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2014/03/16 15:06:09
Subject: Re:Midterms are coming... Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.
In Bill Bennett’s Morning in America program Wednesday, Ryan, who has become involved in the issue of poverty over the last year and a half, told Bennett there is a “tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work.”
“So there’s a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with,” added the House Budget Committee chairman and 2012 GOP vice presidential nominee.
In the radio interview, Ryan also referenced conservative author, American Enterprise Institute scholar, and self-described “right-wing ideologue,” Charles Murray, who wrote the controversial book “The Bell Curve,” which claims that black people have inferior intelligence and is the reason for social disadvantages.
I seen that The bolded statement I agree with. Back home there is the same issue. However it was an issue that did not need race injected into it.
2014/03/16 16:04:08
Subject: Re:Midterms are coming... Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.
We'll, when you refer to a racist bigot idiot as a source for some of the stuff you are saying then it does open the door a little bit for that line of arguments.
2014/03/16 22:46:47
Subject: Re:Midterms are coming... Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.
Nope, but there have been plenty of people trying to say he did.
I saw so many articles using the "he used code words" bull gak over this. Looks like this election is going to be about fake racism again...
That is, as has been repeated ad nauseam, because he cited Charles Murray. That isn't to say Charles Murray is an idiot *, but such a citation was probably not politically prudent.
*Because he isn't. And The Bell Curve is textbook example of what happens when academic work is used for political purposes.
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
2014/03/17 09:34:46
Subject: Re:Midterms are coming... Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.
Paul Ryan's report on poverty, which is basically a piece of academic fraud, should be the bigger issue. I mean, this is Ryan's big idea, or at least his new big idea after his great big budget reform was proven to be a complete sham. And it's full of references to academics, making it look like Ryan has spent time studying the issue and isn't just writing down the assumptions of his political ideology. Except, of course, Ryan just cited people and claimed whatever he wanted, regardless of what they actually said.
And of course, where he doesn't misrepresent studies, he just flat out ignores them when they don't suit his ideology. Research findings are actually pretty clear that the 'hammock effect' from social welfare programs is close to nil, but you'd never know that if you believe Ryan's report.
I mean, that should be the kind of thing that really gets hammered through campaigns like this. Not just by Democrats looking to find a way to gain momentum, but by everyone who wants reality to govern policy. There simply should not be any place in national politics for lying hacks like Ryan.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
2014/03/17 19:10:46
Subject: Re:Midterms are coming... Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.
Nope, but there have been plenty of people trying to say he did.
I saw so many articles using the "he used code words" bull gak over this. Looks like this election is going to be about fake racism again...
That is, as has been repeated ad nauseam, because he cited Charles Murray. That isn't to say Charles Murray is an idiot *, but such a citation was probably not politically prudent.
*Because he isn't. And The Bell Curve is textbook example of what happens when academic work is used for political purposes.
So Paul is going to take his "hits", just like Obama did for attending Rev Wright's Church... eh?
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2014/03/17 20:44:50
Subject: Re:Midterms are coming... Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.
So Paul is going to take his "hits", just like Obama did for attending Rev Wright's Church... eh?
I was unaware you were on a first name basis with Rep. Ryan.
But no, Rep. Ryan will continue exploiting academic publications for political gain, as he is wont to do, and will almost certainly suffer virtually no repercussions (of course he is not the only politician to do this); because most people are not academics.
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
2014/03/17 20:49:55
Subject: Re:Midterms are coming... Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.
So Paul is going to take his "hits", just like Obama did for attending Rev Wright's Church... eh?
I was unaware you were on a first name basis with Rep. Ryan.
But no, Rep. Ryan will continue exploiting academic publications for political gain, as he is wont to do, and will almost certainly suffer virtually no repercussions (of course he is not the only politician to do this); because most people are not academics.
I think he's gone to far "wonky"... as such, he'll anything he'd saying will fall on deaf ears.
EDIT: why should I call him by his title? Don't you know... just about all congress critters are criminals. Relatively speaking of course.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/03/17 20:51:22
Live Ork, Be Ork. or D'Ork!
2014/03/17 21:16:28
Subject: Re:Midterms are coming... Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.
I think he's gone to far "wonky"... as such, he'll anything he'd saying will fall on deaf ears.
I don't follow you.
Basically he's a red meat generator and tries to back it up from academia sources. Folks either goes ga-ga over his statements or wishes to throw him in the looney bin. He's trying to be a policy wonk... and not a very good one if I may add.
Don't get me wrong... I kinda like him... but, he's flawed in such a way that I don't believe he'll ever reach any higher office.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/03/17 21:20:10
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2014/03/17 21:36:23
Subject: Re:Midterms are coming... Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.
If you think that "here is what I want to do and it is specifically based on what this guy says" and "here is what I want to do" (did you know he used to go to a specific church) are the same thing then you are not very good at playing the game...
2014/03/18 00:42:14
Subject: Midterms are coming... Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.
d-usa wrote: If you think that "here is what I want to do and it is specifically based on what this guy says" and "here is what I want to do" (did you know he used to go to a specific church) are the same thing then you are not very good at playing the game...
Wut?
Aren't they both controversial figures? (author vs the Rev)
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2014/03/18 00:55:22
Subject: Midterms are coming... Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.
d-usa wrote: If you think that "here is what I want to do and it is specifically based on what this guy says" and "here is what I want to do" (did you know he used to go to a specific church) are the same thing then you are not very good at playing the game...
