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A Comprehensive 2010 Election Guide


This is from the New Republic so some of the editorializing is anti-Republican, but it appears to be a pretty good guide as to what is good or bad news for you depending on if you are a Democrat or Republican.

This is your comprehensive hour-by-hour guide to Election Night 2010. It will help you follow all of the bellwether indicators throughout the day and interpret the returns. So what are you waiting for? Print it out and keep it close during every minute of the agonizing countdown.

What to Look for Early on Election Day: There will be lots of anecdotal reports during the early hours of voting about turnout and the expectations* of both parties and many candidates. It’s colorful, but DON’T BELIEVE ANY OF IT. Much of this chatter can be safely ignored as too unsystematic or, worse, as spin designed to suppress or motivate turnout. It’s also good to remain skeptical about charges of “voter fraud,” often peddled by Republicans in order to enrage the base and offset Democratic charges of voter intimidation and polling place chaos.

One distraction that generally won’t be available, at least in the East, is the type of early exit-poll rumor that was common before the 2008 election. THE EXIT POLL CONSORTIUM OF MEDIA OUTLETS WON’T GET DATA UNTIL AFTER 5:00 P.M. (all hours in this article are Eastern Daylight Time), and leaks prior to release time are becoming virtually extinct. In addition, EXIT POLLING IS ONLY BEING CONDUCTED IN 26 STATES, and only of statewide races. So if anyone offers you exit poll data from VA-5 at 3:00 p.m., throw it in the nearest trash can.

Watch the weather. Early indications are that Election Day rain will be centered in the South, and some parts of the Northwest—but if the weather gets bad in other key swing areas, it can generally be assumed to benefit Republicans.

Beyond that, though, most of the day before early evening

http://www.tnr.com/blog/ed-kilgore/78782/comprehensive-2010-election-guide




A Little Lady Predicts a Big Win

Well, I think we know where this one’s going. The polls came like waves this week. Independents breaking hard for the GOP, those making under $50,000 going Republican, the party has a 20% lead among college graduates. Gallup says 2010 is looking better than the year of the last great sweep, with 55% of respondents now saying they are Republican or lean Republican. It was 49% in 1994. RealClearPolitics has 222 House seats going to the Republicans, 175 to Democrats, and 38 toss-ups, of which 36 are currently held by the Democrats (Editor’s note—today those numbers are 224 Republican, 167 Democrat and 44 toss-ups with 42 of those being current Democrat seats). The president’s approval numbers remain well below 50%, and Congress’s disapproval numbers above 70%.

Let’s say the polls are pretty correct. If they are, two big facts present themselves. ONE IS THAT THE OBAMA COALITION BROKE UNDER PRESSURE. We’ll see if they regroup. America turns on a dime, we’re in a time of quick and constant change. But Barack Obama’s lines have been broken.


On the other side, NOT ONLY IS A BIG REPUBLICAN WAVE COMING, BUT A ROUGH COALITION SEEMS TO BE FORMING. It is the coalition that did not come together in 2006 to save Congress for the GOP, and did not come together in ‘08 to elect John McCain. The tea party saved the Republican Party by, among other things, re-energizing it. But it’s also becoming clear the tea party did so without turning off the center.


This is news. Six months ago the common wisdom was that the tea party was going to scare independent voters and make them run screaming from the tent. “There was an awful man in an Uncle Sam hat and a woman talking about repealing some amendment. I can’t take it, Harry!”

http://peggynoonan.com/


I think the Republicans will win huge and even take the Senate.



GOP RIP

At a time when the Republican Party is on the verge of rising from a near-death experience just two years ago to achieve a stunning electoral triumph, writing the obituary of the Grand Old Party might seem a little strange.

I would submit, however, that IF YOU DEFINE THE G.O.P. AS AN ORGANIZATION, STRUCTURE, AND ESTABLISHED GROUP OF PEOPLE, ITS DEMISE IS NOT ONLY IMMINENT, BUT ALREADY AN ACCOMPLISHED FACT.
Moreover, the cause of its passing is a change in the political world as fundamental and profound as a polar shift. The political world has truly been turned upside-down. REPUBLICAN POLITICS HAS SHIFTED FROM A TOP-DOWN TO A BOTTOM-UP POWER STRUCTURE.

For the established Republican elite, the professional politicians who have shaped the party's policies, picked its candidates, apportioned its funds, and dispersed the fruits of political power, the Party is over. There's a new group of bosses in town. They're called The American People, and the real irony is that it is all made possible by Al Gore's little invention called "the internet."

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/11/rip_gop.html


No wonder the Democrats rail against the TEA Party so much. They are looking at their future as well. And the party elites in the Democrat party are like the Royal heads of state throughout Europe as the French Revolution was taking place.



Rasmussen warns Republicans

In the first week of January 2010, Rasmussen Reports showed Republicans with a nine-point lead on the generic congressional ballot. Scott Brown delivered a stunning upset in the Massachusetts special U.S. Senate election a couple of weeks later.

