I’m not rooting for Mike Castle to lose. I’m not rooting for him to win, either. But I’m definitely wary of some of these teabaggers actually joining the Senate next January. The common wisdom is that the Democrats will hold the seat in Delaware if Castle loses this primary. That’s probably true. But nothing is certain. Remember, all 100 senators are equally empowered to gum up the works with procedural delays, stupid time-wasting amendments, and grandstanding of all kinds. We’re already dealing with a new senator from Utah who will join the Coburn/DeMint obstruction-train. It’s looking like we might get another from Alaska. Rand Paul is still up in the polls in Kentucky and Harry Reid hasn’t put Sharron Angle away yet in Nevada. If Castle wins tonight, we still have chance to hold the seat. But if he wins tonight and goes on to win the election in the fall, at least we’ll have a Republican sitting on several committees who isn’t insane and doesn’t give a shit about Glenn Beck, Fox News, or Rush Limbaugh. It will grow a tiny moderate caucus by one, or by about twenty-five percent. So, I’m ambivalent. If he loses, I’ll just shake my head at more evidence of a spreading, menacing virus. I won’t call it a good thing, because it’s definitely not a good thing. On the other hand, the common wisdom is probably correct in this case. If Castle loses, we have a much better chance to hold the seat. And that’s a good thing.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Oh, I dunno….there’s some obscure charm in the prospect of anti-masturbation riders being attached to the Ag Department appropriations bill…
Yeah. But, really…not so much.
Early returns are still anemic but teabaggers currently winning in every race in New Hampshire and Delaware.
If Ayotte loses, I’m putting NH in lean-dem, and I had that fairly solid Republican before.
Same with Delaware.
I don’t know enough about the candidate to say for sure. You know, they’re winning these elections for a reason. They’re getting the most votes. I’m not celebrating anything from these results. They’re a sign of widespread mental illness.
Widespread illness among the Republican party.
Are these open or closed primaries?
closed, but still…
No going back now. O’Donnell has won the primary.
Why? Because the Republican establishment is reaping the whirlwind? Because the TradMed in this country refuses to do its job? Because the Democratic Party doesn’t know how, or doesn’t care, to market its accomplishments?
See this:
http://elections.firedoglake.com/2010/09/14/gallup-financial-reform-the-only-popular-democratic-act/
What does it say about the sanity of liberals that they are willing to let the crazies take over?
Who said we’re willing to let the crazies take over? What do you want us to do? Change parties and vote for Mike Castle?
Serious question here Boo, but didn’t Conway (or at least the Kentucky Dems) get MORE total votes in the primary than the Republicans? If so, I understand why baggers are “winning elections” in the cordoned-off halls of insanity that are GOP primaries, but it seems the populace by and large has not fallen on the curiously tasting teabagger honey as of yet.
Dems are turning out, and I’m not seeing blow outs in participation that the media would leave me to believe (nor the “anti-incumbency” for anyone who doesn’t have an R next to their name, but that’s another matter). Are there any hard numbers I can look at to see evidence of the enthusiasm gap, and I’m talking primary or special election results and not pie-in-the-sky-polling numbers.
Without going out and googling a link, they Republicans have millions more total votes than we do in the primaries, mirroring the situation in 2006 and 2008. We’re in big, big trouble.
We had fewer primaries. That makes a difference. Plus, the media has tended to suppress the vote.
We will be in big, big trouble if we don’t get the ground game going.
Just as another example, I browsed Politico’s tool for 2010 primary results here and saw that in the two Arkansas primaries that were uncontested in the House, Dem votes outnumbered Republican ones. I would not have expected this sort of result if I was watching cable news, and I see similar numbers elsewhere which leads to my original question.
The uncontested aspect is obviously obscuring the actual numbers, but I’m just trying to peg down actual instances of the “enthusiasm gap”. If you’ve got districts or states that you can point to from this map just let me know.
Real question, not being obstinate here.
Anybody else listening to Rachel Maddow vs Chris Matthews on O’Donnell’s win. Chris is saying don’t understatement the enthusiasm of O’Donnell’s voters, and compare it to Dem voter enthusiasm and you should NOT under-estitmate the enthusiasm. He of course brought up Reagan, who Dems thought was too “out there” to win, and due to Dem fragmentation and non-enthusiasm, Reagan surfed in on that wave.
Matthews should know better, because he was there. Reagan was a pro. A born salesman, who’d been making shit up since doing remote reconstructions of ballgames off the wire, and running for president since the day Ford was appointed.
These jamokes, not so much.
Yeah, but sometimes you don’t need to be quite the pro Ronnie was. Just slick enough, maybe attractive enough, certainly right-wing enough, then the timing of the election, and finally an opponent Dem who generates little enthusiasm.
I know nothing about Coons. Hopefully he’s not taking the outcome for granted like some on the lib blogs are already.
(nitpick note: Reagan was running for president not since Ford, but since he was elected gov in Nov 1966. Recall his brief first attempt at the nomination in 1968 …)
I forgot the ’68 dry run. Planet Nixon eclipses everything else in my memory of that era.
How many other presidents have an opera? Huh? Huh?
