kins

I'm following this one quite closely :-)

Obama was here a couple of nights ago rallying with Michaud.

Cutler (the Independent) appears to have backed himself into a corner where he keeps saying it would be wrong for him to drop out, but he knows that if LePage gets back in it will in large part be his fault.

Unfortunately a fair few early voters have voted Cutler but I'm expecting a large number to switch alliegance in the voting booth (as happened last time, only in the opposite direction).

Michael

Politicians really don't care and say it is the principle of it. Ralph Nader (Green Party) said that when Gore lost the deciding state of Florida because Nader swiped about 1% of the votes from Gore.

So Nader got everything he didn't want in a president because of "principle" and he's ok with that.

In my opinion, Nader should feel slightly guilty that his actions likely got the US in a war (Iraq) that likely wouldn't have occurred if he didn't take away the votes from Gore to allow Bush to win.

Although I partially blame Nader for the Iraq war, I blame the democratic party more since they didn't oppose the war for fear of being called unpatriotic. If I didn't understand why the US was invading Iraq, I suspect most the democratic party did either.

Bnet36

Over here in GA the race for senate and governor is probably the closest it has ever been they can't call it. Shocker! I'm not holding my breath though.

I think GA will change over eventually as most people here are from somewhere outside of the state which is changing the dynamics quite a bit. Too bad I won't be here to see it ... Correction, not bad.

Michael

Since many senate and governor's races are so close this time, many races are going to be decided by which party has the best machine to turn out the vote. That was Romney's incorrect assumption in 2012 that the democrats wouldn't be able to turn out the vote with the enacted voter ID laws and general apathy but the democrats exceeded expectations.

Since everyone (both republican and democrat) have low opinions of both parties, it's the turnout machine that will likely determine who wins many of the elections.

Michael

If Roberts loses, the Tea Party will say "see you can't win with a Rino" instead of taking blame for unseating a 30 year incumbent. Someone (especially the Tea Party) can always use whatever logic that they want to prove their point.

Michael

Brownback (R-GOV) Kansas might be another loser. Four years ago he was considered a presidential contender with a landslide win in Kansas but since then, he cut the budget severely, gave tax breaks to businesses, and ran up a large state deficit and employment didn't improve significantly.

Although he blames Obama for a poor US economy, he's now asking voters to give him another term since 4 years is not enough time to show results.

Michael

Maybe Boiler can answer this one. Why is Udall (D-SEN) having so much problems getting reelected? The economy looks pretty good and the state seems liberal? I know the rural areas don't like democrats but are the republicans planning to get a good turnout in the rural areas?

Michael

In my opinion, governors races are more important this time than senate races and most races are tightening. Usually within the month before the election, most governors and senate races have been pretty much decided but this year, 12 governors and 8 senate races are still up for grabs.

At one time it looked that Walker (R-GOV) of Wisconsin and Snyder (R-GOV) from Michigan would win reelection but both are now close. If those two go to the democrats, the democrats will likely pick up a lot of governorships.

For senate races, if the most of the east coast close races go to republicans, the republicans may get their dream/nightmare of having 53-54 senators. If they become the majority in the senate, then there will likely be a fight as to who controls the senate, the party leadership or the Tea Party like they do in the house.

Because of the way the US electoral system is setup, coalitions are within a party and not separate parties like most parliamentary systems. That creates a problems since if the party doesn't give in to a minor coalition, the party make break apart and the party may never be able to again regain power.

An example was when the Dixiecrats were part of the democratic party. FDR didn't dare to tackle segregation since he had larger concerns with the economy. When LBJ had civil rights legislation passed, the Dixiecrats jumped ship to the republican party. However in this case, the democrats still controlled about 50% of the electoral vote so were still competitive.

If the Tea Party exits the republican party, there is nowhere to go except to form their own party which will likely cause three way races which means that few republicans or tea party candidates can win in three way races (except the few states that have runoffs when one candidate doesn't get more than 50% of the vote) and the right would lose power (both the moderate and far right).