Wut?
Aren't they both controversial figures? (author vs the Rev)
Did you even read d-usa's post? It isn't the similarity between the two figures, but rather how they present their arguments. One is basing his argument on one of the figures, one used to go to a church run by the other figure. Not that one figure is worse than the other, but that one figure is the basis of one of the people's policy, and not the other.
I wish I had time for all the game systems I own, let alone want to own...
2014/03/18 00:58:17
Subject: Midterms are coming... Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.
d-usa wrote: If you think that "here is what I want to do and it is specifically based on what this guy says" and "here is what I want to do" (did you know he used to go to a specific church) are the same thing then you are not very good at playing the game...
Wut?
Aren't they both controversial figures? (author vs the Rev)
Ryan specifically stated that he wants to make something policy and specifically used the authors work as the justification of that policy. People are not saying that Ryan was influenced by him because they used to hang out in grad school, or went to a luncheon together, or attented the same church. The connection is there because Paul Ryan specifically stated "I want to do X because of Y".
To the best of my knowledge Obama has yet to go out and announce a specific policy and verbally state that he wants to change policy and that it is justified because of what Rev. Wright said.
That's why this episode of the Inferring Game is not very good, because nobody is inferring anything about Paul Ryan's connection to the author. Paul Ryan admitted that the authors work directly influenced this specific policy goal.
So we have "Paul Ryan states that his policy is partially based on this authors work" and your counter is "well, Obama went to that guys church once..." without actually providing a single policy that has been based on the Rev.'s teachings.
2014/03/18 01:07:31
Subject: Midterms are coming... Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.
d-usa wrote: If you think that "here is what I want to do and it is specifically based on what this guy says" and "here is what I want to do" (did you know he used to go to a specific church) are the same thing then you are not very good at playing the game...
Wut?
Aren't they both controversial figures? (author vs the Rev)
Ryan specifically stated that he wants to make something policy and specifically used the authors work as the justification of that policy. People are not saying that Ryan was influenced by him because they used to hang out in grad school, or went to a luncheon together, or attented the same church. The connection is there because Paul Ryan specifically stated "I want to do X because of Y".
To the best of my knowledge Obama has yet to go out and announce a specific policy and verbally state that he wants to change policy and that it is justified because of what Rev. Wright said.
That's why this episode of the Inferring Game is not very good, because nobody is inferring anything about Paul Ryan's connection to the author. Paul Ryan admitted that the authors work directly influenced this specific policy goal.
So we have "Paul Ryan states that his policy is partially based on this authors work" and your counter is "well, Obama went to that guys church once..." without actually providing a single policy that has been based on the Rev.'s teachings.
Okay... I'll concede this argument.
The way you put it... I'm a dumb ass*.
*I'm allowed to be occasionally.
EDIT:
I saw this on twittah:
Ted Cruz ✔ @tedcruz
Follow
Saw this, but noticed an error. So I wanted to make one thing clear: I don't smoke cigarettes http://bit.ly/1nqK08i 8:58 AM - 15 Mar 2014
Heh... wish politicians had more of this sense of humor.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/03/18 04:02:18
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2014/03/20 17:48:10
Subject: Re:Midterms are coming... Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.
Now he's an interesting politician.... had a speech in front of Berkeley University... of all places :
Looking for full transcript... but I like this line:
“Remember Domino’s finally admitted they had bad crust?” Paul said in response to a question after his speech. “I think the Republican Party finally admitted it. OK, bad crust, we need a different kind of party.”
Republican Sen. Rand Paul on Wednesday took his case for civil liberties to one of the most liberal enclaves in the country — and lived, politically, to tell the tale.
The Kentucky senator drew a largely friendly reception at the University of California-Berkeley as he skewered the intelligence community, argued his party must “evolve, adapt or die” and left the door open for a 2016 presidential run.
Paul also announced that when he returns to Washington, he will push for the establishment of a select committee of policymakers designated to oversee intelligence gathering. The proposal comes in the wake of allegations from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that the CIA may have, without authorization, searched computers used by Senate Intelligence Committee staffers — something the agency denies.
“It should be bipartisan, it should be independent and wide-reaching,” Paul said of the proposed committee. “It should have full power to investigate and reform those who spy on us in the name of protecting us. It should watch the watchers. Our liberties are slipping away from us.”
But while blasting the intelligence community, the libertarian-leaning senator also sought common ground with young people as he pitched them on the importance of strong privacy safeguards.
“When [the intelligence community] says, ‘Oh, it’s only boring old business records,’ think what information is on your Visa bill,” Paul said. “From your bill, the government can tell whether you drink, whether you smoke, whether you gamble, what books you read, what magazines you read, whether you see a psychiatrist, what medications you take.”
He continued, to applause: “I oppose this abuse of power with every ounce of energy I have. I believe that you have a right to privacy, and it should be protected.”
Paul, who has filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency, is a passionate advocate for civil liberties. He also believes that championing privacy could offer the GOP a way to bring more young people into the fold, a bet that was on vivid display during the Bay Area appearance.
During the question-and-answer portion of the appearance, the moderator began, “There’s been pretty extensive media coverage of your recent visits to places that don’t usually vote Republican, like students at Howard University …”
“You mean like Berkeley?” Paul interjected, to laughter and applause.
Asked whether such efforts are an attempt to broaden his “personal appeal” ahead of 2016, Paul responded coyly, “Maybe.”
