Great:

Just great. Now there's another seat that we're going to have to battle just to hold on to!

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by: jsrosa @ Fri Mar 05, 2010 at 02:36:35 AM UTC

"Its not about politics"

Well thanks Delahunt glad you think that. Too bad we don't want to defend another swing seat! If its not about politics then why don't you retire in a favorable climate?  

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by: fitchfan28 @ Fri Mar 05, 2010 at 02:38:52 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Geez, it's a Democratic seat, why the panic???......

Mark Kirk gave up a less Democratic seat in IL-10 to run for Senate, and we're all excited about the pickup opportunity.

Delahunt's seat votes Democratic for President by a double-digit margin every time, even when a liberal black guy from Chicago with a foreign and partly-Muslim dictator name is the nominee.

Yeah, Scott Brown cleaned up here, but so what?  That required a perfect storm.  Republicans are not going to target D+5 House seats this November.  They're focusing on many, many Democratic-held districts McCain won, or that Obama won only very narrowly, and after that, there's no money left for anywhere else.  Unless the Democrats nominate a bad candidate running a bad campaign, the Rethugs won't play here.

I realize there are cicumstances where a seat like this can flip, and that it's not impossible for us to lose it this November, but the fact is realistically there are limits to what the GOP can accomplish this November.  We have 17 open seats, fewer than 10 are potentially competitive, and the Republicans don't have very much money, especially in the party committees, to play.  We have a lot of incumbents who are much more endangered than whoever is the Democratic nominee in MA-10.

43, male, Indian-American, Democrat, VA-10

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by: DCCyclone @ Fri Mar 05, 2010 at 14:33:56 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

How do you know Republicans won't target this seat?

I think they might very well target it. That's different from saying they'll win it, though.

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"
--  Will Rogers  

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by: Pan @ Fri Mar 05, 2010 at 17:49:33 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I think what he's saying is that the Republicans won't seriously target it

And I agree, Scott Brown's performance aside, this is simply not fertile ground for the Republicans to be aggressive in.

Politics and Other Random Topics

24, Male, Democrat, NM-01, Chairman of the Atheist Caucus, and Majority Leader of the "Going to Hell" caucus!

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by: DGM @ Fri Mar 05, 2010 at 18:11:30 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

No inside info, I'm going by the facts we all know which are...

...the NRCC has very little money and has struggled; the RNC with Steele's absurd burn rate and a cash on hand that even Howard Dean would laugh at is in its worst financial shape of my 42-year lifetime; and there are so many Dem-held seats in play that are less Democratic than MA-10 that the Rethugs must do triage and pick their targets more narrowly than they want.

Don't get me wrong, the Rethugs likely will get a few they don't target.  If the GOP nominee in MA-10 can raise big money on his own, he won't need party committee help so much.  But even then he'll need the Democratic nominee to run a bad campaign in the same vein as Coakley, and I think that's a lot less likely now that the special election happened as a wake-up call.

I think for the reasons I listed further above, it's highly unlikely the GOP will target this seat, and if they do it's because there's something peculiarly wrong with the Democratic nominee.

43, male, Indian-American, Democrat, VA-10

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by: DCCyclone @ Tue Mar 09, 2010 at 01:47:31 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

???

Republicans already have a top tier challenger who was probably the reason for Delahunt's retirement. He was only a few points away from Delahunt in an internal poll, so yes it's going to be a tough race. As for IL-10 it's not won yet, and most people still think it's a tossup. Yes it's an excellent opportunity, but not (even with Dold :) as the nominee) a sure thing. I'm really not trying to be like Tek, but we need to be realistic.    

Proud member of the Indiana Democratic Party from IN-9.  

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by: hoosierdem @ Fri Mar 05, 2010 at 21:34:03 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Your comments on Delahunt are suspect at best......

Whose "internal poll" was that?  And what was the sourcing?

And "top-tier" recruit is a relative term.  He's a good recruit under the circumstances of a tough district in a very tough state.

