A senior Obama advisor confirms to NBC News that Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel has accepted the job of Chief of Staff for the Obama White House.

Our first special election of the 2009-10 election cycle!

Not that we have a fucking chance of picking up a Chicago seat.

kruker wrote:PA Head Fake

Short, interesting read.

Since I've been old enough to vote, I've been wondering about this "swing state" nonsense. PA's gone blue in every election since '88, and it went blue for Carter and JFK and against Nixon in 1968. Yeah, it's had some elections where it's gone red, but those were all landslides for the Republican candidates (Nixon II, Reagan I + II, Bush I).

On another note, I'm wondering to myself if Centre County is a bellwether for the election. It has been going back to the '92 election, at least.

And speaking of bellwethers, it looks like Missouri's losing its status this year.

Barry Jive wrote:

kruker wrote:PA Head Fake

Short, interesting read.

Since I've been old enough to vote, I've been wondering about this "swing state" nonsense. PA's gone blue in every election since '88, and it went blue for Carter and JFK and against Nixon in 1968. Yeah, it's had some elections where it's gone red, but those were all landslides for the Republican candidates (Nixon II, Reagan I + II, Bush I).

On another note, I'm wondering to myself if Centre County is a bellwether for the election. It has been going back to the '92 election, at least.

And speaking of bellwethers, it looks like Missouri's losing its status this year.

Bush was just about as close to winning PA in 2004 as Kerry was to winning Ohio. It was 5% more Democratic than the country was on the whole in 2004. It was 5% more Democratic than the country was on the whole yesterday. It's maybe a point more Democratic than Florida is Republican. When you have a big pile of electoral votes that are that close to national parity, you're going to have both sides going after them. When you consider of the top ten states, only Florida and Ohio are closer to the national median than PA. Well, maybe NC too after yesterday, but that needs to happen again before it is seen as anything other than an aberration.

I remember saying to a friend 10 or so years ago that I'd never see a black president. I was way off. Well done, America.

Now let's hope he's a success or it might be another 100 years before we see another one.

I hope he's as good as the first black mayor of Philadelphia.

gr wrote:dajafi-

my card check reference refers to Shumer who keeps trumpeting it as a major issue, one of the first things they want to work on. i'm not a pro-union guy, you know that, but i don't have contempt for people who are, i just disagree (and am happy to leave it at that, no problem).

Gotcha. I like him personally, but I have no illusions that Schumer is much of a statesman. He's trying to take care of his caucus and interest groups. Frankly I get more offended when he goes to bat to keep the hedge fund exemption in the tax code, but I get your meaning here even if I don't think it's particularly indicative of how Obama will try to set a tone. (The larger Dem caucus in Congress, OTOH...)

gr wrote:i'm probably guilty of using 'centrist' in an overly-generic sense. i've never believed obama was going to usher in some great post-partisan era where we all get along and legislate on more than a who's-in-power basis. i certainly hope he does, but if i had to offer my opinion, i remain unconvinced. living in washington dc the last 8 years, i'm sick to death of this place and childish behavior on both sides. i don't necessarily think partisanship is all-bad, all-the-time, but the discourse has mostly turned to daytime talk show nanny-ese. regardless of who's fault it was before, i want a more serious, restrained tone in this town or no discussion at all.

Eight years is very impressive. I was pretty much ready to kill to get out after just two...

I think Obama will represent improvement over any president in our lifetimes (I believe you and I are about the same age) as far as this goes--though both Reagan and Bush I had their moments in terms of balancing partisanship with governing. He'll grasp that there's both risk and opportunity in having a Democratic representation that's to the left of the country's political mainstream, and he's a cautious enough character that he won't want to go forward with things on a partisan basis--one of the huge differences between him and G.W. Bush. It wouldn't totally shock me to see people on the left as or more annoyed with Obama a year from now than people on the right--not the Limbaugh-type full-on partisans, but those in the Tom Davis chunk of the party.

