The countdown is starting for the Republicans to convince Dan Maes to drop out of the race for Colorado's Governor. Ballots for November's election will start to be printed next week and at that point it will be too late.
Yesterday's revelations that Maes lied about being an undercover agent for the FBI may well sink his candidacy. People that endorsed him are now backing away.
Hank Brown, the former U.S. senator and former University of Colorado president, on Wednesday said he is no longer backing GOP gubernatorial hopeful Dan Maes and is "looking around" for a new candidate.
Additionally, part of Maes' grassroots base, the 9.12 Project Colorado Coalition, has requested an in-person meeting with Maes before the end of the week to discuss concerns about how he's running his campaign, according to group leader Lu Busse.
Things will need to happen pretty fast for Maes to drop out. If you read yesterday's post you'll know that his wife won't let him.
“Dan has been approached by many “political insiders” (let me clarify, this is not GOP party representatives) who have asked my husband to drop out of the race,” she wrote. “WHY? I believe they are afraid of him because he’s the outsider. I believe they are afraid because he can’t be controlled by them. When did politics become this way?!?! Let me tell you this: I WILL NOT ALLOW DAN TO DROP OUT OF THIS RACE!”
Stay tuned... it may be an interesting 48 hours in Colorado. If Maes and then Tancredo do drop out for another candidate before Saturday, the streak of very good days for John Hickenlooper may end.
KSTP has great video of Tim Kaine talking about Minneapolis' bid for the 2012 Democratic National Convention (unfortunately I can't embed it).
One highlight from the video is Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak getting a dig in on the other bid cities. He said "I will not mention that the only thing standing between Barack Obama's second exception speech and an unfortunate pool of sweat is Minnesota's great climate."
When asked about the possibility of the Metrodome being demolished for a new Vikings stadium he said there are other venues that are part of the mix and that there are a lot of different venue possibilities.
Kaine also said that the winner of the bid may come down to which state the Democrats need to win the most (There's still a chance Cleveland!).
Welcome to the latest edition of the 2010 DemConWatch Senate Forecast, a summary of the best Senate forecasts in an easy overview table.
Senate Forecast: 54.6 (-4.4), down from July's 55.2. (See the latest House Forecast here). The Senate Forecast is an average of the projections of the Democratic held seats in the 2011 Senate. (We count Sanders and Lieberman as Democrats in the Senate Forecast). And things just remain ugly.
And the forecasts based mostly or solely on polls, Daily Kos and 538, look the worse.
The Senate Projection for each source gives Democrats 1.0 seats in a state that is projected Solid/Likely (D) for the Democrat (or seats that are not up for reelection this cycle), 0.8 seats for a Democrat-Lean (DL), 0.5 seats for a a Tossup (T), 0.2 seats for a Republican-Lean (RL), and obviously 0 seats for a solid/likely (R) Republican seat or a Republican seat not up for reelection this cycle.
A little housekeeping: Chris Bowers has moved his forecasts from Open Left to Daily Kos, so they are now so shown. Also, we are now using the actual race-by-race forecasts from Daily Kos and 538, and converting them into categories. 35-65% is a T, and becomes 0.5; and 11-34% or 66-89% is a Lean, and becomes .2 or .8 as appropriate. But I personally think their methodologies significantly underestimates the chances of someone behind 4-6 points in a poll to win.
The Senate seats are sorted by the likelihood of the seat being won by a Democrat, so the most solid Democratic seats are at top, the most solid Republican seats are at the bottom, and the Tossups are in the middle. Rankings are sorted with the most favorable to the Democrats on the left.
Listening to the pundits, you may think that there is a huge movement against the Democratic Party, but when you look at the incumbents who lost primaries, it turns out to be something different indeed. Look at the list:
Senate incumbents who lost primaries:
Arlen Specter (D, previous R)
Bob Bennett (R)
Lisa Murkowski (R)
Challenged incumbent Senators who won primaries:
Blanche Lincoln (D)
Michael Bennet (D)
David Vitter (R)
Further teabag challenge:
Mike Castle (R)
House incumbents who lost primaries:
Bob Inglis (R)
Alan Mollohan (D)
Parker Griffith (R)
Carolyn Kilpatrick (D)
Notice a pattern?
The overwhelming majority of losers were Republicans challenged from the right. When you look at the House incumbents who lost, Mollohan had massive ethics problems and a history of ignoring his constituency. Kilpatrick is the mother of the currently incarcerated ex-mayor of Detroit. Those challenges, and the one from Adam Clayton Powell IV against Charlie Rangel are less philosophical and more, um, personal.
Arlen Specter's challenge also had less to do with philosophy and more to do with being a Republican who switched parties for an attempt at personal gain, and Democratic voters just not buying into it.
