people stop thinking they’re above education and being informed, we never will
catclub
“I really thought this country had hit its nadir of stupid in ‘04/’05. It’s really fucking depressing out there.”
Heck, I thought that when the country voted for Reagan.
Peak wingnut is a myth, as the blog subtitle says.
Kryptik
@wengler:
It doesn’t even really matter on the larger scale of things, honestly, whether Republicans take the houses or not. Committees, Sub-Committees, etc., it doesn’t chance the fact that Republicans have made the Democratic party pariahs in the stage of public opinion, out of total BS and Dem cowardice. It doesn’t help that every victory we’ve gotten, however significant, has been couched in one-sided compromise because we have so many goddamn Dems who think the way to be bipartisan is to say ‘On one hand, our Republican colleagues have a point, on the other hand, Pelosi is a dirty stupid skank.’. Look at the fucking House races, where Blue Dogs aren’t even distancing themselves from Pelosi, Reid, and Obama. They’re running AGAINST them.
It’s all fucking ridiculous, and it pretty much means the death knell of any significant progressive or liberal legislation for at least a decade. :/
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
They’re enthusiastically anti-immigrant. Since Wilson and Prop 187, I don’t think that’s worked out that well for the GOP in CA, and I don’t think it can win a state-wide election.
Look, since Prop. 187, the GOP have had a hard time winning statewide elections that unless (1) it’s an office people don’t give a fuck about [Sec. of State or Insurance Commissoner don’t count], or (2) they have an action movie star as candidate running against a Dem with the charisma of a can of paint. Boxer ain’t Bustamonte, and Fiorina’s brittle.
Meh, don’t panic. Boxer’s, and for that matter Brown in the Governorship, haven’t spent much money yet.
morzer
@Nick:
That you are running away from facts while getting your tighty-whities wrapped around your fee-fees? Or, in short, don’t confuse short-term polling with longterm trends.
Chad S
@Punchy: Feingold’s not losing that race. I live in the DC area, but even among the suburban indys in northern VA(who usually blow with the winds), I haven’t detected any palatable disappointment or hatred of the Dems. In order for the GOP to net 12 seats, they would have to hold all four of their vulnerable seats(unlikely), then beat:
Reid(very unlikely)
Lincoln(she’s toast)
Bennet(coinflip)
Sestak(coinflip)
Whomever is running in ND, Indiana and Delaware(all dem losses)
Giannoulias(he should win that race, Kirk is fucking up)
Murray(she should hold on)
Boxer(she’s not losing)
Feingold(I doubt he loses)
And then pull an upset in NY, Connecticut or West Virginia.
The GOP would have to run the table to come close to that. If there was such hatred of incumbent Dems that could cause something like that, then Giannoulias, Reid, Bennet and Sestak would be down 12+ points in any polls. They aren’t.
@Frank: That really has nothing to do with the point at hand.
morzer
@Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan:
It’s not panicking to explain why Carly might have a shot. I don’t think she’s going to win, but just writing the opposition off completely is what leads to unpleasant November surprises.
wengler
If the Republicans do win the House, they will have 2 main priorities, 1) extend the tax cuts for the rich, 2) impeach Barack Obama and remove him from office.
Funny, I’ve never heard any media figure ask presumptive Speaker of the House Boehner if impeachment is “off the table”. It’s a good thing Obama decided to look forward instead of behind. All that wiping the shit under the rug seems to have done a good job at sabotaging his Presidency.
Nick
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
No, that’s what’s wrong with cable news these days. They don’t put Dems on because Dems don’t want to be on, they don’t put them on because they don’t WANT them to be on.
Case in point, during the 9/11 bill drama, MSNBC and CNN both had Republicans on by themselves blasting Democrats, but then would put a Democrat (like Weiner) on with Peter King at the same time, never put a Democrat on by his or herself.
quaint irene
Aw, hell. I’m just gonna join the terror babies.
Flugelhorn
@Chad S:
Gimme some o’ that Kool-aid, baby!
geg6
@Nick:
And this explains why I hate Americans.
If this is how it is, I opt out. This country is going to become Somalia and it deserves it.
Nick
@morzer: FACT: More people right now believe Obama is Muslim that consider themselves liberal. Why is this me “running away from facts?”
Mark S.
@beltane:
Utterly depressing, but spot on.
FlipYrWhig
It seems to me like there was a Democratic surge in 2008, and a smaller shock in 2006. Political observers kept wondering whether it was sustainable. And maybe it wasn’t. I remember how appalled I was in the aftermath of Election Day 2004, because it didn’t make sense why people would reelect that fuckup. It feels like we’ve slid right back to that point.
But I don’t think it has anything to do with demoralized liberals. It has to do with people who were anxious about the economy in 2008, wanted to see something different done and pulled the D lever, and haven’t seen enough done and feel like lashing out. But there’s no way to make the government do more and have enough people agree on _how_, because the Democratic majority includes conservatives and because the Republicans have no incentive to be helpful in any way.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Nick: I’m not saying you’re wrong, or that we should give up or vote Nader much less join the Ed Schultz pout-don’t-vote movement. I think the blogosphere (about ten years old) and newly energized (by everything from impeachment to Iraq to Sarah Palin) progressive/liberal faction is just starting to have an effect in pushing back against a political establishment, the media and the national Democratic Party, that has bought into rightwing myths for 40 years. In a way, the fight has gotten harder in that same decade as old FDR-Kennedy-Labor Democrats/liberals in politics and the punditocracy have given way to people who came of political age under the cult of Reagan, Broder, Russert and DLC Democrats (people like David Gregory, Jake Tapper, Claire McCaskill). Also, too, there is a huge class bias in the media that they’re not even conscious of. I’m just saying we have to fight harder.
I concentrate my donations to local candidates, even Blue Dogs, cause that’s what I got, and national progressives (Franken, Brown, Boxer) rather than party apparati, because I think a fat Franken PAC does more good within the party thanb giving to the DLC (Bobby Bright, Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson, even Robin Carnahan)
GregB
Sadly the center which is what determines elections are very susceptible to slick ad campaigns.
The Iraq war is a prime example.
My friend whom I considered to be pretty smart was convinced into supporting the war over the reports that Iraq was in possession of drones that were going to jeopardize his family on the South shore of Massachusetts.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
1930s Germany was an advanced, constitutional, liberal democracy. No, I’m not saying the U.S. is the same or is headed in the same direction, just pointing out that there is no reason the U.S. is magically immune from similar temptations.
The electoral climate was worse for the GOP two years ago and they still got 42-46% of the national vote. You need to get used to the idea of fighting this battle for the rest of your life.
ruemara
Here’s what’s pissing me off about the “motivated” vs “unenthusiastic” meme. I was pretty darned happy with the progress that was on the table, until I was told that I shouldn’t be. Now I watch as the same people who told democrats that Obama had failed by say month 2 of his presidency are tut-tutting about how he’s failed to excite the base. GOod fucking GOD, people, you’re upset that he’s not the most supreme liberal president of your dreams, that he didn’t jump on the desk in the senate with a machine gun and make liberman and ben nelson wet themselves at his lats and he won’t be your left wing GWB. So after telling everyone that this or that is what should be, without much of a fact backing up how it could be, basically making everyone feel dispirited and betrayed before a year was up, now you’re stymied about why the base isn’t excited and crazies could win? Oh fuck me with a brick. You know what? Sometimes, fucking cheering a minor gain is exciting to the base, as opposed to saying just how crappy moving a fucking micron after a decade of nothing at all is. I can’t help feeling that we’re so used to being angry that we’re being blinded to potential positive gains.
wengler
@ Kryptik
Considering the only part-way progressive legislation that was passed(the healthcare bill), only got through with massive corporate concessions, I have very little confidence in the ability of this Congress in this environment to push anything even moderately reformist.
