The Washington Post sums it up: at least six seats lost by the Democrats (including their House Minority Leader) in the House of Delegates and either one (Bill Stanley over Roscoe Reynolds) or two (Bryce Reeves leads Edd Houck by 86 votes) in the state Senate. If it’s one, the Democrats retain control of the state Senate; if it’s two, then the Senate is tied and the Lieutenant Governor breaks all ties. The Democrats are in that kind of jubilant despair that you get when things aren’t quite as bad as you thought that they were going to be; public relief aside, losing your House Minority Leader* isn’t good news. Particularly since (as Larry Sabato noted last night) Virginia’s Senate redistricting process was in the hands of the Democrats and they still lost at least one seat. That’s not good news for Democrats on the national level. Continue reading Virginia Senate control hangs by thread.
Tag: senate
#rsrh Senate Democrats struggle to avert their DOOM.
And I wish them joy of the attempt. The Hill, musing on why beleaguered Montana Senator Jon Tester opposes Obama’s latest attempt to be relevant on job creation:
…those facing tough reelection fights will smell the same danger Tester has: that President Obama’s latest jobs bill is less a real jobs program with any chance of passage than a reelection strategy that could end up pushing Obama’s remaining congressional majority – the Democrat-held Senate – over a cliff.
House Democrats fell into this trap in 2010: putting their careers on the line for Obama initiatives like “cap and trade” that had no chance of becoming law. One term later, Senate Democrats are poised to do the same for a stimulus and tax plan that has no chance of becoming law – but serves up a useful sound bite for a president “running against Congress.”
(Via Instapundit) Frankly, Senate Democrats might as well line up behind Obama’s plan: it’s not like doing otherwise will save them. Tester, both Nelsons, McCaskill, and Manchin are in serious trouble this cycle. Heck, Casey, Stabenow, and Brown of Ohio aren’t exactly sitting pretty right now, either? And that’s not even bringing up the half dozen Democrats who are retiring, thus making most of those seats prime pickup territory. Under the circumstances, well, show some party loyalty. Maybe it’ll get you a nice lobbying job in 2013.
Or not. Either way, to dispute the Hill story title: Tester isn’t the canary. The canaries were Jimmy Webb of Virginia and Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, both of whom have already looked at the map of 2012 and decided that it just wasn’t worth the aggravation…
Moe Lane
#rsrh I have a single word response to this article.
“If.”
RS Gathering 2011: Don Stenberg (R CAND, NE-SEN PRIMARY).
This is, unfortunately, a bit late: there were some problems with this and another video, which have seen been resolved. At any rate, Don was one of our speakers at the Gathering – he’s hoping to defeat the other pseudo-moderate Democratic Senator named Nelson in the US Senate – and Don took a few moments to talk with us the night before:
Don’s site is here.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
Marco Rubio and my shameless gloating.
My buddy Aaron covered this Rubio speech over at RedState: but, dammit, I’m going to gloat now.
I gloat. I gloat. We at RedState were early supporters of Marco Rubio – he even spoke at the first Gathering – and while Rubio clearly earned his Senate seat via his own merits it was still our pleasure to give him whatever humble assistance that we could. And the best part is seeing him effortlessly drop-kick doddering relics like Kerry over the horizon. I mean, really: Kerry’s supposed to be one of their elites?
Pathetic.
Moe Lane
20 Democrats Lie about supporting balanced budgets.
The Club for Growth has put out this video showing twenty sitting Democrats and their past ‘support’ of a balanced budget amendment (H/T: Instapundit).
‘Support’ is in scare quotes because it’s all a lie, of course: one of the people in that video is Harry Reid, who is currently screaming about the (popular. Among adults, even) CCB bill because… Continue reading 20 Democrats Lie about supporting balanced budgets.
The DSCC Limited Resources Map.
Consider this map (via Politico) showing what the DSCC calls a “Limited Resource Plan” for the 2012 elections:
…which is, of course, being waved around by the DSCC for the purpose of convincing wary Democratic donors that donating money in 2012 to the group that lost seven* Senate seats and struck out on four prime pickups** in 2010 is a good idea. This did not sit well with the Ben Nelson campaign in Nebraska, which (nervously) pointed out that taking this map seriously suggests that DOOM was coming not only to Nebraska, but Virginia and New Mexico as well.
Richard Mourdock’s valuable life lesson.
Do not let your campaign manager assault* a blogger.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21GicLuaBdU&feature=player_embedded
Richard Mourdock (R) will be apologizing for this event (more details about the incident here) which took place after Right-blogger rebelpundit came up to the Indiana Senate candidate and started asking him some fairly direct questions about Mourdock’s willingness/reluctance to identify with the Tea Party. The actual triggering moment was when rebelpundit asked a Fair Tax question, apparently; it was then that campaign manager Jim Holdren took a slap at the camera and called the blogger a tracker.
OK, this is important. Let us say that rebelpundit was in fact a tracker – which is to say, that he was a guy with a camera whose job it was to make someone from the Other Side look bad by getting some embarrassing video footage. Guess what? If that had been true, then Mission Freaking Accomplished: and directly because of Holdren’s actions. If you are an activist and you see a tracker, feel free to crack wise at them. Feel free to ask them who they are, over and over again. Feel free to get one of those pointing signs saying ‘FAKE’ and assign someone to follow him around. But do not threaten and do not touch. That it happened here demonstrates a lack of training that is in some ways more worrisome than the assault itself.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
#rsrh QotD, Too-Public Pragmatist? edition.
Not that I intend to get sucked into the FL-SEN primary quite just yet, but this line from Ace about Florida primary candidate Adam Hasner made me laugh out loud:
I am completely against choosing political candidates based on irrational, tribalistic ethnic appeal, in all circumstances and based upon sacred principle.
Unless it works in our favor. In which case… okay.
Particularly since normally we’d be talking about going a little bit incremental, given that it’s a Democratic-held seat and all that. But that’s the thing about getting a couple of wins; it makes you hungry for more.
Moe Lane
#rsrh Run, Grayson! Run!
Only… don’t run for the House, OK? Your talents would be wasted in the House. Senate! You want to run for Florida Senate! Sure, there’s a sitting Democrat there right now, but your allies among the netroots would line up to throw money at your candidacy against Bill Nelson*. It would be a glorious sight. GLORIOUS!
I won’t beg – I suspect that you enjoy that sort of thing far too much – but I will say this. This is your destiny.
Your destiny.
Via Hot Air Headlines.
*Admittedly, about a quarter of them would be throwing money at you because they thought that they were throwing money at a primary challenge to Ben Nelson of Nebraska, another quarter of them would contribute thinking that they were funding a primary challenge to Ben Nelson in Florida, and a third quarter of them would donate because they thought that you were running in the Nebraska primary against Bill Nelson – but, hey! The money doesn’t decrease in value just because it used to be held by idiots, am I right?