Re: "Will Mark Robinson's implosion engulf the GOP?"
It would be really interesting to see data on increased investments in/by the campaigns of downticket Democratic candidates in North Carolina. That includes the state legislature and US House seats.
Also, are there any House seats being credibly contested by Democrats? I know Republicans Smith and Hines are trying to unseat Democrat incumbents Davis and Nickel in NC-01 and NC-13, respectively.
One more thing: Any change in the prospects of Justice Allison Riggs (D) holding his seat on the North Carolina State Supreme Court faced with the challenge from Jefferson Griffin (R)? (I have not seen any polling for this race. It’s unfortunate that state supreme court races often tend to fly under-the-radar, even though they are vitally important.)
Now that senators are headed home for election season, here's an update without how things stand judicially:
There are six current+future circuit court vacancies: a liberal vacancy in NJ open since last June, four liberal vacancies on confirmation of successor, and a conservative vacancy opening in DE in January (Manchin has more or less retracted his 'nominees must have bipartisan support' ultimatum from earlier this year):
Julia Lipez (ME) should be confirmed without a fuss. Adeel Mangi (NJ) will need particularly favorable attendance to be confirmed as the first Muslim circuit judge, having garnered opposition from CCM, Rosen, and Manchin. Embry Kidd (FL), Ryan Park (NC), and Karla Campbell (TN) were nominated over the objection of their home state senators; I feel good about Kidd's chances and lean towards confirmation on the other two (Tillis has an active campaign against Park and Campbell being a labor lawyer makes Manchin support less likely). Biden's got three weeks to name a nominee for his home state circuit vacancy in order to get them confirmed this congress.
There are 23 blue state+DC district vacancies, and 19 of them have viable nominees. As with the aforementioned DE seat, Biden has three weeks to name nominees for two CA seats without nominees and seats in CA (Rebecca Kanter, dropped from her hearing because of something unearthed in her background) and NY (Sarah Netburn, voted down in committee for decision transferring trans woman to women's prison) with doomed nominees.
Mustafa Kasubhai (OR, Muslim, accusations of college Marxism), Sarah Russell (CT, advocated large-scale release of prisoners during pandemic), Amir Ali (DC, Muslim), Sparkle Sooknanan (DC, repped vulture capitalists over PR debts), Noel Wise (CA, may oppose gender-based bathrooms), and Anthony Brindisi (NY, co-sponsored trans rights legislation) would almost certainly be party-line votes, assuming they can retain Manchin and/or Sinema.
There are also 37 seats with a GOP blue slip that won't be filled this congress, but a President Harris would be able to fill most of them even without eliminating blue slips, at least with a Dem senate. Biden's filled 33 district seats with a GOP blue slip, including 28/36 that opened before the current congress.
One tax court nominee, two for the DC Court of Appeals, and 8 for the DC Superior Court are also pending; loss of the senate for a Harris administration could dictate a portion of the senate's time during the lame duck for key confirmations. Biden sits at 213 Article III confirmations, and could reach as high as 242, and while passing Trump's single-term record of 234 won't require good luck per se, it will require avoiding bad luck.
I closely follow "On the Bench", a weekly summary from The American Constitution Society. But they failed to post an update last Thursday, and have yet to do so this week.
Chuck Schumer has given Democratic incumbents an extra long break to campaign, which is surely wise given that Democrats are facing a very tough map this cycle. However, Schumer really needs to pick up the pace with confirmations. When the Senate returns on 12 November, there really is no excuse NOT to maximally use the Lame Duck Session to confirm as many Biden judges as possible. This will be particularly true if Republicans manage to flip the Senate!
(Also, the JUDGES act, adding 66 district judgeships over the next decade, has a strong chance of passing as part of the managers' amendment to the NDAA in the lame duck.)
GoUBears, below is my draft of a letter to Russ Feingold, who as president of the ACS writes excellent blogs about America’s judiciary and President Biden’s and Democrats’ fight to improve it. (But I haven’t found his email address.)
Perhaps you can share some insights on the questions I raise?
.