The MSM would have you believe that all the primary challenges and the polling for November relates to an electorate pissed as all get out against Obama and incumbent Democrats. They say that we could lose 60 seats in the House, and potentially the Senate. And while I agree that it's certainly possible, I see something else.
I see an activist Republican electorate completely co-opted by the teabaggers. And yes, I consider them sheeple, as well as intellectually limited and morally bankrupt. I also see a progressive Democratic electorate that has decided to stay home. Not working, not donating money, and possibly not voting in November.
All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to stay silent.
And so again, if we lose in November - they didn't win, we stayed home.
Stories about Cleveland's bid to host the 2012 Democratic National Convention are few and far between. We never found out when their DNC visit was. So anytime I see a story that mention Cleveland and 2012 Convention in the same paragraph I'm going to post it.
Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern says Cleveland has a "great chance" to beat out three competing cities for the 2012 Democratic convention.
"We've got a great arena and we've got a great rebirth going on... We've got a great chance," he told WKYC's Tom Beres.
What does President Obama think about Cleveland as a city to launch his bid for a second term.
Redfern says, "The President indicated to me and the Democratic National Chairman has indicated to me that Cleveland would be a great choice and especially the chairman has indicated to me he would like Ohio if it's at all possible."
Redfern predictably argues Ohio is the most important of the states being considered.
"The electoral importance of this state cannot be put in words properly. We can lose North Carolina, we can lose Missouri, we can lose Minnesota but you can't lose Ohio," Redfern said. - WKYC
Colorado Republican Gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes is known for his UN bike conspiracy theory and his campaign finance problems. Now you can add resume fluffer.
Republican gubernatorial nominee Dan Maes on Tuesday backed away from a claim that, as a police officer 25 years ago, he worked "undercover" with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.
Maes previously said he was fired as a police officer in Liberal, Kan., after working undercover with the KBI in a gambling and drug probe.
A statement he wrote on his campaign website that was later removed said: "At one point in my 2 years there I was place (sic) undercover by the Kansas Bureau of Investigations (sic) to gather information inside a bookmaking ring that was also allegedly selling drugs. I got too close to some significant people in the community who were involved in these activities and abruptly was dismissed from my position. I was blindsided and stunned to say the least."
Maes was asked about the statement that he was placed undercover after law enforcement sources in Kansas disputed the claim in interviews with The Denver Post. - Denver Post
I hate to see anything too bad about Maes as he's the reason Tancredo is in the race.
Despite the trend lines, Tancredo thinks he can win, and he thinks Tea Partiers have been "flim-flammed" by Maes. When Tancredo told Tea Partiers last year not to form a third party and to work with Republicans -- only to later challenge a Republican by joining a third-party himself, and anger members of his Tea Party base -- Tancredo said that at the time, "I was hoping that there was a good reason to get behind a single candidate."
But with Maes as the nominee, that's just not the case, Tancredo said.
"Mr. Maes is a gifted salesman, that is his absolute best suit," Tancredo said. "There was a lot of snake oil salesmanship going on here."
"We ended up with Dan, and frankly I wish that there was somebody else in that position," he said. "I'd give anything to have a different scenario play out here." - TPM
The only way Tanc is going to drop out is if Maes does. According to Maes' wife... she won't let him:
“Dan has been approached by many “political insiders” (let me clarify, this is not GOP party representatives) who have asked my husband to drop out of the race,” she wrote. “WHY? I believe they are afraid of him because he’s the outsider. I believe they are afraid because he can’t be controlled by them. When did politics become this way?!?! Let me tell you this: I WILL NOT ALLOW DAN TO DROP OUT OF THIS RACE!”
And in case you're wondering what the polling looks like:
Did you notice anything different last night when President Obama spoke from the Oval Office? Yup, it looks quite different from how it was when he moved in. About the only remaining item is the desk, called the Resolute, used by every president since Rutherford B. Hayes, except LBJ, Nixon and Ford.
In case a teabagger asks you, none of this was done at taxpayer expense. The monies came from the White House Historical Society via contributions from the Inaugural Committee.
Nor was it Obama's choice to actually make any changes to the Oval Office. After arriving to his new office, his concerns were working on changes to the country, not his office. He considered that quite secondary.
There are five quotations embroidered into the edge of the new rug. They are:
“Government of the People, By the People, For the People” – President Abraham Lincoln
“The Welfare of Each of Us Is Dependent Fundamentally Upon the Welfare of All of Us” – President Theodore Roosevelt
“The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself” – President Franklin D. Roosevelt
“No Problem of Human Destiny Is Beyond Human Beings” – President John F. Kennedy
“The Arc of the Moral Universe Is Long, But It Bends Towards Justice” – Martin Luther King Jr.
If you missed the speech, both text and video are after the jump.
Murkowski has cut the lead to 1210, with exactly 9000 votes added to the total.
Vote counting will continue until around 10:00 Eastern.
