Tag: Democrats

Crossposted from Antemedius

...............

In 2010, American voters foolishly aided and abetted the Republicans by giving them control of Congress.

We now enter a very dangerous period in the lead up to the 2012 presidential election.

If Obama is not re-elected, and people don't work towards returning workable majorities in the House and the Senate to the Democrats, then the country only continues its decline, and all will be lost.

It may be the end of a two century great social experiment unequaled in human history.

It now appears that in all likelihood republicans will win a congressional majority this coming Tuesday. Nate Silver's projections of Friday October 29...

...found Republicans gaining an average of 53 seats, which would bring them to 232 total. Democrats are given a 16 percent chance of holding the House, down slightly from 17 percent on Wednesday.

Increasingly, there seems to be something of a consensus among various forecasting methods around a projected Republican figure somewhere in the 50-60 seat range.

Several of the expert forecasters that FiveThirtyEight's model uses, like the Cook Political Report, the Rothenberg Political Report, and Larry Sabato, have stated that they expect the Republicans' overall total to fall roughly in this range. A straw poll of political insiders for Hotline on Call found an average expectation of a 50-seat gain. And some political science models have been forecasting gains somewhere in this range for some time.

The forecast also seems consistent with the average of generic ballot polling. Our model projects that Republicans will win the average Congressional district by between 3 and 4 points.

The modeling also suggests that there is a 90% chance that after Tuesday Democrats will control at least 50 seats in the Senate, but that there is a 0% chance that Democrats will control at least 60 seats.

It's not looking good by any stretch of the imagination.

CNN Politics.com is reporting that a new poll suggests the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination between Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois is a statistical dead heat in Texas. Really?

More below the fold.

(Cross-posted from Executed Today)

Four presidential cycles ago today, Hillary's husband dropped a syringe plunger in the old Democratic party.

Cross-posted in Orange.

A few accurate and a great many inaccurate things have been said about Barack Obama's advovacy of a "new kind of politics."  Especially amongst the media, this has been treated as "why can't we all get along" vapidity, a bland notion that people shouldn't be mean to each other.

The truth is that what he is advocating is far more subversive and dangerous to the status quo.  

Insight into just how Obama intends to transform our politics and policy comes from Thomas S. (T.S.) Kuhn's seminal work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Cross-posted in Orange

Game on, folks.

While there's been some discussion about his nukes stand in the speech today, what's significant is that Barack Obama directed his fire directly at Hillary Clinton today.  

In very stark terms.  Drawing contrasts.

And he's not taking just her on.  He's taking the entire way of thinking that she represents on.

Details below.

Cross-posted in Orange

Last week I implored Barack Obama to step up on Iraq.

On Wednesday of this week, he will be doing just that.

Context and what to look for below the fold.

Cross-posted in orange

An open letter to Senator Barack Obama from a supporter.  

Senator Obama, in your short time in the public eye you have shown great wisdom, judgment, and vision.  Your greatest strength is the ability to fuse pragmatism with idealism.  This often means eschewing traditional showboating and playing for the cameras in order to build consensus that builds towards progressive goals.

However, no single approach works for every problem, and building consensus is not working on the problem of Iraq.  There was a time for Congress to be the steering wheel of our Iraq policy.  Now, someone needs to slam on the brakes.

Ira Chernus, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has written probably the most sobering article I've yet seen about the prospects for the Iraq occupation, and what can be expected from Democratic presidential candidates.