Posted on 03/01/2008 5:45:17 AM PST by Clintonfatigued
So Gordon Smith, who has been elected and reelected by fairly comfortable margins, will lose in OR because the state is too liberal (only 47.19% for Bush), but SD (only 38.44% for Kerry) isn’t too conservative for Tim Johnson, who was reelected by only a couple of hundred (illegal) votes in 2002?
And Colorado is trending away from us, despite giving the GOP presidential candidates 53.06% in 1988 (below Bush’s national average), 35.87% in 1992 (again below Bush’s national average), 45.805 in 1996 (above Dole’s national average), 50.75% in 2000 (above Bush’s national average) and 51.69% in 2004 (again above Bush’s national average)? The GOP had a terrible 2006 in Colorado, but that was mainly because the GOP had a terrible 2006 in just about every state. I think that Colorado is a competitive state that leans GOP and which likely will vote for McCain over Obama or Hillary by a larger percentage than it voted for Bush over Kerry. In an open seat race between a liberal Democrat such as Udall and a conservative Republican such as Schaffer, my money is on the conservative Republican.
If 2008 is a repeat of 2006, then you’re right and we’ll lose all of the states that you mentioned, but I see no reason to believe that it will be another 2006. If I had to predict right now, I would guess that only two or three of VA, NM, CO, NH, MN, AK and OR will go Democrat (I listed them in order of Dem odds), and that only one or two of LA, SD, IA and NJ will go Republican. That would be a net pickup of between 0 and 2 seats for the Democrats.
If we all believe that we will lose, then we will lose. It’s one of the main reasons why we lost so big in 2006, when conservatives “stayed home in droves.”
And Udall, while liberal, has tremendous name recognition in the West. Tim Johnson is a shoe-in, I think because of nothing to do with politics. He'll have the sympathy factor. Smith is probably your strongest case, but OR is also trending more liberal. We'll see.
Who’s running in Iowa that could win? Is Steve King getting in?
I don’t know if King will get in, but if he does I think he could win. Not sure about other candidates-—I always thought that Nussle could defeat Harkin, but given his big loss in the 2006 gubernatorial race I’m not so sure anymore.
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