RoadWarriorFromLP

The emphasis on women was a mistake. The women don't buy it, while it alienates the male vote that already skews Republican.

Bob

LePage is mental, it will be scary if he gets the nod.

What I'm surprised about is the green guy, he's always putting his hand in, but I don't think he has recently.

scrubbedexpat099

I have yet to have one conversation about the election. Odd. I have been down in the Denver ish Boulder area and now I come to think of it have seen very little activity, signs etc. Even the Prius's are missing the mandatory Obama stickers.

Now the media has been full of attack adds and I guess like most people I tend to blank them out.

Now I think of it I do not remember overhearing any conversations.

I am sure that in my circle Dems heavily outnumber Repubs but amongst the Dems Obama and the Gun fiasco had a big negativity. Even Hickenlooper I noticed has been backing away from both.

Certainly true in simplistic terms that the Dems have the advantage that their support base is within a fairly small area and Colorado is a big State.

I know nothing about Udall, he seems Mr nondescript.

More people are interested in the Broncos.

Michael

So was Ross Perot but 19% of the voters voted for him in the 1992 presidential election.

Perot's paranoia is pretty well known, due to his announcement in 1992 that he was quitting the presidential race (in which he was a very strong contender) because Republican's were planning to disrupt his daughters wedding (by forging photos of phony lesbian sex.) But it has long been typical of him.

He thinks he lost his 1993 debate to Al Gore because Gore had a hidden earpiece, through which he was being fed answers, or possibly questions. (Posner, p330). While he was serving on a Texas anti-drug commission in the early 1980s, he became convinced that Charles Harrelson (the father of actor Woody Harrelson, from "Cheers") had been hired to kill him by drug dealers. (The elder Harrelson is in fact a career criminal doing time for killing a federal judge.) The FBI dismissed his fears as baseless.

In 1992, Perot claimed that the North Vietnamese government had hired the Black Panthers to assasinate him, back in 1970, because of his efforts on behalf of POWs. He even said that "one night they had five people coming across my front lawn with rifles", and that a guard dog bit a big piece out of one attacker's butt.

Just before Perot's 1993 debate with Gore, he announced that the FBI had alerted him that a six-member Cuban hit squad had been sent to murder him. "The organization is a Mafia-like group in favor of the North American Free Trade Agreement", Perot claimed. (Posner, p327-8) The FBI had told him about an anonymous tip that he would be assassinated, but public figures get weird threat calls all the time. What is striking is that Perot believed the claim, embellished it and announced it publicly.

Presidential Candidate H. Ross Perot - The Dark Side

robin1234

Here in New York State, the election is even more complicated than usual. Sure, we have a democratic and a republican line, as in the rest of the country, but we also have Working Families Party, Greens, Women's Equality Party, Conservatives and various other lines and minor parties. I've been registered WFP for many years, and they usually endorse a line of mostly democratic candidates and some republican and independent candidates. Governor Cuomo, who will certainly win his race, has an obscure feud with the WFP so he and his backers created the supposed Women's Equality Party to siphon off votes from the WFP so they are in danger of losing their place on the ballot next election. Meanwhile, the WFP is also under attack from the left ... the Greens are concentrating most of their venom on the Working Families Party instead of maybe trying to persuade folks from voting Republican or Democratic?? What?

Meanwhile in our US Congressional race, the Republican is set to win, there's a democrat who is perceived as very weak, and the Green candidate has a surprise endorsement from the (fairly conservative) newspaper.

I'll be voting Green and WFP, the details will emerge when I actually see the ballot paper when I get to the polling station. (League of Women Voters and our county board of elections both last updated their websites in 2013, so no elucidation from them.)

FlaviusAetius

And then, this just in: Obamacare is expanding to include golf balls, so the Republicans are reconsidering their opposition, but it will need some tweaking:

http://www.sbisvcs.com/Obama_Golf%20%281%29.mp3

Hotscot

So is it just going to be gridlock for two years while this shower enjoy their pay and benefits?