Our political discourse on the decision-making level is controlled by the corporate plutocracy, which in turn feeds a very vile violent racist rightwing to keep any assault on their power in check. Honestly, we need a large people to stop being so goddamned stupid. But the institutions created by the corporate right constantly reinforce their assumptions and beliefs so no rational thoughts can intercede.
Nick
@wengler: Corporations are the modern day aristocracy and, like I said, the common man has never beat the aristocracy without there being bloodshed.
Trinity
Sweet Jeebus – has anyone one seen this from ole’ Glenny Beck?
FlipYrWhig
@ruemara:
I was just saying somewhere else that if you keep saying you’re demoralized and disillusioned and feel like dropping out of politics, you shouldn’t really be surprised when people actually believe you, write you off, and look for votes to your right.
But, look, it’s not that hard to demoralize a liberal. It kind of goes with the territory. We’re moody, grumpy people by nature. If the Democrats are in the shit right now it has little to do with liberal gripes about not being liberal enough. It has much more to do with very bad economic conditions, a rift between liberal and conservative Democrats in Congress about how to deal with that, and a Republican party that is expressly dedicated to not helping make it better.
(Republicans in Congress did one thing lately to help deal with the economic crisis: voting for TARP because the sky was falling. As a result, their activists tore them a new one, guaranteeing that they’ll not be doing anything like that ever again.)
morzer
@Nick:
Because it’s irrelevant and misleading. I know you just want to lead a chorus of “We are all Blue Dogs” but it isn’t true. Stop comparing different categories: short-term reactions to emotional issues and long-term political identification. How complex is this for you?
cat48
@Kryptik:
I’ve been feeling that way lately, but I keep telling myself it’s only temporary…….I’m going to IL this week & won’t have time to engage in politics the way I normally do. I’ll let you know if it makes me feel better to be away from it.
Joe Bauers
The underlying problem: Most (or at least a very large minority) of the people in this country are stupid, ignorant, lazy, and eager to blame their problems on The Other. They will always be susceptible to the kind of manipulation that Republicans have mastered.
So when Democrats try to convince them that they should care about their neighbor with no health insurance, and Republicans tell them that only freeloading Mexicans don’t have insurance and also too strapping bucks / welfare checks / T-bone steaks, they go with their lizard brains.
As NonyNony said in #25, we all get the government they deserve. And we’re going to get it harder and deeper, starting in January when the new House and Senate are seated and the Republicans have even more tools at their disposal to make sure the Democrats are good and paralyzed. Maybe even subpoena power, and won’t that be fun?
Can Obama account for every dollar the federal government has spent on his watch to prove none of them have gone to ACORN or the New Black Panthers? Can he detail the whereabouts of the Obenis every second of his presidency? Can he prove that he’s never said anything nice about a Muslim? Because Darrell Issa will be asking.
God, it’s way too early to start drinking.
morzer
@Trinity:
You don’t mean the new Fourth Person of the Trinity, do you?
wengler
@ruemera
The disappointment comes from the the fact that this is likely to be the most Democratic Congress of my generation. A lot of legislation was passed, but only after they had been compromised to death. The banks that were too big to fail? They are even bigger now. Global warming legislation? Dead on Arrival with even the old Republican emissions trading scheme not having support. EFCA? No way! We can’t be so hard on businesses during tough times, just like we can’t bother them during the good times.
The problem is the Obama administration’s dialogue of what constitutes sensible answers to problems mostly comes from the 1996 Dole campaign. And it has a hard time even getting that passed.
I mean we have real problems and I really think that Obama is the best we can do in this political environment and the only real hope we have going forward for a long time. And if he can only find middling solutions that won’t come close to solving the vast array of problems then where the hell do we go? The lazy fascism of the GOP?
Svensker
Obama did not win in a landslide. Just think about that.
Davis X. Machina
Cf. the UK, where the Tories ran on an open “Fuck the workers” platform, and got enough of them to agree with being fucked to get within the length of Nick Clegg’s ego of the finish line anyways.
Mencken is right: Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it — good and hard.
Jules
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
This is from way above, but I agree with your brother on Blanche.
I think that while polling looks bad once her ads begin and she keeps hammering home the money she brings home and the fact that she is the Chair of the Ag comm things will turn around.
Most people don’t really even know Boozeman…today he was whining how she should not say he supports a flat sales tax because he was just one of the sponsors that signed on.
Idiot.
Bastard.
General Stuck
The real campaign is just about to start and the melon head public hasn’t been paying close attention and reminded yet on a daily basis, that these tea tards and goopers are republicans same as George Bush.
So I wouldn’t consider this chicken fucked just yet. I wonder if Silver isn’t playing a little mind fu himself, trying to warn dems to get off their asses and go vote, because the current majorities in congress are not forever.
Xenos
@Nick: Mr. we could use a man like Oliver Cromwell again…
Comrade Kevin
Every time someone uses the phrase “fee-fees”, their IQ drops by several points.
morzer
@Comrade Kevin:
Can we sympathize with you on your loss?
ppcli
How could people vote for the batshit crazy party? Well, right after Obama was elected we had a thread speculating about what the (then apparently in tatters) GOP slogan in 2012 would be. I suggested “So you finally decided to face reality and you learned that reality sucks? Well, come on back home to the GOP.”
Nick
@morzer:
I’m not sure “Obama is a Muslim” isa short-term reaction to an emotional issue.
beltane
@Davis X. Machina: Humans are basically sadistic creatures who enjoy watching the suffering of others. Sacrifice is noble when it is other people doing the sacrificing (notice how no one ever volunteers to give up something of their own). If gladiatorial shows were legal, they would still be popular and profitable.
The English speaking world has refined the sadism somewhat by disguising it in Calvinist terms such as “successful” “productive” “undeserving” etc., but it is sadism nonetheless.
Frank
@Chad S:
???
beltane
@General Stuck: There is that element to it as well. Despite all the talk of demoralized Dems, the turnout in our primary this Tuesday was more than double what was expected. People who were undecided and who otherwise might have stayed home showed up to vote because they were so horrified by the national Republicans that they just wanted to make a statement.
Nick
@wengler:
but here’s my problem with this…if we weren’t a hopelessly right wing country, wouldn’t this NOT be true?
There’s a cognitive dissonance here…how can Congress be too far right for the people, but there’s no way it can get more liberal?
Davis X. Machina
Congratulations. We live — although some BJ’ers check in from abroad, I know — in a country where if you promise me:
that I’ll get to keep my guns,
that foreigners will tremble when they hear our planes,
that at Jesus’ name every knee shall bend,
that coloreds and fags and liberals and women will know their place, and
that all change will stop, now, forever, I’ll give you all my money, my children, and the battery from my pacemaker.
To get something I hold as cheap as my vote, you don’t even need to promise more than twp or three.
In a midterm election, pick any one — that’ll be good enough.
That’s America.
morzer
@Nick:
I’m not sure you understand basic logic either, but I keep trying. You keep trying to compare short-term views with long-term political identification. Your original attempt at a point was to claim that there are very few liberals. This is simply a ludicrous over-statement. Polls show that about 20% of Americans call themselves liberal. This is not an insignificant number. Despite this fact, you keep going on as if there were only three liberals in America, hiding out in Mrs Finkelstein’s root-cellar in Massachusetts. It ain’t so, and you can drag in all the irrelevant polls about mosques, Obama, Obama and mosques, libertarian hair-cutting guilds, the bank of Nebraska or school-children and compulsory broccoli for breakfast that you want. The fact remains: you are grossly over-stating your claim that liberals are few in number and have no influence, while trying to hide this fact by obfuscating the issue. Please stop.
