After the last few (four, I guess, now) cycles where the GOP seemed to do everything possible to throw away winnable Senate races in October, this was a very pleasant week. Still plenty of time for us to fuck everything up, but almost every competitive race featured something good. Moving vaguely from east to west and north to south…

Virginia isn’t exactly competitive, Warner was and remains a solid favorite to hold the seat, but with the story last night that he is involved in this State Senate job offer flap, it could cut into his margin.

North Carolina has been one of the few bright spots for Dems with Kay Hagan holding a slim but consistent lead over State House Speaker Thom Tillis. He’s recently seized on this line of attack bashing Hagan for poor committee attendance. Everyone misses a lot of committee meetings, but CNN reported private polling has shown the attack broadly speaking is very potent, so you don’t want to do what Hagan did earlier this week and try to excuse an absence of a classified Armed Services briefing on ISIS and other national security threats with the DNI by saying she had to attend a fundraiser (hello tone deaf!). This is a good time to speak in broad generalities about the challenges a senator faces with scheduling, and not to get into the specifics.

Kentucky is a race that’s competitive, though getting a disproportionate amount of coverage relative to its likelihood of flipping due to McConnell being Minority Leader. His opponent, Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, dodged a question on voting for Obama in really poor fashion. She was an Obama delegate to the DNC in 2012 and everyone knows she voted for him. Just say yes and that he’s been disappointing or whatever rather than make yourself look like you’ve got something to hide.

Arkansas is looking like one of the more secure GOP pickups, with Cotton pulling ahead of Pryor over the past month, and Pryor got made fun of all over the place this week for his ummmmmmm garbled mess of a response to how the Obama Administration is handling the Ebola problem.

Louisiana is another GOP pickup opportunity with Rep. Bill Cassidy running ahead of Sen. Mary Landrieu when matched up head to head. Landrieu made news this week firing her campaign manager and a chunk of her other campaign staff. This is generally something you want to avoid doing in October, though if the race goes to a runoff there are two full months left, so maybe not the end of the world. Still not exactly a sign of brimming confidence.

Iowa was thought to be a likely Democratic hold earlier in the year with Democratic Congressman Bruce Braley having a clear field compared to the mess of a primary on the GOP side, but recent polling has shown Iowa State Senator Joni Ernst running even with Braley. First lady Michelle Obama was in state yesterday campaigning for Braley, and she exhorted the gathered crowd to elect Bruce Bailey, US Marine. Bailey (sic) has not served in the Marine Corps, although Ernst would be the first female combat veteran ever elected to the US Senate.

South Dakota has popped up as not as solid of a GOP pickup as previously thought with former GOP gov Mike Rounds fighting a lingering scandal from his administration about visas, and former GOP Senator Larry Pressler, who backed Obama in 2008 and 2012, emerging as a possibly spoiler in a three way race. A big problem for Pressler popped up Friday as some GOP oppo dropped that he’s essentially a DC resident (takes his homestead rebate deduction there, has a 202 phone number, and has been a registered lobbyist). Nothing says fuck the system like electing an ex-Senator who lives in the capital still. The Democrat, Rick Weiland, is running a somewhat distant third, so it’s not clear if he is gonna be able to capitalize on this from Pressler, whose votes in the polls look like they’re mostly coming at Rounds’ expense.

Kansas has been far and away the biggest bright spot for Democrats over the past month with Independent Greg Orman surprising everyone and looking like he might knock off longtime GOP Senator Pat Roberts after the Democrat in the race withdrew. Nothing bad really happened this week for Orman outside of a few polls showing Roberts ahead, but I meant to post this last weekend, and I love the hell out of this article so will post it now – Kansas Senate candidate Greg Orman is 2014's most cynical politician – god love ya Vox (the mediocre Ezra Klein site, not our excellent message board founder) for writing and posting this. Elections are supposed to be about choices, and if your entire campaign is running as a blank slate, that doesn’t really do much for representative democracy.

Colorado has been one of the most Democratic trending states in the country, but GOP Rep. Cory Gardner is giving first term Dem Senator Mark Udall everything he can handle. Newspaper endorsements usually don’t matter much, but when they’re unexpected they at least generate some news coverage. The liberal leaning Denver Post backed Gardner yesterday, leading to a nice little news cycle for him. More delightfully they hammered Udall for his “obnoxious one-issue campaign” of trying to accuse Gardner of outlawing birth control when he’s called for contraceptives to be made available over the counter being “an insult to those he seeks to convince.” Tell them how you really feel.

Finally not a Senate contest, but the great Wendy Davis uncorked the ad of the cycle yesterday. As Mother Jones puts it – “Wendy Davis just released an ad attacking Greg Abbott, her opponent for governor in Texas, which is, to be blunt, bullshit. It's offensive and nasty and it shouldn't exist. She's basically calling Abbott a cripple.”



What a time to be alive

As for Wendy Davis, I suspect her biggest issue (beyond being a Democrat in Texas) will be getting minority voters to the polls. While she's got the urban/suburban white pro-choice vote in the bag, she's never really gotten away from her filibuster image. There are a lot of minority pro-life Democratic-leaning voters who needed something to convince them to support her and that ad certainly won't help GOTV. It's kinda weird Battleground Texas thought she'd be the best candidate to turn Texas purple/blue. They'd probably do better with someone similar in views to Mary Landrieu.

