Appears Dems will Lose Control of the House

The House will be run by the Republicans and they have a chance to take over the Senate as well!
by Charlie Leck

Nate Silver, New York Times political analyst has pessimistic news for progressives. He sees Republicans gaining ground, giving themselves a “decent” chance of taking over the Senate and an improvement in races for the House. He gives the GOP a 72 percent chance of taking over the House.

In the Minnesota gubernatorial race, Silver gives Mark Dayton, the Democrat, a 72 percent chance of winning. In Minnesota it looks like all incumbents will retain their seats in the House and, of course, we have no contests for Senate seats.

In Wisconsin, testing 8 polling services, Silver sees a defeat of Russ Feingold as nearly certain. That’s a dagger to my heart and really bad news for Democrats.

In California, all polls point to a Barbara Boxer win in her Senate race. The Democrat, Senator Wyden, will win in Oregon and it appears Washington’s Democrat, Patty Murry, will win up in that corner of the nation. In New York, Schumer will win big for the Democrats and it looks good for progressives in the eastern states of Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut and Vermont. Hawaii will also return the Democrat, Daniel Inouye, to the Senate.

Here are the states, in addition to Wisconsin, where Democrats now hold the Senate seat that will probably change over to Republicans… Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, North Dakota and Pennsylvania.

Toss-up races for the Senate include Nevada, where Senate Leader, Harry Reid, is trailing right now by a point or two. Add to that toss-up category the states of West Virginia and Illinois, both currently controlled by Democrats.

There is not one Senate seat, currently in Republican hands, that is in danger – not one!

I don’t mean to be bitter about this (although I am), but this means a tremendous victory for the corporations that have been dabbling big-time in this election (thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court).

Who votes in America? Corporations or the People?
These will be major questions to struggle with in the aftermath of this election.

Is the Tea Party a winner?
Whether this can be considered a big victory for the Tea Party has not yet been determined. Paul’s win in Kentucky has been a foregone conclusion for many weeks. Marco Rubio, the Republican endorsee for the U.S. Senate in Florida was also endorsed by the Florida Tea Party. He’ll win going away, but is it a win for the Tea Party? Nevada is a key state for the Tea Party. Sharon Angle is their baby! A victory there will give the Tea Party strong bragging rights!

The biggest question
It’ll take quite a while to answer the biggest question about the election year: What happened to all those excited followers of Barack Obama? We’ll have a book or two written on the subject, I am sure!

Here’s my prediction
2012 will be very, very different. Big corporation involvement in this election will be exposed by then. The conservative attack on important institutions like Medicare and Social Security will wake some people up. It’s going to be a helluva scrap!

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The Only Hope for the Dems

Actually, there are two things the Democratic Party and progressives must hope for in the November election and they are not too likely.
by Charlie Leck

Labor Day, 2010

Hopes are slim for the Democrats in the upcoming elections. I hope all of you will get out and vote, exercising your most important right as a citizen. For the Democrats and progressives to have any success in 2010 two things must happen.

ONE
Somehow the Democrats have got to reenergize all those new voters who came out in 2008 to elect a man who had promised to change the way the executive branch of government (at the very least) worked. The predictions are that tens of millions of those new voters, having not seen any change in the way things work, will not come out to vote in this mid-term election in November. If that is true, the progressive agenda is skunked.

TWO
Somehow progressives must hope that millions of people are getting turned-off on, rather than turned on to, the Tea Party and all its hype, shenanigans and bellicosity. The Tea Party is a conglomeration of all sorts of angry and frightened folks. Most of them have bought into the execrable claims of the Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh types in America. The Tea Party folks desire to live in a world that doesn’t and cannot exist anymore.

Perhaps the Tea Party is so outrageous that most middle of the road folks will find its claims to be odiously fictional. The political party that comes closest to staking its claim at the middle of the great American political spectrum is usually the party that wins the most elections.

President Obama is being crunched by time. The elections are racing toward us. In only two months the American people will vote. The results may turn out to be a crushing defeat for the Obama agenda and make him look dangerously like a one-term President.

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