D-Chance.
“Hope and change” = near 20% true unemployment, trillion dollar deficits, tripling down on Afghanistan, sub-10K Dow… yeah, why WOULD anyone not re-up on the O’ster and his fellows in the Ass Club? It’s incomprehensible.
Ajay
This country has no hope. I thought 8 years of Bush taught them a lesson. The fact that people can call themselves republican or a conservative and not feel remorse for what they did/supported, we can only have lunatic party incharge all the time.
It can only get worse.
Peter J
Punxsutawney Phil says 6 more years of republican obstructionism in the Senate. (Considering the upcoming elections, I’d argue that he’s right about 4 of them.)
LanceThruster
Not so hard to imagine as the candidates and their base are a party of the lunatics, by the lunatics, and for the lunatics.
cat48
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
You must not watch cable….Obama started this a month ago & repeated it continually last wk in several appearances, along w/other Dems. He varies the story so much that Politico did a story last wk on the people who appear in it, etc…….The only thing the msg is missing is something more for the economy which would require the Congress to actually pass something if they won.
morzer
@Peter J:
Didn’t he get fired and replaced by Troy Polamalu? Is he being paid for predictions while committing benefit fraud? Inquiring minds want to know!
Chad S
@Flugelhorn: Its not kool aid. Reid has been leading or tied in every poll since Angle was exposed as the high chief of crazy town and the leading political reporter for Nevada had declared the race over. I don’t know how Silver has her ahead a point. Crist has been leading in every poll that doesn’t rhyme with Masmussen or Murvey MUSA. Paul should be creaming Conway, and its very close(and some polls have Conway ahead).
catclub
Premature capitulation. Excellent strategy!
If we win in November, good. If not:
‘the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.’
Belief in a permanent, easy, Democratic majority is just as fatuous as the GOP version.
Nick
@morzer: Again, I don’t think beliving Obama is a muslim is a short term view. It’s not something you believe today and don’t tomorrow
slag
@D-Chance.:
Ummm…Wanna pull your head out of your own ass for a minute and take a look around at your alternative?
This isn’t some academic exercise. You go to the voting booth with the parties you’ve got. And, quite frankly, Obama has put us on a far better course than his challenger ever would have.
Mark S.
@Trinity:
I love how the whole video has an ad at the bottom for Goldline. You can’t make shit like this up; no one would believe it.
@Chad S:
Really?
Tom Levenson
I am too swamped with both work and depression at the state of the body politic to read the comment thread like I should, but in this context, it would be wrong if someone didn’t link to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeI5ke0BENw
If it’s a repeat, sue me.
Chad S
@Mark S.: Yeah, Ralston. Angle needs to be ahead 4-5 points to overcome Reid’s groundgame to have a chance also.
DPirate
Did you ever see that movie “Hoffa” with Jack Nickleson? Remember where he says a man can forgive being slighted, but an imagined slight is a grudge held forever, or something like that? That’s why people vote republican; they believed democrats were on their side.
Mark S.
@beltane:
I’m not the biggest fan of Christianity, but nothing pisses me off more than Republican Free Market Jesus bullshit peddled by so many televangelists and megapastors. They jettisoned the one admirable trait of the religion and replaced it with Fuck the Poor. I hope those fuckers rot in hell.
cleek
@slag:
a lot of people just don’t see things as black and white as that. for some, sitting out is a perfectly acceptable thing to do when neither choice is all that exciting.
call them names if you like, but they probably outnumber us.
Nick
@cleek:
when all of our lives are at stake, then get fucking excited.
The things is too, it goes beyond that. A lot of people don’t vote because they just don’t find politics that exciting, but rather something that’s above their paygrade and too complicated for them to bother with.
I mentioned this last year but I had a few people, who said they weren’t planning to vote in the New Jersey Governors Race last year; “Politics is soooo 2008”
morzer
@Nick:
This isn’t the point, Nick. The point is that you keep making claims about how few liberals there are, and those claims are false. Quit weaseling around.
Sly
Midterms are all about turnout, and that’s pretty much what is driving Nate Silver’s forecast. The people who will turn out for Republicans are roughly the same as in the Presidential elections, independents generally don’t vote in off-year elections, and the Democratic base remains somewhat depressed. The best lack all conviction, etc.
Vulnerable Democrats need to run on their agenda. Advances in the bast two years based on ARRA, HCR, and FinReg. This is not mutually exclusive with tearing their challengers apart over insipid conservative orthodoxy that overtly seeks to repeal those gains. “I voted to prevent insurance companies from discriminating against children with preexisting conditions, ban retroactive rate increases on credit cards, and helped bring much needed money to this district/state during a time of recession. Cookoo McDumbshit over there wants to repeal all that.”
Democrats who balked at these policies and voted no are probably screwed, however. Sucks for them, but I won’t be shedding any tears.
Bob
“I simply can not believe people would vote for the lunatic party.”
I’m starting to get the sense that whenever the political scene in this country seems to look better, it’s just a temporary aberration along our descent into a banana republic marinating in propaganda and run by insane/incompetent wingnuts and the corporate oligarchs who issue their marching orders.
Nick
@morzer:
One out of five Americans consider themselves liberal, you can make it seem like that’s a lot all you want, but one out of five is a small number, especially considering almost twice as many consider themselves conservative.
Sanka
Yeah. In the real world, the world where most people don’t get to write on their blogs all day while bitching about their dogs and cats, and why your TV doesn’t stream BBC television shows properly, people are actually looking out for how to pay a mortgage and take care of their families.
They don’t want to hear Keynesian utopian fantasies about “oh, the stimulus wasn’t big enough” or “those jerk Blue Dogs” blah blah blah.
A tax cut
a $13 biweekly bump in your paycheckjust isn’t cutting it, coming from theparty of the perpetual middle class stroke-festDemocrats. The same party that has promised more help for the “working class” since 2006, is quite simply, a steaming pile of fail.evap
In the end, though, Nate usually gets it right. He called all Senate races correctly in 2008, e.g. I’m curious to see what happens to his prediction for NV, KY, PA, and even AK (assuming Murkowski loses) as we get closer to election day.
The opening blog on his NY Times site is worth a read. He talks about statistics/models vs. “gut feelings” and makes a good case for the fact that “gut feelings” don’t make good predictions.
I really want to see his House prediction, although I am dreading it as well…
morzer
@Nick:
Right. Let’s just dismiss one in five Americans as insignificant. I mean, obviously a mere 20% of the population doesn’t rate anything in your book. Of course, it’s not quite the same as your earlier claims about how there are next to no liberals, but hey, why should you be responsible for arguing honestly? The more I see of you, the more you look like a slightly smarter than average GOPer, trying to persuade everyone just to go along with the whackjobs you hope are the majority. Well, you can take the misleading claims and the cries of panic, and sell them on Teabay, along with your pitbull and lipstick.
slag
@cleek:
You don’t vote because doing so is exciting. You vote because it’s your freaking job as a citizen of a representative democracy.
And I will call them names because I have no use for uselessness. They’ve made their priorities known. The least I can do is point out how insipid those priorities are. They’re not in any way progressive or liberal. They’re nihilistic.
El Cid
When 1 in 5 Americans self-identify as liberals, this is a very tiny, isolated part of the American electorate.
When 1 in 5 Americans say they think Obama is a Muslin, this is a huge number of people whose prejudices have inordinate weight in political matters.
Zandar
As I said yesterday, it’s important to note that Nate’s median projection is that the Dems keep the Senate with 52 or 53 seats.
Keep in mind however the there’s a pretty damn good chance that 3 of those 52-53 will consist of Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, and Charlie Crist.
