Tag: democrats

Meet fourteen worrying Democrats.

List extrapolated from here from Reid Wilson:

Candidate District PVI Cook Rating
Mike Ross AR-04 R+7 Likely Dem
Allan Boyd FL-02 R+6 Likely Dem
Alan Grayson FL-08 R+2 Toss-Up
Suzanne Kosmas FL-24 R+4 Lean Dem
Sanford Bishop GA-02 D+1 Safe Dem
Bill Foster IL-14 R+1 Lean Dem
Frank Kratovil MD-01 R+13 Toss-Up
Ike Skelton MO-04 R+14 Lean Dem
Earl Pomeroy ND-AL R+10 Lean Dem
Dina Titus NV-03 D+2 Toss-Up
Mike McMahon NY-13 R+4 Lean Dem
Michael Arcuri NY-24 R+2 Lean Dem
Chris Carney PA-10 R+8 Lean Dem
Ciro Rodriguez TX-23 R+4 Likely Dem

…and the reason that you can tell that they’re worrying is because everyone on that list commissioned a poll in the last three months of 2009. Reid explains why this is interesting:

Some political professionals advising their clients have told them to hold off conducting polls until this 3-month period, when the health care debate calms down. Dems saw a demonstrable drop in support during the final half of the year, thanks to health care, and polling during such a turbulent time gives unnecessarily worrying, or inaccurate, results.

Which last may or may not be true; but it still begs the question why these fourteen are worrying. Aside from the fact that they’re all in competitive districts.  And that all but one of them is in a race rated as competitive.  And that more than half of them are already at serious risk of losing their jobs.  And that it’s turning out to be a bad year to be an incumbent Democrat.  Other than that, no worries, yes?

Yes, ‘worry’ is an interesting word, ‘isn’t it?  It originally meant ‘to strangle,’ you know.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

The headline some of you thought you’d never see. #rsrh

Mind you, I always thought that we would, although I guessed that it’d take about 20 months to show up, not 12.

“GOP to tie Obama to Dem candidates.”

Isn’t it pretty? More:

The challenge will be to link Democrats with the administration on such issues as spending, bailouts, healthcare and cap-and-trade while not personally attacking Obama, who remains personally well-liked even as his standing erodes. So, at least in purple states or districts, don’t expect to see an ad where the faces of Democratic candidates are morphed into that of the president—a time-honored approach from past campaigns.

But Republicans are unmistakably enthusiastic – and downright giddy in some cases – about the prospect of Democrats stumping with the president in their states, a vivid reminder about how starkly different the political landscape seems now than when Obama took office.

Thus, expect a lot of the President being lumped in with such… iconic… Democrats as Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Murtha, and Al Franken (add your own favorite clown, crook, or creep, of course). Which suggests that there’s an interesting counter-move for this administration…

Moe Lane

Beck explains the Grandma’s kitchen sink situation to POTUS. #rsrh

Via @tommyxtopher, who isn’t happy that he has to agree with this:

I don’t watch Beck, myself – I got nothing against him, particularly, but I don’t need him as an information source – but the above is an excellent point. It’s not particularly the GOP’s problem that the Democrats disliked actually having a super-majority, particularly since it meant that fourteen years’ worth of wild-eyed promises to the Left suddenly came due. It’s also not particularly our problem that the progressives are increasingly unable to pretend that their party top leadership cares for them for longer than it takes the check to clear. We will, however, be happy to solve their problems for them, in our own little way.

Because that’s just how we roll.

Moe Lane

‘Bullets won’t kill it!’ – Democrats and their upcoming Bad Time.

Full disclosure: this is all going to be as-I-think-of-it-opinion, I have no interest in interrupting the narrative flow by looking for links, and so I freely admit that it would be fair to discount or dismiss the results accordingly.

The Democrats are in for a bad election cycle, to the point where people are actually talking about the Democrats losing the House – and starting to hint that maybe, just maybe, it’s not entirely bizarre to suggest that the Senate might be technically in a position where the Republicans could take control of it. Long since past time that this happened to this party, to be sure: but why?

I think that it’s for a pretty simple reason: the American people subscribe to a pretty simple political mathematics.  They divide our political class into Those Idiots Running Things and Those Idiots Out Of Power.  Then they modify it with (I Hate Those Guys).  Typically speaking, election cycles depend on which party gets the modifier.  For example:

  • 2002 (post-9/11): Normally a time for Those Idiots Out Of Power to win seats, but being at actual war meant that (I Hate Those Guys) continued to apply to the Democrats.
  • 2004: This is where (I Hate Those Guys) began to shift away from Those Idiots Out Of Power. As I recall, House gains were largely from redistricting; if Those Idiots Out Of Power had put up somebody better than Kerry, the race would have been a heck of a lot closer.
  • 2006: At this point, Those Idiots Running Things had officially gotten the (I Hate Those Guys) designation. And we got shellacked in Congress.
  • 2008: Interesting case, here: the holding of the Presidency by the GOP meant that we got to be still treated as Those Idiots Running Things (I Hate Those Guys), instead of Those Idiots Out Of Power (I Hate Those Guys). The more I think of it, the more I think that maybe that saved us seats.

Continue reading ‘Bullets won’t kill it!’ – Democrats and their upcoming Bad Time.

Admit it: if I pulled out a taser… #rsrh

…and told you that you had ten seconds to explain to me what the heck the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 actually did, how likely would it be that you’d be able to avoid doing your impersonation of a sufferer of St. Vitus’ Dance?

