Storm Clouds Gather For Democrats

SIgh.
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Meanwhile, in reality:
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DEMOCRATIC PARTY:
Approval: 45
Disapproval: 48
Don't know: 7
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REPUBLICAN PARTY:
Approval: 17
Disapproval: 74
Don't know: 9

Again you don't know what you are talking about. I saw Cook on TV yesterday talking about this. He said that up to twenty dems could lose their seats in the House. However, he said that the majority of those who may lose seats would be BLUE DOGS.
This is excellent news. Let's say you are a Blue Dog that rode Obama's coattails to victory last November, does Obama's current weakness scare you? It should. Now historically, huge legislative victories boost a president's approval rating, and those of his party (i.e. everyone likes a winner).
Going forward, if you are Blue Dog, do you continue to tea-bag the legislative process and serve the insurance industry or do you work to pass a good bill? All the insurance industry bribes in the world won't stem an election day massacre.
So we either have Blue Dogs acting in the best interest of Democrats, knowing they have the most to lose, or we don't and they get shown the door. Either way it a win for the Democratic Party brand.

OK - people, place your bets - next August, before the midterms, what will be the August Hysteria? Who would have ever guessed "Death Panels" for this August OR POTUS is an illegal alien who should be picked up by ICE and deported?

Come on, the more ridiculous, the more likely Sarah Palin is to actually say it and Fox News and Republicans are likely to believe it.

Conventional Pundit Wisdom has been wrong so many times, I don't care what Charlie says will happen. Time will tell. Something crazy will probably happen between now and then and we have no idea how that will effect things. Republicans are just proving themselves to be complete liars willing to do and say anything.

On the day that news breaks of Tom Ridge's admission that the terror alerts were politically manipulated, what would we expect from TIME magazine but a determined misreading of recent polls? "It's excellent news for John McCain!"

momentomaury,

It is hard to get worked up over the numbers if you're a democrat. It's even harder if you're a liberal democrat. I'm not worried about it myself. Losing the blue dogs isn't going to faze me. The democrats have put up big wins for the last two elections. It's only natural that there are going to be some losses after two wave elections. Should we really expect anything else?
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Even if Obama's numbers were in the 60's, I'd still expect a return to a more natural equilibrium. Some of the red states that flirted with the blue dogs in 2008 should be expected to return to the fold. It will be pretty interesting to see what happens next year, but even losses aren't going to cause me to lose any sleep.
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The republican party is still in meltdown mode and their crazies are on center stage. If the inmates are still running the asylum next August and the candidates are of the wingnut variety, I'd say it was more of a dying gasp than a comeback.

Count me among those who notes that The Dem house majority is large enough that Quality matters.

Getting rid of the Bluedogs seems like a win-win to me. There is no difference between them and a conservative, and the party no longer needs to appease them.
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Good riddance.

Let us not forget as well that the moment he's examining is when HCR is in a state of flux and under relentless attack. Do we honestly think that 6 months after a bill passes that the 'tea leaves' are going to look exactly the same?

I'd suggest MS look at fivethirtyeight.com for real-world handicapping, not fake inside-the-belt punditry. Nate Silver has a Dem. HC update today.

...and sacred, welcome back. With lots of rants this week, pirate still not posting, and me mostly posting to crickets (or getting comment deleted), your humor was missed.

This is good news for John McCain.

/sigh

The Democrats currently have a 78-seat margin in the House of Representatives. That means they could lose a net of 38 seats (half of 78, less one) and still control a majority of the chamber.

Now, this is no reason for Dems to relax, but no one should be pulling a Chicken Little at this point.

