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I thought he was quoting from Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, from that “death is a natural part of life” spiel Yoda was giving Anakin.

I think they drove Rehberg’s negatives up with controversy involving a boating accident he had a few years back. Evidently, he didn’t fight back hard enough.

MT is one odd duck. It seems like it can’t abide national Democrats but won’t associate its own Democrats with them. Hence why Obama gets 42 percent but Tester and Bullock ran about seven points ahead of him. Primarily, it seems the swing comes in the heavier-populated counties (with the exception of Flathead), while Republicans regularly win the small rural counties.

I find it silly that Dingell has any district at all to run in after all this time. He’s gone from an era where Detriot had multiple districts within the city and could elect white Democrats* to now when Detriot no longer has *one* district wholly in its boundaries and both have mostly black populations. Do his current constituents at all resemble the constituents he represented when he was first elected in 1955?

* Actually, the election of Gary Peters shows a white Democrat could still be elected from a Detriot-based district, but lately I was doubting even the possibility that it could happen.

Encouraging news. Cassidy actually beat a Dem to win his House seat, so he’s had some experience with a competitive race. Plus he’s from the Baton Rouge area, and getting a good showing in that metro area is key to a win. I hope he becomes well known here in metro N.O. He won’t win the city (natch) but he needs big numbers out of suburban Jefferson Parish, which Landrieu actually....*gripes*...won last time.

I was born Galactic Overlord...KNEEL!

Au contraire, mon ami. :D

I’d recommend “The Secret History of Star Wars” for the definitive look at how Lucas really made up the saga as he went along and didn’t have it all planned out, the biggie being that he obviously didn’t intend Vader to be Luke’s father until the second draft of The Empire Strikes Back, which partially explains the age inconsistencies of Anakin and Obi-Wan being older than they should in the original trilogy.

Rehberg’s loss was one big WTF moment, but then again, most of the competitive Senate races that year were WTF moments (seriously, we only flipped Ben Nelson’s open seat? I still am floored by that).

I think Berg also had a bunch of problems like using the franking privilege too much and coming off as an out of touch elitist. If Daines has a more down to earth appeal, he may do better. Then again, Montana isn’t that big population-wise, so perhaps we could pluck someone from the state legislature for the job. (I think Tester was Senate president or something) Or maybe Montana has a Ron Johnson-type somewhere?

The whole Ewok thing was ridiculous, and I was a bit annoyed and puzzled by it as a 9-year old in the theater. Lucas was getting weird and punch-drunk by the end of the trilogy, anyhow, and the Ewoks were a symptom of it. He needed a real director to reign in his excesses (like he had in ESB with Irvin Kershner).

BTW, I recall reading that the Ewoks were supposed to represent the Viet Cong defeating those “oppressive American capitalist-fascist pigs.” Who knew bloodthirsty Commie totalitarian devils were so cute and loveable ?

Yep, Lucas intended to parallel Vietnam by having the primitive (read Vietcong) Ewoks defeat a more "technologically advanced" enemy in the Empire...a metaphor for us. Oh, he also initially based the Emperor on Nixon. Just shows you his politics are about as good as his ability to write romantic dialogue.

It looks like Creigh Deeds is getting screwed by this. Poor guy can’t catch a break. (Heh Heh) Gets beaten for AG, beaten for Guv, and finally may lose his senate seat.

Roemer attempted a comeback to the governor’s mansion in 1995, after four more years of enduring Edwin “The Crook” Edwards over David “The Klansman Crook” Duke. Voters remorse over throwing him out in the open primary ought to have given him an edge. Indeed, he led in the polls for much of the campaign. Then, State Senator Mike Foster switched from Democrat to Republican and took a big chunk of Roemer votes, and Roemer ended up finishing fourth behind Foster, Cleo Fields, and Mary Landrieu. If Roemer couldn’t win in that kind of environment, he’s not gonna now.

The idea of Landry as my senator would be great, but I’m afraid it would be tougher going for him to beat Landrieu. Her skill has been in finding whatever cracks there are in the opposition and using them to cobble together a winning coalition. While I imagine Landry would clean up in Cajun country, I’m afraid his (very) thick Cajun accent won’t go over well in metro Baton Rouge and metro New Orleans. He might come off as too much of a country bumpkin, and we need suburban votes to overcome New Orleans’ mega-margins for Landrieu. What helped Vitter win outright in 2004 was blowing away his Dem opponents in suburban N.O. and B.R.