And even if all of them go with the Dems, how many milliseconds will it take before the Wingers honestly proclaim that a Senate with 52-53 Dems is illegitimate because it’s less than the current 59 and the will of the people is that the GOP should be running things, especially if the GOP takes back the House?
Won’t that be fun?
Patrix
Frankly, we need more than two ‘credible’ parties. That way, voting against one doesn’t involve voting for the lunatic other.
morzer
@El Cid:
Especially when 40% call him a Taffeta, and a further 30% suggest he might just be a Nylon.
catclub
Nick @ 140
“One out of five Americans consider themselves liberal, you can make it seem like that’s a lot all you want, but one out of five is a small number, especially considering almost twice as many consider themselves conservative.”
I bet 90% or more of Americans think they are sane.
And 75% of drivers think they are above average drivers.
When asked about specific policies, they come down in favor of policies that get called liberal.
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
@James E. Powell: Shirley you are not suggesting, my good sir, that Democrats should engage in “class warfare”?
I’m inured to the reality that I belong to a political party that is run by pussies. Democrats don’t employ even 10% of the techniques that are available to any party for voter outreach and message discipline, and commonly used by left-leaning parties in other democracies.
In an ecosystem where the opposition does things that are many orders of magnitude worse, every single day, they work at an immense handicap.
Plus, the other side is willing to scream bloody murder if they sense even a whiff of testosterone– and the media heads for the fainting couch.
At some point, it would be better just to run up the pirate flag and say “The Republicans don’t give a crap about anyone but the rich.” But I guess that would make things too easy.
catclub
morzer @ 148
How many think he will be whiter than Fuller’s cloth after being washed in the blood of the lamb?
(One of many strange phrases in revelation. How the heck does washing in blood turn something white?)
morzer
@catclub:
My general interpretative principle with Revelation is to regard it as the consequence of over-hasty religious blogging after a long night with heroine, hookers and too much wine. Once you realize that the blogger had no delete key, it all makes much more sense.
Wile E. Quixote
@Sanka:
I know, just think of how many jobs would have been created if President Obama had implemented those FEMA death camps for conservatives that I kept hearing about. Not only would thousands of well-paying government jobs have been created but the economy and deficit also would have improved as conservative no-loads who consume more in taxes than they pay were removed from the mainstream. Damn Democrats.
Nick
@morzer:
They are insignificant, both liberals and those who think Obama is a muslim…my point was, an entire political wing of the country is exactly the same size as a radical fringe group on the right, that speaks volumes.
Bob L
Because of the economy this should be a real shitty year for Dems but the GOP has proved time and time again they are capable of shooting themselves in the foot. You guys might keep in mind Obama in 2008 was losing in the polls between July and October when it was all about Obama. When the election started and it was Obama verse someone it changed. A big part of Obama win was what kind of fucktards McCain and Palin are.
Right now it is all about the Dems, how they’ve fucked up.
Once the race starts then it will be, “the Dems suck and how about those Republicans,,.”
brendancalling
it’s not people voting for the lunatic party you have to worry about, it’s about people not voting for the
DemocraticRepublican Lite Party.I’ll vote, but am I enthuiastic about supporting the party that dramatically restricted women’s access to abortion services, including the very sick women in the high risk pools? Fuck no, I don’t want to force some woman with AIDS to carry a baby to term, that’s cruel.
Am I enthusiastic about the President who brought us the Catfood Commission and stands by
AlanAsshole Simpson? Fuck no, i have elderly parents and my “retirement savings” won’t last me a month.Am i enthusiastic about supporting the party that escalated in Afghanistan? No, I am not. About the party that stands behind HAMP, which atrios accurately describes as a “predatory lending program”? No. Not enthusiastic at all. Don’t get me started on civil liberties or the health care exchanges I can’t afford to participate in.
yes, I’m grateful for student loan reform: it won’t save ME any money on my existing loans, but maybe next year. And I’m grateful we got a foot in the door with health INSURANCE reform: maybe in another decade we’ll actually get to health CARE reform. Maybe when i’m 90 we’ll even get a public option.
THAT is the problem: unmotivated Democrats who have not only not gotten much in the way of goodies (despite booman’s lists of what’s been accomplished), but have been repeatedly kicked in the balls. This poutraged fucking retard who should probably be drug tested is not impressed, and neither are most of the people I know, including substantial numbers of self-described Obots.
Now pardon me while I return to my alternative universe of permanent outrage and relentless negativity, fueled and fostered by the white progressive blogosphere.
morzer
@Nick:
Yes. It says you can’t do math and are a dishonest ignoramus to boot.
Nick
@brendancalling:
You know, get the fuck over it. This is how governing works.
iLarynx
Americans won’t. But Republicans will.
Nick
@morzer: Someone once said, you know you’ve won an argument when the other person resorts to only personal attacks…so thanks.
Ash Wing League
We’re in the position because the Democratic party has candidates who don’t know how to properly campaign (thanks DNC!) and voters who are too fucking stupid to realize that sitting out of an election will not help make the party more liberal and will likely make it more conservative (thanks firedoglake!).
morzer
@Nick:
Given your track record of insults and falsehoods, it’s pretty clear you began by losing. Either way, I can see you don’t have a serious case to make, or a contribution to offer. Pie time for you.
Nick
@Woodrow L. Goode, IV:
Democrats don’t have 10% of the techniques available to any party!
Why is this so fucking hard to understand?
Glenndacious Greenwaldian (formerly tim)
@MattR:
I have heard and read varying accounts of the origin of the word “faggot,” and I have no idea which is correct.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
Faggot in the UK means a stick of wood for tinder (hence “fag” meaning cigarette in the UK). Because old ladies were vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft, “faggot” got used for old lady, and is still used over there. Later, it got used to refer to homosexuals.
lawnorder
No John people will vote for people who give jobs.. or say the reason there are no jobs is Obama’s inaction.
A nice label about “health care passed’ means absolutely zero for an unemployed single mom with a sick kid. Or for a barely employed one that has to decide between a co-pay and food.
To some, all those nice things Obama passed are as real as Bush’s “Mission Accomplished”. A vacuous celebration of a meaningless first step into a long hard process. They were fooled then, they won’t be fooled now.
Results matter. Little tick marks in Obama’s to-do list aren’t jobs or medicine or a needed surgery.
And I hate to say it, but we told you so, we told Obama so and we were called traitors. As usual.
Nick
@morzer: Once again, when your opponent responds in nothing but personal insults, it means you’ve won the argument. I like banana creme the best
But keep thinking 20% is a substantial number that needs to be paid attention to, unless, of course, it’s the number that approves of Dick Cheney, then it’s just a radical fringe.
Dave Trowbridge
They’re not voting for the lunatic party, they’re voting against the republican-lite party.
cleek
@slag:
“lazy, apathetic, or disinterested” works just as well.
Nick
@lawnorder:
No, I don’t think you do
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@lawnorder:
I can’t believe I’m responding, but I have to ask: Your alternative was…. Dumbledore?
MattR
@Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan: So you’re telling me that something that I heard on a fictional TV show (about 5 min in) is not completely true? What’s next, a warning about not trusting everything I read on the internet?
Nick
@Dave Trowbridge:
Yes, that’s right, people are voting for Ken Buck and Sharron Angle because Michael Bennet and Harry Reid are “Republican-lite”
morzer
@Nick:
So you like boysenberry pie too. Have you met Matoko-chan? You guys ought to get on well together.
cat48
Yes, the Dems are horrible! I’m watching repugs on Ratigan who want the minimum wage REPEALED!! So corps can profit! Go rethugs!
MattR
I think my mp3 player is reading the blog over my shoulder.
