Moe Lane

I wonder if they have the mother-wit to figure it out?

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) may blame the National Rifle Association for the failure of his background check legislation, but he has no plan to leave the group anytime soon.

“Why would I quit when I’m trying to change from within?” he said in response to a question from The Huffington Post at a breakfast discussion on Friday, sponsored by centrist think tank Third Way.

Translation: Why would I quit when I’m still intending to run for re-election in 2018?  Let me spell it out: the opinion of the Huffington Post is irrelevant to West Virginia voters.  The opinion of the National Rifle Association is not.  Thus, picking which group to gratuitously insult is a simple decision for Joe Manchin – and, yes, waving one’s NRA Life Member card in the face of a prominent Lefty media group is gratuitously insulting, particularly when the discussion is on how the Left can properly punish Democratic Senators who aren’t inclined towards committing political suicide.  Said punishment, by the way, is something that Manchin is not really interested in enabling: (more…)

I feel that a lot of perhaps misplaced angst (and possibly, even recklessness) is on display in this Roll Call article that’s ostensibly about finding a more conservative alternative to Shelley Capito for WV-SEN (people could be forgiven for thinking that the article is actually about complaining about the Tea Party in general).  You can like or not like Shelley Capito as you please, of course.  You can rather keep Senator Rockefeller in that position until he dies than put in an insufficiently conservative Republican replacement, too.  You can even be disgusted by the whole thing.  I have varying degrees of sympathy towards those positions, but it’s a free country: you don’t have to care about my personal opinions if you don’t want to.

(more…)

This is.

Well.

This is certainly something.  Maybe not as much a something as the sight of Senator Joe Manchin (D, WV) refusing to admit whether or not he voted for Barack Obama last night* – profiles in courage, folks. Profiles in courage – but definitely something.  What it does mean is open for interpretation, but here’s one way to figure out whether or not there was an, um, ethnic dimension to this: poll West Virginian Democrats who voted for the convict and ask ‘em whether they would have voted for Rep. Allen West if he had been the one running.  That guy was practically the definition of ‘Jacksonian’ when he was serving.

Moe Lane

*Via @jaketapper.  And that should worry Manchin.

Well, maybe not important, but I’d still like to know. Why? Because tonight was a really fun night, and I don’t want it to end.

Via @BuzzFeedAndrew, via Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.  Background here.

It’s honestly the best way to describe it. PPP is doing its best to put a positive spin on the way that their own polling is showing Democratic Acting Governor Earl Ray Tomblin going from a 46/40 lead over Republican businessman Bill Maloney to a 47/46 lead now, but the trend is fairly clear.  September’s polling showed 14% undecided; today it’s 7%, and those numbers have pretty much all broken for Maloney.  Worse, from Tomblin’s point of view?  Those are Democrats going to Maloney: Republican and independent voters have not shifted in the last month.

Does this mean that Maloney’s a shoo-in?  Of course not; Tomblin retains three advantages.  First, party registration is still lopsided in West Virginia.  Second, the Acting Governor is personally popular (as is Maloney), which is rare for Democratic incumbents these days.  Third, this is a special election, which means that turnout will be reduced.  Normally that wouldn’t favor an opponent, but if Tomblin’s hemorrhaging Democrats… well.  We’ll see tomorrow.

In the meantime, Bill could almost certainly still use some help.  Every little bit, and all that.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Democratic pollster PPP reports that Republican Bill Maloney is now trailing acting Governor Earl Ray Tomblin by only six points (46/40, poll data here).  Compare that to the May (45/30) and April (56/23) polls from the same pollster and suddenly we apparently have a race on our hands.

Yes, I know.  It’s early days yet to justify the title, but let’s see how the next couple of months go month goes.

Bill Maloney’s site is here.

(Via @streiffredstate)

The RGA has a website (West Virginia Pays) and an ad up to get people… acquainted… with acting Governor Earl Ray Tomblin (D):

To refresh people’s memories: West Virginia – a coal-producing state that is almost stubbornly Democratic on the local level, despite the fact that the national Democratic party elite dreams of dismantling the coal industry – last year saw Democratic governor Joe Manchin transfer over to the US Senate.  This made state Senate President Tomblin – a man who has been a professional politician for almost my entire life; heck, he went directly from school to the legislature – acting Governor; there will be a special election in October of this year; his Republican opponent is businessman and engineer Bill Maloney.
(more…)

The Manchin administration in West Virginia has decided that the needs of its new, state-owned technology park outweigh the needs of miner safety.

