Read My Mind

I just commented on this on another thread. Do we know why this happened? Too bad we didn't know earlier, we could've made a play here.

Did Obama win here? He did surprisingly well in Orange County and won Riverside County.


Liberty Avenue Politics - a place for politics in Southern Queens

---

by: nrafter530 @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 00:51:58 AM UTC

I predicted one

I figured we'd have one come from outer space. Might have known it would hit California. But fell a bit short. Too bad. Well, I won't blame the DCCC for missing this one. We all missed it.

I did say that when the voters want change, they will find it on the ballot. Then it can be enough to have the (D) beside the challenger's name and the (R) beside the incumbent's name.

Also, my proposal for spreading the wealth, giving $10,000 seed money to a hundred, or $100,000 to at least 10 or 20, of the long shot candidates might have fit this case.

Otherwise I'm still hiding in my cave, having expected that we'd win 40 or 50 seats. Eventually I will emerge to face the funereal music and comment on my fail.

---

by: WoodyNYC @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 02:04:04 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I predicted we would win 34

I thought we would get FL-21, FL-25, IL-10, NJ-07 and MN-03 which all turned out to be easy Republican wins.  I also thought we would get OH-15(we still might), MN-06, and NE-02.  

---

by: BillNolan @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 02:25:13 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I like the $10K each idea

Just 3 million USD worth of seed money to every candidate, to give them at least a tiny fighting chance.  And to show them that we're behind them, even if they're in R+26 districts (Bennion Spencer, anyone?).

party: Democratic, ideology: moderate, district: CT-01

---

by: Glenn Magus Harvey @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 02:27:09 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

The seed money

It pays for a website and professional photographs of the candidate. It rents a headquarters space, phone lines, and a handful of used laptops. It may allow a single fund-raising mailing. It's a start. Otherwise we risk again having no candidate in 3 or 4 or 5 House seats in Texas and an equal or greater number of blanks elsewhere.

---

by: WoodyNYC @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 03:04:03 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Here's what we should do: a Swing State Project Project

to calculate how $10,000 can be used as seed money for stuff like that, and put together some idea of a package--and recommend this idea directly to the Democratic leadership.

Hey, it only costs up to $4.35 million every two years.  How much does the DCCC usually raise per cycle?

party: Democratic, ideology: moderate, district: CT-01

---

by: Glenn Magus Harvey @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 05:02:32 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Heh

Maybe we should have moved everything one column to the right.

---

by: James L. @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 02:28:10 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Heh heh

I'm baking my humble pie, supersizing it, and expect that it will feed me until about Nov. '10. But no point in you changing your table, James L., you and your team did just fine. Congratulations on a job well done.

Was I that far off on the other indicators? When others said we'd get 4 or 5 Senate seats, I said we win about a dozen. Looks like we'll get 9. I said Rick Noriega in Texas had a better chance than Tom Allen in Maine, and it's Noriega 43%, Allen 39%. I said one or more races would come out of nowhere, and that turned out to be GA. At some point I threw out that Obama would get about 30 states. Kerry got 19 and Obama will get 28 or 29 when MO and NC are settled. (Where was MT when I needed it?)

Ah, well, surely better to have my meds putting me a little Up rather than a little too much Down.
:-)

---

by: WoodyNYC @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 02:59:06 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I predicted a net win of 26

I would have been thrilled if we got 40 or 50 seats, but I did not get overly optimistic like I did in the 2004 presidential race and went with my formula prediction of the D's gaining 29 seats and losing 3, and it looks like the results are going to be short even there.

My blog
Twitter
Scribd
28, New Democrat, Female, TX-03 (hometown CA-26)

---

by: californianintexas @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 04:18:53 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

PA-06 was another one

Everyone thought Gerlach would be sitting pretty, but he only won by 4%.

Follow the elections in Georgia at the 2010 Georgia Race Tracker.

---

by: TheUnknown285 @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 00:55:24 AM UTC

Yeah, damn

Imagine if we had had a candidate that campaigned.  2010, we better give him hell.

---

by: Andrew @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 01:03:18 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Gerlach is incapable of getting more than

55% of that district. He's too unpopular and dislike in Montgomery county, and Chester county is becoming more and more Democratic, so I don't know how much longer he can keep putting together his non-montgomery count winning coalition.