Re: SENATE CONFIRMATION OF JUDGES
There has been lots of focus on Blue Slips, but I believe it would be valuable with a column that highlights and explains Senate rules, and explores what Democrats can and cannot do to hasten the confirmation of judges. Russ Feingold’s last “In Brief” column was “Judges and Democracy” on 26 January. I believe it is time for a new blog entry.
Can Chairman Dick Durbin call extra committee hearings for nominated judges, and Executive Meetings to vote on them? Why have so many Executive Meetings been cancelled?
Why doesn’t Majority Leader Chuck Schumer file far more cloture motions on judges? Can Schumer file cloture motions on all judges who are awaiting floor votes? Why not at least file cloture motions on a handful of judges at the end of each week?
If multiple cloture motions are ripe, can Schumer choose which cloture and confirmation votes to bring up – taking advantage of known Senate absences? Does each specific vote need to be announced ahead of time? Does Minority Leader McConnell have to concur?
Can uncontroversial or less-controversial judges be voted on en bloc?
Is there any objective reason why Senate votes often take an hour or more?
Who are the worst culprits that cause such lengthy votes? Why not more discipline, at least amongst the Democratic caucus?
What power does Schumer have to shorten the voting time? The Senate does occasionally have very short votes (30-, 20-, even 10-minute votes). How is this enabled? Can the Majority Leader demand this for cloture and confirmation votes on judicial nominations?
Can Schumer just say: The Senate WILL hold these three confirmation votes before we adjourn this Thursday afternoon – so it is in everyone’s interest that we vote quickly.
What would it take for the Senate to introduce electronic voting.
How about actual roll-call votes where, if your name is called three times without response, then your vote is not registered?
Would it be an advantage for the full Democratic caucus to “sponsor” each of the judicial nominations? And then quickly enter their votes so the count is waiting only for Republicans?
Are there other Senate rules that slow down the pace of judicial confirmations? Are there rules that could be exploited to hasten the confirmations?
The answer to many of those questions boils down to the sheer amount of power held by the minority leader. So much of what the senate does is done by unanimous consent, and the minority leader essentially has as much power as the majority leader, except with regard to what comes to the floor. They could gum things up so badly, and the only reason they don't is the threat of retribution from their counterpart when their fortunes are reversed. Much should be modernized about the senate (electronic voting with correspondingly streamlined voting timelines, elimination of cloture votes at least when the threshold is 50), and having Manchin out of the caucus will make achieving that easier. We shall see in the coming years who the next rung of remaining traditionalists are.
The rules are 400-odd pages long and don't clarify much if you read them. I remember Martin Gold's Senate Procedure and Practice being enlightening, though it's remarkable how much they've jacked up the price for the current edition.
I see that it’s affordable used through Abe Books. Do you recommend it for a non-specialist? Would it address my questions any more concretely than you have already done?
Can't really say, it's been 15-plus years since I've read it and I'm not sure how much they change from one edition to the next. It's not an exciting read, but it did give me a fundamental understanding of the senate in a way that other works failed to.
Ossoff opposed Netburn, but I don't think he's said anything about it. I'd guess he was envisioning Cruz's attacks on his future opponent's ads ('voted for judge who sent 6'2'' child serial rapist man to women's prison').
The recommendations Butler and Padilla have sent to the WH for judicial vacancies seem to be pretty bad. I believe quite a few have failed background checks, and those that haven't have been difficult to confirm. Wise's very public and easily misconstrued stance (she wrote an article for Time) is pretty much in line with the others.
Polls out this morning include Trump up 51-46 and Cruz up 49-46 in Texas and Harris up 52-44 in Virginia (Emerson). Rosen up 53-38 (Noble Predictive) and Alsobrooks up 51-40 (University of Maryland).
If by some miracle we were Ble to just one of Cruz, Hawley, or Skeletor (I genuinely can never remember his actual name), I would be over the fucking moon.
Not sure who that pollster is in Ohio, but should we be worried about Sherrod Brown? He seemed to have a mid-single digit lead for most of this cycle...
Yea that's Scott Rasmussen who was apparently the founder of Rasmussen before he left. I guess he's fairly credible? Hard to say tho since there's been limited polling in Ohio. There was also that online Activote poll showing brown trailing but it took place well over a month. There's also the Morning Consult poll that still shows him up by 2 recently too.