And the notion that Delahunt quit because he feared a tough race is truly meritless.  It's almost certainly false based on the fact that one virtually never sees an incumbent retire out of fear in a seat as partisan in the incumbent's favor as this one.

43, male, Indian-American, Democrat, VA-10

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by: DCCyclone @ Tue Mar 09, 2010 at 01:38:50 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Something

is telling me that possumtracker1991 isn't happy right now.  

Proud member of the Indiana Democratic Party from IN-9.  

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by: hoosierdem @ Fri Mar 05, 2010 at 02:46:39 AM UTC

i was thinking

the same thing.  and i agree with him/her

18, Dem, CA-14 (home) CA-09 (college, next year). social libertarian, economic liberal, fiscal conservative.   Everybody should put age and CD here. :)

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by: jncca @ Fri Mar 05, 2010 at 02:49:35 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I do as well

Yeah I published that 2 sentence Rangel diary and I realize that was stupid now. I suppose you live and learn.

Proud member of the Indiana Democratic Party from IN-9.  

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by: hoosierdem @ Fri Mar 05, 2010 at 02:53:58 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

seriously

I at least try to write a paragraph or two when it comes to these type of diaries :\

2 Sentence diaries can just be comments in a daily digest thread instead imo.

21, Male, Gay, Dem, Born: AR-04 ;  Current Residence: FL-02

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by: shocky27 @ Fri Mar 05, 2010 at 13:13:05 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I agree

I think that election news that just send a link shouldn't be diaries. It takes FOREVER to put together a redistricting diary, and it's frustrating for all of us if it falls by the wayside because of news that will be put on the front page regardless.

NY-14, DC-AL (college) Distraught Mets fan

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by: nycyoungin @ Fri Mar 05, 2010 at 14:34:23 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

At dailykos, it's a requirement

Substantive diaries only. If you don't have at least three solid, original paragraphs, you should probably post a comment in an Open Thread.

and users (typically newbies) who violate that will get hammered in the comments and pressured to delete those diaries.

On SSP it seems to be merely a mild suggestion to have 3 paragraphs.
Which is a shame since it causes those those redistricting diaries to disappear off the list much quicker. And people will be much less likely to spend the time creating them.

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by: homerun @ Sat Mar 06, 2010 at 02:59:25 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I think possibly one of the reasons why it happens

Is that sometimes at the very end of the day someone hears some kind of breaking news and wants to be the first to post about it. But the daily digest has already been pushed down on the front page by three or four other stories, so people don't read the daily digest as much by that time of day. And they get discouraged from breaking the story on an unrelated story. So what do they do if they want to talk about the story before it appears on the daily digest or the front page? They create a diary about it. I think that is basically what happens. Maybe if there was some way to keep an open thread for each day "stuck" to the top of the front page and replaced each day, that we people would still read and comment on the open thread even after it had been pushed down by other stories. Does that make sense to anyone?

I think this phenomenon definitely makes people less likely to spend the time on redistricting diaries, which are something that I had never seen before SSP. This was my first redistricting diary in 9 months and I spent about 6-8 hours finishing it. Perhaps it would be possible to have a separate list for diaries that were done on the subject of redistricting or data, since those are really quite different from many of the other diaries, even the substantive ones.

Anyway, those are just some ideas I had, I love the site and think it is a really great community for learning about politics in depth.

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by: possumtracker1991 @ Sat Mar 06, 2010 at 03:48:32 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I think

a fair idea would be to create different sections of diaries. We could have one for redistricting, one for election updates, and one for polls. Just an idea that I think is win-win. Although I don't think the SSP editors need any more stress though.    

Proud member of the Indiana Democratic Party from IN-9.  

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by: hoosierdem @ Sat Mar 06, 2010 at 04:26:07 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

maybe links to tags

would work for that.

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

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by: Glenn Magus Harvey @ Sat Mar 06, 2010 at 07:44:55 AM UTC

[ Parent ]