(Of course, Tom Davis retired in large part because his chunk of the party was shrinking and increasingly marginalized. It's probably a good question whether there are enough non-Limbaugh types left in the GOP even to make deals with, certainly in the House and probably in the realm of the non-electeds. If the bomb-throwers are all that's left, Obama will have to go forward with just Dems and maybe a few "RINO" types like Snowe and Collins.)

Team of Rivals update: Lugar says no, Hagel maybe

Too bad about Lugar, though he might be of more help in the Senate anyway.

Also, it's rumored that Emanuel said yes to the Chief of Staff offer.

jerseyhoya wrote:

Barry Jive wrote:

kruker wrote:PA Head Fake

Short, interesting read.

Since I've been old enough to vote, I've been wondering about this "swing state" nonsense. PA's gone blue in every election since '88, and it went blue for Carter and JFK and against Nixon in 1968. Yeah, it's had some elections where it's gone red, but those were all landslides for the Republican candidates (Nixon II, Reagan I + II, Bush I).

On another note, I'm wondering to myself if Centre County is a bellwether for the election. It has been going back to the '92 election, at least.

And speaking of bellwethers, it looks like Missouri's losing its status this year.

Bush was just about as close to winning PA in 2004 as Kerry was to winning Ohio. It was 5% more Democratic than the country was on the whole in 2004. It was 5% more Democratic than the country was on the whole yesterday. It's maybe a point more Democratic than Florida is Republican. When you have a big pile of electoral votes that are that close to national parity, you're going to have both sides going after them. When you consider of the top ten states, only Florida and Ohio are closer to the national median than PA. Well, maybe NC too after yesterday, but that needs to happen again before it is seen as anything other than an aberration.

I realize it's always close, but am I just confusing correlation/causation here? It looks like Dems always win in a close election, but would you say that has more to do with how they run their campaigns in PA? I just figured that the dynamic of the state is what lends itself to close elections. The vast majority of the state is Red, but the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh areas are so Democratic that they always carry the state in close elections.

Houshphandzadeh wrote:I hope he's as good as the first black mayor of Philadelphia.

Michael Nutter, you mean, right? We've never had a black mayor before him. NEVER.

I think going forward, PA will be more of a swing state than VA, which is probably going to get bluer going forward. But while big chunks of PA are socially conservative, they aren't Southerners, and the Republicans are going to have to figure out the difference. Southern Baptists and conservative Catholics have a lot in common, but there are enormous differences as well. To further complicate matters, social conservatives in the midwest are different from the other two groups. These denominational difference matter.

My social conservative students started warming to McCain on the basis of the debate at Rick Warren's church. But I don't think it had the same impact outside the South.

Barry Jive wrote:

Houshphandzadeh wrote:I hope he's as good as the first black mayor of Philadelphia.

Michael Nutter, you mean, right? We've never had a black mayor before him. NEVER.

I think he means the guy that bombed the damn city.

pacino wrote:

Barry Jive wrote:

Houshphandzadeh wrote:I hope he's as good as the first black mayor of Philadelphia.

Michael Nutter, you mean, right? We've never had a black mayor before him. NEVER.

I think he means the guy that bombed the damn city.

MICHAEL NUTTER, I SAY

dajafi wrote:One more from me before I start to transition out of Playoffs/Election All-the-Time Awake-and-Asleep and try to start, y'know, doing work and making money again...

Democrats take New York State Senate

This was probably inevitable given the disappearance of the Republican Party everywhere north of the Mason-Dixon line, but if I was ambivalent about the prospect of the Dems reaching 60 seats in the U.S. Senate, I was much more conflicted about the Ds taking unified control of our state government. For one thing, on all but a few issues (gay rights being one), our state GOP was/is pretty reasonable ("bought off by the unions" might be an alternate description). For another, our state Dems tend to be unprincipled and incredibly profligate. With the state budget wedged deep in the crapper, this could get scary pretty fast.

I think this is important because this democratic majority will redraw the congressional districts for NY after the 2010 census.

pacino wrote:

Barry Jive wrote:

Houshphandzadeh wrote:I hope he's as good as the first black mayor of Philadelphia.

