Whose heads will roll after the Democrats lose big in November?

[DSeid]

@E-Sabbath

No, it’s not what Nate Silver is saying …

Or maybe it is, now.

The FiveThirtyEight model now gives Republicans an 18 percent chance of claiming control of the Senate after the Nov. 2 elections — down from 24 percent last week.

And his House model has so many races so close that he is focusing on how uncertain the prediction is.

Thing is the narrative right now is an expected GOP rout. And perceptions are based on meeting or failing to meet those expectations. If the Dems keep the Senate with 51 or 52 and lose the House by less than conventional wisdom expects, then the Dems win the PR storyline for the days news cycle and no Dem heads roll as a result. And behind the scenes GOP top brass fret even as they publicly try to crow about the victory.

Pragmatically what does it matter? Nothing short of 60 (and with loyalty on votes) one way or the other matters in the Senate; “majority” matters naught. And it is clear that having the D or the R after the name in the House does not matter much either. I’d be more interested in an analysis of how various election outcomes will effect future major policy votes. So, for example, in IL: Kirk or Giannoulias? It’s close because neither of them is all that different from each other. Neither great, neither awful, both moderate, both likely to end up voting not too differently on major issues. A GOP victory there could give a majority but have no difference on any policy outcome.

The interesting thing to me is that the nominations of Tea Party backed candidates has raised the stakes. Elections that were more likely in the bag for the GOP before are now more competitive. The GOP has a greater chance of losing a few elections that shouldn’t have been competitive but if they win the impact on policy will be much greater.

[Digital_Stimulus]

@Fotheringay-Phipps

@Digital_Stimulus

Second, I think you’re conflating “evidence” and “proof”.

That’s a technically valid gambit but one that’s also very open to abuse. Virtually anything can be construed as “evidence”. The murder victim was killed with a knife. Barak Obama owns a knife. Therefore there is “evidence” tying Barak Obama to the crime, and we can run ads implying that he is a murderer unless he allows a full investigation of his schedule and whereabouts on the murder night. Open the books!!!

Pah. No gambit on my part. Again, as I understand it, funds all go into a single account. If they do not, that’s fine, nothing to see here and I’ve become slightly more informed. If they do, then money is fungible. It’s rather obvious that either qualifies as evidence (pretty decisive evidence too: the first, exonerating, the second, implicating); I’m not sure how or why you’d argue otherwise. Well, I understand why, but I’d hoped for better.

I’m curious as to why you apparently accept the charges are true when leveled at the COC, but make a point of saying that you have “no idea” whether these charges are true when leveled at unions (despite being reported in the NYT, in the linked article).

This really isn’t that difficult. Again, I haven’t really been paying attention to this story. What I have caught has dealt primarily with the CoC; I’ve only heard a few minor rumblings about unions.

I’m sorry, but some contract work just came in, and I have to put in some hours. Not sure when I’ll be able to revisit this…

[DSeid]

Posted in error.

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@DSeid

Thing is the narrative right now is an expected GOP rout. And perceptions are based on meeting or failing to meet those expectations. If the Dems keep the Senate with 51 or 52 and lose the House by less than conventional wisdom expects, then the Dems win the PR storyline for the days news cycle and no Dem heads roll as a result.

That’s entirely possible. But it’s also possible that the media will find the story of a rout more compelling than a story about “less happened than we thought”, especially since many or most readers & viewers are not political junkies like so many of us are. I incline to think that unless the Republicans fail to take the House, the “story” will be the Republican gains.

And possibly with some justice. There are ebbs and flows and ups and downs in these political campaigns, and I don’t think it makes sense to treat as a loss anything less than the high point of your position in the polls, or to treat anything above the lowest point as a win. It was only recently that R Gibbs got in trouble for even admitting the possibility of the Republicans taking over the House, and the Senate was a very long shot even more recently.

And it is clear that having the D or the R after the name in the House does not matter much either. I’d be more interested in an analysis of how various election outcomes will effect future major policy votes. So, for example, in IL: Kirk or Giannoulias? It’s close because neither of them is all that different from each other. Neither great, neither awful, both moderate, both likely to end up voting not too differently on major issues. A GOP victory there could give a majority but have no difference on any policy outcome.

I think it matters quite a lot. In the end, party unity prevails on the important issues. Ben Nelson et al made stinks about this or that aspect of the HCR bill, but in the end they all voted for it. There are any number of Democratic Senators who would not have voted for that bill if their ideology was unchanged but they had been elected as Republicans, and the converse is true of several Republicans.

And that’s even besides for the leadership votes.

@Digital_Stimulus

Again, as I understand it, funds all go into a single account. If they do not, that’s fine, nothing to see here and I’ve become slightly more informed. If they do, then money is fungible.

I don’t know if this is true or if it makes a difference. All money is fungible, regardless. Any number of laws ignore this (e.g. abortion funding), for whatever reason.

[The truth is that the whole accusation is beyond silly. The foreign money is a longstanding practice of contributions to the central COC by foreign affiliates and the entire sum of money is $100K, versus the $75M campaign budget. I don’t believe any of the Democrats genuinely believe in it]

Again, I haven’t really been paying attention to this story. What I have caught has dealt primarily with the CoC; I’ve only heard a few minor rumblings about unions.

But I helpfully provided a link to a NYT article. You could read it.

[DSeid]

@BrainGlutton

… N.B.: The above analysis is expressly based on the assumption that the present RW insurgence is libertarian rather than social-conservative. That might not be true.

The common view that the Tea Party movement is a rebellious, libertarian threat not only to the Republican establishment but also to traditional Christian conservatives is upended by a new survey that shows a broad overlap between the religious right and voters who identify with the Tea Party.

For example, nearly half (47 percent) of Americans who consider themselves members of the Tea Party movement also consider themselves part of the “Christian conservative movement,” and among the more than 8 in 10 Tea Partiers who identify as Christian, nearly 6 in 10 (57 percent) also consider themselves part of the Christian conservative movement.

The biennial American Values Survey, released in Washington on Tuesday, was conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and shows that two-thirds of Tea Partiers say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, while 45 percent say there should be no legal recognition for same-sex relationships. That is hardly the profile of a libertarian fringe and more closely reflects the Republican base.

So 47% of “Tea Partiers” are Christian Conservative as well. Therefore more than half are not. What percent of those who usually vote in GOP primaries are? Well, self-identified Christian Conservaties make up 22% of the adult population, and I’d guess that’s more than half of the usual GOP primary turn-out, so they seem less likely to be Christian Conservative than the typical GOP primary voter. Also in that site is that compared to that 22% that are the relatively quieter Christian Conservatives, only 11% of US adults identify as “Tea Party” - doing the math that means that less than one in four of those who identify as Christian Conservative also identify as “Tea Party” The fact that a selection of fiscally conservative GOP activists who “report that Fox News is their most trusted source of news about politics and current events” have 2/3s against abortion is not a shock; the fact that 55% would not endorse a statement that they are against legal recognition of same-sex relationships is.