Mistakes have been made

RCP and the HOUSE

In looking at the election you want to watch what overall is happening. I’m using the RCP number in the House of Representatives. Are the Democrats making inroads? So far the answer is no.

Over the last 4 days, RCP has reassigned 15 seats. 2 of them took races in the Democrats favor while 13 of the moves went for the Republicans. The average gain for the REPUBLICANS IN THE HOUSE HAS GONE FROM 56 TO 61 A NET GAIN OF 5 SEATS.

I’ve also watch the Sunday morning shows. Getting guesses from their pundits, the liberal leaning Meet the Press had a number saying the House will go Republican but the Senate won’t while a couple of pundits said they thought the Democrats would just barely hang on to the House and the Senate. They reminded me of 1994 when Eleanor Clift said the Republicans would take the Senate but there was no way they could take the House. I’m seeing the same thing from Left wing pundits. They can’t bring themselves to even imagine the Democrats will be fired a week from Tuesday.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/house/2010_elections_house_map.html


Is Obama a Socialist?

Now a new book by Stanley Kurtz -- a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a Harvard PhD -- reveals why we should have probed the disconnect when we had a chance. Americans increasingly sense we were sold a bill of goods, and Kurtz explains why in "Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism." OUR PRESIDENT ISN'T WHAT HE CLAIMS TO BE, says Kurtz. Obama's plummeting approval ratings, and the electoral tsunami about to hit Democrats, reflect voters' sense of betrayal.


In fact, Kurtz goes further, and makes an electrifying charge: Obama has purposely disguised what he believes, and is actively seeking to mislead the American people about his agenda. OBAMA, SAYS KURTZ, IS A SOCIALIST. He believes -- not in state ownership -- but in a savvier version of socialism that seeks to transform and undermine American capitalism through ever-expanding government control; irreversible entitlements; and a metastasizing public sector.

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/105550623.html?page=1&c=y


Leftists views of The TEA Party

Here’s an interesting article on a leftist academics conference trying to understand the TEA Party. These folks seem angry and confused and you may need to read it a couple of times to get an insight into what these folks believe.

"If you look across the board here, true skeptics of the Tea Party, 49 percent agreed with the proposition that blacks ought to work their way up without any special favors," says Parker. "But if you look at the true believers, that goes to 92 percent. THIS IS ANOTHER INDICATOR OF RACISM, RIGHT: Over the past few years, blacks have gotten less than they deserve. Forty-five percent of true skeptics disagree with this; almost 80 percent of true believers disagree with this."

http://www.slate.com/id/2272097/pagenum/all/



Big Labor’s Big Mistake

It’s Big Labor’s Big Mistake going into the Big Midterms. The union’s mistake was that IT HAS GOTTEN OUT IN FRONT OF THE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE WHEN IT COMES TO SPENDING ON THE ELECTION. If you take a look at the top five outside spenders on candidates running in the midterms, you’ll see that the National Education Association (the teachers union) and the Service Employees International Union (second largest after AFSCME in terms of public employees, also has a lot of healthcare workers) have spent a combined total with AFSCME of $171.5 million. Big Labor has now outspent the two biggest boogeymen on the right--the Chamber of Commerce and American Crossroads, who have spent a combined total of $140 million.

http://politics.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/mary-kate-cary/2010/10/22/big-labors-big-mistake-in-the-2010-elections.html


So as Obama and the Democrats decry the big money spent against them, we are finding out that even more money is being spent for them. And this money at least indirectly comes from the Tax Payers through public employee unions.



Where did the Democrats go wrong?

The liberal journalist Peter Beinart noted that for decades Democratic leaders had treated the American public’s latent conservatism as a sleeping bear: THE CHIEF IMPERATIVE WAS TO AVOID SUDDEN MOVES THAT WOULD ROUSE IT. But the Reagan era was now over, and Democrats no longer needed to live in fear. THAT’S WHAT OBAMA’S “YES WE CAN” SLOGAN MEANT TO LIBERALS: Yes we can move past both conservatism and Clintonian triangulation. Liberalism was living in its favored political tense: the future perfect.

Democrats could look at the political landscape with confidence, assured of three things. The country had decisively rejected conservatism and moved leftward. The idea of small government had been discredited by the financial crisis. And the president’s persuasive powers could get the Democrats through any remaining difficulties.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/250736/bender-over-rich-lowry


The article is an interesting look at the hubris of the Democrats after the 2008 election. It is apparent they didn’t hear what the American people were actually saying because they were too busy telling each other what they wanted to hear.



It’s the economy, stupid

Democrats are perplexed. Here is a case that should be bringing a Republican Senator down and it doesn’t seem to be doing what the Democrats expected. In any other time it probably would, but in this election social issues are a non sequitur. It’s all about the economy.

NEW ORLEANS -- In July 2007, when Sen. David Vitter acknowledged a "very serious sin" in his past during the D.C. Madam prostitution scandal, many pundits wrote the Louisiana Republican's political obituary.


After all, Vitter was one of the country's fiercest social conservatives who was elected to Congress in 1999 after former Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.) was forced to step down as the result of his own adultery scandal.


No one, including most Republicans, believed Vitter could survive charges of hypocrisy that would surely come as part of a re-election campaign


But with only nine days left before Election Day -- and despite the best efforts of his Democratic opponent, Rep. Charlie Melancon, to make Vitter's personal problems a defining issue -- the first-term Senator appears headed to a relatively comfortable re-election victory.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20101024/pl_cq_politics/politics000003755122