El Cid
@morzer: Centuries ago the British had to defend its nascent capitalism from the Calico threat.
And now we have elected our own Kenyonesian Calicut-backing fiend.
Montysano
@Frank:
As Hunter S. Thompson said after 9/11 (and shortly before his exit), the United States has suffered a mass nervous breakdown. At this point, the breakdown seems to have evolved into mass psychosis. People are incoherent, enraged, and completely divorced from reality.
And yeah… getting the govt that we truly deserve is one of my greatest fears.
Andrew
People need to keep in mind Nate’s projections are projections of what would happen if the election were held TODAY. It’s based on current polls.
So if the polls improve in places like Pennsylvania or Missouri, then the probability of winning them will be higher at that point.
brendancalling
@Nick:
hi, do you not know how to read? I SAID I’M GOING TO VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS. THAT is the definition of “get the fuck over it”.
I think what you meant to say was “You know, get the fuck over it [and shut up with your bellyaching]. This is how governing works. ”
A) this is NOT how governing HAS to work: there was no need to appease the right wingers and the republicans at every turn.
B) Oh I am ever so sorry for not clapping harder when “my team” does something I’m opposed to.
C) reading your comments to others that reference my own, it’s clear you DON’T know how to read. I NEVER said anything suggesting “people are voting for Ken Buck and Sharron Angle because Michael Bennet and Harry Reid are “Republican-lite” “. What I SAID was “it’s about people not voting for the Democratic Republican Lite Party” because “unmotivated Democrats… have not only not gotten much in the way of goodies”.
And that is unfortunately true.
I don’t know where you live, but I am sure there’s a qualified provider of adult basic education services somewhere within 25 miles.
August J. Pollak
@Bob L:
This is just completely untrue. With the exception of the two weeks during and immediately following the Republican National Convention Obama dominated the polls from April 2008 until Election Day.
If you think Democrats are going to turn this around, by all means do so, but jeez, man- they’re all out of later, and no, they were not performing this miserably two years ago. Every single poll and tracker indicates a massive enthusiasm gap between Republican and Democratic voters.
And if you’re basing the defense on “people voted because of how bad McCain and Palin are” they boy howdy are Democrats royally fucked in two months because pretending that this entire election, even in the primaries, isn’t about opposition to incumbency is deliberate denial.
Benito
The Republicans are so funny, when the economy is good you say let’s all celebrate “Cinco de Mayo, my brothers” but when the economy is down “it’s all your fault, you damn immigrant”. When most Americans (with Latin America roots) go to the polls this November we will remember that the GOP has gone on a nationwide rant in proposing and passing several anti-immigration legislation (that our US Courts continue to strike down) and have continue to blame the immigrant for the flat economy or worse. We will remember who stands with us and who stands against us, so trying to stop it now is somewhat funny, but go ahead, you will not change our minds. Plus the more radical of the GOP are now attacking our Constitution and our Bill of Rights, in a misguided attempt to garner some much needed votes, they really are fools, and leading the GOP towards obscurity because they are no longer a party of ideas, just of empty suits. Your hate made you do it, in November; you will reap what you have sown. I wonder what Abraham Lincoln would say about todays GOP, he unlike the current GOP was a man of ideas.
LanceThruster
@Patrix: Or IRV or Boorda (sp?) voting.
Darnell
It’s times like this that make me feel like a kindred spirit to a citizen of the Roman Empire around 400 AD.
Maybe we are nothing more than witnesses to history! Citizens of the “Great American Empire” as it buckled, and then fell!
We should all start keeping diaries for future historians to study as they pick through the wreckage…
brendancalling
@Dave Trowbridge:
actually, if the democrats lose, it won’t be because democrats voted FOR the lunatics, but because democrats stayed home and didn’t vote AT ALL.
you ever get the bait-n-switch treatment from the cable company or your cell phone company? a lot of the past two years has felt like that. And when you feel like you’ve been ripped off, it’s hard to get that enthusiasm back. “we’re not as bad as the GOP” isn’t a compelling slogan.
Nick
@brendancalling:
No one appeased right wingers or Republicans, we did, however, appease the large conservative wing of the Democratic Party and people like Bart Stupak and Marcy Kaptur (the latter of whom support single fucking payer) who express strong anti-choice views, and people like the New York House delegation who tends to be more favorable toward the financial industry.
You’re opposed to giving people healthcare? You’re opposed to a consumer protection agency? You’re opposed to pulling combat troops out of Iraq? No, the problem isn’t that you’re not clapping harder when “your team” does something you’re opposed to, the problem is you’re not clapping at all when they do things you’re NOT opposed to. Part of governing if your team is going to sometimes do things you oppose, and sometimes they won’t.
I wasn’t referencing your comment to anyone else, I was specifically responding to them. If you got one thing you like from the 111th Congress, you should vote to reelect them, otherwise, you’re a counterproductive idiot. If you’re expecting to vote for a party that does EVERYTHING you want them to do and NOTHING you don’t, don’t hold your breath…or do, then maybe we can govern the country without having to twist ourselves into pretzels trying to please you.
Nick
@brendancalling:
it’s pretty clear it’s gonna be because of both, but the latter needs to be smacked around a bit. Staying home is a counterproductive option and all it does it send the message that the reliable voting bloc is more conservative. No one is going to pander to you if they don’t think you’ll vote.
morzer
@El Cid:
Hmmm.. does this make Hillary the virtuous but ignored Tabby?
August J. Pollak
@Nick:
Just out of curiosity, Nick, I’m wondering what you’ve been doing that constitutes yourself as being part of the “we” that “governs the country.” Do you work for a government official and/or have you done any work for a Democratic campaign this cycle? I ask as if the answer’s yes, I would really hope you have a better motivational message to potential voters than “you should vote to reelect them or else you’re a counterproductive idiot.” If the answer’s no, I guess I’m just wondering if there’s an actual measurement of how entitled one gets to feel by virtue of simply complaining less about the state of the country.
Nick
@August J. Pollak:
I meant “they” and wrote “we,” ok?
morzer
@August J. Pollak:
He spends his time telling us that 20% of the country don’t count, that’s all. He’s greatly improved by a heaping helping of pie.
General Stuck
For all the pearl clutchers on impending democratic electoral doom this Nov, you might want to read this counterargument that makes some good points on why rumors of democratic electoral death may be exaggerated.
These are all material advantages the dems have over wingers right now, and doesn’t consider the motivation and OH noes! effect of only being two years out from George Bush.
And don’t sell short these money advantages and OFA in getting the vote out for dems.
Tax Analyst
@Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan:
Not to mention the fact that Boxer is one hellacious campaigner once she settles into that mode. She ALWAYS walks into the Senate race with about 40% just dead set against her and the early polling always shows somewhere near half inclined to vote against her. But when the real campaign is under way we’re going to start seeing campaign ads that remind people of Boxer’s accomplishments and positions and they’re going to compare these to what Fiorina stands for. Boxer will come out with energy and be aggressive, which will make some people wince, but she will make her case and remind us of the importance of her vote in the Senate. You’ll never win over the people that use the “L” word as an epithet or those with extreme gender issues, but I think she will win over a decent share of reluctant independents when they take the time to look at what Fiorina is actually about.
I could be wrong, of course, but I expect Boxer to pull through. It’ll probably be a lot closer than I’d like.
Prediction: Boxer 52.4% Fiorina 47.3 others 0.3
Methodology: I reached these numbers by closing my eyes, doing a “Men on Film”(an ongoing skit from the old “In Living Colour” TV show) “3 snaps” and clicking the heals of my beat-up old tennis shoes together. Then I pulled them out of my butt *.