Or speaking of possible Reagan parallels with O’Donnell, and since this is the midterm year, how about 1966 when then Dem gov Pat Brown eagerly looked forward to facing Bedtime for Bonzo’s Ronald Reagan instead of the Repub he truly feared, moderate SF Mayor George Christianson.
All these crazies winning GOP primaries is causing me to feel a strange mixture of hope and terror.
We’re simply not smart to cheer when the Reps go for the crazies. Many of these people will win and they move the Overton window in their crazy direction even if they don’t. Remember Barry Goldwater. There is nowhere so crazy the US electorate might not go as empire crumbles and fear spreads. People die when fear triumphs — maybe not in our neighborhoods (now), but across the world.
You make a good point. That said, Barry Goldwater’s (for the time) no-holds barred crazy caused a huge backlash against Republicans that swept in the biggest Democratic majority since the New Deal (and bigger than any Dem majority since). It was only after Goldwater’s 1964 beatdown that Republicans learned to start couching their beliefs in code phrases like “Silent Majority” and “states’ rights.”
So who knows. Maybe the only way to get past all this is to go right through the heart of the Crazy. I sure hope so, anyway.
O’Donnell won. Another lunatic on the November ballot for the Repugs.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/09/14/primary.elections/index.html?hpt=T1&iref=BN1
In my youth my favorite record album was “Beat The Meatles”.
Let’s look at the reality of the Delaware upset. O’Donnell won with 30,000 voters (31,000+ by the time it’s over, I predict). Castle voters add 27,000 but only if they vote for O’Donnell. O’Donnell has very little upside in the general election; she turned out as many of her acolytes as she could to win this primary.
Delaware had 555,000 or so registered voters in 2004; that means that the current number of registered voters is probably no more than the average Congressional district.
Turn out 150,000 voters and you win by a landslide. I think that is in the realm of possibility for Chris Coons to accomplish with strong GOTV work for the entire ticket in Delaware. It is possible to sweep Senate and the Congressional seat. That is a pickup in the House.
Chris Mathews’s warning is a little extreme, but Democrats in Delaware should use it to build momentum for their ticket. (Matthews still must have PTSD over those losses.)
This is why I love you. You’re always so level-headed and tell the reality of the situation.
Love, it.
Also:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2010/election_2010_govern
or_elections/colorado/election_2010_colorado_governor
She’s got 50% negatives going in. She’s going to have to work just to keep the R’s on the reservation.
PPP reports that Castle voters break 44%-28% for the Democrat Chris Coons. Of course it’s a long time and many Koch hours of political commercials to election day, but things are hopeful in Delaware. Likely one House pickup for the good guys.
It is likely that the NSRC will not support O’Donnell in DE. She’s beyond the fringe, even for the Republican leadership.
I think it’s clear that if Democrats work in Delaware, Republicans can’t take the Senate.
Remember that Delaware is one of the Senate seats that will have a new Senator seated right after the election. It’s a special election.
I hear ya on seeing so much crazy given so much airtime unchallenged. Are the teebagger candidates gonna hafta do debates now and actually answer real questions from real reporters in their general elections, which they haven’t really done so far? Either way it’s weird to see how idiotic a human brain can get.
Thing is…it was always there. They’re just being given the megaphone now. They aren’t winning new people over…they’re simply coming out of the deep recesses of society and sticking together…like slime molds. I expected this to happen after President BlackityBlackBlackKenyan was elected.
They are overwhelming old. They are incredibly incoherent. I mean going back to when John McInsane unleashed the Quitta from Wasilla upon the world, hasn’t every single teebagger candidate had to stop doing even short basic interviews because they are so pathetic in having to defend their ridiculous views? (“What do you like to read?” is a “gotcha” question?!?!) Literally every…single…one. This is not some big movement developing…it’s one last big flameout of a dying mentality and they’re lashing out with all they got…sorta like a cornered rat.
Short term: Sure, they might have some slight effect here and there, but I’m not sure any benefit they get even outweighs the negative from how fractured they’re making the Repub Party. Castle’s people and the national Repubs are already saying they’re sitting it out now or supporting the Dem, Coons, and establishment Repubs are publicly bitching about DeMint and how he’s stirring up trouble. Divide and conquer, baby!
Long term: They’re driving people away from the Repub Party, just as the Quitta did in the last Prez election. She hurt the Repub ticket…alot. Once they burn off all their oxygen, the flameout will be complete. Might last another cycle or two, but I think we’ll be better off once all this puss bubbles up and we can lance it off once and for all.
This is all a MASSIVE difference from 1994, where Repubs were quite unified with the joke “Contract On America.” And another HUGE difference is the development of the blogs and more importantly a resurgence in Community Organizing, especially with Organizing For America. This is almost exactly the opposite of what Clinton and the DLC-led DNC did after the 1992 win, where they literally began closing down Dem Party offices across the country save a few “swing states.” Because of these distinct differences and more, I’m still holding out hope for holding current numbers for Dems, or maybe even some pickup, and yes, I realize polls are not showing this so far, but it really doesn’t get going until tomorrow. It’s all going to depend on ground game, as usual, so lace ’em up y’all!