ND-SEN: But you are, Blanche, you are

[Virginiá]

I'm not too worried. There is no way to know how this particular race will go next year (except to wait), but I do know that it is no easy task for the party that controls the White House to knock off opposition party incumbents in a bad midterm. So until next summer, until proven otherwise, I think it would be best to take a pro-incumbent outlook.

[Virginiá]

Nothing to think peeps

Love your sig, MT

Thanks.

:THINKING:

MT's sock is mostly quotes of LimoLiberal, so naturally LimoLiberal is taking his kudos.

[Virginiá]

Seriously R's go from down 11 to 8 on the CGB in February and all of a sudden RWers and a few concern trolls act like this a 2014 environment

In a way, it's not entirely their fault. They have gotten so used to winning election after election in the Obama era that they forgot what it's like to be on the losing side of an election season. The bar has also been set pretty high for Democrats due to the estimations of their needed margin to take back the House (>= D+7), so it gives Republicans breathing room when pushing their narrative.

I suspect people will look at all of this differently in 2019-2020.

[Virginiá]

All I can say is that there are too many Democratic Senators from Republican-leaning states, and too many consistently through modern political history for a prediction to be built solely or even just mostly on a state's PVI. If Heitkamp could win in 2012, then 2018 should definitely be doable for her, particularly since she is an incumbent now.

I feel like anyone empty-quoting King Lear should state their own thoughts, because Lear has made it pretty clear that his predictions are based on nothing but "the polls were wrong in 2016," (yes, he really did - link) combined with what is clearly a very strong Republican bias that he hasn't acknowledged.

[Virginiá]

Maybe the argument has to made over and over again so it is not so subtle.  It has worked in House elections with Pelosi.

That's seriously debatable. Obviously Republicans have used her as a liberal boogeyman for years, but to credit her with their success just because they happened to be using her at the same time as two GOP waves does not mean she caused those wins. It just means people think she did. Now that Obama is out of office, we've already had one instance (Lamb) where they went after him via Pelosi and it didn't do anything. He still won in a district that Republicans should have easily held. And in GA-06, where they used Pelosi as well, Ossoff still performed about as well as Clinton did.

One thing I've noticed in politics is that people tend to lean on attributing wins / losses to strategies purely based on correlation. For instance, Handel + GOP campaigned heavily against Pelosi. Handel won. Ergo, Pelosi = very effective. It's very poor logic that wouldn't cut it in most other cases. You need something else to back it up, and not polls that show already-reliable Republicans saying they'd be more likely to vote Republican when Pelosi is mentioned, mostly because those people were never going to vote for the Democrat anyway.

I expect attacks using Chuck Schumer to be significantly less effective than Pelosi, whose effectiveness is already highly questionable at best.

[Virginiá]

I do not think you understand that in or polarized state that the Senate will be run by either Schumer or McConnell.  There is no other choice.  It is one or the other.  The Nation has to dcide which one should run the Senate.  That decision will have great consequences for the Nation.  That is the battle that will be fought this fall and in 2020.

I do believe anyone with connections to the oil and gas industry would want McConnell to run the show.

Since the EPA under the Democrats has pushed for farm ponds and ditches to be regulated by the EPA as part of the navigable waters of the US, I would expect most farmers and ranchers would want McConnell to run the Senate.

All I am saying is it our duty to make theses issues clear to the voters of North Dakota. If they chose Heidi and that leads to a Democrat majority, they will have to live with that decision.  Unfortunately I will have to live with it, too. 

I know how the Senate works, I'm just saying that the effectiveness of Pelosi (and now Schumer?) attacks is vastly overstated. Also, Republicans didn't weaponize Pelosi overnight, and she actually had to be speaker first to do that, so it's going to be hard to make Schumer into an attack ad when he hasn't actually been majority leader yet.