Michael Nutter, you mean, right? We've never had a black mayor before him. NEVER.

I think he means the guy that bombed the damn city.

I am old enough to remember that like it happened yesterday.

traderdave wrote:

pacino wrote:

Barry Jive wrote:

Houshphandzadeh wrote:I hope he's as good as the first black mayor of Philadelphia.

Michael Nutter, you mean, right? We've never had a black mayor before him. NEVER.

I think he means the guy that bombed the damn city.

I am old enough to remember that like it happened yesterday.

Me too... I remember sitting in my pad on 19th and Pine, yelling at the TV, "why aren't the fireman spraying their hoses?!!!!"

Yes, there are a variety of nuances amongst people in this nation. A friend today mentioned that what she felt, that in some way many Americans were envigorated that they could "still have a voice" and that it wasn't all an inside-job. That things have been so obviously corrupt for so long. Most people I talk to, are more optimistic about Obama than I am, as far as actually reversing trends and policies of Bush. I dont see it, and I think once you are in the White House, you become even more secretive and conservative.

lethal wrote:

dajafi wrote:One more from me before I start to transition out of Playoffs/Election All-the-Time Awake-and-Asleep and try to start, y'know, doing work and making money again...

Democrats take New York State Senate

This was probably inevitable given the disappearance of the Republican Party everywhere north of the Mason-Dixon line, but if I was ambivalent about the prospect of the Dems reaching 60 seats in the U.S. Senate, I was much more conflicted about the Ds taking unified control of our state government. For one thing, on all but a few issues (gay rights being one), our state GOP was/is pretty reasonable ("bought off by the unions" might be an alternate description). For another, our state Dems tend to be unprincipled and incredibly profligate. With the state budget wedged deep in the crapper, this could get scary pretty fast.

I think this is important because this democratic majority will redraw the congressional districts for NY after the 2010 census.

The Dems currently hold a 26-3 advantage among the NY delegation. I guess the state will lose a few seats, and the Dems could then try and eliminate the GOP held seats, but there are some Republican areas in the state. It'd be hard to draw them much worse than they currently are.

Bahaha, my precinct in DC:

Barack Obama - 1,417
John McCain - 72
Ralph Nader - 7
Cynthia McKinney - 7
Write In - 7

McCain got 4.77%.

Philly the Kid wrote:

traderdave wrote:

pacino wrote:

Barry Jive wrote:

Houshphandzadeh wrote:I hope he's as good as the first black mayor of Philadelphia.

Michael Nutter, you mean, right? We've never had a black mayor before him. NEVER.

I think he means the guy that bombed the damn city.

I am old enough to remember that like it happened yesterday.

Me too... I remember sitting in my pad on 19th and Pine, yelling at the TV, "why aren't the fireman spraying their hoses?!!!!"

Yes, there are a variety of nuances amongst people in this nation. A friend today mentioned that what she felt, that in some way many Americans were envigorated that they could "still have a voice" and that it wasn't all an inside-job. That things have been so obviously corrupt for so long. Most people I talk to, are more optimistic about Obama than I am, as far as actually reversing trends and policies of Bush. I dont see it, and I think once you are in the White House, you become even more secretive and conservative.

Had Thai food for the first time that night. (It's 1985, remember, Thai is pretty exotic) The restaurant was in W. Philly/University City (I could never tell those two neighborhoods apart) and we kept seeing fire trucks racing down the street.

Don't lots of people who work for Republicans live there?

Some GOP guy just said that they must stand against Obama to serve the center/right nation the represent -- not work with Obama, stand "against" him. If the role was reversed, the GOP would say the dems are for the terrorists. First day after election and they are already signaling their obstruction. Disgusting. I guess we'll have to vote the rest of them out in 2 years.

Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not saying Obama shouldn't take the right's views into consideration. But the idea that Obama should cater to the right, the party that the electorate just roundly rejected, is just laughable. The country is ready to move back to the left, not the extreme left, but more left than where we are now. The right's policies, particularly their economic policies, have been rejected.