“Part of it might be that,” he said. “Part of it might be that the Republican Party … has to either evolve, adapt or die. … Remember Domino’s [the pizza chain] finally admitted they had bad crust? I think the Republican Party finally admitted it. OK, bad crust, we need a different kind of party.”
As he has done in the past, Paul pointed to libertarian-minded causes, such as ending indefinite detention and reforming drug sentencing laws, as ways the party could appeal to a broader electorate.
“So something’s gone wrong,” Paul said. “So maybe [if] a candidate would stand up and say, ‘Everyone deserves their day in court,’ that laws should not have a racial outcome, maybe then people would say, ‘You know what, I’ve always hated those Republicans, and their crust sucks, but maybe there’s some new Republicans, maybe there’ll be a new GOP.’ We’ll see.”
Aside from quick detours to discuss issues such as lower taxes, which received a full-throated defense from Paul, he spent the bulk of his speech slamming the NSA, the CIA and the politicians who defend some of the spy agencies’ more controversial intelligence-gathering tactics.
“Your rights, especially your right to privacy, are under assault,” he said. He added that in the wake of the news concerning the CIA’s alleged searches tied to Senate staffers, “I think I perceive fear of an intelligence community that’s drunk with power, unrepentant and uninclined to relinquish power.”
NSA officials, he said, have displayed “sheer arrogance.”
“They’re only sorry they got caught,” he said, though he noted that he is for due process, not “against the NSA per se.”
He criticized Director of National Intelligence James Clapper for once saying he offered the “least untruthful” answer to a question about the extent of the NSA’s data collection. Paul said Clapper should be tried for perjury, a suggestion he has made before, and a stance that drew applause in Berkeley.
“As Americans, we don’t deserve the ‘least untruthful’ way,” he said. “We have a right to the truth, we deserve the truth and we demand the truth from our officials.”
NSA leaker Edward Snowden presents a complex question, Paul said. On one hand, it would be “chaos” if sensitive information was leaked indiscriminately; on the other, “without the Snowden leaks the spies would still be blithely doing what they pleased.”
“Clapper lied in the name of security,” the senator said. “Snowden told the truth in the name of privacy.”
The Republican also went after President Barack Obama in a brief section that touched on the sensitive subject of race.
“I find it ironic that the first African-American president has, without compunction, allowed this vast exercise of raw power by the NSA. Certainly [the late FBI Director] J. Edgar Hoover’s illegal spying on Martin Luther King and others in the civil rights movement should give us all pause,” he said.
And while he acknowledged Obama is not Hoover, Paul cautioned: “Power must be restrained because no one knows who will next hold that power.”
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2014/03/24 21:39:54
Subject: Re:Midterms are coming... Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.
When FiveThirtyEight last issued a U.S. Senate forecast — way back in July — we concluded the race for Senate control was a toss-up. That was a little ahead of the conventional wisdom at the time, which characterized the Democrats as vulnerable but more likely than not to retain the chamber.
Our new forecast goes a half-step further: We think the Republicans are now slight favorites to win at least six seats and capture the chamber. The Democrats’ position has deteriorated somewhat since last summer, with President Obama’s approval ratings down to 42 or 43 percent from an average of about 45 percent before. Furthermore, as compared with 2010 or 2012, the GOP has done a better job of recruiting credible candidates, with some exceptions.
As always, we encourage you to read this analysis with some caution. Republicans have great opportunities in a number of states, but only in West Virginia, South Dakota, Montana and Arkansas do we rate the races as clearly leaning their way. Republicans will also have to win at least two toss-up races, perhaps in Alaska, North Carolina or Michigan, or to convert states such as New Hampshire into that category. And they’ll have to avoid taking losses of their own in Georgia and Kentucky, where the fundamentals favor them but recent polls show extremely competitive races.
Since a number of you may be new to FiveThirtyEight, I’m going to go into slightly more detail than usual in explaining how we make these forecasts. You’re welcome to skip past this next section if you’re more interested in the forecasts than in how we came to them.
An overview of our methodology
In contrast to the forecasts we’ll begin issuing sometime this summer, which are strictly algorithmic based on our senate forecast model, these are done by hand. However, they’re based on an assessment of the same basic factors our algorithm uses:
The national environment. The single best measure of the national political environment, in our view, is the generic congressional ballot. Right now, it shows a rough tie between Democrats and Republicans. That stalemate likely reflects voters’ dislike for both Obama and the Republican Party.
A tie on the generic ballot might not sound so bad for Democrats. But it’s a misleading signal, for two reasons. First, most of the generic ballot polls were conducted among registered voters. Those do not reflect the turnout advantage the GOP is likely to have in November. Especially in recent years, Democrats have come to rely on groups such as racial minorities and young voters that turn out much more reliably in presidential years than for the midterms. In 2010, the Republican turnout advantage amounted to the equivalent of 6 percentage points, meaning a tie on the generic ballot among registered voters translated into a six-point Republican lead among likely voters. The GOP’s edge hadn’t been quite that large in past years. But if the “enthusiasm gap” is as large this year as it was in 2010, Democrats will have a difficult time keeping the Senate.
Democrats’ other problem is one of basic constitutional mathematics. Senators are elected in six-year cycles, so the seats in play this year were last contested in 2008,1 an extraordinarily strong year for Democrats. Even a strictly neutral political environment, or one that slightly favored Democrats, would produce a drop-off relative to that baseline. And Democrats’ losses will grow this year if voters go from modestly favoring Republicans to strongly favoring them.