Update: They were expected to count around 15000 votes today, with another 10000 votes to be counted in the future. So Murkowski needs to cut Miller's original lead by 60% to stay on track, or to get it down to 700 votes or so. This may be over by the end of the day.
Update 9:10 PM: Miller now up 52360-50891, the lead growing to 1489 votes, 10865 votes counted today.
Update 10 PM: Murkowski speaking shortly, rumors are that she will concede.
Update 10:20: Murkowski concedes. She becomes the 3rd Senator (Specter, Bennett) to lose a primary this year.
Last night, I saw Harry Shearer's documentary The Big Uneasy. It told the story of Katrina from the point of view of the non-Corps of Engineers researchers who evaluated the human causes of Katrina. And the point of the documentary was that Katrina was NOTa natural disaster, but a completely man-made one that would have been much more mild had the Corps not messed around with the Mississippi River and greatly damaging the ecosystem of the wetland. This information has been around for several years, but it was an interesting packaging of it. My takeaway: the next time Robert Gates decides to cut budgets, he should start with the Corps of Engineers. It turns out that this is the only government entity where virtually 100% of the projects are earmarks. And the Corps, as many of us have long known, surpassed their own level of the Peter Principle 100 times over several decades ago.
There are no primaries today. Damn. The next good primary day will be 14 September. Both Guam and the Virgin Islands hold their primaries on Saturdays between now and then, but well...On the 14th, the states will be Delaware, DC, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. Closer to the election, I'll have a rundown on the races, including the teabag challenge to Mike Castle. But I can tell you going in that my pick fave race of the night will be the NY 15th Democratic primary. (Yes, you should know, but if you don't: Rangel v Powell.)
Tonight President Obama will be making his second Oval Office address on the ceasing of the combat mission in Iraq. It will be at 8 pm eastern. Getting the troops out was a campaign promise: a really big one. Some people feel that he made this promise a reality, others believe that it doesn't count since there are still 50,000 troops there. What's your take?
On 6 October 2010, the Supremes will hear the case of Snyder v Phelps. The full background of documents is here. Briefly, in 2006, Albert Snyder and his family buried son Matthew, a Marine who had been killed in Iraq. The funeral was protested, loudly, by the Phelps Family Organization, a "church" comprised of about 60 members, mostly Phelpses. Albert Snyder sued, and was awarded $5 million. The judgment was reversed, and is now headed to SCOTUS.
48 of 50 state's attorneys general (all but Maine, Virginia and DC) have filed an amicus brief on behalf of Snyder, along with 42 Senators (of both parties), and many others. The ACLU and a few others have filed briefs supporting the right of the Phelpses to protest, no matter how heinous the speech. And no one except the Phelpses see their actual words, yelling and signage as anything other than hate-mongering.
The issues:
Whether the prohibition of awarding damages to public figures to compensate for the intentional infliction of emotional distress, under the Supreme Court’s First Amendment precedents, applies to a case involving two private persons regarding a private matter.
Whether the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment trumps its freedom of religion and peaceful assembly.
Whether an individual attending a family member’s funeral constitutes a “captive audience” who is entitled to state protection from unwanted communication.
I find myself somewhat conflicted here. My heart says that no matter how one feels about war, soldiers follow orders, wherever they lead, and giving one's life for one's country is the ultimate act of sacrifice. As someone who has stood graveside wanting to jump in after the person I loved, I believe that personal grief should be respected, no matter what the cause of death. Loss is loss. Grief is grief. And losing a child is the single worst grief of all. Still, a tiny part of me feels that objectionable speech is protected. A really, tiny part. Maybe 5 cells.
I don't know what the Supremes will do. I hope that they are able to carve a spot out of the First Amendment, like they did with child pornography. The "assembly" protected by the First Amendment is that of "peaceably" assembling. It's not just the words here, the speech, it's also that they assembled, and while it doesn't appear to be part of the court case, screaming at grieving people does not seem so "peaceably" to me.
On his first gubernatorial run, he didn't have the money to stay in hotels, so he stayed in people's houses. After being elected to his first term, he had the money, but continued to stay with constituents because he liked it, liked hearing what people had to say, and there were always a plethora of invitations, thus indicating his constituents liked it too.
He considers himself a public service employee.
He's smart (Princeton), has a thick CV prior to becoming governor, he's moderate, and people who've met him find him likable. He's also a fitness buff, running or swimming daily. In his 60's. He even wants a temporary halt to the discussion on social issues so the country can solve the larger financial issues.
In his first term as governor, he introduced merit pay for government employees, and performance metrics for the state agencies themselves. He cut the state workforce, but not everywhere: he increased the number of caseworkers to cut the ratio for those who served children in need. He made mistakes, and went back and fixed them. In his first term, he took a $200 million deficit and turned it into a $1.3 billion surplus. (Which helped, as this year, the state is still in the black. Next year will be problematic, but likely solvable.)
