Moe Lane

I was going to write something about Lincoln Chafee’s Hail Mary conversion to Democrat, prior to the 2014 RI gubernatorial election, but this passage about something entirely different made me chuckle too much:

Psst! – Barack Obama, there IS a Democrat running for Governor in New Jersey, as Shush Walshe reports:  While President Obama played arcade games Tuesday with Gov. Chris Christie at the New Jersey shore, there was no sign of the Democrat who’s challenging Christie for governor. Instead, state Sen. Barbara Buono was reduced to tweeting, “@BuonoForNJGov It was great to meet with @BarackObama today as we cheer the shore’s re-opening: a testament to all we accomplish when we work together. -BB” http://abcn.ws/174ZTbM (Shushannah Walshe)

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I’m not sure that Stu Rothenberg is correct, here:

…it isn’t clear how much of an impact, if any, the controversies will have on the 2014 midterms. Even if (when) those controversies fade, however, there could be short-term consequences for both the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the area of recruitment.

Largely because it doesn’t look like either organization was having stellar recruitment before everything in the world fell on the Democrats’ heads.  We’re about eighteen months out from the election, which is close enough to start seeing trends (at this point in the 2010 cycle I was interviewing a bunch of insurgent candidates and seeing the first signs of the 2010 tsunami).  A look at my usual House race handicappers is… instructive: (more…)

Surely the National Journal is asking a rhetorical question here, yes?

When Mark Sanford debated a cardboard cutout of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi in his South Carolina race last week, it was a replay of a tried-and-true Republican strategy: Demonize Pelosi and wrap her like a stone around your opponent’s neck.

The tactic can be effective, torn from a well-worn playbook that dates from nearly a decade ago. But it does beg a question: Why isn’t Speaker John Boehner targeted in the same way by Democrats?

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Not your candidate.  Your attitude. Do you want to win*?

Gotta admit, I agree with Jazz Shaw here, on the reaction to the RNC-commissioned autopsy of the 2012 election (particularly the part about getting rid of caucuses**):

In the end, you can say all you want about the “low information” or “low motivation” or brain dead voters who won’t stand in nine groups in the church basement for six hours after dinner for a caucus. Insult them all you like, and point out how they aren’t “strong” enough to fight for their cause in a caucus. But they DO show up in a primary. And they show up in the general election. And that’s who you’ve got to convince on election day. If the message of these caucus powered candidates is truly viable they will thrive in a fair outing where all of the voters who show up in the general take part. Criticizing Priebus for pointing out some basic, if unpleasant, mathematical realities isn’t going to take back the White House any time soon.

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…”this” being, well, this litany of doom and worry: and I ask myself, Jeez.  We are so totally not going to be prepared for the consequences when we end up winning the Presidential election in 2016.

(pause)

…What?  I’ve been doing this sort of thing since before the 2002 midterms; and back in that cycle the Democrats were just as smugly certain as they are today that they were Destiny’s Children.  And as I recall, Election Night ended with James Carville putting a garbage can on his head to hide his shame.  Look, I’m not going to pretend that I’m always right, or anything – but if the Democratic party was REALLY as in tune with both objective reality and the will of the electorate as it likes to pretend it is then we wouldn’t have spent the last couple cycles ripping state governments out of its hands.  And, collectively: neither party is as Machiavellian and darkly brilliant as their detractors like to think that they are.

But far be it from me to interfere with somebody’s Moment of Emo… is emo still a thing?  I got kids now, so I don’t keep up with pop culture as much as I quickly vet it before I let any of it into the house.

Moe Lane

It’s a technical term: see below.

Let me give all of you the basic background, first: Obama has yet to make a decision on the Keystone Pipeline, and he’s more or less going to seriously anger a key block of supporters either way.  If he approves the pipeline, he annoys Hollywood celebrities, radical environmentalists, and other scientific illiterates; and if Obama rejects it, he infuriates Big Labor, or at least those parts of it that still do actual work.  The result?  Barack Obama is… dithering; which pleases nobody.  The union workers aren’t working, and the scientific illiterates are justifiably paranoid that the current no-by-default is unsustainable in the long run.  So, of course, both sides are now trying to pressure the White House into resolving the situation.

