Could Castro possibly win, part 2: The two tribes have their alternate realities, as Krugman semi-explained this morning. (He only mentioned the other tribe’s alternate state.)
On our own liberal channel, it’s all comfort food all the time. But uh-oh! Over on their tribal channel last night, we saw Dick Morris say the following things. We thought again of Michael Corleone, wondering if Castro could win:
MORRIS (3/22/12): The other thing, Greta, that I mentioned here earlier that is just absolutely incredible is that the Republicans are sweeping the U.S. Senate races. Sweeping them! They need to pick up three or four seats, depending on who the vice president is, to control the Senate.We thought of Michael Corleone in Havana again. Two questions:
Right now, there are eight seats currently held by Democrats where Republicans are in the lead, and some of those are incumbent seats, like Missouri, where Sarah Steelman is 10 points ahead of McCaskill—10 points ahead of McCaskill!
Usually, you'd say, “Well, she's behind, but McCaskill's under 50.” In this case, Steelman has 51 and McCaskill has 41. In Ohio, I'm sorry—Josh Mandel is 4 points ahead of Sherrod Brown, the Democratic senator. In Florida, Connie Mack is 6 points ahead of Nelson, the Democratic senator.
If the election were held today, the Republicans with probably pick up eight seats, lose one or two, and end up with a net of six, which is incredible!
VAN SUSTEREN: Well, you raise—I mean, Missouri, Senator McCaskill, that's a really interesting race and how it'll affect the general election because she was very quick to come out and support President Obama over Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Then she embraced health care, and then no sooner had she embraced health care and been one of the sort of the stewards of it that suddenly, they passed something, I forget what it was—in August 2010, I think, like, 93 percent of the people in Missouri were opposed to the health care, some overwhelming number.
MORRIS: Yes.
VAN SUSTEREN: So she's really on the rail so that it certainly looks like if she's losing by 10 points now, Missouri doesn't look like it's going to be a stronghold for President Obama come November.
MORRIS: No. And my whole point, Greta, is that right now, the head-to-head of the president against Romney is a little bit obscured because Romney is not the candidate and because they're going through this civil war that's going on in the Republican Party. Once that ends, I think Romney will move up smartly.
But to understand what's really happening in terms of incumbents and Democrats in the United States, you look at those Senate races. I would expect right now that an incumbent senator might be under 50. He might be only 8 or 10 ahead of his Republican challenger.
But you have Nelson behind Mack in Florida. You have McCaskill behind Steelman in Missouri. You have Tester behind Rehberg in Montana. You have Brown behind Mandel in Ohio. And then in open seats in North Dakota, Nebraska and Wisconsin, you have, and you have—and Virginia, you have the Republican ahead.
This is presaging, setting up to be an absolute wipeout for the Democratic Party! And people aren't saying that, but if you look at the data, it's showing it.
How much of that is accurate?
If it's accurate, do you think they’ll say so on our tribal channel? Or will they simply keep clowning around about the height of those trees?
It's March, and this is Dick Morris, and this is FoxNews. So it doesn't mean much. Neither do any senate race polls mean much now, because only political junkies are paying any attention at all.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, neither party has any chance of getting 60% to override a filibuster, meaning the senate will continue to block meaningful legislation from either party, which is exactly what it is intended to do- maintain the status quo.
It's March, and this is Dick Morris, and this is FoxNews. So it doesn't mean much. Neither do any senate race polls mean much now, because only political junkies are paying any attention at all.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, neither party has any chance of getting 60% to override a filibuster, meaning the senate will continue to block meaningful legislation from either party, which is exactly what it is intended to do- maintain the status quo.
It might not be so bad, but there's no hope for McCaskill in Missouri. It's trending ever further to the far-right. Roy Blunt was embroiled in a huge scandal a few years back and his son was so disgraced he couldn't even run for reelection in Missouri, yet since Obama took office the state has moved even further to the right. Don't forget Obama barely lost Missouri too.
ReplyDeleteThe Democrats will probably keep the Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Florida seats, win Massachusetts and Connecticut, and a few others, but they'll be lucky if they can hold onto a bare majority in the Senate. It's going to be tough.
Brown leads Mandel by 9% in the Realclearpolitics poll average: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/senate/oh/ohio_senate_mandel_vs_brown-2100.html
ReplyDeleteTherefore, Morris' statement that Mandel leads by 4 is very suspect pending confirmation of which poll or polls he's talking about.
As per McCaskill and Steelman, Morris relies on a total of one poll as his evidence that Steelman is ahead as 10. Given the fact that the poll is a Rasmussen poll, and Rasmussen is a right-wing nut who once wrote for the Worldnetdaily right-wing site and advocates privatization of social security, we should be wary of Morris' confident assertion regarding the state of Missouri.
James Taranto has previously written about this theme in his blog Best of the Web. He claimed that pro-liberal media bias helps Republicans in a way, because a friendly media hide problems from the Democrats.
ReplyDeleteIf the Dems were convinced that they were in deep doo doo, they might choose to reverse positions on their two most unpopular programs. They could rescind the Health Reform law and approve the Keystone pipeline from Canada. IMHO those two moves would be a big electoral boost for the Dems.
In other words, if the Democrats just flat-out became Republicans they'd be more likely to win.
DeleteThat's some brilliant advice.
Took the words right out of my mouth.
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DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteWith some advice the time it takes for the intent and the substance to separate is different than , umm lets say , less snide pearls . Sometimes it is down right hilarious , aside from that poisonous root .
DeleteEnter the three Witches
First Witch
Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd.