Rep. Bill Cassidy of the Baton Rouge-area district might be the better bet. He actually beat a Democratic incumbent to win the seat in 2008, and has been elected to the LA legislature prior, so he’s not a greenhorn. Being known in metro B.R., it gives him a solid base to challenge Landrieu. Redistricting also extended his district toward the Gulf Coast, so he’s been able to expand his name-rec a little. I can’t speak to how he would do in the Cajun south or the Protestant north, but SW LA has mightily turned against Obama and if Landrieu wants to tout her deciding vote for Obamacare (as she has said she’d do), Cassidy could easily turn that to his advantage and nationalize the race.

Of course if Jindal was to run, I think he’d be an even better bet to beat Landrieu. I don’t think the door is closed on that possibility just yet.

Hints of a possible Johnson retirement:

http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/sen-tim-johnson-signals-possible-retirement-84640.html

Didn’t they try to portray McDonnell as a fringe kook when his college thesis came up during the campaign? No one says they wouldn’t try to bag Cooch anyway, but who says he couldn’t overcome it? (and Allen, arguably, could have overcome the Macaca thing if not for his bad response to it)

What’s former Gov. Steve Merrill up to these days?

Bolling might not be out of the running yet; some articles I’ve read suggests Bolling might run as an independent. One of his advisors hasn’t shut the door on that possibility.

VA’s shift has definitely troubled me, and the fact that Obama was able to win it a second time was a shocker. There’s the shift in NOVA, but I’ve noticed Republican candidates in recent years tend to run behind in other metro areas when they lose, like the Richmond suburbs, Virginia Beach, and Chesapeake. Even when Romney was running ahead of McCain in rural, small-town counties, I noticed when the results from Chesterfield County (suburban Richmond) came in, Romney wasn’t up from where McCain was four years ago. That told me Romney was likely to lose. Suburban VA as a whole seems more swingy than it used to be.

Cassidy actually does have the distinction of beating an incumbent. In 2008, he beat Don Cazayoux, who won the old LA-06 in a special election over Woody Jenkins.

Landrieu absolutely is vulnerable. Incumbency is valuable, sure. I have to admit that she *could* win another term. However, she has yet to top 52 percent in any of her Senate bids. In 2008, she went up against Dem-turned-GOPer John Kennedy (no relation to JFK). Kennedy wasn’t fully trusted by the GOP base, while Landrieu received some good will following the Katrina aftermath (she won the conservative coastal parishes in the N.O. area this time), and she still only got 52 percent, the same percentage as in 2002 when she faced off against Suzanne Haik Terrell in an ultra-competitive race. It wasn’t that she did better, it was that Kennedy did worse (he got 46 percent as opposed to Terrell’s 48 percent).

A more competent and trusted Republican with the party united behind him (party disunity hurt Terrell) should be able to beat Landrieu. But I’m under no illusions that this will be easy.

I don't believe the anger has subsided at all. I think the GOP just didn't know what to do with it.

I think there's a point there. In 2008, Obama was gold to the Democrats downballot. I think the Dems picked up in the neighborhood of 20 House seats. This time, they may get seven, but that's entirely due to redistricting in California that yielded more marginal seats, some of which were already weakening for us, plus a blatant Dem gerrymander in Illinois that sadly wiped out some good people. But Obama's coal policies pretty much ended the congressional careers of Ben Chandler and Mark Critz and gave Nick Rahall a tougher race this time than in 10. We also went all-GOP in OK and AR. Many races that Dems contested in 08 went untouched this time. Some of our defeats like Canseco and Rivera were due to self-inflicted wounds. And of course, the Senate races were botched due to stupidly run races instead of a Democrat headwind.

We've still got the same people in charge and serving that did when we lost the Congress in 2006. Those folks have got to be replaced with forward-thinking individuals who can inspire the base and reach out to other disaffected persons. Millions didn't bother to show up in this election that might've voted for us had the party done a better job. This was inexcusable. But make no mistake, it was no victory for the left, either. If the numbers are correct at present, it will show Zero did not even get 50% of the vote. That is as sweeping a mandate as Clinton had in 1996, but with a difference... he got a higher % than his first race, Zero went the opposite way. Not since FDR in 1940 and 1944 has an incumbent President received a lower % in their successive election.

And those were FDR's third and fourth terms. No president that got elected and got re-elected did so with a lower popular vote percentage since Andrew Jackson, and he had a major third-party candidate getting 6 percent of the vote.

I don’t think race was on the radar. The hot Iowa races I always heard about was the Boswell-Latham and King-Vilsack matchups.

Then again, Braley nearly lost last time, and some other not-focused-on-much contests like the Barr-Chandler rematch have been rising to the top lately.

