It was a joke. Should have included the smiley. It is the way the discussion goes anytime either side can't refute a point.

And you wonder why most everyone doesn't take you seriously.

At this point MBBF is little more than a conservative MrBigglesworth.

Feel free to add something to the discussion if you'd like. Otherwise, move along.

Need a mirror?

BTW.....I read up on the Diaz-Balart. There's no question that guy is running scared, though it appears he has a job in wait thanks to Crist.

I'll have to wait on the other 'guy in MI' name before passing judgment on that situation. If you want to present the info on that guy, feel free.

Not at all. I contribute quite a bit in this thread of meaningful discussion. Some don't agree with it, but that doesn't mean I'm not contributing.

I should stop pretending you're looking for a legitimate discussion here and just move on to discussion with the other participants.

Fixed that for you. Stomping your feet and saying "I am too" is not a valid line of reasoning, when the preponderance of evidence points to the contrary.

Back to the topic at hand, there were mentions earlier of who are the folks behind the scenes steering the Palin ship. TPM has profiled a few of the folks who seem to be working the message.

Brain Trust To Nowhere: Meet The Advisers Behind The Palin Road Show | TPMMuckraker

As of right now in the 2010 elections:

Democrats will defend 4 open Senate seats. Of those, 2 (Dodd, Dorgan) can be construed as not wanting to face re-election. The other 2 (Kaufman, Burriss) were placeholder Senators.

Republicans will defend 6 open Senate seats. Of those, 1 (LeMieux - Florida) is a placeholder, 1 (Brownback) is retiring due to "self-imposed term limits", and the other 4 (Bunning, Voinovich, Gregg, Bond) can be construed as not wanting to face re-election.

So, in the Senate, Senators retiring because they don't want to face a tough re-election account for 50% of Senate Democrats and 66% of Senate Republicans.

Democrats will defend 14 open House seats. Of those, 1 died, 1 is retiring due to health reasons and 6 are running for other offices. Of the remaining 6, all but one (CA-33) probably faced tough re-elections. So roughly 1/3rd of House Democrats who are retiring are doing so to avoid a tough re-election campaign.

Republicans will defend 17 open House seats. Of those, 12 are running for other offices. Of the remaining 5, it doesn't appear that any faced particularly difficult re-election chances.


If this is the data upon which one wants to base a conclusion of Democrats "running scared", then so be it.

If Obama won, then anybody can win, plain & simple. From either side, whether we're talking about Glenn Beck's assistant producer or Al Franken's 2nd assistant script writer, they're as qualified to have the job at this point as he was/is.


Geez, you really are more optimistic than I am. And that's completely regardless of who is in the WH or on the Hill.

Come on. You don't like his policies which is fine, but the guy is much smarter than Palin. He was the editor of the Harvard Law Review which they don't just hand out to anybody. I don't agree with someone like Mitt Romney much but he isn't stupid, just different views on how to solve certain issues.

Well I'm not an economist and have no idea where things go from here. I'm just saying that we were in really bad shape for awhile and any sort of improvement from that will be something he can campaign on. From reading most economic experts, the worst is over and now it's just a matter of how fast we can recover.

Having the theoretical intellectual capability but consistently drawing wrong conclusions doesn't = smart. And since our current fencepost turtle hasn't exceeded the stopped clock ratio to date, how smart is he?


We definitely disagree on "any sort" being (legitimately) campaignable. Imperfect is campaign fodder I'll agree, noticeable likely is too. But not only am I not seeing "noticeable", I don't see it on the horizon either. Let's be clear about something though, I'm not sitting here blaming Obama for it, but surely we can agree that he's not going to get voter credit for having an unemployment rate 25% higher than the one he inherited nor even for having it be (hypothetically) the same as it was after he's in office for four years.

Nah, you still need a 5 star speechwriter and the ability to deliver said speeches exceedingly well. Palin doesn't have the oratory ability Obama has.