Incidentally, we prefer to look at aggregate measures of the national environment, like the generic ballot and Obama’s approval ratings, instead of piecemeal ones such as voters’ views of Obamacare. Certainly the unpopularity of the Affordable Care Act — and its clumsy roll-out late last year — contributes to Democrats’ problems. But it’s hard to tell where Obamacare’s unpopularity ends and President Obama’s overall unpopularity begins. Voters’ views of the economy also have ambiguous effects in midterm years, especially when control of government is already divided.
Candidate quality. The notion of “candidate quality” might sound awfully subjective, but there are sound statistical ways to assess it. Fundraising totals, especially individual contributions, are a good indication of a candidate’s organizational strength. Various systems rate a candidate’s ideology on a left-right scale, based on her voting record or public issue statements, and we can compare those ratings against those of voters in her state. And candidates who have previously held elected office tend to outperform inexperienced ones, controlling for other factors.
State partisanship. As Dan Hopkins wrote at FiveThirtyEight last week, races of all kinds have become more and more correlated with presidential results in recent years. So the Partisan Voting Index (PVI), which compares how a state voted in the past two presidential years against the national popular vote, is also a useful tool for congressional races. At this early point in the cycle, there’s reason to be skeptical of races where the polls are out of step with how the state usually votes; states often revert to their partisan mean once more voters engage with the campaign.
Incumbency. Incumbents may be unpopular in the abstract, but they still win the overwhelming majority of races. Incumbency still represents an advantage in most cases, and sometimes a significant one. We can spot the potential exceptions by looking at an incumbent’s approval or favorability ratings.
Head-to-head polls. Head-to-head polls at this point in the cycle have some predictive power if evaluated carefully. That means taking care to see whether the poll was conducted among registered or likely voters, and putting less emphasis on polls when one or both candidates lack widespread name recognition. However, as my colleague Harry Enten has lamented, many of the more important Senate races have rarely been polled this year. Furthermore, much of the polling comes from firms such as Rasmussen Reports and Public Policy Polling, which have poor track records, employ dubious methodologies, or both. So the most appropriate use of polls at this stage is to see whether they roughly match our assessment of the race based on the fundamentals. Where there is a mismatch, it could indicate that the polls are missing something, that our view of the fundamentals is incorrect, or some of both — and it means there is more uncertainty in the outlook for the state.
Overall forecast
In consideration of these factors, we assess the probability of the Democratic or Republican candidate winning each seat. Where the choice of candidates is uncertain — for instance, in a race where a Democrat will face either a moderate, six-term incumbent U.S. representative or a poorly-financed tea party upstart, depending on the outcome of the Republican primary — the probabilities are meant to reflect a weighted combination of the plausible match-ups. Our assessment of the 36 races2 up for grabs this November is as follows:
One advantage of looking at the races on a probabilistic basis is that we can simply sum the probabilities to come up with a projection of how the new Senate will look. That method projects that Republicans will finish with 51 seats,3 a net gain of six from Democrats, and exactly as many as they need to win control of the chamber. (Democrats will hold the Senate in the event of a 50-50 split because of the tiebreaking vote of Vice President Joe Biden.)
That represents an edge for Republicans, but not much of one — and there are any number of paths by which they might get to 51 seats, or fail to do so. It might help to break the 36 races down into six categories, based on the party which holds the seat now and its likelihood of flipping to the other party.
Democrat-held seats likely to be picked up by Republicans (4): West Virginia, South Dakota, Montana, Arkansas
You’ll find that our characterization of the 36 races in most cases is very close to that issued by such forecasters as the Cook Political Report and Rothenberg Political Report. We’re looking at the same sort of information they are, and they have strong track records, so it’s natural there should be similarities.
One point of difference is that we’re much more pessimistic about the Democrats’ chances in West Virginia, South Dakota and Montana. These races have a lot in common, taking place in three red states where longtime Democratic incumbents have retired.
We’re bullish on Republican chances in these states for simple reasons. First, they’re red states. Second, we think the national political environment modestly favors Republicans. Third, we think the Republicans are poised to nominate equal or superior candidates in each state. Fourth, our research suggests there is little or no carry-over effect from incumbency once the incumbent himself retires. In West Virginia, for instance, the retirement of Democrat Jay Rockefeller provides little information about how the race will turn out in November.
We give Republicans a 90 percent chance of winning West Virginia, in fact. The state’s politics are a little more complicated than might be apparent from presidential voting — Obama is extraordinarily unpopular there, but a slim majority of the state’s voters are still registered as Democrats, and Democrats hold the governorship and both branches of the state legislature. But Republicans are poised to nominate an excellent candidate in Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, and she has held leads of 6 to 17 percentage points in polls against the likely Democratic nominee, Secretary of State Natalie Tennant.
We also give Republicans a 90 percent chance of winning South Dakota. It’s a more straightforward case, except that the presumptive Republican nominee, Gov. Mike Rounds, has been caught up in a controversy over the state’s participation in the EB-5 immigration visa program. To have much of a chance, Democrats will either need Rounds to lose the Republican primary or be significantly damaged by it.