The updated results now include Delaware County. I talked about metro Columbus in another thread. This county is north of Franklin and is part of the GOP-leaning suburban “ring” around Columbus (and also part of Kasich’s old congressional district.) Bush got 66 percent there, but dropped to 59 percent for McCain.

With 16,958 ballots requested, Republicans have a 33%-9% lead, for a 25% margin.

There’s no 2008 numbers, but there are some for nearby Licking County, which seems to be slightly more Dem, yet Republican margin has surged from a 0.37% advantage to a 16.44% margin. So far, other Columbus-area counties (Franklin, Union, Pickaway) have also shown big surges in Republican absentee requests, so I assume a similar surge is taking place in Delaware as well. If so, that means GOP turnout in many of these suburbs is going to look more like 2004 or 2010 than 2008.

Now, turning to Lake County, west of Cuyhouga County. Republican margin is up more slightly so far, 7.03% up from 5.72%. Not a big surge, but Lake County seems to be more heavily polarized. In 2004, it went 51%-48% for Bush, while it barely went for Obama by 1,013 votes, so this place barely changed much from 2004, not at all characteristic of much of the rest of the state. So no big surge here, but it doesn’t look like you would.

So far, it looks like Columbus metro is experiencing a big snapback. I suspect Obama ran farther ahead in this area than a Dem candidate usually would, because of higher turnout among blacks and college students, as well as gaining votes among some disaffected suburbanites that were probably affected by the housing bubble bust.

Finally, I see some numbers from Williams County, on the Indiana-Ohio border. This county had a HUGE swing from 2004 to 2008. It gave Bush 65 percent, then plummeted to just 54 percent for McCain. This seems to be historical GOP territory that swings Dem in times of economic distress. It’s currently showing a 35%-11% GOP advantage, for a 24 point margin. These numbers look comparable to other higher GOP margins in the other counties, which means Williams County probably isn’t going to give Obama anything like the 44% he got in 2008.

In sum, the trend continues to be our friend.

Let’s see:

Warren in 04: Difference b/w Bush and Kerry was 41,933.
Hamilton in 04: Difference b/w Bush and Kerry was 22,937.

Together: 64,870 margin for Bush. By contrast, McCain only got a 8,610 margin from the two combined.

So maybe the Romney campaign is aiming for something similar to the Bush margin.

I have no idea what the Romney team/state GOP thinks is their “ideal” Hamilton Co. number, but I’d have to think it’s at least a 50,000 advantage. When you throw in Warren, that should amount to about an 80,000 advantage.

50,000 actually would more than double the 22,937 margin Bush got in 2004. If they thought they could get that high, that would be great.

If you go to this link on David Leip’s website and wave your mouse arrow over the “Swing” button, it shows how far Ohio’s counties have swung Democrat from 2004. As you’ll see, the swing in NW Ohio was the biggest, so a strong GOP return from there will likely mean O is cooked.

http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=2008&fips=39&f=1&off=0&elect=0

Thanks for the links. Some of the absentee counts are very low, but I did find a few that were interesting.

Williams County: Rs up 36%-11% with 1472 ballots requested. That county’s on the Ohio/Indiana border and had one of the steepest dropoffs from Bush to McCain. In 04, it gave 65% to Bush, but in 08, it plunged to just 54% for McCain. This is one of the NW Ohio counties I mentioned earlier. I’m guessing this is historical GOP territory that swings when the economy gets sour, kind of like NE Indiana is.

1,472 ballots for a county that cast 18,396 votes in 08 is nothing to sneeze at. I’m sure more will be coming, but it’s substantial compared to the other absentee numbers we’re seeing.

I’ve also noticed the absentees from Licking County. Bush: 62%, McCain: 57%. This county looks like part of the outer suburban ring of Columbus. Licking has 11,616 requests so far, compared to 29,208 in 08. In 08, Rs had a 0.37% advantage over Ds. Right now, they have a 15.85% advantage over Ds. And there are similar large spikes in Union and Pickaway counties, also part of Columbus metro, where it looks like about a fourth of the 08 absentee totals have come in so far.

This trend would seem to confirm the GOP lead in Franklin County (city of Columbus) so far. I wish the site had the absentees for Franklin in 08, because that would be really telling. I don’t expect Romney to actually carry Franklin (I think only Portman actually won it in 2010 among the GOP statewide winners) but he doesn’t have to. He just has to hold his loss to single digits. (I suspect Obama’s inflated 59% was largely due to the “yuts” from the university and higher black turnout. By contrast, Kerry got 54% and Strickland in 2010 got 53%)

Granted, this could change, but as each day passes, Dems would have to make up an increasing number of the remaining absentees to turn it around, and then they would have to make up a huge number of the voters on Election Day. In other words, Obama would need a huge “hidden vote” to propel him to victory. Given all the anecdotal evidence I’ve been reading of much fewer Obama signs out there, it must be hidden indeed!