Considering that J.D. Vance won in 2022, we can't feel sure any candidate is too bad for Ohioans to elect or any Democrat is too good for them to defeat.
JD Vance also led in the polls the whole time and Tim Ryan did not. Granted 2022 for the OH-SEN race was for an open race, the fact that Ryan didn't cut down the margin enough may have been in part because he was an incumbent.
Brown's led in the polls most of the time by 5-5+% points. The way they've moved recently seems to me that the GOP is now tuning in more than they used to. If Brown loses, I doubt it's going to be as much as Ryan lost in 2022 if polling suggests.
Was Vance that controversial in 2022 though? He was pretty close to standard right wing Republican if I recall correctly, though a political lightweight. Him winning really a surprise. Most of the issues only came out with his VP candidacy, which implies to be that Ryan wasn’t thorough enough in his opposition research.
It's J.D's modest 53-47 win after being propped up for years as a national rising star & "intellectual" in a Dem Presidents midterm with 7% inflation that gives me hope Brown can squeeze out a win. Under no illusion, it will be easy though.
Yes, this has nothing to do with Brown who’s still a great senator and candidate. But sometimes the ground under you shifts and there’s little you can do. I still think he can hang on though.
I'm not worried about him but that's just me. The reason why the polls are the way they are is because more voters are paying attention to the OH-SEN race, namely those who are Republicans.
The problem for the GOP is, Brown has led in the polls for much of the election cycle by 5+% points. Sure, polls may tighten or move in different directions, but if the GOP couldn't cut down on his lead for this amount of time, it suggests the following:
1) Brown still has clout and incumbency status in OH.
2) Moreno is really a flawed candidate who hasn't presented a credible enough campaign. Maybe he's getting more attention now but he's polling worse than Tim Sheehy in the MT-SEN race, which is saying a lot.
Apparently Adams wasn't a very good criminal(easily indicted); the arrogance of the dude is mind boggling(and I can't wait for the underlings to start dropping the dime on him)
President Biden really needs to stop weaponizing his Department of Justice against all these Republicans: Senator Menendez, Congressman Cuellar, Hunter Biden, Mayor Eric Adams...
He was. I misremembered that he had made the mistake of having a 3rd term, but actually, term limits would have prevented him from doing so, and it was his 2nd term that was bad and reminded me of third terms by Bloomberg and Koch. He won reelection by plenty but did not have a good 2nd term.
He didn’t have a third term. He was elected in 2013 and then in 2017. It wasn’t until after Koch that NYC implemented term limits. Remember that Koch ran for a fourth term in 1989 but lost his primary to Dinkins.
Not being an election afficionado it seems to me that quite a few Senate incumbents are in close races: Baldwin, Brown, Tester, Scott, Cruz...if the poles are to be believed. Is this normal or is their an anti-incumbent vibe coming into play?
It was a very close race, and it's obvious that the very unpopular and damaging pardon of Nixon cost him the race. But I thought a lot of Republican seats were turned over in Congress. Was that more in 1974?
Agree. That's why I was thinking the franking scandal (not minting) because it hit both parties I think, or during antitrust or after 1929 where everyone was mad. But my comment is informed by no research. .😁
WI (Baldwin) & PA (Casey) statewide races are usually close but both should hit 53%. MT (Tester) is a red state that got a little redder. Tester got lucky to win close races because he was rational politician. OH (Brown) is a swing state turned red. Brown's been in the public eye for 40 years & been a high quality guy the whole time. Brown needs to get truly lucky for the first time. TX (Cruz) & FL (Scott) are pink states with super unpopular Senators. Trump is going to drag Cruz to 50.2% while the state kicks & screams. Scott is the one GOP incumbent in trouble but might get bailed out by former NY snowbirds who made Florida their permanent residence post-COVID.