[Virginiá]

The feeling I get out of North Dakota is that Heitkamp is really putting in the work for a second term while Cramer sorta expects to be elected because to state is red(ish)... I'd still say advantage Heitkamp in ND

If that is the case, you'd think he would understand that this election cycle is, if anything, better for her than 2012. Obama got blown out by just shy of 20 points in 2012 and she still won. Now she's an incumbent who is reasonably popular or at least neutral, and running in a year that some think will be the biggest Dem wave year since the 80s, or 2006 at the very least. This is really the best environment she could ask for. The only thing that would make it better is if she drew a toxic opponent.

[Virginiá]

there are still 4 lefty justices who will absolutely ignore the clear reading of what the constitution says to advance their agenda.

Why are conservatives always claiming the mantle of this? You honestly believe that conservatives don't have their own 'activist judges' as well? As if your judges aren't getting overly creative with the 1st amendment justifications these days?

This sounds as silly to me as how apparently conservatives are the only true patriots (yet somehow elected Donald Trump). Or conservatives are the real Americans. Not only do they disagree with liberals, but liberals aren't even real. They make up rules, legislate from the bench and are evil unpatriotic commies.

[Virginiá]

Many thanks to Cramer for giving us a long-lost taste of his foot-in-mouth syndrome made him so undesirable to Turtle & Co in the first place!

[Virginiá]

Heitkamp apparently will be on 60 minutes explaining her vote.

[Virginiá]

What I'm confused about is why the Purcell principle did not apply here? This is a major rule very close to an election, and SCOTUS has blocked other changes in the past. What is the rationale this time? This seems like a pretty clear cut idea. If you want to suddenly create new requirements to vote (or allow existing ones to go into effect), don't do it just a month or two before a general election.

[Virginiá]

Jesus Heitkamp

[Virginiá]

Did anyone really think Blanche had a chance? I mean, look at these awful polls:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/senate/ar/arkansas_senate_boozman_vs_lincoln-1186.html

She was done by January, if not much sooner.

[Virginiá]

To the extent that they matter at all, the only surrogates who really matter are people are like Obama, and only because he recently-ish left office and he is still fresh in people's memories. Other members of the party who are national stars may be catnip for activists and other people like that but are hardly going to change anything.

But Mary Landrieu? Does anyone in North Dakota even know who she is?

[Virginiá]

https://www.wctv.tv/content/news/Latest-poll-Florida-gov-senate-races-neck-and-neck-498545201.html
DeSantis-48
Gillum-45
R+3
Trump Net Approval: +9
(done by Stratigic Research Associates)


This is the pollster that has given most of the info we have so far on the ND senate race......

Unskew!!!unskew!!!

If anything, this poll balances out CNN's +12 poll for Gillum. That is the point of throwing them in the average. An average which, btw, DeSantis is still comfortably behind in.

[Virginiá]

https://twitter.com/rebeccagberg/status/1057390950035718144

[Virginiá]

Cramer up 9 in the new poll. LOL at everyone who thought Heidi still had a chance because Joe Biden, her brother, and other random people on Twitter said so.

They also showed Donnelly winning by 7 and a tie in MO, so yeah, bad news for her. It must be absolutely humiliating to lose as an incumbent in a tidal wave for your party, especially if you’re the reason your party fails to take the Senate.

2018 is not a "tidal wave" for the Democratic Party. If it were, no Democratic incumbents would lose, in either the House or Senate, and Democrats would have a very strong shot at picking up Arizona, Nevada, Texas, and Tennessee. At best, it is a blue "ripple", enough to flip the House, some governorships, and several state legislatures, but not enough to take the Senate or to make even more penetrative gains at the state level.

The House wouldn't flip in a "ripple." To label it as such really diminishes the structural disadvantages Democrats have in winning the chamber at all. A wave would flip the House, and on a Senate map this bad with so many seats in deeply unfavorable territory, one or two losses is to be expected even if it isn't guaranteed due to the fundamentals.

Simply put, basing so much of this on the Senate is not a good way to define a wave.