I think another way to gauge whether Rs will carry Ohio is look at the cluster of counties (Williams, Defiance, Paulding, Henry, Fulton) in the northwestern part of the state, just west of Toledo. Bush swept that region with over 60 percent of the vote in each county, but McCain took a plunge and finished mostly in the mid 50s, plus he lost nearby Wood County that Bush carried. Actually, that might be the part of the state where GOP erosion was the most dramatic. If it came back our way, that would be a good sign.

Obama can't think he's going to pull a bunch of military votes out of Pensacola, can he? And speaking of that, why not run the ads out of Pensacola? In 2008, the only counties they won in that area were the 3 containing and adjacent to Talahassee. I think they're trying to buck up their base in the area, and if I'm right they have to be thinking they have a very real chance of losing Florida and losing it badly. Maybe they're trying to depress conservatives by making it appear that Obama is everywhere, but if that's the case the same logic applies.

Checking the Escambia County results from 2008 and 2004, Obama did get a sizable jump to 40% from Kerry's 34%, so perhaps he does see something of a swing vote for him there.

What’s your take on Whitman v. Bill Bradley? It seemed she got the nod for guv based on her near-victory then, so it probably wasn’t a surprise that she got nominated. Do you think she came off better then and just got worse later on?

I know one rematch that saw a different result: Shaheen vs. Sununu in 2008 . . . .

Yep. That's why I said most. :)

Actually, that's why I wasn't bullish on Shaheen winning in the end. Actually, Sununu got the upper hand during the oil price spike. Then the housing bubble burst, TARP got passed, and things went downhill for Senate GOP candidates in a big way from there.

It’d be great if Sununu could take the seat back, but I’m still amazed he didn’t pull a Slade Gorton and run for the other Senate seat when it opened, or even his old House seat if he wished. Most rematches I’ve seen rarely result in a change of winner - Boschwitz vs. Wellstone in 90 and 96, for example.

Green County now all in. Barrett won it by 1%. Walker wins it by 2%. So Walker has now even flipped a Barrett county.

I shall commence extreme gloating now. :)

Finally got full precincts from two counties in:

Vilas County has Walker winning with 63.3%. In 2010, he won it with 62.6%.

Door County: Walker 56.8%. 2010, Walker got 50.1%.

Barrett meanwhile hasn’t even gotten to his 2010 totals in Dane County.

Green Lake County:

Walker 72.3% with 37.5% reporting.

In 2010 Walker won it with 64.3%

Don’t know if the county has more Dem vote in it, but I’ll take what I can get.

Milwaukee County does have its share of GOP suburbs. The city is probably still out.

Fond Du Lac County has 44% in, the only county with a lot of vote in, so it’s the only county I can do sort of a comparison with.

Currently, it’s 67% Walker with 44% in. In 2010, Walker won it with 64.3%.

From what I’ve heard, Berg has generated some negative press over using spending a lot of money on franking privileges, hence why the polls don’t show him blowing away Heitkamp.

This was also the election where Jeremiah Denton lost to then-Democrat Richard Shelby. Can’t imagine a Republican losing a Senate race in Alabama today.

From what I read, Reagan actually campaigned strongly for the 1980 GOP freshmen class. Many of their failures seemed to be because of personal style, not ideology, or just poor campaigning.

The sole reason, as you cited, is the Constitution Party’s unfortunate prior paleo/libertarian stance on foreign policy/defense, but I think with Goode’s nomination, it moves it away from that to a more reasonable and sensible stance.

I sure hope so, but from the sound of this statement right here, Goode may have changed his stances at least somewhat to accommodate them. Quote: "Goode says that he regrets his vote for the Patriot Act and now wants it repealed. He also wants to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan." http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2012/04/virgil-goode-speech-on-c-span/

Nope, he’s a good Conservative. Unlike RP, he doesn’t kiss the asses of those who hate us (Mohammadans).

That alone does a lot to redeem the CP in my eyes, which last time went with 9/11 Truther and Ron Paul scyophant Chuck Baldwin (seriously, to this day he continues to write columns about how wonderful Ron Paul is-you'd think the man was a groupie) over a true conservative in Alan Keyes, despite the latter's good will among many conservatives and unimpeachable record. Given that, I'm a bit surprised that the CP went with Goode, as he did support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and to my knowledge was never known as espousing Ron Paul's foreign policy views, although that could have changed. Still, he's a vast improvement.