Edit: * The NUMBERS, not my tennis shoes.
cs
So how big in reality is the enthusiasm gap? I keep hearing about it but the money being spent seems to say differently. With Rand Paul’s money bomb fizzling or the RNC pulling in less than half of the DNC, it seems like for the people who still have money to give, there’s not much of a gap at all.
I know that’s a weak straw to feverishly grasp but I’d like to keep at least a modicum of optimism.
feebog
I agree with Tax Analyst. Except the margin will be even higher than what he predicted. I like Nate, and he does some great numbers crunching, but we are still in primary season. Case in point, Nate has Murkowski in Alaska as a lock for re-election. Except it looks like she just lost the primary to a far right lunitic backed by far right lunatic Sarah Palin. So now, what happens to that seat is anyones guess.
The same story in Nevada, Sue Lowden, who was favored right up to the last couple weeks, lost big time to Sharon Angle. Angle has dropped faster than a Kamakazi pilot on a suicide mission, and Reid has pulled ahead in the polls. That doesn’t mean Reid will win necessarily, but his chances sure look better than they did four months ago.
That scenario is playing out in various forms in Kentucky, Florida and Colorado. Will the Dems lose a few senate seats in November? Most likely. Will they lose 10 seats net? Don’t think so.
morzer
@Tax Analyst:
My God, you are Wolf Blitzer!
Bender
Why not? They did in 2008!
See, what I did there is…
Nick
@morzer: Shotter morzer: WE 20% RULE THE WORLD! The other side’s 20% are just lunatic fringes who need to be ignored.
Bender
Yeah, it’s like the Special Olympics bowling competition out there! There are at least enough stupid people to make Guam capsize. It’s at least as many people as live in South Vietnam. There are more morons than there are “corpse-men” in the 57 states I’ve been to (one left to go!). Hit the “Overcharged” button!
Signed,
The Smarty Party
chaseyourtail
I think all this anti-Muslim crap is going to backfire on the Republicans. I think the Dems will get a bigger share of the Indie vote because of it. There are so many close races and every vote will count. I think the Dems will end up doing a lot better than the polling suggests. Expect a November surprise folks.
morzer
@Nick:
Boysenberry pie working for you, Freeper-Deeper?
Nick
@chaseyourtail:
Newsflash, Indies hate Muslims too
Bob L
@August J. Pollak:
How the Angle verse Ried in Nevada is not an example of a strong Republican win against a weak incumbent self-destructing on the teabagging, chicken obsessed idiocy of the challenger? Keep in mind she managed to do this when all she needs to do is just keep her own mouth shut until next November.
To use another example her in Cal “Demon Sheep I-Destoryed-HP” Fiona out teabagged Campbell in the primary who was considered a sure bet to win against Boxer. So far the Cal GOP is following it’s track record of finding the one candidate who could lose against Boxer.
chaseyourtail
@Nick: Newsflash: Indies are not of one mindset.
PaulW
I can’t believe 46 percent of voting Republicans in Florida chose THE WELL-KNOWN MEDICARE FRAUD CEO.
/facepalm.
What the hell were you people thinking?! Our elected officials are supposed to BECOME corrupt, not ALREADY BE corrupt!
Nick
@chaseyourtail: Only 20% of Indies have a favorable view of Islam.
They’re pretty damn close to one mindset.
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/poll_082510.pdf
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
I’ve been saying this for 25-30 years. And yet they still keep voting for the GOP in roughly the same numbers.
It’s weird. It’s almost like no one listens to me.
.
PaulW
@JGabriel:
No one listens to us. That’s because we don’t have $20 billion to start our own Yelling And Shouting cable network.
Triassic Sands
The only sane Republican is a former Republican.
chaseyourtail
@Nick: Unlike you, I don’t take every poll result as gospel. Public opinion polls are often designed to produce a desired result. Regardless, we’ll have to wait and see what happens in November, won’t we?
Frank
@lawnorder:
So what do you think Obama should have done instead? Bigger stimulus? How would you have gotten 60 votes for the bigger stimulus?
Having read dailykos now and then I am fully aware of the “I told you” stuff. But I have yet to read a persuasive argument of what Obama should have done differently.
chaseyourtail
@Nick:
Funny, you didn’t mention the part of the poll that indicates 69% of Indies acknowledge the right to build the mosque. That’s a big number (I’m taking these poll results at face value for the sake of argument). Just because some people don’t have a favorable view of Islam doesn’t mean they approve of the hate campaign that’s being waged by the Repiglicans.
Kryptik
@chaseyourtail:
I still think there’s a significant problem here. Yes, a rather large majority believes in their legal right to have it there.
But a majority still believes it shouldn’t be built. There’s a distinct over lap here, and it’s represented by folks like Howard Dean and David Paterson, who essentially say ‘Oh, they have the right to, but they shouldn’t anyway, in the spirit of ‘compromise’. It’s represented by folks who believe ‘yes, they have the legal right, but they shouldn’t because all them Dirty Muslims hurt Ground Zero’.
Just because they believe in the legal right doesn’t mean they actually support or like Muslims, or even Park51 or any mosque.
Yes, there’s no impediments here legally, but the discussion here seems to be about politics and about ideology. And sadly? Sadly? It’s ideologically advantageous right now to hate Muslims, because way too many folk in this country honestly and truly believe that Islam as a whole is indistinguishable from Al-Qaeda or the Taliban or general extremism.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
@Nick:
I read the question and it’s stupid. The only choices were very and somewhat favorable, very and somewhat unfavorable, “haven’t heard enough”, and don’t know. Myself, I don’t have a favorable or unfavorable view of Islam, it’s somebody else’s religion and I don’t give a shit about it. I’ve heard plenty about it. I know exactly how I feel about it; it’s somebody else’s religion and they’re entitled to it. So I guess I would have to be “no answer”, thus putting me in the 76% who don’t have a favorable view.
chaseyourtail
@Kryptik:
Yeah, I hear you. Maybe I’m just being pathologically optimistic but I still have some faith in American voters…not a lot, but some. Having said that, Democrats need to get off their asses ASAP and start fighting…they better not fucking roll over and die…this is what concerns me.
NobodySpecial
And now you all see why I mock Nick so much. Half of the time, he’s urging you guys to surrender to the hordes of conservatives that this nation is because they ‘surround us’.
Wonder who that sounds like.
The other half, he’s arguing that liberals need to start whacking members of the aristocracy because they stand an at maximum 1 in 5 chance of losing the Senate and a much lower chance of losing the House. Overreact much?
Of course, all this assumes that Democrats get zero positive events between now and then with these generic polls, which I find implausible given how the Republicans have been acting. It also assumes (contrary to, you know, actual history) that races that look like blowouts don’t tighten up as you get closer to the election and that GOTV only happens if you’re a conservative.
And, of course, it also ignores that whole effect where people tend to reelect incumbents at about a 90% rate historically. No, that never happens with liberals, which is why they only last one term ever, especially in red states. Cole can tell us all about that.
mnpundit
@NobodySpecial: Well what positive events have happened so far? Josh Marshall pointed out that things have been getting worse for a while now and Benen said that Dem strategists basically have no plan–and that includes taking votes between September and election day.
Look at Reid/Angle. Angle is a lunatic and she’s still winning and Reid’s been hammering at her for a month.
Nick
@NobodySpecial:
yeah I never said that
you think we have a better chance of keeping the House vs. Senate? Dude, the House is already gone. How delusional are you?
THAT delusional. “Oh, America can’t possibly be voting for these crazy lunatics, so it all must be not true. LA LA LA LA I can’t hear you LA LA LA LA”
Boy are you in for a rude awakening in November, but you’ll just probably blame Obama or something.