White women on (my) social media will be so crushed with her loss.

Polar Bear Phan wrote:As for Wendy Davis, I suspect her biggest issue (beyond being a Democrat in Texas) will be getting minority voters to the polls. While she's got the urban/suburban white pro-choice vote in the bag, she's never really gotten away from her filibuster image. There are a lot of minority pro-life Democratic-leaning voters who needed something to convince them to support her and that ad certainly won't help GOTV. It's kinda weird Battleground Texas thought she'd be the best candidate to turn Texas purple/blue. They'd probably do better with someone similar in views to Mary Landrieu.

White women on (my) social media will be so crushed with her loss.

I think the fact that she could raise a ton of outside money had more to do with her candidacy than anything else. Consultants like to get paid more than they like to win.

i don't see how the GOP views this past week as good news for any actual legislative goals of theirs, but a few poll numbers were good for their shitty senate candidates, so good week all round, I guess??

also tammy duckworth is a double-amputee helicopter pilot from the Iraq War, so Ernst wouldn't be first anything.

Why are we still supplying the Iraqi army with weapons? Have we not bombed enough of our Humvees yet?

pacino wrote:i don't see how the GOP views this past week as good news for any actual legislative goals of theirs, but a few poll numbers were good for their shitty senate candidates, so good week all round, I guess??

also tammy duckworth is a double-amputee helicopter pilot from the Iraq War, so Ernst wouldn't be first anything.

Winning the Senate would be good for GOP legislative goals. Congress isn't in session, so the party probably wasn't gonna be passing many bills to our liking this week. And as long as Harry Reid is majority leader, that will be the case whether or not Congress is in session.

And you probably learned in grammar school that there are two houses in Congress. The lower house, the House of Representatives, has 435 members, of which Tammy Duckworth is one. The upper house, the Senate, has 100 members. Joni Ernst would be the first female combat vet in the Senate, as I stated. So she'd be the first of that, which is something.

Shes an incredible loon. Im. Not surprised youre glad she's on her way there. The courts are slowly unraveling the various gerrymandering, voter suppression and anti-civil rights laws your party worked hard to pass. You can have the federal Senate if it means there's still two somewhat competent branches of the government actually looking out for its citizens.

You say a few things that aren't true or don't make sense, and you don't let that faze you. Just double down on the insults like nothing ever happened.

I like the moxie.

I dont see one insult against you. You were the one talking down to me. But, you know, let's make it about that.

If we want to get down to it, they're not in session because they dont want to be. It's not August.

I wouldn't want America to see what I stand for if I were them, so I can't really blame them for shutting it down. The last thing they need is people seeing their opinions. And who knows how many of their members would denigrate women if they were having to give speeches on the floor

pacino wrote:I dont see one insult against you. You were the one talking down to me. But, you know, let's make it about that.

If we want to get down to it, they're not in session because they dont want to be. It's not August.

Insults toward various other folk, not me. Calling candidates shitty and loons and whatnot. I think we've got some pretty good senate candidates this go around, tbh. But your arguments are powerful and convincing.

I only talked down to you because you managed to be both obnoxious and wrong in trying to correct me on a straightforward statement that was not partisan and something of a throwaway line. I didn't start the fire.

Monkeyboy wrote:I wouldn't want America to see what I stand for if I were them, so I can't really blame them for shutting it down. The last thing they need is people seeing their opinions. And who knows how many of their members would denigrate women if they were having to give speeches on the floor

Who is shutting down what?

There's very little wrong with 'insulting' a politician. They aren't special. You do it all the time.

Was it Ernst that made Glen Beck's "UN Agenda 21" conspiracy theory a platform in her campaign?

pacino wrote:There's very little wrong with 'insulting' a politician. They aren't special. You do it all the time.

Yeah, but those are politicians that are wrong.

There's nothing wrong with insulting politicians. pacino made an almost impossibly terrible post and kept on trucking when it was pointed out like nothing happened.

Whatever.

The point of the post is that you viewed it as a good week despite all sorts of laws being stopped or overturned that your party had passed. The reason it was a good week? A few senate races look good.

What is your goal?

You chose to focus on my last line. Am I supposed to apologize to you? Throw myself upon the mercy of the court? No, Id rather not give a shit about a rathrr random distinction and instead discuss how out of whack priorities seem to be.

I think his point is that his first priority (winning) will lead to his second priority (getting the laws he wants passed).

I'm much more concerned that the crux of both his priorities is to concentrate as much wealth and power as possible into as few people as possible. That's the GOP agenda right now. Very simple: win elections so that they can pass laws that help the very few Americans who really don't need the help. The rest of this is just window dressing.

yep

pacino wrote:i don't see how the GOP views this past week as good news for any actual legislative goals of theirs, but a few poll numbers were good for their shitty senate candidates, so good week all round, I guess??

silly, it goes like this: good news for the horse race, bad news for the human race