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Joementum posted:You can probably argue some of the leans and tossup picks, but there's not a ton of pickup opportunities for the Democrats outside of those. IA is a purple state, but Grassly is hugely popular in the state, which is why I put it as a solid hold for him. Same with Thune in SD, which is not as purple as IA. Kentucky and Florida will be interesting, depending on what Rand and Rubio decide to do extracurricularly that year, but aren't easy targets for the Democrats either way. I genuinely think the Democrats can nab Rand's senate seat if he is not on the ballot. The state Democratic party has a significantly stronger bench than the state GoP, and Obama-era Democratic policies are popular here (we just don't vote that way in the nationals due to our horrific racism, which should be less of a factor once Hillary eclipses the President). They would have to run a better campaign than Grimes did in 2014, but it can be done. We also have at least one Republican-held House seat (the 6th, which contains Lexington, Frankfort, and a blue-leaning swathe of Appalachia along with the heavily red-leaning outer Bluegrass) that is ripe for picking off. PupsOfWar has issued a correction as of 16:56 on Nov 10, 2014 |
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Nov 10, 2014 16:50
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Johnny Cache Hit posted:Who will we trot out, though? Beshear? I think the last poll I saw showed him with an advantage over Thomas Massie - who is quite the Tea Party darling. Conway has his eyes on Frankfort. Who else does that leave? Mayor Jerry? Greg Stumbo? I worry the bench may be deep but I'm not sure they stack up well against Massie. I was mostly thinking of Beshear, yeah, since that is such a popular rumor. He's probably the only guy who could give Rand a good fight if he is running to retain the seat. I do worry about his age, though. He could decline to run for age/health reasons and, even if he did take the seat, we would probably only get a couple of terms out of him. Grimes probably isn't an option. This past election boosted her name-recognition but did so in a bad way, and she might have difficulty reeling in national-level funding and support after the extravagant '14 campaign was so blatantly squandered. I don't know that she wil challenge Conway in the gubernatorial primary either, even though that has been heavily rumored for a while now. Might have a good shot at that Congressional seat, though, being a Lexington gal. I would say Conway, but he is liable to be exhausted (personally, financially and reputationally) if he whiffs on the Governorship. Abramson is almost as old as Beshear and does not seem to have that kind of ambition. But I think Overly or Atkins could take a decent swing at it, and they could always try to dust off Mongiardo. I'm curious how Conway's background will affect his fortunes in the gubernatiorial race, given our long tradition of refusing to elect Louisvillian governors. And given that he went to Duke
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Nov 11, 2014 01:35
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evilweasel posted:Pennsylvania is one of the key targets for the 2020 redistricting: in Presidential years Democrats tend to have a bit of an edge, but their seats are 5D/13R. That's a 16-seat swing if they can take Pennsylvania for the redistricting. Ohio is more of a reach but another key target as well. What does the state legislature in Pennsylvania look like?
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Nov 11, 2014 23:58
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One must also consider the different requirements of different elections. Democrats can rely on the coasts and rust-belt cities in the Presidential, but to win the Senate (and to win enough governors' mansions and statehouses to control redistricting and get a decent shot at the House), you've got to be able to win some races in Middle America. You've got to be competitive in the midwest and steal the occasional seat in the South or the Rockies. You can't do that with a slate of doctrinaire liberal progressives. There is some tendency to forget the fact that most of the electorate doesn't pay that much attention to policy and will vote either as a visceral reaction to the status-quo or based on how individual candidates present themselves. Despite what conservative wingnuts want to believe, Reagan didn't win landslide victories because there is some secret ultraconservative majority of Americans who will only show up to vote for a sufficiently doctrinaire candidate. He won because he was charismatic as hell and came along at the right time. Despite what leftists wanted to believe, Obama didn't win because the GoP was permanently consigned to the abyss of demographic irrelevance: he won because he is charismatic as hell and came along at the right time. Iowa, a state of mildly-populist-leaning social conservatives, spent thirty years electing one of America's most reliably liberal legislators, Tom Harkin. There is a long history of liberal DFL candidates winning overwhelmingly white and rural stretches of Minnesota countryside. Things like this happen not because of platforms or voting records, but because the candidates know how to win the personal respect of their constituencies. Wholesomeness and relateability are enormous factors in flyover country elections where folks don't pay much attention to any national policy issues that don't expressly relate to corn. Going rightward isn't the key to winning Middle America, nor is going leftward: the key is doing a better job with candidate recruitment and messaging, and to get marketeers and spin-doctors who know how to appeal to a broader spectrum of voters. I don't mind the Blue Dogs in my state that much. Governor Beshear is a pretty decent liberal by the standards of southern Democrats, meaning that he is a solid fiscal/infrastructural leftist (by american standards), projects a convincing level of indifference about gay marriage, gun control and abortion, and willingly pushes economic protectionism to keep labor on his side. He is popular because he puts a friendly, white, good-ol-boy face on policies that benefit the people of Kentucky, but which the state's rural white majority don't trust when they are presented by I view this type of Democrat as a natural mirror to the socially-liberal, Wall-Street-friendly style represented by the Clintons, Obama and other third-wayers. PupsOfWar has issued a correction as of 13:37 on Feb 23, 2015 |
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Feb 23, 2015 03:15
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Ted Strickland was a fine and briefly popular governor if this were Reconstruction I would come cast a fake vote for him
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Feb 24, 2015 23:41
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Duckbag posted:
To be fair voter registration numbers are effectively meaningless. My county has a 3-to-1 Democratic edge in registration but votes Republican by roughly the opposite margin. It's that way in large swathes of the South. Yeah in places like California most of the registered Ds actually vote D but you probably shouldn't lean on registration to tell you about anything in general.