What both sides don’t quite realize is that the problem that the administration is facing a structural problem, not an ideological one.  It’s not that the White House doesn’t want to resolve the issue; it just doesn’t know how. (more…)

He’s sticking with the Senate.

After months of speculation, U.S. Sen. Mark Warner today announced he won’t seek another term as governor, meaning whatever his political future holds is likely be oriented around Washington rather than the State Capitol.

Which apparently means that the new Democratic front-runner will be… Terry McAuliffe.  For those who don’t remember the 2009 VA-GOV election, he’s the failed DNC chairman from New York who’s never actually won an election; it is a measure of the fellow that McAuliffe decisively lost to a man who kept hitting people with his car.  On the other hand, thanks to that “no consecutive terms” thing Virginian gubernatorial elections have a distressing tendency to resemble a metronome, so McAuliffe can make a half-credible argument that he might as well be Governor of Virginia: everybody else in the state has, after all.

As for why Warner isn’t running in 2013… I dunno.  Maybe Warner wants to run for President in 2016.

…Puede ser difícil.

Since Glenn Reynolds asked, here’s my current assessment of at-risk Democratic Senators in 2014*. Bear in mind: while I generally got the House right in 2010 and 2012, I overestimated our Senate performance by a couple of seats in both years and of course got the 2008 and 2012 Presidential elections wrong.  So, you know, grain of salt and all of that.

Quick assessments on each: (more…)

READ. THIS. READ. THIS. READ. THIS.

The fact that Republicans lost so overwhelmingly in 2008, I think, delayed an awareness of the technical gap between the two sides, and they imputed Obama’s win to much broader conditions in the country. For the sake of innovation on the Republican side, the best thing that could happen to them is that they lose narrowly on Tuesday, that the story becomes how Obama and his allies ran a mechanically superior campaign, and Republican donors, party leaders, consultants face the existential predicament that Democrats did at the end of 2004, which is, “We’re going to lose forever unless we figure out how to make our campaigns better.”

READ. THIS. READ… Oh, by the way: “…finding social scientists who want anything to do with the Republican party in the 21st century…” is a simple problem that can be readily solved by the traditional method of “throwing lots of money at it.” I mention this because I suspect that Issenberg might have put that rather snide commentary in order to make Democrats better, and we can’t have that. …THIS. READ. THIS…

Moe Lane

Michael Barone looked at the downticket races, and found some interesting results:

• On the Congressional level, the Democrats have made net gains in three states since 2008 (CA, DE, MD).  There were a few states where 2010′s results were wiped out: IL’s is most noteworthy.  It was also easily the most blatant redistricting hack job done by either party in 2012, but that’s what happens when Democrats control the state legislature.
• Speaking of state legislatures: Democrats went from controlling 53% of state senate seats and 56% of state house seats after 2008 to 46%/48% after 2012.  They likewise gained seats over that period in only three states: CA, IL, & NJ.

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…over at RedState; specifically how he (and a bunch of others, explicitly including me*) got the results wrong.  Short version: ayup, the state polls were the true quill in this one.  It’s tempting to get into explanations and conjectures, but the truth of the matter is that I calculated it wrong.  In 2012 we had an Obama +6 electorate.

(pause)

Some people reading this are nastily smiling right now.  And some people reading this are suddenly smiling right now.  Spoiler warning: it’s the latter folks who should be. (more…)

Not every one of these I agree with, but it’s reasonably clear-headed and Ellis has got some interesting insights.  For example:

8. President Obama doesn’t have a mandate; he has leverage.

…And the truth is, [Obama] doesn’t need a mandate, he just needs sensible policy ideas.

[snip of various purportedly sensible policy ideas]

The list goes on. The point is that he has the leverage to get things done. Gridlock is only certain if he tries to refight old wars.

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