Montana is slightly different in that Democrats technically do have an incumbent, John E. Walsh, running for re-election there. However, Walsh was appointed, not elected (he replaced Max Baucus in February when Baucus was named United States Ambassador to China). Appointed senators have a poor historical track record; from a predictive standpoint, it’s best to think of their races as open seats, rather than incumbent defenses. Walsh trails the likely Republican nominee, Rep. Steve Daines, by double digits in polling so far. The race is likely to tighten; Montana is somewhere between a purple state and a red one, and Walsh, who was elected as Montana’s lieutenant governor in 2012, is a credible candidate. Still, we give Republicans an 80 percent chance of flipping it.
The final race in this category is Arkansas, where Democrats have a true incumbent, Sen. Mark Pryor, running. Pryor was once so popular that he won without Republican opposition in 2008. But Arkansas has become redder and redder, and Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s 21-point loss to Republican John Boozman in 2010 demonstrates that past popularity is no guarantee of future success for a Democrat there. Furthermore, Republicans have a strong candidate in Rep. Tom Cotton, who is ahead by an average of about five points in recent polls. Pryor will be able to fight for his seat — he had $4.2 million in cash on hand as of Dec. 31, compared to $2.2 million for Cotton. The polling has returned inconsistent answers about Pryor’s approval and favorability ratings, so it’s hard to say how deep a reservoir of personal goodwill he will have to draw from. But the evidence points toward him being the underdog.
Democrat-held seats that are toss-ups (4): Louisiana, North Carolina, Alaska, Michigan
For Republicans, the path of least resistance to a Senate majority is winning West Virginia, South Dakota, Montana and Arkansas, and then two of the four states in this category.
Louisiana, where the Democratic incumbent Mary Landrieu is running, may be the easiest opportunity. Landrieu’s fundamentals are similar in most respects to Pryor’s: Her fundraising has been fine, but otherwise she’s running against the tide in what has become a very red state, and her moderate overall voting record may be undermined by her role in passing the Affordable Care Act in 2010. The difference is that Landrieu’s most likely opponent, Rep. Bill Cassidy, has yet to pull ahead in the polls, which instead show a race that’s roughly tied.
In North Carolina, Democrat Kay Hagan is an example of a candidate who could go in and out with the political tides. She was elected in 2008 over Elizabeth Dole as the Obama campaign turned out African Americans and college students throughout the state. But those are precisely the voters who don’t always show up for midterms. Still, Hagan could get a reprieve depending on Republicans’ choice of nominee. Republicans have eight declared candidates for their May 6 primary who range from Thom Tills, the speaker of the state House, to a variety of activists and political amateurs.
Alaska might be the hardest race to forecast. The polling there is often erratic. The state has voted Republican for president every year since 1968, but its independent streak sometimes translates differently in other races. The Democratic incumbent, Mark Begich, might face an establishment candidate in Daniel S. Sullivan, the former attorney general, or Mead Treadwell, the lieutenant governor — or he could face Joe Miller, the former judge and tea party activist who is unpopular beyond the Republican base.
The race in Michigan differs from the others in this group: It’s somewhere between purple and blue instead of red, and there’s no incumbent, as Democratic Sen. Carl Levin is retiring. But Republicans will have an excellent candidate in Terri Lynn Land, the former secretary of state. She comes from the old guard of moderate Michigan Republicans, instead of the tea party wing that might have preferred a candidate like Rep. Justin Amash. The likely Democratic nominee, Rep. Gary Peters, should win his primary without serious opposition, and he’s kept pace with Land in fundraising. But we take the polls that show the race as a toss-up at face value. The question is whether Michigan’s modest blue lean is enough to overcome a modestly Republican-leaning national climate.
Democrat-held seats that lean Democratic but with a plausible GOP pick-up (3): Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire
Republicans have some backup options if they fail to win states such as North Carolina and Michigan.
The best one is Colorado. The GOP got the candidate of its choice in Rep. Cory Gardner, who declared for the race last month. That will prevent them from again nominating Ken Buck, the tea party candidate who lost a winnable race in 2010. (Buck has withdrawn from this year’s Senate race and decided to run for the U.S. House instead.) By our measures, Gardner is a decent candidate rather than a great one. He’ll start at a fundraising deficit to the Democratic incumbent, Mark Udall, who had $4.7 million in cash on hand as of Dec. 31, and he comes from a conservative district and has amassed a conservative voting record that may or may not translate well in the Denver suburbs. But Udall’s approval ratings only break even, and we give Republicans a 40 percent chance of winning his seat.
The other big recruiting news is in New Hampshire, where Scott Brown, the former Massachusetts senator, has announced he’ll seek the Republican nomination. But as Harry Enten noted, Brown isn’t terribly popular in New Hampshire, which has long had a love-hate relationship with Massachusetts. Just as important, Jeanne Shaheen, the Democratic incumbent, has enjoyed approval ratings that would be good enough to get her re-elected. The political winds in New Hampshire can shift quickly, which is why we’re not ruling out a Republican win. But we don’t think Brown improves the GOP’s chances much as compared with another credible candidate.
Iowa is also a political bellwether. Sen. Tom Harkin, the Democrat, is retiring, which might seem to give Republicans even or better odds in a Republican-leaning national environment. But Democrats have a substantial edge in candidate quality. Rep. Bruce Braley, the presumptive nominee, has a fairly moderate voting record and $2.6 million in cash on hand. Meanwhile, Republicans have yet to coalesce around one of several inexperienced candidates. Perhaps like the one in New Hampshire, therefore, this race could swing Republican if the Democrats’ national position deteriorates further; Braley would hold the seat for them in an election held today.