Let’s walk through this: (more…)

The report is that West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin (D) will be pushing for having a 2010 special election for the late Senator Robert Byrd’s seat.  In this he’s joined by Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R), who shares with Manchin a desire for the job.  Which is fine: neither politician is making a secret of it and they’d be the most likely candidates for 2012 anyway.

There does seem to be a general consensus that while a special election is not required, it would be desirable:

Secretary of State Natalie Tenant has already called on state lawmakers to revise the law to allow for a special election.

“For me, there is a distinct line between how I personally feel and what I can legally do,” Tennant said on her website late last week. “I personally believe that the voters of the state should be allowed to elect a successor to Senator Byrd sooner than November of 2012.”

(more…)

Now that it’s been determined by the Secretary of State for WV that there will be no special election for Byrd’s now-vacant seat…

OK, let me just note something here. The seat was held by a Democrat; the Governor is a Democrat; the state government is more or less dominated by Democrats.  The people of West Virginia seem more or less happy about this state of affairs, and state law really does suggest that there is an issue with the fact that the filing period for 2010 has already passed.  Governor Manchin isn’t putting himself in the seat, and he’s probably not going to pull a Blagojevich and try to sell it to the highest Democratic bidder.  There’s not much for us to work with with regard to pushing for a 2010 special election, sorry. (more…)

It’s kind of quiet, but there may be one actually brewing.  Compare this:

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., seems to have become a convert. Last week he signaled strongly that promises from the White House are not enough. During a Senate hearing on Obama’s proposal for the [2010]* budget, Rockefeller lashed out.

According to one published report, Rockefeller made it clear “he isn’t sure he trusts the president’s commitments to coal. …” Referring to Obama’s pledges to support coal, the senator complained that, “He says it in his speeches, but he doesn’t say it in (his budget proposal). He doesn’t say it in the actions of (EPA Administrator) Lisa Jackson. And he doesn’t say it in the minds of my own people. And he’s beginning to not be believable to me.”

…with this (by Senator Byrd, D-WV):

To be part of any solution, one must first acknowledge a problem. To deny the mounting science of climate change is to stick our heads in the sand and say “deal me out.” West Virginia would be much smarter to stay at the table.

The 20 coal-producing states together hold some powerful political cards. We can have a part in shaping energy policy, but we must be honest brokers if we have any prayer of influencing coal policy on looming issues important to the future of coal like hazardous air pollutants, climate change, and federal dollars for investments in clean coal technology.

Most people understand that America cannot meet its current energy needs without coal, but there is strong bi-partisan opposition in Congress to the mountaintop removal method of mining it. We have our work cut out for us in finding a prudent and profitable middle ground – but we will not reach it by using fear mongering, grandstanding and outrage as a strategy.

So we seem to have a difference of opinion between Senators Rockefeller and Byrd about whether one can trust the President on coal policy as far as one can throw him.  It would be unkind to suggest that the reason for this is that the former is still in a position to run at least once more for elected office, while the latter… let us just say (without any ill-wish) that it is rather low-probability that Senator Byrd will be still in the Senate in 2013.  It is thus in the best interests of Senator Rockefeller to speak in terms that recognizes one elementary truth (that this administration hates coal production with the fury of a thousand burning suns**), while Senator Byrd speaks in terms that recognizes another elementary truth (that his staff is probably going to need to find new jobs in the Democratic establishment in the not-too-distant future).

One hopes that this hasn’t caused a break between the two.  They’ve been Senators together for so long that their professional relationship is old enough to serve in the House of Representatives****.

Moe Lane (more…)

And by ‘favorite’ I mean either ‘one you’d like to see gone’ or ‘one who is on the cusp.’  Watching either type try to decide whether they can hold out another two years for a Presidential election – and whether there’s any point to it, given the way that this President’s approval ratings keep shrinking – should provide us all with many hours of innocent amusement for the next few months.  Or not-so-innocent amusement.

My current candidate for the next round of spend-more-time-with-my-family?  Alan Mollohan, WV-01.  As Brian notes, Mollohan is a corrupt suckweasel who may get indicted soon; as Don notes, Mollohan is having fundraising troubles; and as Jim notes, people are lining up to get a stab at the privilege of challenging Mollohan for his seat. WV-01 is R+9; Cook lists it as competitive (“Likely Democratic“).  And (again) like Brian, I suspect that the DCCC’s going to want to spend its money elsewhere next year.

Interesting times for the Democrats.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.