She also won't have the baggage he'll be carrying after four years and her message will resonate far better with voters hoping for something good than his will while toting said baggage.

Another couple of years worth of hope & change and I might be able to beat him if I had the money.

I dunno about that. I certainly don't disagree with the baggage Obama is going to have next election, and the GOP is almost certainly going to have a distinct advantage in that regard, but...

The message is irrelevant. It's the delivery. If you can chant "change change change" long enough with charisma, you're golden. She comes off as way too "well golly-gee" (yes, I just used that as an adjective) to win a national election.

To beat Obama, you need to have someone who can speak & look the part. Palin doesn't.

Right. Gee golly, I'm no editor of the Harvard review, and I quit my biggest job early to make speeches instead of policy, but dang it I hate gays, blacks, and abortions too. Ya know?

Wasn't Bill Clinton a cinch to be defeated around 1994?

As was Reagan after the big Democratic wins in the '82 mid-terms.

The more I think about it, the more 2010 reminds me of 1992, not 1994, with the difference that the descendants of the Perotistas are not the Tea Partiers, but a much larger group (as in 1992) concerned with the economy and government frivoloty, and electorate anger not directed at Congressional Democrats specifically (as in 1990-1994), but Congress in general.

I'd be interested to hear other thoughts from those who were politically aware during that time period.

you should apologize for your joke about the NY Governor's lack of eyesight. IT was probably the worst thing you've done or said since the Bowling / Short bus debacle. Unless the new MBBF has embraced his new Limbaugh-esque penchant to poke fun at those less fortunate than he/you.

Scattered thoughts on this, not feeling up to trying to organize them into a single narrative right now.

-- I'd buy the general nature of the anger observation. But considering the previously discussed nature of disliking everyone's representative except your own, I'm not sure how much change that really leads to.

-- Again I'd caution against falling into the potential trap of labeling Tea Partiers with capital letters. No matter what they may claim or eventually have determined by various courts, I don't get any sense that the usage of the words have coalesced into a unified "party" to nearly the degree that even the Perot movement did. As convenient shorthand to represent something like "various elements extremely unhappy with one or more aspects of both major parties" it's fine afaic but beyond that I really think it's a stretch.

-- To the above a little further, maybe it's my recollection failing me but my impression sitting here today was that there was Perot followed by a party/movement. The current catch-all Tea Party seems more like a (loose coalition of) movement(s) in search of a party and a candidate. Not sure how similar the dynamics of that actually end up being but my gut sitting here right now is that it won't amount to even half what Perot managed (19% of the popular vote in '92). In other words, I see a better chance of the nominally aligned groups largely taking control of the GOP in both direction & votes than I do of them being able to form themselves into a genuinely competitive party on their own.

He's smarter than most of the people in this country. I'm sorry, but you have to have a strong intellect to become editor of the Harvard Law Review (heck to even get into Harvard Law School). Intelligence is not measured on whether you hate gays or believe in moon Gods, it's based on your mental capacities in numerous intellectual areas.

Palin just can't win the numbers game. Her demographics are skewing away from the direction the country's demographics are. Minorities are growing at faster rates than whites. Minorities vote heavily in favor of Democrats and Obama. The younger voters have grown up being taught basic biology and don't believe gays are evil and we should be making our laws around what the Book of Leviticus says.

Obama can be beat by a solid candidate on the right, but the demographics Palin appeals to are the demographics of this country that are shrinking.

None of which eliminates the possibility of winning the numbers game, and the reason is so simple that you really ought to be ashamed of yourself for failing to address the point.

Overcoming the scenario which you (relatively accurately afaic) paint only requires a properly motivated bloc for her and a properly demotivated bloc that would vote against her. It's early but so far I like the way both of those are trending. Basically you just gotta keep driving the enemies before you in order to enjoy the sweet sound of the lamentations of their women.

The problem is that she is so divisive that she'll never get that demotivated bloc. It's why many believed Obama had a much better chance at winning the general election than Clinton. Hillary has strong negatives and would drive people who may ignore the election to the polls.