Nick
@chaseyourtail:
Dude SARAH PALIN thinks they have a right to build it. Just because you recognize the right doesn’t mean you think they should have it. Go back to the torture polls where we got results saying: “Yes it’s wrong, but we should totally do it anyway”
d.s.
People voted in droves for the lunatic party back in 1994 during a time of peace and prosperity. What did you guys think would happen in an election where unemployment is 9.5% when there’s a Democratic president?
During the Bush years one of this things that I found remarkable was that if we were veering into right wing radicalism at a reasonably stable point in our history, how on earth did we avoid turning into Nazis or Stalinists during the Great Depression? It happened in Europe.
Were Americans just more mentally stable back then? Probably, I guess.
I figured that if a Great Depression hit the USA today there would be concentration camps for blacks, gays, and immigrants within months.
I remember liberals scoffing at the idea of President Palin a year ago. If the economy is still in the gutter two years from now, Obama will be toast and the election is going to be a competition between Sharron Angle and Sarah Palin, and we’re going to have to pull the lever for “moderate” Palin just to avoid a nuclear war.
NobodySpecial
@mnpundit: Um, what?
The only poll that shows Angle beating Reid in the last two months is a current Rasmussen – and Rasmussen, as we all should know, is a Republican-leaning polling outfit. Even then, all the polls are within margin of error.
Stop listening to the Republican trolls on site. I beg you.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@MattR:
I suck on fags every single day (and night!). The Marlboro Man and I are good friends…
Rather than disparaging dicks and the sucking of them by men, the ‘eat a bag of dicks’ line is more like telling someone to go eat a bag of Dahmer Dogs.
Buns are optional…
NobodySpecial
@Nick: You’ve completely lost it.
The House
168 Solid Dem
55 Lean Dem
31 Tossup
18 Lean Rep
163 Solid Rep
In no universe other than yours does that lead to the conclusion that the House is already gone.
Take a break. Two, maybe three weeks. Don’t do a Stuck.
chaseyourtail
@Nick:
What’s her face is an extremist nut…you can’t compare everyone’s thinking to hers.
However, you may be correct…I’m just not convinced that you are…
d.s.
@NobodySpecial: If Republicans win a majority of the national vote, as pretty much all the polling suggests they will, they’re overwhelmingly likely to win control of the House, because Republican voters are distributed more efficiently than Democrats.
A large portion of the Democratic vote is bottled up in urban, majority-minority districts where they win with 80% of the vote, and since you only need 50% to win, about 30% of the vote is wasted.
In “solid” Republican districts, outside of Utah, Republicans still typically only win with 60% or so, so they’re only wasting about 10% of the vote.
El Cid
Our Galtian leaders of the Big Bidness World.
Up in Canada
Why shouldn’t these idiots be tossed out. The Cat Food Commission appointed by our “progressive president” and the idiot that chairs it says the public has been sucking at the public tit. For all our working lives we contributed to this fund, as did the employer, and now we are told this is sucking the public tit. What happened to the money! All worthless iou’s. If Obama can’t find it, then impeach him and the rest of dino’s.
Corner Stone
@El Cid: I thought fascism was overall control between corporations and government.
Why are these guys complaining?
d.s.
I don’t understand the hysteria over this. He’s the Republican cochair of the bipartisan commission. Republicans are fucking crazy and despise Social Security. No secret there.
The whole commission is bullshit and toothless in the first place. Are the seniors who hit the streets to scream “Keep the government off my Medicare” going to embrace cuts to Social Security? If Democrats are stupid enough to release a plan that includes Social Security cuts, Republicans are going to go buck wild with ads shrieking about “OBAMA’S SECRET PLAN TO SLASH SOCIAL SECURITY.”
Out of all the things to be mad at Obama for, “Republican on pointless commission he sponsored hates old people and social spending” isn’t near the top of my list.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Up in Canada:
Heh. Al Franken always had a great response when George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and other idiots used to bray about this “worthless IOUs” nonsense. He said he’d pay five cents on the dollar for any “worthless IOUs”, known to people who don’t fling their virtual poo as “US treasury bonds”, those gentlemen had in their investment portfolios.
S Brennan
Yeah, people are really stupid,
Obama appoints Allen Simpson [lunatic party don’t ya know] to head a commission [which Obama singlehandedly revived] to destroy Social Security and the idiots in the country aren’t grateful…imagine?
Well…keep up the work of calling them idiots instead of asking for good policy out Democrats.
AxelFoley
@ChrisWWW:
So, putting the idiots who fucked things up in the first place back in power is rational?
d.s.
People don’t like the fact that the Republican co-chair of the bipartisan deficit commission hates Social Security like most Republicans, so their solution is to elect more Republicans?
Sharron Angle must be leading in Nevada because voters think she’ll be a staunch advocate of government benefits for seniors!
d.s.
@AxelFoley: The economy didn’t start really tanking until a few months before the election.
All people remember is that things have been shittier economically over the last two years than they were over the 8 years of Bush, which weren’t exactly picnic years either.
You’ve got to hand it to Republicans. They have impeccable timing.
NobodySpecial
@d.s.: I repeat:
SHARRON ANGLE IS ONLY LEADING IN RASMUSSEN POLLS.
That’s it.
You might as well say Sharron Angle leads among polls of the Palin household, given their recent right wing lean and results.
Corner Stone
@d.s.: Moron.
S Brennan
“People don’t like the fact that the Republican co-chair of the bipartisan deficit commission hates Social Security like most Republicans, so their solution is to elect more Republicans?”
Let me walk you through this slowly…
Simpson didn’t just appear miraculously along with all the other Social Security haters on the commission, they were hand picked by Obama, head of the Democratic party.
The commission was disbanded, but revived by Obama, head of the Democratic party.
Clever Pelosi made it’s finding binding and then scheduled an up or down vote during the lame duck session majority leader of the Democratic party in the house.
…and now Dems say, vote for us or we’ll vote to destroy SSI in a lame duck session.
Now let’s return to what you said “so their solution is to elect more Republicans” and contrast it to what old Harry said:
“If you give the people a choice between a watered-down Republican and a Republican, they will choose the real thing”
General Stuck
@S Brennan:
Which dems say this? Gimme some names, links.
Otherwise, go back to Dkos and with this bullshit.
d.s.
I’m with you here. Obama stupidly revived a commission that has very little political support in the Democratically controlled Senate and House, and appointed a conservative Republican as the ranking Republican on the committee.
Nope. The rule she included simply says that any deficit commission findings that the Senate passes will come up for an up or down-vote in the House, instead of going to the conference committee.
So the same Senate that wanted to scuttle the deficit commission in the first place is going to schedule a debate over its findings, come up with 60 votes to pass its recommendations, and then hand it over to the House, all in the short lame duck session?
OK, you’ve convinced me. The Democrats are trying to destroy Social Security. It’s not the Republicans who have been attacking Social Security for years, who attempted to privatize it back in 2005 and got exactly zero Democratic support.
p.s. SSI is Supplemental Security Income, a disability program for people who are not eligible for Social Security.
Up in Canada
The Democrats have control of the Congress and the White House. They put the bloodsuckers on this committee for a reason. The only motive that makes any sense, is that they are after the money that’s in the Social Security fund. Why writers on this blog feel an imperative to defend an administration that set this in motion is beyond me.
I voted for Obama. I had no idea that all his rhetoric was total crap. But, you can’t keep on screwing me and expect me to hope that change will kick in some day. More like I’ll get kicked in the ass one more time.
Nick
@Up in Canada:
it’s irresponsible not to speculate.
brendancalling
@Nick:
You’re an idiot.
well, and also escalating in afghanistan. and “looking forward not backward”. and show trials in Gitmo.