Don’t feel bad: I had to look it up myself (and I would have guessed unemployment benefits, or something).  The Democrats talk of it a lot, but don’t actually talk about it.  The law “amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 stating that the 180-day statute of limitations for filing an equal-pay lawsuit regarding pay discrimination resets with each new discriminatory paycheck.”  Not precisely the New Deal there, huh?

I bring this up because, as near as Jim Geraghty and I can figure out, this is pretty much all that the Democratic party can brag about to its base with regard to the accomplishments of the 111th Congress.  Although if they want to run on the Democrats’ ‘stimulus’ bill I’ll be happy to let them…

Moe Lane

*Yes. This is what they have to work with when it comes to bragging rights.

Hesitating in the face of volley fire.

Back in the day – which is to say, the days before reliable automatic weapons were present on the battlefield – armies relied pretty heavily on volley fire and rigid discipline to win battles.  There were two reasons for this: first, of course, the more missiles you have in the air at once, the harder it is to get out of their way.  The second reason was psychological: charging in the face of steady fire – even essentially unaimed fire – is extremely difficult.  Armies and their generals simply had to accept that there would be casualties, and that the proper response was to keep moving forward and return fire.  So it usually came down to determination versus determination.  Sometimes the one side broke and ran… and sometimes one side simply hesitated in the face of a sustained series of volleys.  It sounds counter-intuitive, but that can happen when your troops are braver than your generals.  Or when your generals simply don’t know what to do next, and don’t have the capacity to improvise.

Why am I bringing this up?

The White House privately anticipates health care talks to slip into February — past President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union address — and then plans to make a “very hard pivot” to a new jobs bill, according to senior administration officials.

[snip]

Internally, White House aides are plunging into a 2010 plan calling for an early focus on creating jobs, especially in the energy sector, along with starting a conversation about deficit reduction measures, the administration officials said.

Ed Morrissey has more.  Bottom line: this will probably work out well enough for the President, but only because he has over two years before he has to start worrying about getting re-elected.  Democratic Members of Congress have eleven months, and they’ll need every second of it to handle the problem of their unpopular support of an unpopular health care rationing bill.  Put another way: either health care is an immediate crisis, or it is not.  If it is the crisis that we were told, then the President needs to get his fellow-Democrats in Congress to press on through and pass something with the urgency that they’ve been claiming all along was necessary.  If it is not the crisis that we were told, then the President needs to pull his fellow-Democrats out of this particular fight before retreat becomes impossible (but rout does not).  Letting Democrats in Congress take fire on health care rationing in the same way that they’ve been taking fire on cap-and-trade will simply get more of them fired in November for no good reason*.

But that assumes that the President is loyal enough to his party to take the personal hit to what’s left to his reputation for competence.

Moe Lane

*Which is fine with me, of course.

Crossposted to RedState.

Actually, I agree with both Reynolds *and* Yglesias.

The country is indeed ungovernable.

…By Democrats.

I mean, seriously: remember what life was like four years ago, when it was the GOP running things?  Miss it yet?  You should: rather more of the people reading this had jobs back then.  And fatter retirement accounts.  And better value in their houses.  And soon – very, very soon – lower taxes.

Remember, folks: the GOP can run things without Democratic input. At least, the Democrats certainly spent six or so years saying that we did*.  In contrast, the Democrats can’t run a Sunday School picnic without a Republican supervising them every step of the way.

Moe Lane

PS: I don’t really think that Reynolds would disagree with this.  Or that Yglesias would agree, although I mention that last only out of completeness.

*Which is, by the way, not true.

Crossposted to RedState.

PURGE! PURGE! PURGE!

(Via Hot Air Headlines) In the course of an otherwise generic NYT Op-Ed bemoaning how the USA’s two-party system is just a touch more resilient than our self-appointed media elite would like it to be, Charles Blow comes up with this observation (bolding mine):

The party that wins the White House generally loses Congressional seats in the midterm, but this Democratic-controlled government has particular issues. Its agenda has been hamstrung by a perfect storm of politics: the Republicans’ surprisingly effective obstructionist strategy, a Democratic caucus riddled with conservative sympathizers and a president encircled by crises and crippled by caution.

Well. The Democratic faithful can’t do anything about us awful, awful, Republican obstructionists; and they certainly can’t do anything about this crippled* President. I guess that leaves getting rid of the Democratic conservatives lurking about. Burn them out! Burn them out! BURN THEM OUT!

Hey, just trying to be helpful.

Moe Lane

*Blow’s word, not mine.

Crossposted to RedState.

Barack Obama: Alan Grayson ‘outstanding member of Congress.’

Talk about timing:

President Obama offered him some warm words at a Miami fundraiser for the Democratic congressional campaign committees last night.

Obama, in introducing the members of Congress in attendance, called Grayson – along with Florida Reps. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Kendrick Meek – as “outstanding members of Congress.”

This would be the same day that it came out that Alan Grayson went on the Alex Jones show last month – the Alex Jones Show – and called a Treasury staffer a “K Street whore.” This is actually angering more than a few Democrats right now – and if you’re wondering why this resonated when other nastiness didn’t, it may be because K Street in DC is also known for being a hangout for actual prostitutes, which certainly puts a somewhat different complexion on the attack*. Now Grayson’s behavior, I understand: he’s a darling of the progressive antiwar Left, which means that his casual misogyny is a unexceptional rhetorical flourish to that sort**. He’ll just scream louder and louder until he gets smacked for it. But what’s the President’s excuse?

Letting the Teleprompter do his thinking for him again, perhaps?

Moe Lane

*Although Rep. Weiner – who originally declared Grayson to be a ‘one fry short of a Happy Meal’ – has since changed his tune.

**See here (via Instapundit) for how more and more feminists are reacting to such indulgences.

Crossposted to RedState.