Happy to see Santorum won my home parish (Jefferson).

Justin Amash needs to go, too.

Is he the Ron Paul acolyte from MI?

Redistricting may have been a factor, but this time she even lost Clermont County, her home base. Ouch.

This reminds me of when former Senator John Breaux was hyped to come back to Louisiana to run for governor. Turned out he spent too much time in D.C. and may not have been eligible. Kerrey at least doesn’t seem to have a legal problem in running, but how he withstands his “I love NY” post-Senate career being splashed on NE airwaves, I don’t know.

Funny, I was glancing at Tennessee Senate elections on David Leip’s site the other day and noticed Lamar!’s 2002 election race. He actually lost a lot of Central and West TN counties to Clement, and only really did great in Eastern TN, Williamson County, and to my surprise, he actually won Memphis’ Shelby County. Given how close Corker’s election turned out to be, and how much better Thompson and Frist did in 1994, it really shows TN will respond better to conservatives than RINOs any day of the week.

This conversation has stoked my curiosity about a couple things, and I’d like to hear your take on them.

You’ve made the point that Gingrich is too unpopular to beat Obama. What would you say to people who constantly beat the drum that Palin was too unpopular and couldn’t win against Obama?

Second, I went back and looked at all the presidents who got elected once and then got re-elected in their own right. All of them, with the exception of Andrew Jackson, got a higher popular vote percentage the second time around.

Abraham Lincoln:
1860 39.65%
1864 55.03%

Ulyssess S. Grant:
1868 52.66%
1872 55.58%

William McKinley:
1896: 51.02%
1900: 51.64%

Woodrow Wilson:
1912: 41.84%
1916: 49.24%

Franklin Roosevelt:
1932: 57.41%
1936: 60.80%

Dwight Eisenhower
1952: 55.18%
1956: 57.37%

Richard Nixon
1968: 43.42%
1972: 60.67%

Ronald Reagan
1980: 50.75%
1984: 58.77%

Bill Clinton
1992: 43.01%
1996: 49.23%

George W. Bush
2000: 47.87%
2004: 50.73%

It seems that presidents either build on their support from their last election, or they just don’t win (I’m excluding FDR’s third and fourth term elections, as no president can run for them any more). Given that, is it really likely Obama could beat even an unpopular opponent like Gingrich? (I’m not counting the whackjobs like Ron Paul).

For the record, I would definitely prefer we not take the chance on Gingrich. I’m supporting Santorum.

Scott Kleeb actually did run for office again. In 2008, he ran for the Senate against former Gov. Mike Johanns. Johanns beat him pretty handily, 58%-40%. Kleeb only won eight counties, all sparsely populated in the middle of the state except for Lincoln-based Lancaster county, where he barely edged out Johanns by a point. Kleeb also ran pretty far behind Obama in the Omaha area.

If scum like Mack is all this party can come up with for a thoroughly winnable race, the GOP deserves to lose.

Given the size of the GOP House delegation, I wondered why it took this long to cough up one of them to run for the Senate.

His wife has to go, too.

She somewhat impressed me in that her overall vote percentage managed to plunge from 2008 (horrible GOP year) to 2010 (great GOP year). Not too many people can do that.

I read that Jack Warner was a Republican.

WWL-TV in New Orleans projects Jindal re-elected.

It’s also worth pointing out that when pitted against several semi-serious independent candidates in 06, 61% of voters voted against him.

The hubbub seems to be that a new Hispanic district was not drawn in the Dallas area. The buzz I’ve heard leading up to this challenge revolved around that point.

Also, I think Lloyd Doggett’s CD is now majority or plurality Hispanic, so maybe it’s a net two.

I was wondering when Ohio would release its map. I figured that the Republican to go would be either freshman Bill Johnson or Bob Gibbs, but talk shifted to an Austria-Turner showdown a month or so ago. Judging from some of the articles I’ve read today, Turner has the edge.

Shifting one of the Dem seats to the city of Columbus will save us a lot of anxiety. As it is, both Stivers and Tiberi’s seats aren’t anywhere near safe, and both could fall in a bad GOP year.

The Campaign Spot adds that Chabot, Latourette, and Renacci all get stronger districts. I wonder if they’ve shorn up Johnson. It was supposed to be a safe seat for then-Rep. Ted Strickland, so it can’t be left as it is.