So, Would Edwards/Kerry '04 Have Won?

Check out this Washington Post article.

Here's why the 2006 elections don't necessarily translate into a great Democratic year in 2008: they don't have the horses for the courses. Kerry finished DEAD LAST among Democrats in a feeling thermometer rating of likability. Now, anyone who watched his charisma-free 2004 presidential campaign would know that Kerry is a likable as avian flu, so it isn't much of a surprise. In fact, I think a flipped ticket in 2004 would have come closer to Bush or tied like 2000. Also interesting that the poll was conducted before Kerry's hoof-in-mouth moment over the less educated getting 'stuck in Iraq'. Pretty much everyone knows Kerry is a jerk now. So memo to the Senator: stay home in '08. You've done enough damage to your party.
Then again, it might not have been good to have a young 'un at the helm in 2004. Edwards was probably too inexperienced to win it, and the lesson from Edwards goes to the New Democratic Heartthrob (NDH) Barack Obama. Oprah has practically soiled herself trying to get this guy to run, but guess what? Nobody knows who he is! 41% of respondents didn't know enough about the guy to register an opinion. Plus, Kerry taught us that the Senate is a terrible place to make a run from because your voting record can be used against you just as it can be something to run on. Give Obama another few years, let him run for governor of Illinois, serve a term or two, and THEN run. The guy's got time to run in the future after he builds a more national profile. He'll be a much better candidate in 2016 or 2020 and he will still be in his 50's.

Two other things ought to give the Dems pause right now: Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Joe Freakin' Lieberman came in ahead of their putative nominee, Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton is still more popular than her, for what that's worth. In other words, the Democratic pool is filled with inexperience and churlishness. Maybe McCain and Lieberman ought to run as an Independent ticket. . ..

Student Body Left!

Plenty of moderate Democrats won seats in Congress. Narrow victories for most anyone. The most liberal issues anyone ran on was an Iraq exit. So with a mandate to the middle, wouldn't you think Speaker-Elect Pelosi would heed the warnings? No, she's a Democrat. And Democrats just refuse to do what would help them long term: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-dems12nov12,0,4533842.story?track=mostviewed-sectionfront

Despite a declining base of numbers and power, the unions (trial lawyers were conveniently left out of this LA Times piece) will have a significant presence and shift the agenda to the left. Abortion (where was this issue in the '06 campaigns?) will also be a pet project. The Pelosi Saturday Night Live opening skit this past weekend may end up being more prescient than satire. I wonder how many moderate Republicans are going to have some serious buyer's remose next January.

Conveniently, the effects should start right about six months before the 2008 elections. Someone remind me how this party won in the first place . . . . .

Got One Call Right!

At least I knew Rumsfeld wasn't the only one going down. I had a feeling Ken Mehlmann was on his way out at the RNC. And here he goes: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/09/AR2006110901815.html

Mehlmann is great at Presidential politics and the RNC is going to miss him. The one who really needs to fall on his sword for this one is Tom Davis of Virginia, the NRCC chair. He's the one who let the "GOP farm team" that Gingrich, Paxton, and DeLay built in the 1980's get thin. No good Republican replacements since 1994 meant a steadily dwindling GOP advantage in House seats that is paying off for the Dems now. But Davis seems popular and probably won't exit.

But why do I have a feeling John Bolton's not long for the road?

One Order of "Wrong!" with a side of bacon, please

Well, there goes those predictions! Like most of us who wrote predictively about the 2006 midterms, I was wrong and dead wrong.

For what it's worth, divided government is usually a very good thing so the prospect of a Democratic Congress against a Republican President means two delightful years of gridlock ahead!

Now things are getting VERY interesting. And Rumsfeld will NOT be the only casualty of these midterms.

Bold Cold Medicine Induced Predictions

Wow, is it election eve already? Must be, because the Daily Show is on full-cynical ahead!

Now that the flu is past, I'm back reading everyone's predictions. Chris Bowers sees a split Senate and a 23-29 seat House pickup. I just don't see it. Note that his method is a probability model based on the different likelihood tiers, but I've never found those as reliable methods. Take the top fifty races and look at them instead. If national trends determined Congressional elections, the probability model might work. But it doesn't. Tom DeLay's seat is going Democratic for different reasons than Sherwood Boehlert's old district is going to be represented by Mike Arcuri. That's not probabilistic, that's an individualistic model.

Radley Balko thinks the Dems will have a 20-25 seat advantage in the House with a 51-49 Senate for the GOP. The mighty mighty Gooch has Republicans holding the House by two seats and the Senate is 53-47 Republican.

