In challenging times like ours, it is important to step back and look at the big picture. In the Senate we wrestle with painful choices to balance the state budget. Some factors affecting the budget are outside of our control, some we can control, and others fall somewhere in-between. While most legislative work addresses things we have direct control over, we should at least understand other factors influencing the resources available.
My campaign manager recently drafted a letter to discuss the electability of my candidacy. Recently, we had a strong showing at the gubernatorial caucuses, stunning the pundits who said we didn't have a chance.
As the Chief Author of the Minnesota Health Plan, I've helped organize over 70 signers onto the bill, including several of my opponents in this primary race. If I have the opportunity to serve as Minnesota's next Governor, I will push for real changes. That is my promise to you. We will see real change!
I look forward to hearing any questions, comments or concerns relating to the electability of my candidacy and addressing them directly.
Below the fold for all the details (and bring some eyewash) and hey go check out the 2010 Race Tracker Wiki over at Open Congress for all your House, Senate and Gubernatorial needs.
Also keep an eye out for the great series on Democratic House Candidates by Adam T
(Cross posted at Daily Kos, MyDD and Swing State Project)
Below the fold for all the details and hey go check out the 2010 Race Tracker Wiki over at Open Congress for all your House, Senate and Gubernatorial needs.
Also keep an eye out for the great series on Democratic House Candidates by Adam T
(Cross posted at Daily Kos, MyDD and Swing State Project)
Kansas Democrats are on their way to presenting the strongest slate of candidates in years with respected businessman Tom Wiggans' announcement that he will run for Governor. Wiggans, a native Kansan, will run against career politician, and well known right-wing Republican, Sam Brownback.
From his bio:
Tom is committed to applying his vast business experience to Kansas state government as our next Governor. By utilizing his common sense business practices to bring people together and solve problems, Tom will work with both Democrats and Republicans to pull our state out of the economic recession, ensure we have a stable state budget, and create 21st century jobs for our future.
The latest poll of Nevada residents by MasonDixon/Las Vegas Journal-Review shows Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to be very unpopular:
Favorable/Unfavorable:
Harry Reid: 38/50
Sue Lowden (R): 31/15
D.Tarkanian (R): 30/11
General Election:
Reid: 39; Lowden: 49
Reid: 43; Tarkanian: 48
When an incumbent is around 50-54% in a poll a year away they are considered vulnerable. Reid isn't even close to 50% in this poll or in this poll from Rasmussen in September. Reid is going to lose without a game-changing event.
Part of Reid's problem, aside from his own lack of leadership ability, is the state of Nevada's economy. It's very bad. Perhaps Reid thinks the game-changing event will be an improving economy is 2010. But it's not likely that citizens will notice much improvement in the next 12 months and, even if they do, they may have soured on Reid too much for him to recover. When progressives in Congress are trying to pass measures to help average citizens it doesn't look good to keep saying "We can't do that, we don't have the votes."
Reid has one chance to reinvigorate his chances which I discuss inside.
Update for Andrew Davey (see comments): You say the polls are lying and you also say Harry Reid always polls badly before ultimately winning. Can you back that up with some data? Here is what I found. First, the two polls I linked to are by MasonDixon (for Las Vegas Journal-Review) and Rasmussen. According to Nate Silver's analysis of 30+ polling companies, they are both in the top 7 for accuracy. I don't think the polls are lying. Second, a poll commissioned by the Journal-Review 8 months prior to the 2004 election found that Reid would easily beat his GOP opponent with 61% support in the poll. Guess what? Reid ultimately won with 61% of the vote. That result would seem to refute both your claim that the paper's polls are always biased for the GOP and that Reid is always polling badly before ultimately winning on election day.
Below the fold for all the details (and bring some eyewash) and hey go check out the shiny new 2010 Race Tracker Wiki over at Open Congress for all your House, Senate and Gubernatorial needs.
Also keep an eye out for the great series on Democratic House Candidates by Adam T
(Cross posted at Daily Kos, MyDD and Swing State Project)
Yesterday I took a look at our efforts to recruit House candidates for 2010. This time it is the Republicans.
Below the fold for all the details (and bring some eyewash) and hey go check out the shiny new 2010 Race Tracker Wiki over at Open Congress for all your House, Senate and Gubernatorial needs.
(Cross posted at Daily Kos, MyDD and Swing State Project)
Well, it seems the Republicans have decided their electoral troubles all came down to that "macaca" video of George Allen. McClatchy is reporting that the NRCC has dispatched numerous Republican operatives to begin tracking key Democratic congressional targets:
The National Republican Congressional Committee is sending out video "trackers" to ask provocative questions of Democratic members of Congress. The trackers, who are congressional committee staffers, were earlier reported by Congress Daily, a specialty publication distributed largely on Capitol Hill.
It's depressing to think - after having just lost an expensive and exhausting campaign - that repealing Proposition 8 could mean going back to the ballot. It is unfair and unjust that a slim majority of California voters took a fundamental right away from a minority, jeopardizing equal protection. But the state Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the City Attorney's lawsuit yesterday, and the signs were very discouraging. Justice Joyce Kennard (who last year voted to grant marriage equality) was hostile to the case against Prop 8, and Chief Justice Ron George was skeptical. Not that there isn't any hope: perhaps the extreme arguments made by Prop 8 lawyer Kenneth Starr will inadvertently sway the Court into recognizing the measure's dangerous effects. But no one should expect the Court to repeal Prop 8. Activists must get ready for a 2010 proposition campaign as the next available remedy, however deficient a political solution that would be. We must learn from the colossal mistakes of the past campaign, and a new generation of activists will make it happen.
"The Marching Morons" by C.M. Kornbluth was one of the best science fiction stories written in the 1950's, and instrumental in making me a science fiction fan for life. I've had it on my bookshelf for close to 30 years now, and occasionally pull it out to re-read.
It is, at one and the same time, tragic, comic, loathsome, prescient, and just about any other adjective that you might care to come up with.
Listening to the Republicans "plans" for the future, Michael Steele's incomprehensible opposition to the stimulus plan on "This Week," John Thain and the rest of Wall Streets "Masters of the Universe," brought the phrase to mind, and as I began to ruminate on it, I was reminded of just why I love that old story so much.
That, and one of the companion stories in "The Science Fiction Hall of Fame," Frederick Pohl's "The Midas Plague," speak from out of the past to offer us a bleak, ironic view of a future which has, in large part, come to pass.