In the last week of October 2010, Rasmussen Reports again showed Republicans with a nine-point lead on the generic ballot. And tomorrow REPUBLICANS WILL SEND MORE REPUBLICANS TO CONGRESS THAN AT ANY TIME IN THE PAST 80 YEARS.

This isn't a wave, it's a tidal shift—and we've seen it coming for a long time. Remarkably, there have been plenty of warning signs over the past two years, but Democratic leaders ignored them. At least the captain of the Titanic tried to miss the iceberg. Congressional Democrats aimed right for it….

But Rasmussen warns towards the end of his story.

In this environment, it would be wise for all Republicans to remember that THEIR TEAM DIDN'T WIN, THE OTHER TEAM LOST. Heading into 2012, voters will remain ready to vote against the party in power unless they are given a reason not to do so.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703708404575586063725870380.html

I think Rasmussen's message is getting delivered over and over to Republicans.  If they don't get it they will be in trouble in 2012.  If they do get it, things could get a lot better for the country and the Republican Party by 2012.


Nine Ways the Democrats and their Friends in the Press Will Spin the Election Results

You might as well get ready for this. You’ll be hearing a lot about it in the next few weeks.

In the context of historic midterm elections, it's not that big a deal. Expect to hear a lot of this one if the Democrats hold on to control of the Senate. In 1994, President Clinton and his Democratic Party lost both the House and the Senate to the Republicans. And Mr. Clinton didn't even get his health care bill passed. As recently as 2006, President George W. Bush and his Republican Party lost control of both the House and the Senate. In 1946, Harry Truman and his Democratic Party lost both the House and the Senate to the Republicans. And in 1954, Dwight Eisenhower and his Republicans lost both the House and the Senate to the Democrats.

The Democrats have been saying all along that between the financial "reform," ObamaCare, and the stimulus, they've had the most domestic achievements since the New Deal; it's not surprising that the public reaction is similar; Franklin Roosevelt's Democratic Party lost 72 seats in the 1938 midterm elections for the House of Representatives, which is more than most predict Obama and his Democrats will lose. Bottom line spin: Obama did better than Clinton, George W. Bush, Eisenhower, Truman, or FDR.

The foreigners bought the election. See President Obama's claim that "groups that receive foreign money are spending huge sums to influence American elections." He wasn't talking about the Sierra Club or about the Mexican Carlos-Slim-backed New York Times. Expect to see this as the rationale for a renewed post-election push for campaign finance "reform."

The Republicans won, but they have no mandate. Example: John McCormick and Heidi Przybyla in an October 28 Bloomberg News article under the headline "Republicans Win, Get No Mandate in Poll Favoring Clinton."

The voters are ignorant. Example: Hendrik Hertzberg, writing in the November 1 New Yorker: "Even among the small minority of voters who have some familiarity with Senate rules and their baneful consequences, few know that the Democrats had their filibuster-proof majority—sixty votes, not all of them reliable—for just seven of the Obama Administration's twenty-one months."

Read it all here: http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2010/11/how-the-left-will-spin-the-election-results





Obama’s “it depends what your definition of “is” is moment

Remember the Obama "enemies" comment.  Here's the latest spin on it.

Obama responded: "If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, 'We're gonna PUNISH OUR ENEMIES  and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us,' if they don't see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it's gonna be harder."

The president said Monday that the message he was trying to send was that voters need to support lawmakers who stand with them on the issue.

"NOW THE REPUBLICANS ARE SAYING THAT I'M CALLING THEM ENEMIES," Obama said. "What I'm saying is you're an opponent of this particular provision, comprehensive immigration reform, which is something very different."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101102/ap_on_el_ge/us_obama_enemies


Perhaps Republicans are saying that you’re calling them enemies because you called them enemies.


Hamas Finally Admits Most Gaza Fatalities Were Combatants, Not Civilians

Here’s a news item certain to be ignored by every human rights organization, every UN agency, and every country that backed the Goldstone Report: almost two years after the war in Gaza ended, no less a person than HAMAS’S INTERIOR MINISTER HAS FINALLY ADMITTED THAT ISRAEL WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG ABOUT THE CASUALTIES — THE VAST MAJORITY WERE COMBATANTS, NOT CIVILIANS.

The first crucial admission in Fathi Hammad’s interview with the London-based Al-Hayat is that the 250 policemen Israel killed on the war’s first day by bombing their station were indeed combatants, just as Israel claimed. Human rights organizations have repeatedly labeled this raid a deliberate slaughter of civilian police tasked solely with preserving law and order, dismissing Israel’s contention that these policemen functioned as an auxiliary Hamas army unit. But here’s what Hamas’s own interior minister says:

On the first day of the war, Israel targeted police stations and 250 martyrs who were part of Hamas and the various factions fell.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/evelyn-gordon/379742


Not the news the anti-Israeli crowd wants to hear.