Rick Scott has surpassed 50% exactly 1 time in his political career; topping out at a whopping 50.06% in 2018(my point is; he's NEVER been popular; just rich)
I'm getting Jason Kander vibes from Lucas Kunce in Missouri. Could this be another sleeper race like in 2016 where Trump wins big but the Senate race is close, Josh Hawley doesn't appear popular?! 💙🇺🇲
The difference between 2016 and 2024 is that Roy Blunt was never really a lightning rod. He had a lower profile than most Senate Republicans and not as much of an ego as Josh Hawley. However, if Kander got the percentage of the votes that he did in 2016, that means it's still possible to mount credible Senate races in Missouri.
Kunce's rallies have been packed as of recently and he's getting in serious fundraising that has surpassed even Hawley's.
Kander's key advantage was that he served in the Missouri house and moreover, served as the Secretary of State of Missouri. A major issue in many red states for Democrats is not necessarily that the states are too conservative, but rather they lack name recognition. Serving in a statewide office is definitely one such way to get name recognition. Without name recognition, it becomes harder to engage constituents and communicate your platform. Kunce lacks the advantage of serving in a state office, but he has had some exposure thanks to his previous senate election. We will see how far Kunce can establish his brand and build up a network and infrastructure.
He could although last I remember, Kander postponed his political career because he was still suffering from PTSD from having served in the War in Afghanistan.
Harris getting some republican endorsements and not from the usual bunch. Ex. reps Charles Boustany from Louisiana, Bill Paxon from New York and Dan Miller from Florida. Also ex Bush guy Robert Zoellick.
The quote aims to further underscore Nate’s irrelevancy.
Whatever small respect I had for Nate Silver evaporated when he started working for Polymarkets, a prediction market that is owned in part by Peter Thiel. Simply put, I don’t approve of Mr Silver’s bedfellows.
Perhaps I am overly cynical, but I wouldn’t put it past Nate Silver to have placed a major bet on the presidential election, and to use his own widely-distributed predictions to influence the odds.
He let his success go to his head, thinking because he was good at one part of election analysis that he would be good at the other type.
The unique thing he contributed that did not exist yet was a data-based based system. The model itself is ultimately subjective (there's no inherent law about how that data should be weighed) but the data that the model relied on was objective: polling numbers, economic data, previous election history in a region. He was offering something different from what we usually got from people like Wasserman or Sabato or Walter who primarily work with what they hear behind the scenes and their own personal mental assessment of how everything ties together without using a specific model or algorithm.
When Silver decided to offer his "gut feel" assessments as a part of what he offered, he steadily shifted into being just another pundit. We have no shortage of pundits.
There is value in data/model based assessments and also value in personal evaluation based assessments. That doesn't mean someone providing one of those is capable of providing the other with any value or worth.
That's really well stated. At first, he was a breath of fresh air. He became really stale because he stopped trying to be so statistics-based. However, his project of applying baseball-style sabermetrics to polling was also greatly damaged by the fact that polls are not hard numbers like bases on balls or the more sophisticated stats Silver created based on defensive range as well as fielding percentage, on base percentage plus ballpark adjusted slugging and so forth. Ultimately, no matter what corrective measures you may seek to apply to polls, they are still educated guesses, even when they are completely honest, and there is a constant risk of garbage in, garbage out.
As you note, garbage in garbage out put a shelf-life on him approach anyway, but he shortened that shelf life unnecessarily by abandoning what he was good at.
Although, polling isn't strictly dead in the water. I think 2022 polls were fairly accurate, weren't they? We could have had a nice model for that year if it was a proper focus.
I'm generally pretty skeptical of the value data-based election models to begin with, particularly the way that its used in 99.9% of instances. I think what's true of elections and I think this is true of sports as well is that this data is very good as an explanatory tool after the event, I'm pretty skeptical of its value as a predictive tool before the event.
It's worth noting that Silver's first big success was in creating a predictive tool (PECOTA), which was pretty good, though of course such tools can only be so good as there's just too much data that simply can't be input into an algorithmic model.
I think he got pundit brain because he knows the model can only do so much. On top of that, I think the model is just inputting garbage now (because polls are garbage, just universally).
Believe me, I'm aware of Silver's background. But the reason I've been skeptical of him pretty much since day 1 is that I think if you asked baseball scouts, managers, GM's and asked them to predict a player's performance, you'd get just as accurate of information
I get where you're coming from, but in reality we're all relying on data for all of our predictions. What we lack is a thorough and consistent process for applying that data.