I have a lot of respect for the difficulty of doing what Charlie Cook does, but it's also not like he hasn't been wrong before. Scherer is only highlighting him right now because he, like the rest of the GOP, thinks they smell blood in the water and think they are kicking Democrats when their down. Of course, this is not going to be how the election plays out. Charlie is making a lot of assumptions based on conventional wisdom, which boils down to nothing more than past is prologue. Of course, everyone remembers how 2008 didn't end up the way they predicted in 2007 now did it? We do remember that every time a pundit made a prediction they were wrong but in politics pundits don't ever pay a price for being wrong.
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Charlie is basing his projection on criteria that he cannot guarantee will remain the same. Frankly, some of it is based on things that aren't even real.. What we do know is that the political debate will not remain stagnate. And we are entering an era unlike one we've ever seen before. He talks about what voters will do in off year elections, giving more credibility to the party out of power, who have basically transformed into a caricature of crazy. We don't even know how the latest story about the CIA outsourcing death squads to black water is going to play out let alone Tom Ridge's book revealing the manipulation of terror alerts for political gain.
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Any Democrat who listens to this crap at this stage is nuts. This is about trying to scare Democrats who are slowly coming to their senses and finding their feet. The goal is to use fear to keep Democrats paralyzed, but Howard Dean has it right when he says this moment will pass and so will health care. The approval numbers will go back up and all will be right with the world.
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Charlie Cook assumes that the GOP won't pay any price for their transformation into nihilists, but he's in for a rude awakening, he like the rest of the media is confusing the ginned up, corporate sponsored town hall faux outrage as proof of the passion on the right, despite polling that clearly shows that the GOP is not benefitting from any of this. Frankly, what would make you think that brithers actually vote, these fringe elements showing up in the media are not those who vote they are those who yell. They are the gun toting survivalist in the bunkers, afraid of government, screaming don't tread on me from ruby ridge, they don't want government tracking them so they don't register.

I think the only thing for Obama to do now this long and deep 8 months into his presidency, is to resign his governorship so as to avoid being a lame duck. Which of course would be business as usual for a skinny Hollywood, telepromter, making up stuff type like him.

He could hold a press conference in front of a lake with squawking ducks, use lots of exclamation points and have Bo as the only attendee.

If I put this up on my twitter page will you write a blog post about it Michael? If not, why not?

OMGROTFLMAO-TWEET-TWEET! Just as SUSA releases a new poll showing that if you word the question about a public option the same way the NBC/WSJ poll worded it in June, then 77% of the population still supports the public option. Dark storm clouds for Dems? Yes, if they persist in thwarting the overwhelming majority of the nation on health care reform.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/20/new-poll-77-percent-suppo_n_264375.html

The Dems lost seats in 1966, almost certainly as a result of the landmark civil rights legislation that LBJ rammed through. Who among us today would want to have won the seats, rather than to have passed the laws, and changed the country for all time?

It's not about whether you lose seats, but whether you have anything to show for the seats you lose.

Amazingly, as I clicked on the article referenced in the post that talks about Charlie Cook being the best, I ended up on Pg 2 of a Dana Milbank article written a week or so before Election 2006(why Pg 2 I wondered) ...clicking to Pg 1, I read this gem of a forecast from Mr Cook
" What fate does the seer see for Sen. George Allen (R-Va.)?

"He wins ugly, but he wins," Cook divines."

AH that's why maybe Mr Scherer didnt link to Pg 1 of the article.

PLEASE SUPPORT OUR GREAT PRESIDENT GENIUS OBAMA, BY RE-ELECTING YOUR LOCAL DESPERCRAP.

Love,

Tokyo Al Franken

Obama is holding steady at 47 percent, and should be well situated by November of 2010 to lead his party into the 1994 deja douche ditch only the Iranian media could hate.

Of course, if calling Republican taxpayers un-American starts wowing voters, and insuring illegal aliens, and releasing terrorists, and funding ACORN Sacramento, and firing IG's, and losing Iraq, and taking money under the table from PayPal PLO?

Well then all bets are off.

CLIXONS ACCOMPLISHED.

I like when the POTUS scares people about health care and evil Republicans.

That makes many people support him.

Sanford edges ahead of Hillary, Kerry, any sober Kennedy or cloned Nixon in 2012 polling, Obama officially off charts and now suspected by majority of Yellow Dogs of being Kenyan after all, DNC to hold raffle for Vermont to pay off Sacramento ACORN legal bills, North Korean hooker rescuers, Chicago.

http://twitter.com/HULAgate

DNC plot to kill one-sixth of U.S. economy crashes on takeoff, Howard Scream relegated to Under Secretary to Haiti, Obama plans golf trip.

http://twitter.com/HULAgate

Obama can fix this by shoving socialized medicine down the AARP's craw whether they like cafeteria euthanasia or not.

KEEP KEVORKIAN ALIVE!

Did Charlie Cook also predict the next Kentucky Derby winner? Sorry, Charlie, you're a good man, but a week is a long time in politics, and you are gambling a year ahead. This is just reading the tea-leaves when there's nothing better to do.

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