But what in the world do I think? Somewhere between the two above. So here goes.

House:
Dems pick up the following seats: AZ 5, 8; CA 11; FL 13, 16; IL 6; IN 2, 8; IA 1; NY 24; OH 2, 15, 18; PA 7, 10. That's a fifteen-seat pickup for the Dems.
Republicans picking up one seat: GA 12.
The result, Republicans maintain the House . . . by a single seat.

Senate:
Pennsylvania. Santorum is going down and going down big. Score one for the Dems.
Minnesota. I remember when Mark Kennedy first ran for the House and wasn't even targeted by the GOP. He won then, but I don't see it happening now. And to make it worse, he's losing to someone named "Klobuchar." Yikes. Dems plus two.
Washington. Maria Cantwell keeps her seat. No change.
Michigan. Debbie Stabenow retains her seat. No change.
Ohio. How in the world is Mike DeWine going down? I don't know, but I know Sherrod Brown is winning. Dems up three.
New Jersey. I can't believe this, but Menendez is going to lose to Kean. Republicans pick a seat up, but still down two.
Rhode Island. Chafee ends up holding on to the seat despite a big scare. No change.
Arizona. Kyl wins again, no change.
Maryland. I could beef it on this one, but I'm picking Steele. The race is a functional tie, within the margin of error on polls, but the GOP has to have something to hang their hat on. I think it's this one. Republicans now down just one seat.
Tennessee. Harold Ford has been running a phenomenal campaign and has this red state just about ready to vote Democratic. Just about, but not quite. Corker wins, no change.
Missouri. Having lived in Missouri, I know that the state can elect dead men. But Claire McCaskill is no Mel Carnahan. Michael J. Fox helps, but not enough. Talent holds his seat.
Montana. Conrad Burns, the white courtesy phone is ringing. Tester bests him, Democrats now back to two seats up.
Connecticut. Joe Liberman is going to retain his seat, but the big question is this: who is he going to caucus with. I think he's going to pull a Jeffords and caucus with the GOP, since they're going to retain the house.
Virginia. This has been the big race, so it should come last. Allen should have walked away with this one, and it's emblematic of a year when Republicans seemed to lose their way. Macaca aside, Allen should be up twelve on Webb. With party ID on his side, Allen pulls this one out, GOP retains one more seat and loses a total of two seats.

The 110th Congress looks like this:
House: D 217 (including Sanders), R 218.
Senate: D 47 (including Jeffords), R 53.

Here in Kansas, I'm just picking winners:
Governor: Sebelius retains (duh. Hey, Senator Barnett, try raising money next time)
Secretary of State: Thornburgh retains (another no-brainer. Haley, please)
Attorney General: Morrison over Kline. The abortion records controversy just allowed folks who thought Kline was shady in the first place evidence of their belief. Plus, the fundies seem to be having a bad year (see Cauble's School Board win over Morris in the 5th District GOP primary) so Kline suffers.
Treasurer: Jenkins retains, no sweat.
Insurance Commissioner: Who cares? Why in the world do we elect this position in the first place? Praeger retains.
KS Congressional delegation:
All seats retained. Ryun fights off a challenge from Boyda, Moore gets no real challenge from Ahner, Tiahrt and Moran cruise.

We Interrupt This Political Broadcast . . .

For three very important and beautiful words:

BRING
ON
DETROIT

Congratulations on your seventeenth NL pennant, Saint Louis Cardinals. Now go win the World Series.

GO CARDS!

Talk About Cut and Run!

OK, so the Times piece today (another Nagourney winner http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/19/us/politics/19campaign.html?hp&ex=1161316800&en=dd5585cc01a8e36c&ei=5094&partner=homepage) points to an interesting development that makes me think for the first time the GOP might lose both chambers.

The GOP has long been a 'stay the course' organization when campaigning: pick a message, stay on it. But now Republican candidates for Congress are changing their tactics and backing off of Iraq. It's almost all over now, Baby Blue (apologies to Dylan), because it's simply too late to get a new message into peoples' heads. And the Democrats are doing their best to remind people of the Bush-My Incumbent Republican Congressman connection (search campaign ads 2006 on YouTube and you'll get it) that reminds them of . . . Iraq!

I haven't seen the GOP in this much of a dithering state since 1992. And we all know what a winner that was for the Republicans. Oh, wait .. . it wasn't.

I think November 7th's going to be a long night for a lot of people on First Street.