Second Witch
Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.
Third Witch
Harpier cries 'Tis time, 'tis time.
First Witch
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison'd entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.
ALL
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Does that help ?
Keep in mind that Dick Morris predicted a Democratic sweep of Senate elections on the eve of the 2002 elections and a Condi-Hillary presidential race in 2012. So, his track record isn't too hot.
ReplyDeleteIt's best to take a wait and see attitude towards the Senate races. Right now, there doesn't seem to be a strong political wind pushing in either direction (generic Dem v. GOP polls are tied). So, 2012 may turn out to be a year when politics is mainly local.
In this scenario, the GOP have good to excellent chances of picking up Nebraska, Missouri, North Dakota, and Montana. Democrats have similar chances in Maine and Massachusetts. There are other competitive seats, of course, but it is unlikely that more than one or two of those will switch parties. That comes out to a net loss of 2 seats for the Democrats, and a narrow 51-49 majority.
At this point, 2012 is shaping up to be a status quo election, with Obama comfortably winning re-election but the public returning a Democratic Senate and a Republican House majority, albeit narrower majorities in both cases.
Dick Morris also predicted months ago, at the height of Gingrich frenzy, that Santorum would end up as Romney's main challenger.
DeleteUnfortunately, you can't count on Morris being either ridiculously wrong or frighteningly prescient, which is why Bill Clinton was addicted to his advice for so many years.
In the case of the Senate races, though, Morris is fulfilling his duty (and his paycheck from Fox) of being a cheerleader for the GOP side.
He has a Web site (his name plus dot com) where he expounds on this stuff, apparently. I won't give him a click, but dedicated Morris observers could go look up what he says there in more detail.
Angus King is the front-runner in Maine, and he is not a Democrat. He is also fiscally very conservative. So you can't count that state in the Democratic column. Democrats will win Connecticut's seat back from the horrendous excuse from a senator Joseph Lieberman, though.
DeleteAngus King is also not a Republican by any stretch of the imagination. Olympia Snowe is.
DeleteAnd by every account I have seen, there seems to be no question but that King, should he be elected, will caucus with the Democrats.
First off, Morris is presuming Steelman will be the GOP nominee. She's in a bloody primary fight with Todd Akin that will be just as bloody as the primary fight she LOST to Kenny Hulshoff for the gubernatorial (gawd, I love that word!) nomination in '08, and led to the election of Democrat Jay Nixon, while McCain was carrying the state (barely).
ReplyDeleteSecond, Public Policy Polling has a potential Steelman-McCaskill race at 43 percent each with 13 percent undecided (don't know where the other four percent is), and that pretty much describes Missouri.
Recall that in her first re-election campaign as state auditor, incumbent McCaskill ran against a convicted felon who was formally disavowed by the Republican Party and ran absolutely no campaign, and the felon STILL got 40 percent of the vote.
Also recall that a dead Democrat beat a live Republican for that same Senate seat not that long ago.
DeleteJust some more perspective and context into the 2000 U.S. Senate race in Missouri. Gov. Mel Carnahan -- one of the most gifted and popular politicians of either party in this state's history -- was already beating Ashcroft like a rented mule when he was killed in a plane crash with a few weeks to go before Election Day.
DeleteThe guy who succeeded him for the remainder of his term had announced that should Carnahan win the election, he would appoint his widow, Jean, to the vacant Senate seat. So Ashcroft wasn't really running against a "dead Democrat." We went to the polls that day knowing exactly who the senator would be if we cast our vote for Mel.
Ashcroft essentiall lost (by two percent) because of two things.
1. He tried to call Carnahan "soft on crime" because Carnahan, at the personal request of Pope John Paul II during the pope's St. Louis visit, commuted the death sentence of Darrel Mease who execution was set, then delayed, on the very day of the Pope's visit. Ashcroft's attempt to play politics with that angered Catholic voters, particularly in St. Louis County, and cut deeply into whatever advantage Ashcroft had among them as the "pro-life" candidate.
2. Ashcroft personally blocked the appointment of Missouri Supreme Court Justice Ronnie White, an African-American, to the federal bench. This angered and energized African-American voters who turned out in droves on election day.
The best prediction-maker in the country has Ohio "leaning Democrat" as of March 22th, the same day Dick Morris claims the other guy is ahead. Missouri is labeled "toss-up." This proves that Dick Morris is an ultra-biased cherry-picker who doesn't source his statements. See link http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/tilting-the-toss-ups-the-eight-races-that-will-decide-the-senate/
ReplyDelete"If it's accurate, do you think they’ll say so on our tribal channel? Or will they simply keep clowning around about the height of those trees?"
ReplyDeleteEven if it is not accurate, is the strategy of making fun of the Republicans most helpful to win the most races? The Republicans have been very effective in painting liberal policies as well-intentioned evil, destructive to our nation. They have been beating this drum for decades. Countering that tactic with laughing at how silly and stupid the conservatives candidates are while virtually ignoring the devastating laws and policy which they advance does not help, at election time, or any other.
The Republican machine can easily say to their supporters, "hey, this liberal is a pretty smart, nice guy, but he'll tax and spend you to death, so, sadly, you shouldn't vote for him." The Democrats can't do this as strongly. If a Republican presidential candidate came out of the back room with a clean personal character, most of the Democratic propaganda to date would have been wasted, because so little is based on policy.
But policy is sooooo booooring...
DeleteYou can trust Intrade, or you can trust inbred Dick Morris. Take your pick.
ReplyDelete