Palin is Hillary on steroids. If she's on the ballot, there are a lot of people who may have ignored the election turning around and saying "no fucking way I'm letting this happen".

In the end, the reaction was different than that conventional wisdom. I can't think of a single GOP'er who ended up minding nearly Hillary nearly as much as Obama & I was definitely not alone on the notion of just sitting the election out if it came down to Clinton vs McCain.

Like when General Sherman rolled through Georgia?

But it's easy to say that because she didn't win. There was plenty of anti-Hillary crazy out there. Don't forget that Citizens United was originally Citizens United Not Timid.

Hillary was public enemy #1 until it looked like she'd lose.

Let's try again.

Group files suit against head of DHHS :: WRAL.com

That's right, we're getting lawsuits that claim folks have a RIGHT to my tax dollars.

you forget though...Jon has contempt for those who are educated intellectuals.

I must be reading it differently from you. I read it as the plaintiffs asking that an existing program that they depend on not be cut. Not to just have money handed directly to them as you seem to infer. From what I've seen of these programs, it is much cheaper and more productive to have disabled people work with programs to help them stay independent than it is to keep them living in state institutions.

regardless, these people are suing for access to tax dollars

Thought I'd be proactive on this subject since JPhillips values my well-informed opinion on it..........

Patrick Kennedy WILL NOT RUN: No Re-Election Race For Ted Kennedy's Son In Rhode Island

I think he's bored of the job. Probably not a writing on the wall situation here.

On a broader note, I think anyone assuming that the Democrats are the only ones who face 'writing on the wall' situations is very ill-informed. I think that most congressional members up for re-election are in for an uphill fight. When you have polls noting that only 1 in 10 Americans think that the current congressional members have done enough to keep their position, that's a scary environment for an incumbent. The only reason the Democrats are more at risk is simply because they hold more seats. There's more opportunities for a flip-flop.

I applaud this post as "fair & balanced."

You should tell that to the guy that posted this:

In order to do that, I'd first have to talk to the guy who made the false assumption that Republicans didn't face a similar situation. As much as you value my opinion, you would have thought you'd have the good sense to clarify that rather than wrongfully assume my stance.

You need to develop a stampofapproval.jpg to make it easier.

like so

That'll do for now, but I expected something much more high rent.

we're trying to be fiscally responsible.

Something like this?

Something is wrong with the board and those posts as well as your posts from criticizing Bush's spending don't show up for me.

Understandable.


Meh, that's so 2009. It's a new year!

Sounds like user error. They are both on this board.

Yes, I agree. Maybe I phrased it badly, but:


Perot was really the ideal person at the time to grab hold of the general sense of economic worry and malaise. He was able to pretty clearly articulate, and put facts and figures around the elements that concerned people at the time.

I feel the population is in the same place today, but the Tea Partiers probably aren't going to produce someone like Perot. There's simply too much uninformed and misdirected anger there.

But there's plenty of informed and well-directed anger and concern amongst the population at large.

Anyway, I was just musing on some of the similarities and differences, based on the personal experience. I'm feeling a lot of deja vu these days.

Perot isn't a great person to emulate. He did very well at putting deficit reduction on the map, but he was a terrible candidate. He spent a ton of money, came up with crazy conspiracies that were keeping hi from winning, dropped out only to re-enter the race and ended with less than 20% of the vote and zero delegates.

In terms of actually winning elections rather than getting publicity, Perot was a disaster and another in a long line of hard lessons for third party candidates.

Poll - Obama Has Edge Over G.O.P. With Public - NYTimes.com

Partial excerpt (any added emphasis is mine):

George Bush would have killed for a 46% approval rating for the vast majority of his presidency.

(the above comment was solely to preempt any attempt to spin 46% as a terrible thing)

Or not?

What was Bush's approval rating in year 2? Shouldn't we compare Obama's to that at this point?