Democrat-held seats likely or almost certain to be retained by Democrats (10): Minnesota, Oregon, New Jersey, Virginia, Hawaii (special election), Massachusetts, Illinois, New Mexico, Delaware, Rhode Island
Minnesota might seem vulnerable for Democrats. Sen. Al Franken won his seat only after a months-long recount in 2008, and he’s amassed the liberal voting record you’d expect of him. But Franken’s approval ratings are pretty good and he raises plenty of money from liberals around the country. So far, he has deterred a credible Republican challenger from entering the race.
In Oregon, Democratic incumbent Jeff Merkley has middling approval ratings. But the state has become quite blue, and the Republican roster there is weak; in 2010, the GOP nominated inexperienced candidates in both the Senate and gubernatorial races. It doesn’t look like they’ll nominate a strong candidate this year, either. Their chances of victory depend on the electoral climate becoming catastrophic for Democrats.
The other eight races on this list are likely to hold for Democrats even in worst-case scenarios. Republicans have sometimes talked up their opportunity in Virginia, where the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ed Gillespie, is running. Ordinarily, we’d snark about party hacks overrating the chances of one of their brethren winning office, but Virginia just elected Terry McAuliffe as its governor. However, Democratic incumbent Mark Warner maintains high approval ratings, and he’d likely hold the seat even against a strong opponent.
Republican-held seats that lean Republican but where Democratic pick-up is possible (2): Georgia, Kentucky
Republican paths to take over the Senate are complicated slightly by their need to defend two seats of their own.
The higher-profile problem is in Kentucky, where Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, has poor approval ratings, and Democrats will nominate a charismatic candidate in Alison Lundergan Grimes, the secretary of state.4 Grimes has run about even with McConnell in polls since she declared her candidacy in July. But McConnell will have all the financial resources he could want — he had $10.9 million as of Dec. 31 — along with Obama’s unpopularity in Kentucky to undermine Grimes. His path to survival could resemble that of the Democratic leader, Harry Reid, who prevailed in Nevada in 2010 with similarly poor approval ratings after a brutal campaign. We give McConnell a 75 percent chance of holding the seat. I’ll concede that I’m curious to see what our algorithmic forecasts do with this race once they’re up and running.
Georgia might be the slightly better opportunity for Democrats. The Republican primary, to be held May 20, has been a mess in the polling, with any of five different GOP candidates near the top of the race depending on the survey. Their prospects range from Secretary of State Karen Handel, who might be the strongest general-election nominee, to Reps. Phil Gingrey and Paul Broun, who have amassed conservative enough voting records that they might turn off swing voters even in red Georgia. Democrats are almost certain to nominate Michelle Nunn, the daughter of former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, who has run even with or slightly ahead of the Republicans in scant polling so far. Ordinarily, we are skeptical of candidates who lack previous experience in elected office, but those from famous political families don’t have the same name-recognition deficit to overcome and can sometimes tap into their families’ networks to raise funds and staff their campaigns.
Republican-held seats likely or almost certain to be retained by Republicans (13): Maine, Mississippi, South Carolina (regular election), Nebraska, South Carolina (special election), Texas, Tennessee, Oklahoma (special election), Kansas, Oklahoma (regular election), Wyoming, Alabama, Idaho
Thirteen other Republican-held seats will be contested in November, but none looks like a viable opportunity for Democrats. The moonshot for Democrats might be in Mississippi, where the Republican incumbent, Thad Cochran, is vulnerable to a primary challenge and Democrats have a good prospective nominee in former Rep. Travis Childers. Still, as Harry Enten explained, it’s hard for any Democrat to get to 50 percent of the vote in Mississippi.
A wide range of outcomes
We’ve sometimes seen people take our race ratings and run Monte Carlo simulations based upon them, which assume that the outcome of each race is independent from the others. But that’s a dubious assumption, especially so far out from the election. Instead, the full-fledged version of our ratings assumes that the error in the forecasts is somewhat correlated from state to state.
In plain language: sometimes one party wins most or all of the competitive races. If we had conducted this exercise at this point in the 2006, 2008 or 2012 campaigns, that party would have been the Democrats. In 2010, it would have been the Republicans. There are still more than seven months for news events to intervene and affect the national climate.
There are 10 races that each party has at least a 25 percent chance of winning, according to our ratings. If Republicans were to win all of them, they would gain a net of 11 seats from Democrats, which would give them a 56-44 majority in the new Senate. If Democrats were to sweep, they would lose a net of just one seat and hold a 54-46 majority.
So our forecast might be thought of as a Republican gain of six seats — plus or minus five. The balance has shifted slightly toward the GOP. But it wouldn’t take much for it to revert to the Democrats, nor for this year to develop into a Republican rout along the lines of 2010.
Meh... I think it's waaaaaaaaaaay too early to make such proclamation.
whembly wrote: Meh... I think it's waaaaaaaaaaay too early to make such proclamation.
It's way too early to make any real kind of prediction... but its the perfect time for wild speculation!
Has there ever been a drawn Senate before, a 50-50 split? The VP would become relevant, it would blow everyone's mind.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/03/25 03:25:00
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
2014/03/25 04:09:49
Subject: Re:Midterms are coming... Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
2014/03/27 21:07:53
Subject: Re:Midterms are coming... Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.