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus

---

by: ArkDem the Ragin Cajin @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 01:05:07 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

NY-24 as well

Arcuri only won 51-49 there, despite all prognosticators having him at "likely democratic" for the entire election.

28, Unenrolled, MA-08

---

by: Marcus @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 01:17:28 AM UTC

Hey Arcuri

That had better be a good lesson to ya not to be complacent!

party: Democratic, ideology: moderate, district: CT-01

---

by: Glenn Magus Harvey @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 01:22:42 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Gerlach

This guy knows that redistricting is around the corner and you better believe that his district is going to become more Montgomery County and less Berks County.  Democrats are going to want all of Lehigh County for Tim Holden.  Holden currently represents a conservative area of Pennsylvania, yet his district only includes half of Reading (a minority majority city) in Berks County.  

Therefore, since PA is likely to lose one and possibly two seats come 2010 Redistricting, Montgomery County parts of the district are going to move into a district favorable to Setak and the Chester County parts of the district will move into the Lancaster County based seat of Joe Pitts.

Gerlach is definately a possible party switcher, along with Mark Kirk and Charlie Dent.

---

by: bushy08 @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 01:29:47 AM UTC

GErlach is a solid conservative

staunchly actually. We need a candidate from Chester in order to win, because he keeps winning only by running up the margins there; Berks was pretty evenly divided, even this year.  

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus

---

by: ArkDem the Ragin Cajin @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 03:26:23 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Mich 11

Thaddeus McCotter is a terrible and weak GOP Congressman, but we didn't recruit a strong opponent, despite that, he only got 51%.  Plus, he didn't perform well last time for an inc either.  We dropped the ball on this one.

We should also target Mike Rogers in MI 08 because his support is soft too--though he did pull 57% this year.

---

by: the lurking ecologist @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 01:35:49 AM UTC

McCotter

is also likely to lose his job in the leadership. Heh.

---

by: Populista @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 02:37:55 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

McCotter

only got 52% against a nobody last time. His district is definitely trending blue and he's only barely gotten by weak challengers.  

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus

---

by: ArkDem the Ragin Cajin @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 03:27:10 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Wow

A few CA races were extremely close. Ultimately these ones, the MI race, and the PA one were just missed with polling. Overall a good job with the DCCC. They spent as much as possible in the likeliest wins and it still wasn't enough for whatever reason.  

---

by: Progressive America @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 02:09:51 AM UTC

WA-08: Burner closing in

Unfortunately that's just because King is counting quicker than Pierce. She's about 600 votes down now. She's winning 51-49 in King, but she probably needs that to be 52-48 (maybe 51.5-48.5) if she continues to lose Pearce by 10 points. My estimates are that King will ultimately produce 4 times as many votes as Pearce County. So if she can net 7,000 or so votes in King and lose Pearce by less than 7,000 than she can win.

---

by: Progressive America @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 03:16:12 AM UTC

then*

---

by: Progressive America @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 03:16:52 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Hedrick

Hope he runs again in 2010 and gets the help he deserves. With that fundraising discrepancy, clearly he can win this seat next time.

---

by: Progressive America @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 03:19:05 AM UTC

Two thoughts

One, Ken Calvert is one of those scandal-plagued Inland Empire GOPers, like his neighbors Jerry Lewis and Gary Miller. It's mostly penny ante corruption, but he was also picked up with a prostitute in his car back when he was a freshman rep in the mid 90s. So although nothing new came out about him lately, maybe there's some cumulative distaste with him.

And two, this is the second fastest growing district in California population-wise. The majority of that growth is Hispanic. I don't know how many of them are actual voters, but I suspect the number of Democrats in the district is going up sharply. Riverside County in general went for Obama, and I don't think it's gone Dem since 1992.

---

by: Crisitunity @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 04:03:47 AM UTC

That's right.

Though Clinton only won with a sub-40% plurality. Before that, the only other times it went Democratic were in FDR's mega-landslide in 1936 (and even then FDR only got a plurality), and 1964, the only other time a Dem won the majority in Riverside.

My blog
Twitter
Scribd
28, New Democrat, Female, TX-03 (hometown CA-26)

---

by: californianintexas @ Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 04:25:31 AM UTC

[ Parent ]