Maybe the right wing wasn’t appeases, but that was clearly sop to them. next…
I am not opposed to giving people healthcare. that’s not what the bill does though: it forces people to buy insurance from a private company, with no cost controls, high deductibles that make the insurance unaffordable, and prevents women with health problems from obtaining abortions (because for some reason your hero bart Stupak thinks it’s a good thing when women with AIDS carry babies with AIDS to term, so they can experience the wonder of watching a child die). Asshole.
Depends if it works. hey, does Liz warren have ajob yet?
50,000 troops left behind for “training purposes” ,a href=”http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/23/world/la-fg-iraq-pullout-20100823″>who could see combat is not a pullout. if i serve you a plateful of dogshit and tell you it’s fudge, that doesn’t make it fudge.
How the fuck do you know that i don’t clap when the government does something I approve of? You’re just making that up. So now you’re an idiot AND a liar.
Gee, duh why didn’t i think of that, me must be wee-tall-did. in any event, your stance seems to be “…and when they do something you oppose, you mustn’t say anything about it.”
C) reading your comments to others that reference my own, it’s clear you DON’T know how to read. I NEVER said anything suggesting “people are voting for Ken Buck and Sharron Angle because Michael Bennet and Harry Reid are “Republican-lite” “. What I SAID was “it’s about people not voting for the Democratic Republican Lite Party” because “unmotivated Democrats… have not only not gotten much in the way of goodies”.
And that is unfortunately true.
And using my comment, which is, by definition, referencing it.
WHAT PART OF “I AM VOTING FOR THE DEMOCRATS” IS SO HARD FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND
here, try this plate of fudge I just made for you. ignore the smell and the corn kernels, really it’s fudge.
mclaren
As I predicted six months ago.
When I said back in February that the Republicans were not only going to take back the House but they had a good chance of taking back the senate, everyone called me insane, demanted, a psycho, in need of meds, mentally ill, ranting, raving, a half-wit, an idiot, mentally defective, crazy, ignorant, a fool, a lunatic, a candidate for frontal lobotomy.
A couple of months ago everyone basically admitted that the Republicans were going to take back the House.
Now you people are slowly coming around to confronting the horror of the Republicans possibly taking the senate as well.
This is not rocket science, people. As Brendancalling points out above, the Democrats have betrayed every one of their campaign promises.
We now have more U.S. forces in Iraq than when Obama claimed we were “drawing down” our troop strength there — it’s an accounting game, we’ve merely removed some troops and added more mercs. People are not stupid. They can see what’s going on. We are going to have military forces in Iraq at the end of 2016, and everyone knows it. We’re not leaving Iraq.
Google “U.S. actually increasing personnel in Iraq: fewer troops, more contactors,” John Byrne, September 9 2009.
The Afghanistan quagmire gets worse and worse and worse, and Biden and Petraeus and SecDef Gates and Rahm Emanuel have all now walked back their promise to start pulling out troops there by July 2011.
“Rahm hedges on Afghanistan deadline: guess it’s really more of a suggestion,” Firedoglake, Susie Madrak, June 20 2010.
“Gates: July 2011 would only be `beginning’ of drawdown,” Ed Morrissey, December 4 2009.
Once again, people are not stupid. They know this means we’re stuck in Afghanistan just the way we’re stuck in Iraq, and we’ll still have U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2020, 2030, 2040, 2050.
Obama opposed and ridiculed as a candidate the health care bill he wound up pushing through congress:
“If a mandate was the solution, we could try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody buy a house,” he said on a CNN morning show on Super Tuesday during the election. “The reason they don’t have a house is they don’t have the money.”
The non-reform Democratic HCR bill includes a huge cadillac tax increase on decent health care plans — a tax increase paid by employers, and designed to force employers to stop offering high-quality health insurance to employees. “Cadillac Flip Flop: Obama Was Against Health Plan Tax Before He Was For It,” Gregg Levine, January 7, Firedoglake.
“Soaring costs laid to growing power of medical cartels” San Francisco Chronicle, February 21 2010.
“Obama Points to the Lack of Insurance Competition, a Problem His Plan No Longer Solves,” Common Dreams, February 8-9, 2010.
“The hidden public-private cartel that sets health care prices,” Slate magazine online.
“Medical device maker kickback allegations keep coming,” Fierce healthcare, July 16 2009.
“The Medical Cartel: Why are MD Salaries so High?”
“Insurers set to raise prices, walk away from consumers,” Huffington Post, Febuary 5 2010.
Meanwhile, health care premiums are shooting up by 50%.
Google the article “Kicked In The Groin: Health Insurance Companies Are Dramatically Increasing Premiums Due To The New Health Care Law And There Is Not Much We Can Do About It,” Economic Collapse blog.
People are mandated by law to buy health insurance, but they can’t afford it. People are now shooting themselves to get into the ER so they can get old injuries taken care of. Google “Kathy Myers Shot Herself to Get Medical Care,” Jun 14, 2010, CBS News.
Of course, she didn’t get medical care…but she did get arrested.
This is America in 2010: people are robbing banks and rolling away in wheelchairs so they can get taken to prison where they can get decent health care.
The whole thing is unsustainable. “Tax increases abound in health reform legislation,” Jamie Downey, 22 December 2009, The Boston Globe.
People are losing their jobs and losing their houses but costs are skyrocketing for medical care, and there are no cost controls. None. Zero. Nada. Zip. Bupkiss. Diddly.
Obama sent up a spending freeze for all government agencies…except our worthless useless military. In a deflationary recession, THAT gets an 8% increase.
Source: “Robert Gates meets defense industry heads,” by Jen Dimascio, January 13 2010.
Cities can’t pave their roads or keep their streetlights on, but the White House is going to make sure we’ve got “steady growth in the Pentagon’s budgets over time” so we can lose even more wars simultaneously. Losing two wars at once isn’t enough…we have to be able to lose three or four different wars at the same time.
The financial reform bill is toothless:
“Dodd Frank Financial Reform Legislation– Watered Down, Diluted, Loaded with Loopholes,” by Rob Kall, June 27 2010, oped news blog.
Hedge fund managers who wrecked the economy are getting record bonuses. The cat food commission is telling us we need to cut social security and medicare so we can have more tax increases for the rich, even bigger bonuses for hedge fund managers, even more Pentagon spending.
People, this isn’t working. Obama promised change. Things haven’t changed, except to get worse.
Then John Cole and the rest of you scream that this kind of criticism makes us into “teabaggers.” Bullshit. This kind of criticism makes us into realists. We’re living in the real world here and things can’t keep going on like this. It’s unsustainable.
The voters aren’t stupid. They voted for change and they didn’t get it. So now they’re voting for the Republicans.
If the Repubs retake the house and the senate, you can count on instant impeachment. Well, guess what? Obama ordered the assassination of U.S. citizens without charges and without trial. Maybe a lot of Americans think he should be impeached.
Meanwhile, the government will grind to a halt with bullshit subpoenas and phony investigations into Obama’s birth certificate. Maybe people don’t care. Maybe the voters are so fed up they no longer give a damn. When things get bad enough, you get a “Throw the bums out!” mentality even if the alternative is worse. Because what’s the option? Vote for the Democrats again, and get more war, more 50% health insurance premium hikes, more assassinations of American citizens without charges and without trial, more Pentagon spending while the rest of the country crumbles and cities sell their parking meters and their airports and their municipal waterworks to pay their bills?
See “Facing budget gaps, cities selling airports, parking, zoo,” The Wall Street Journal.
Mark my words: Sarah Palin is a real contender for the presidency in 2012. Nightmare scenario? No, we’re headed for a double dip recession, and people have sold off everything they own and drained their 401Ks and they’re still out of work and now they’re getting desperate. Desperate voters do crazy things.