He won his first gubernatorial election with 53%, and his second, current, term with 58%, in a state that the other party's candidate for President won in 2008.
He has said that he is considering a presidential run in 2012.
Hypothetically, if such a candidate were up for election, in a primary or a general, notwithstanding who else is running, would you consider such a candidate?
The short answer is yes, but it's not going to be pretty.
Nate Silver says there is an 80% chance the Democrats hold 50 seats (a majority with Joe Biden as tie-breaker) based on a comparison of 2010 to the last six election cycles. In his model, we hold 52 or 53 seats.
Is he right? If so, it's better than a while back when it looked like we were going to lose states (like Nevada and Florida) in which we now have a fighting chance. Still, I have my disagreements with Nate. He and I use slightly different ways of calling races. Here at DCW, we look at D, DL, T, RL and R. Nate uses a probability to indicate whether the incumbent party will lose that seat.
California: Nate has this at a 41% chance that Boxer will lose, which is probably toss-up or DL. I have it as strong Democratic, as I think that in the end, Fiorina will be shown for what she is, and Boxer will prevail.
Colorado: Nate has this at a 77% loss-chance, and I have it as DL. I don't see Bennet winning so much as I see Buck losing. This is a race that the DSCC and DNC have, and will, poured a lot of resources into, and I believe that will make a large difference in the end.
Florida: While Nate sees this as a pure toss-up (48%), I see this as a Democratic win. And I say that whether Meek or Crist wins the race. If Charlie wins, he'll have to pick a side, and so long as we hold the chamber (and we will), he'll caucus with us because we'll make him a better offer than the IIE, including the committee assignments he wants.
Indiana: Nate sees this a a pure Republican pick-up, and I still view it as a toss-up.
Kentucky: Once again, Nate is seeing a Republican hold, and I believe we have a chance here, citing it as a toss-up. There is a lot of negative dirt on Paul, and this may well be a state with an October surprise.
Missouri: Nate has given up on Robin Carnahan (9%). I have this as a lean, because she might actually pull her campaign together. It doesn't matter as it would be a pick-up not a loss, but still...
New Hampshire: Nate sees a middling chance that Hodes can pull it out, but I believe that the DSCC and DNC will end up pumping a lot of money into this race, and Ayotte may well be too far right for most of the Granite State.
Nevada: Nate has Harry at a 59% chance of losing. I see him winning.
Pennsylvania: Nate sees Sesak losing (88%). I just don't see that. I see the ads coming on the TV in droves from all the candidates, and they're nasty. There are too many people who poll at not knowing enough about either candidate, and thus high undecideds. Once people hear about how Pat Toomey wrote the derivatives legislation while a Congressman, they tend to hate him.
So, my number? I see us with a minimum of 55 seats, with an additional 7 toss-ups. We obviously hold the 40 Class 1 and 2 seats not up for election, white the IIE only has 23. Of the remaining 37, I believe we split 15/15 with the other side.
I'm always glad to leave Philadelphia. From any geographic point in the city, I know the quickest way to the nearest border, and usually two or three alternates in case of traffic. There are a few things I do love about the city, like the Constitution Center, Whole Foods and Harry's on South Street, and a few delightful restaurants. I am also happy to use the airport. But mostly, I consider Philadelphia a second rate city, with little going for it besides the remnants of an auspicious history.
And now there is another reason: if I move into Philadelphia (there's a better chance I'd stick pins in my eyes) I would get to pay a tax for blogging. No joke. It's actually a "business privilege tax" which is now going to be applied to any bloggers who make ANY money on blogging.
Trust me, it's rare to get rich on blogging. If your blog runs ads, you might make a few dollars. But not as much as the tax, which is $50/year, or $300/lifetime. And in real terms, it won't get paid since the only way Philadelphia has to track down bloggers is to use IRS records, meaning bloggers who earned more than $400/year from a single source on a 1099.
The problem is not with taxes per se, I'm a supporter of local taxes. I like paying for schools and roads and police and streetlights. I believe that it makes sense to have things like property taxes, and progressive income taxes and use taxes. But blogging is writing. It uses no municipal services. It is, in most cases, no different than writing a letter or an email or using social media. Blogging is a First Amendment right. And there should be no tax on speaking, or writing, one's mind.
It's shameful. And be warned: if you've got a lemonade stand, or are planning a garage sale, you're in their sights, too.
Did you notice anything different last night when President Obama spoke from the Oval Office? Yup, it looks quite different from how it was when he moved in. About the only remaining item is the desk, called the Resolute, used by every president since Rutherford B. Hayes, except LBJ, Nixon and Ford. 
On 6 October 2010, the Supremes will hear the case of Snyder v Phelps. The full background of documents is 
The short answer is yes, but it's not going to be pretty. 