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Feb 25, 2015 08:08
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Nth Doctor posted:This map really annoys me, mostly because Appalachia is comprised of mostly not the Appalachians. you can make a decent argument for linking appalachia and the ozarks together, as the ozarks were settled from appalachia and are ~kinda similar, culturally. Then you give em western tuckasee to make it contiguous, even though western tuckasee is largely indistinguishable from the white parts of dixieland. I know when I'm in highland arkansas there is a distinct vibe of "hey, these are my people!", though it's not quite all the way there. I don't know why they lumped all of north texas, southern indiana, illinois and ohio in there, though. PupsOfWar has issued a correction as of 18:03 on Feb 28, 2015 |
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Feb 28, 2015 17:59
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CaptainCarrot posted:Yeah, how dare he lose a gubernatorial election in a closely divided state by a point in a massively Republican year! democrats are (perhaps wrongly) optimistic about Rubio's senate seat, given that it's in a presidential year and Rubio doesn't have the momentum he had after 2010. It makes sense they wouldn't want to waste that chance by electing a crusty ex-Republican. If it were a midterm year where they didn't have much chance at unseating Rubio anyway, it would be fine to run the reasonably-safe-choice Crist, lose by a respectable margin and go home without wasting anybody good, but under the circumstances it is okay to agitate for a better candidate
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Mar 12, 2015 23:31
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I can't wait for scott brown to run for the Democratic senate nomination in florida
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Mar 17, 2015 20:07
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De Nomolos posted:Knope (D) vs. Swanson (L) I know people who were surprised and offended when season 7 revealed that Leslie was a Democrat
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Mar 25, 2015 07:20
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Zaleov posted:How could that be a surprise? Her office is covered with mostly Democratic officials (because the Republicans have no women, but still), and she is in love with Diamond Joe. leslie is Good and democrats are Bad
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Mar 26, 2015 00:28
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damnit harry, Strom Up and bolt yourself into that miserable chair til the day you die
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Mar 27, 2015 13:58
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evilweasel posted:Why is the Nevada seat considered a likely Republican pickup - it's a Presidential year and Obama carried it in 2008 and 2012. Is the local bench simply that weak? It's more that Sandoval is very strong and would've stood a good chance at taking the seat even if Reid had run. Without the virtues of incumbency and leadership, they don't have anybody who could put up much of a fight against Sandoval and, even if he doesn't run, will have a hard time in a state that trends R in statewides.
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Mar 27, 2015 14:09
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Joementum posted:Also: Chuck will first have to win re-election in 2016. im zephyr teachout and for senate i endorse my twin brother, gloaming teachout
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Mar 27, 2015 17:33
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FlamingLiberal posted:Isn't Rand Paul also having the same issue with running? I know for sure in that state he can't do both at the same time and I guess it doesn't look like the state is going to change that law like he wanted. The kentucky presidential primary is fairly late and not that important. We'll be well into primary campaigning season by the time Rand has to make up his mind one way or the other, meaning that he will have the information he needs. If he has a genuine shot at the presidential nomination, he can put his name on the KY presidential primary ballot and try to pick up some extra momentum by winning his home state. In this case he could attempt to defend his seat as a write-in candidate, being drastically more well-known and popular than any other republican in the state. If he has no shot at being anything other than a protest candidate, like his father, he will put his name down as a senate candidate and focus on keeping his seat. Alternatively he can get the state GoP to switch to a caucus rather than a primary, which would get around the ballot issue but which they haven't made up their minds about yet. The move has gotten through some of the relevent committees but has not been put to a general vote of the state GoP leadership (there's a central commitee that has to vote on it, separate from the smaller commitees that have approved it already). Another consideration is that the state's gubernatorial elections are off-year and there's one coming up in 2015. Currently there are two obstacles to passing an LBJ law: the democratic stateouse and the democratic governor, who would veto. There's no way to affect composition of the House until the 2016 generals, but, if a republican wins the governors' mansion, Rand might have some hope that the new republican governor could whip up the votes to pass a bill. PupsOfWar has issued a correction as of 01:13 on Mar 30, 2015 |
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Mar 30, 2015 01:06
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every good flordia democrat is black and therefor unelectable at the state level every florida democrat who might be electable at the state level is awful at everything except finding ways to gently caress themselves. it is a Big Problem and will not be solved until lawton chiles returns from his long slumber 'neath the Mountain
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Mar 30, 2015 02:10
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could rubio see a serious primary challenge from republicans outraged at his flirtation with moderate stances?
