#rsrh QotD, a perfect metaphor edition.

(H/T: Instapundit) The Daily Caller, on an unique problem for that hip, young-voter crowd:

With Comedy Central’s “Rally to Restore Sanity” and the “March to Keep Fear Alive” scheduled the weekend before the midterm elections, politically minded college students face a choice: Do I want to spend a day with television comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for a party on the National Mall, or sit in a windowless room for hours making cold calls to strangers for a political campaign?

For some members of Democratic college clubs around Washington, the decision is not an easy one.

Really, the more I think about it the more perfect this gets. Stewart and Colbert couldn’t have messed up the Democratic party more with the timing on these things if they were actually trying. It’s being touted by various groups of College Democrats as an enthusiasm-boosting mechanism for… College Democrats, who typically are generally expected to be enthusiastic anyway, given that they went to the trouble of joining groups like the College Democrats. And while enthusiasm is very nice, if you have to take off the weekend before an election to get pumped up to vote in that election – not to mention getting other people to vote in that election – well, there’s a problem there.

Moe Lane Continue reading #rsrh QotD, a perfect metaphor edition.

State of the race: WI-07 (Sean Duffy).

If you want to know how bad things are for the Democrats in the Midwest right now, here’s one particular data point: the Duffy/Lassa matchup in WI-07. This was David Obey’s district for over forty years, before Sean Duffy scared him off: it’s a D+3 district, according to Cook; and Democratic candidate Julie Lassa is doing everything she can to disassociate herself from the national Democratic party.  And even her own internal polls show her losing.

Partially this is due to Duffy, who is turning out to be an excellent recruiting ‘get;’ and partially it’s due to the fact that Lassa is being hypocritical about spurning the Democratic party with one hand, while taking lots of dirty DCCC money with the other.  And it’s also partially due to the fact that this is a bad year to be a Democrat in the Midwest – particularly if you’re one who understands that Obamacare is going to be a dead albatross around your neck.  Lassa’s particular way to try to reconcile needing to show opposition to the health care monstrosity saddled on the USA by the Democratic party with not jeopardizing the flow of all that lovely, lovely dirty DCCC money is to  pretend that she has a problem with the individual mandate (she doesn’t, particularly, as a state senator).

Couple that with somewhat puerile attempts to bring up Duffy’s The Real World gig and you’re left with a certain amount of wonder at who replaced all the competent political operatives in the Democratic party with these people…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Sean Duffy for WI-07, of course.

Slight posting delay.

Firemen visiting next door just stopped by and politely asked if they could check to see whether the roof was on fire.

[UPDATE] The roof, the roof, the roof was not on fire. Neither was the roof next door, actually. For those wondering why I stopped to blog this in real-time, answer’s simple: I didn’t. At the time, I was collecting the three things I needed: the baby, the car seat, and the car keys. Everything else could be handled with a major credit card.

#rsrh A PSA for 2012 third-party enthusiasts.

As brought up here and here.  Anyway:

  • A group of very smart, very skilled men went to some time and trouble to create a system that hates political parties in the first place.  That’s why we only have two of them in the first place.
  • To win Electoral Votes, you need to win states.  All but two are winner-take-all; and if any of them have 50%+1 runoff rules for Presidential elections it’s news to me.
  • If you get enough votes to throw the election into the House then keep in mind that the Twelfth Amendment dictates that each state votes for one of the top three vote-getters, and they do so as individual states: thus, you can get 219 House members to vote for your candidate and still lose easily.  What has to happen is that you need to win the count in 26 of the state Congressional delegations. Continue reading #rsrh A PSA for 2012 third-party enthusiasts.

#rsrh What’s worse than having Walter Mondale…

…give you political advice?

Walter Mondale being right.

“He uses these idiot boards to read speeches in television, and I think he loses the connection that he needs emotionally with American voters,” Mondale said in an interview set to air this evening on CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, according to a transcript from the network.

But that’s not the best part! The best part is Ben Smith’s update, where ‘a source’ (that’s Beltway for ‘a White House official wanting a little payback for being lectured by Walter Mondale’) wanted to make sure that people knew that Mondale would be using his own idiot board at a rally tomorrow.  Normally I’d assume that it was Rahm Emanuel who ‘leaked’ that – it’s ineffectual and petty, after all – but Rahm’s gone off to the Emerald City.  Something about getting a heart*…

Via Hot Air.

Moe Lane

*It may not be going well.

Meet Nan Hayworth (R CAND, NY-19).

Dr. Hayworth – odd, there are a lot of medical doctors running as Republicans for Congress this session; I wonder why that is? – is up against John Hall in NY-19.  She is, in fact, well-positioned to take the seat away from the man, and not before time.  We spoke about the campaign:

Nan’s site is here.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Ami Bera (D CAND, CA-03) covering up sex offender tenants?

There are two parts to this: what is known, and what was reported.

It is known that the aforementioned Bera owned a transient hotel in California that had a registered sex offender (case involved a minor) living there in April of 2010.  It is also known that living at the location in question would be effectively banned for sex offenders under the California Penal Code, as it is too close to both a playground and a high school.  Lastly, it is known that the property was sold in December of 2009.  These things are all known.

It has been reported to RedState that in April of 2010 an agent of the Bera campaign ran a focus group on Bera’s ownership of this hotel and the residency of the sex offender.  If the information provided to RedState is as reported, then the Bera campaign was both aware and actively worried about the possible implications of it being revealed that their candidate was renting to sex offenders (the information provided to RedState used the plural).  It also indicates that at least one sex offender was living on the premises when Bera owned it; obviously, it would hardly reflect badly on the candidate if a pedophile moved in after Bera sold the property.
.  In short, there seems to be a bit of potentially-disturbing development going on here.

Now, it is entirely possible that the answer to the question Did Ami Bera knowingly violate the California Penal Code by renting to a pedophile? could be ‘no.’  However, given that this was apparently important enough for his campaign that Bera had an outside group focus test it among voters, it seems clear that the question should be asked.  If it turns out that the candidate had merely not done due diligence as per the law… well, that’s bad, but it’s not really nasty.  But regardless of whatever is going on here,  it certainly needs to be resolved.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Dan Lungren for CA-03.

#rsrh Gloria Allred: long-time Brown supporter.

I can’t read the linked article, but California Watch (H/T Chaos Party) can – and they report that Allred was involved with Jerry Brown’s first gubernatorial bid, too.  CW also reports that Allred has a history of relatively small but consistent contributions to Brown and other Democratic candidates over the years.  Judging from the Whitman thing, I suppose that means that Allred prefers to donate time and labor instead of money.

Moe Lane

PS: Meg Whitman for Governor.