Sen. Rand Paul has become the first Republican to assemble a network in all 50 states as a precursor to a 2016 presidential run, the latest sign that he is looking to build a more mainstream coalition than the largely ad hoc one that backed his father’s unsuccessful campaigns.
Paul’s move, which comes nearly two years before the 2016 primaries, also signals an effort to win the confidence of skeptical members of the Republican establishment, many of whom doubt that his appeal will translate beyond the libertarian base that was attracted to Ron Paul, the former Texas congressman.
Rand Paul’s nationwide organization, which counts more than 200 people, includes new backers who have previously funded more traditional Republicans, along with longtime libertarian activists. Paul, of Kentucky, has also been courting Wall Street titans and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who donated to the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, attending elite conclaves in Utah and elsewhere along with other GOP hopefuls.
For the rest of this year, his national team’s chief duties will be to take the lead in their respective states in planning fundraisers and meet-ups and helping Paul’s Washington-based advisers get a sense of where support is solid and where it’s not. This is especially important in key early primary battlegrounds, such as Iowa and New Hampshire, and in areas rich in GOP donors, such as Dallas and Chicago.
“A national leadership team is an important step, and it’s a critical one for the movement going forward,” said Fritz Wenzel, Paul’s pollster. “Rand has tremendous momentum, and the formation of this team will guide him as he gets closer to a decision and [will] serve as a foundation for a campaign.”
A growing number of Republicans have started to consider presidential campaigns. Aides to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) are sketching out how possible bids could look and keeping tabs on donors and potential staffers. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Rick Santorum, a distant runner-up to Romney in the 2012 race for the GOP nomination, have been wooing conservative leaders.
At this early juncture, Paul is consistently at or near the top in polling. A CNN/ORC International survey this month found that 16 percent of Republicans and independents who lean Republican were likely to support Paul, putting him at the front of the Republican field. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the 2012 GOP vice-presidential nominee, was second, at 15 percent.
Paul’s leadership team is set up as part of Rand Paul Victory, a group that pools donations. It is a joint committee that overlaps the fundraising efforts of Rand PAC, Paul’s political-action committee, and Rand Paul 2016, his Senate campaign, and it is described by Paul aides as the basis for a presidential campaign.
“There are people in every state who have joined Team Paul, with the money people ready to go,” said Mallory Factor, a consultant and South Carolina Republican who has worked with Paul to expand the senator’s footprint.
Kevin Madden, a former adviser to Romney and House Republican leaders, said the development of a national network was a notable moment in pre-primary positioning.
“This framework of supporters is an important building block in the architecture required to build a competitive national campaign,” Madden said. “What looks like just a name is often someone who knows local reporters, has a fundraising network or has an ability or history of organizing party activists.”
Democrats are closely watching Paul as he moves to become less of a fringe figure than his father, who struggled to resonate with Republicans beyond his fervent base.
David Axelrod, director of the Institute for Politics at the University of Chicago and a former strategist for President Obama, said, “He’s certainly creating buzz, and when I saw him at Romney’s donor meeting in Utah, it showed seriousness behind what he’s trying to do, beyond all he’s done from a message standpoint.”
Axelrod dismissed the criticism of those consultants in both parties who have said Paul needs to enlist more veteran hands and tap a well-known Republican strategist with deep presidential campaign experience.
“David Axelrod wasn’t David Axelrod until he was,” Axelrod said.
At the Romney retreat last year in Park City, Utah, Paul gained some fans among the GOP elite. Though few pledged to back him should he run for president, they did warm up to him.
“Going in, people weren’t sure. Most of them didn’t know him,” recalled Ron Kaufman, a Romney confidant. “But they had these one-on-one meetings with him and came away saying he’s a sharp guy. They were still in the grieving stage, not ready to think about 2016, but their opinion of him increased rather dramatically.”
Nevertheless, many Republicans question whether Paul can build a campaign that could win a national election.
“I think he’s dangerously irresponsible,” said Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), who is mulling his own presidential bid and has been critical of the GOP’s tea party wing, including Cruz.“I can’t believe responsible Republicans will support this guy, who’s a modern version of Charles Lindbergh.”
The decision to swiftly expand and announce Paul’s national political infrastructure — which will be fully unveiled this spring — comes after reports describing Paul’s operation as unready to compete nationally.
But it was finalized this month at a meeting at a Hampton Inn in Oxon Hill, Md., during the Conservative Political Action Conference. Speaking to more than 40 members of Paul’s circle, his strategists emphasized consolidating the sprawling support Paul has amassed into a coordinated apparatus.
Paul, who also spoke, said he will not make a final decision on a run until the end of the year, but he indicated that he is leaning toward getting into the race and wants a well-staffed political operation to move on all fronts — fundraising, advertising, Internet presence and volunteer coordination — if he does.
Paul’s national team plans to huddle once every quarter, with weekly calls between the meetings. Foreign policy advisers, such as former ambassador Richard Burt and Lorne Craner, a former State Department official, are expected to be part of the chain of command.
Joe Lonsdale, a hedge-fund manager, is also onboard, as is Ken Garschina, a principal at Mason Capital Management in New York. So are Donald and Phillip Huffines, brothers and Texas real estate developers; Atlanta investor Lane Moore; and Frayda Levy, a board member at conservative advocacy groups Americans for Prosperity and the Club for Growth.