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Mar 30, 2015 02:58
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Franco Potente posted:
is WV's democratic bench that bad where they couldn't field an at-least-remotely-passable senate candidate outside of ole Joe? like yeah I know it has tilted further to the right over the past decade but I'd think they could wrangle a decent field together out of all the democratic state officials that they've had under the tomblin and manchin administrations. Particularly when the Democratic presidential candidate will be hillary, who should generate less visceral backlash in appalachia than obama did
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Apr 10, 2015 16:01
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computer parts posted:The honorable Senator Tim Tebow. Pretty confident tebow is a Republican. PupsOfWar has issued a correction as of 03:43 on Apr 14, 2015 |
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Apr 14, 2015 03:39
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BI NOW GAY LATER posted:Was about to say this. Though now I am curious to see who we can cajole to run for governor. Joe Manchin IV alternatively see if y'all can whip up an Earl Tomblin III
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Apr 19, 2015 19:48
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BI NOW GAY LATER posted:JM4 isn't very popular within the political machinery. I was joking I didn't know yall had another Joe
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Apr 20, 2015 13:52
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I don't expect Jim Gray to oust Rand Paul. Here in Kentucky we're finally catching up to the Reagan-era realignment, with movement conservatism thoroughly flipping a lot of deep-blue constituencies over the past 10-15 years (particularly the past 8). Won't be long until Republican identity is as ingrained and tribal as it is elsewhere in the South. I'm from one of those notorious "80% of residents are registered Democrats, votes 80% Republican in national elections" counties and know people are pretty intractable about it. Still, I'm cool with Gray's candidacy because, while he is not perfect (or, hell, even very good), he is significantly less bad than the last two people we nominated for major elections in the Commonwealth, and can carry the standard credibly. That matters for turnout, which is important down-ballot even if the up-ballot race is hopeless.
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Feb 11, 2016 15:40
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oystertoadfish posted:
I think right now the Kentucky Democratic Party's strategy is to stick their heads in the sand and hope that the Bevin administration self-destructs and takes the state Republican party with it for a while, like what happened with the last Republican governor, Ernie Fletcher. Which, hell, might happen. They've already caved to Bevin and the state Senate on a number of things (most prominently an informed-consent law for abortions), so any hope that they would learn the right lessons from 2015 seems like a non-starter. Mostly they just seem kinda hapless without a popular central figure like Beshear, Patton or Wendell Ford to rally around, which is something the state party has always had but currently lacks. 2015 took out the closest thing* to a next-gen Beshear among elected politicians (former state auditor Adam Edelen), while such a figure is unlikely to arise among the party's donor and operator classes because those guys are all fossils who have not psychologically adapted to life in the modern South. *I know there's a literal next-gen Beshear but he has maybe a fifth of his dad's skill as a campaigner, and is as-yet untested as a governing official.
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Feb 11, 2016 23:03
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oystertoadfish posted:only be guessed at Grimes will probably run the next time governor comes around, presuming Bevin looks vulnerable in 2019. If not, then 2023. She's still in her 30s, has plenty of time. I say she'll run not because it is a good idea for her to do so (she's bad), but because there isn't much else left.
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Feb 12, 2016 18:17
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oystertoadfish posted:
It's complicated. On the one hand I don't have a problem saying that Beshear has a lot more talent and trained ability than Grimes or Conway. More credentialed, too. But on the other hand there some specific circumstances surrounding his rise to the governorship that sometimes go overlooked. The first time he ran for governor, it was against a deeply unpopular and scandal-plagued incumbent, Ernie Fletcher, who had himself benefited from the scandals of the previous Democratic governor, Paul Patton. There was a deep malaise in the electorate, and a broad, bipartisan sense that the state government had gone to the dogs. Beshear had been a big deal in state politics in the 70s and 80s before taking a twenty-year hiatus to work in Biglaw, leaving him untainted by the various scandals of the 90s and aughts. The administrations he was in - particularly that of gov. Martha Layne Collins, under whom he served as lieutenant governor - are still fondly-remembered by both current Democratic voters and former Democratic voters who have defected to the Republicans over the past two decades. The consequences of realignment weren't as clear to voters in the Commonwealth at that time, so among our conservatives there is some sense of that time as the Good Ole Days when the democratic party still represented So I think this allowed Beshear to appear as a sort of King Under the Mountain figure, emerging from the unspoiled past to bring order to an unruly present. I'm not saying he couldn't have won without this context - he is good at what he does, and Ernie Fletcher was a very weak incumbent - but I think this particular context, combined with the presence of an engaging third-party option (Gatewood Galbraith, a charismatic perennial candidate), contributed to the sheer margin of the victory in 2007.  I'd say President Obama not yet being around for the Republicans to use as a boogeyman helped, too, and it undoubtedly did. This is the case throughout the South. But since our incumbent democrats also swept statewide elections in 2011 (post-Obama and post-Tea Party) it's hard to quantify this. PupsOfWar has issued a correction as of 12:11 on Feb 15, 2016 |
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Feb 15, 2016 12:07
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