Stay On Target . . . Stay On Target

Today's Times has a very strong piece on GOP targeting (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/16/us/politics/16spend.html?hp&ex=1161057600&en=4ab375783b7dff54&ei=5094&partner=homepage). No surprise there, it's Adam Nagourney's writing, who seems to have a good handle on the process of campaigning.

The GOP is doing their traditional last-minute concentration of resources into selected races, and it will probably pay off. In the last three cycles, the GOP's candidates have had more success than their Democratic rivals and this partly has to do with the wise shifting of resources late in the campaign. Their success also has to do with a strong financial advantage that lets the GOP target from a position of strength.

But this year is different. With the Ney, DeLay, and Foley resignations, plus a few challenged Republican incumbents (Jack Ryun, Chris Chocola, John Sweeney for example) means that the GOP has enough exposure to worry about a Democratic takeover. And oh yeah, the Senate is ALWAYS in play. So the GOP is having to adapt to a new problem: targeting from a position of weakness. The GOP has the money, but they have more races where they are unsure than they have of late. So now the NRCC and NRSC appear to be dithering. The move of money from Ohio to Missouri is pretty smart, though I'd write Tennessee off and put more into Virginia, where George Allen is saveable despite Webb's Allen-empowered surge. It wouldn't surprise me to see the GOP's success rate of targeted races drop this year.

These elections, which looked to be a snoozer in March, are getting VERY interesting.

Repeat after me . . .the sky is NOT falling

So today started out as a lovely fall day in Hays America. Cleaned up, had some scones from Augustine's, took the dog for a walk, mowed the grass for hopefully the last time this year. And then I had to sit down and watch my beloved alma mater play like one-legged men at an ass kicking contest. Texas A&M 25, Missouri 19. So much for our ranking and any hope of a BCS bid (which was probably a pipe dream anyway, but I'm feeling like it's time to wallow in my own crapulence right now) but I'm now worried that our 6-1 start will turn into 6-6.

Hopefully Carl Edwards will win at Lowe's tonight and the Cards will go up 2-1 to restore sporting equilibrium to my fractured soul.

Now I've Seen Everything!

OK, I'll admit to being biased against polling done by local media. When I lived near Saint Louis, the Post-Dispatch earned its reputation as the Post-Disgrace primarily through an inept polling unit. So imagine my suprise when I get a phone survey tonight from an area TV station that was actually written by a human being who knows something about survey research. KBSH-TV in Wichita was the sponsoring entity, and rather than doing it in-house they obviously spent the money to contract with a professional polling entity. I'd rather see that than try to do it in-house and fail. Of course, they should've just contacted the Docking Institute at FHSU.

Donnybrooks and Shockwaves

Today's Times has a piece on Bob Ney's guilty plea in connection with the Abramoff investigation and Ney's resignation from the House. Since I've been following the Abramoff donnybrook pretty closely, it gets me thinking:

1) I remember vividly some bloggers saying that the "Republican Spin Machine" would bury the Abramoff scandal and that their conspiratorial efforts would mean nobody would remember all of the misdeeds done by Abramoff's contacts in Congress. I wonder what they're thinking now. The Abramoff investigation has already brought down a couple of Republicans and two or three more may follow.

2) When I gave a Times Talk (http://vodreal.fhsu.edu/ramgen/ctelt/adp/timestalk27.rm) {Real Player needed} on the Abramoff affair, a colleague suggested that Abramoff, Delay, and their ilk were the first people to play this corrupt little game. Bull. This kind of thing has been going on since the beginning of the republic (see Sabato's Dirty Little Secrets for a nice rundown of scandals in American politics) and now the difference is with federal campaign finance disclosure we can track it down and punish the people who do it. I've never been a fan of campaign finance limits, but disclosure's one of the best things that's happened in a while.

3) The effect on the November elections. In April, the thought that Democrats might take over the House of Representatives was as likely as the Yankees getting drop-kicked in the ALDS. Now one's happened and the other one is at least in the realm of possibility. DeLay, Ney, Foley, and other retirements from the House mean that there are a number of Republican seats exposed to competition. If all the open seats go Democratic and just a few incumbent Republicans lose, the House could narrowly switch control. I still don't think it will happen, but it will be close and I wouldn't die of surprise if it did.

Why Am I Here?

No, this isn't Admiral Stockdale from 1992, asking why he was present at the ping-pong match debate between Dan Quayle and Al Gore. Welcome to the blog of Political Science Professor Chapman Rackaway, Fort Hays State University.

Most of my blogging will relate to articles from the New York Times, as a template for my Political Communication and American Government classes. But I might just post other stuff, too. Or I might get kidnapped by aliens. Anything is possible, after all.