From the state parties, outgoing Iowa GOP chairman A.J. Spiker and former Nevada GOP chairman James Smack have signed on, and a handful of Republican officials are preparing to join once their terms expire, including Robert Graham, chairman of the Arizona Republican Party.
Drew Ivers, a former Iowa GOP chairman and Paul supporter, said Paul is “seriously building” a Hawkeye State network, but said much of the activity has gone unnoticed by Washington observers because it is mostly on social media. “In June 2007, Ron Paul’s name identification was zero,” Ivers said. “These days, 95 percent of Iowa Republicans know Rand Paul.”
Paul’s chief political adviser, Doug Stafford, and his fundraising director, Erika Sather, will manage the bolstered organization. Their challenge will be to construct a presidential-level operation that is able to court both the family’s long-standing grass-roots activists as and wealthy donors.
Sather, a former development director at the Club for Growth, spent much of the winter introducing Paul to donors beyond the rich libertarians who poured more than $40 million into Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign. Stafford, a former adviser to several conservative groups, has mined the donor lists of the Campaign for Liberty, FreedomWorks and other advocacy organizations.
Cathy Bailey and Nate Morris, two prominent GOP fundraisers from Kentucky, were also instrumental in bringing the group together.
Morris, previously a fundraiser for George W. Bush, has served as Paul’s guide as the freshman senator has navigated steakhouse dinners and tony receptions with Wall Street and Silicon Valley leaders.
“The bones for the network are there,” Morris said. “We’ll take that and bring in new talent, people who could be like Spencer Zwick was for Mitt Romney’s on finance. Among donors, there’s a fever out there, people are looking to rebrand the party and they haven’t yet been tapped.”
Last year, Rand Paul Victory raised $4.4 million, with nearly half of its fourth-quarter donations coming from high-dollar donors, typically those who give more than $500 and often contribute the legal limit.
Paul’s pitch at these gatherings combined his antagonism toward the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs with a discussion of issues such as drug-sentencing reform and what he calls “crunchy conservatism,” a focus on the environment and civil liberties.
In June, in a pilgrimage to Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., Paul spoke with the company’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, and wrote a Patrick Henry-inspired social-media message — “Give me liberty to post” — on a hallway chalkboard.
Nurturing relationships with Bob Murray, a coal baron and former Romney bundler, former Bush bundler Jack Oliver, who is aligned with former Florida governor Jeb Bush, and Blakely Page, an associate of billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, has been a priority.
Those big-name donors have yet to sign on with any potential Republican candidate, but Paul’s supporters believes the formation of a leadership team could entice them, or at least signal Paul’s seriousness to them.
Billionaire Peter Thiel, the cofounder of PayPal, is another looming figure in Paul’s constellation of friends, advisers, and possible bundlers. He stays in touch with Paul, occasionally meets with him, and is one of his top West Coast allies. Another is San Francisco businessman John Dennis, who once ran for Congress against Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the current House minority leader.
Jesse Benton, Ron Paul’s former campaign manager who is running Sen. Mitch McConnell’s reelection campaign in Kentucky, and Trygve Olson, a Paul ally and an adviser to American Crossroads, a Karl Rove-affiliated super PAC, are two more Paul supporters who could join his camp after the midterm elections. Rex Elsass, who has worked for Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R), has agreed to serve as Paul’s media strategist.
I think announcing this early is letting the donor's aware that he's serious...
He's a libertarian/conservative hybrid candidate... meh, still has no fething chance against Hillary.
Live Ork, Be Ork. or D'Ork!
2014/04/28 21:12:49
Subject: Re:Midterms are coming... Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.
Mitt Romney has said time and time again that he has no interest in running for president a third time.
But, on Sunday morning, CBS' Bob Schieffer said not to write off the idea of a 2016 campaign by Romney so quickly.
"I have a source that told me that if Jeb Bush decides not to run, that Mitt Romney may actually try it again," Schieffer said.
During a political panel discussion, the "Face the Nation" host said that he has been told that Romney will consider seeking the Republican nomination for the presidency in 2016 if former Florida governor Jeb Bush chooses to sit the race out.
Romney and Bush are considered similar candidates -- both moderate former governors who enjoy the support of much of the GOP establishment but draw skepticism from the party's conservative ranks.
Several major Romney donors told The Washington Post earlier this year that Bush would be their preferred Republican candidate in 2016.
After shrinking out of the public light following his crushing loss to President Obama in 2012, Romney has slowly reemerged as a coveted political ally for Republicans seeking office this year.
Romney, 67, has begun to embrace the role of party elder, believing he can shape the national debate and help guide his fractured party to a governing majority.
Insisting he won’t seek the presidency again, Romney has endorsed at least 16 candidates this cycle, many of them establishment favorites who backed his campaigns.
What's he going to run on? "I told you so?"
Live Ork, Be Ork. or D'Ork!
2014/04/28 21:13:54
Subject: Midterms are coming... Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war.
-"Wait a minute.....who is that Frazz is talking to in the gallery? Hmmm something is going on here.....Oh.... it seems there is some dispute over video taping of some sort......Frazz is really upset now..........wait a minute......whats he go there.......is it? Can it be?....Frazz has just unleashed his hidden weiner dog from his mini bag, while quoting shakespeares "Let slip the dogs the war!!" GG
-"Don't mind Frazzled. He's just Dakka's crazy old dude locked in the attic. He's harmless. Mostly."
-TBone the Magnificent 1999-2014, Long Live the King!