Having a model is a way to formalize that data process and make it consistent. We will never see a perfectly predictive model, and that's OK. We shouldn't expect one. Just like we shouldn't expect it from more traditional pundits.
I think we all know that tossup/lean/likely/safe all have degrees within them. Sabato has WI, MI, AZ, NV, PA, GA, and NC all as tossup states for the presidential election. That doesn't truly mean each of them is exactly as likely to go to Harris, but more that they exist in some spectrum of maybe something in the range of 45-55 to 55-45. Similar idea for lean and likely. There's little practical difference between "Lean D" and "70.3% of D win" in that sense. They're both the result of models, one informal and one formal. The exactness of one prediction is a result of it being a formal model and the consequences of it being mathematically based, rather than it having anything approaching that degree of confidence.
So long as we take into account the limitations at play I rather like formal data models. If a prediction changes, it will be known an obvious why. If you feed it the same exact data to two different elections, it will give the same prediction. There's no fretting about emotions and secret sources and personal bias. There's a place for them if they can source good data.
I've heard this before, I just haven't seen any reason to believe that these models are any more accurate than simply asking the people who would know like Sabato and asking them to put percentages on a candidate's likelihood to win
2 main points imo; 1 he moved Nebraska -2 to likely D for the single EV (which bodes very well for the congressional race against Bacon) and 2\he moved NC-Gov to likely D(taking it off the table); today's newsletter was interesting in the analysis of how the 7 swing states move in the EC According to some bellwether county's and what to look for on election night
Re: "Will Mark Robinson's implosion engulf the GOP?"
It would be really interesting to see data on increased investments in/by the campaigns of downticket Democratic candidates in North Carolina. That includes the state legislature and US House seats.
Also, are there any House seats being credibly contested by Democrats? I know Republicans Smith and Hines are trying to unseat Democrat incumbents Davis and Nickel in NC-01 and NC-13, respectively.
One more thing: Any change in the prospects of Justice Allison Riggs (D) holding his seat on the North Carolina State Supreme Court faced with the challenge from Jefferson Griffin (R)? (I have not seen any polling for this race. It’s unfortunate that state supreme court races often tend to fly under-the-radar, even though they are vitally important.)
The Cygnal poll taken 9/15-16 had Riggs leading by 2. That is the result from adding "definitely" and "probably" voting for. Here is a link to the whole poll: https://www.carolinajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/22402-CJ-NC-Sept24-Toplines.pdf
Thank you!
Now that senators are headed home for election season, here's an update without how things stand judicially:
There are six current+future circuit court vacancies: a liberal vacancy in NJ open since last June, four liberal vacancies on confirmation of successor, and a conservative vacancy opening in DE in January (Manchin has more or less retracted his 'nominees must have bipartisan support' ultimatum from earlier this year):
Julia Lipez (ME) should be confirmed without a fuss. Adeel Mangi (NJ) will need particularly favorable attendance to be confirmed as the first Muslim circuit judge, having garnered opposition from CCM, Rosen, and Manchin. Embry Kidd (FL), Ryan Park (NC), and Karla Campbell (TN) were nominated over the objection of their home state senators; I feel good about Kidd's chances and lean towards confirmation on the other two (Tillis has an active campaign against Park and Campbell being a labor lawyer makes Manchin support less likely). Biden's got three weeks to name a nominee for his home state circuit vacancy in order to get them confirmed this congress.
There are 23 blue state+DC district vacancies, and 19 of them have viable nominees. As with the aforementioned DE seat, Biden has three weeks to name nominees for two CA seats without nominees and seats in CA (Rebecca Kanter, dropped from her hearing because of something unearthed in her background) and NY (Sarah Netburn, voted down in committee for decision transferring trans woman to women's prison) with doomed nominees.
Mustafa Kasubhai (OR, Muslim, accusations of college Marxism), Sarah Russell (CT, advocated large-scale release of prisoners during pandemic), Amir Ali (DC, Muslim), Sparkle Sooknanan (DC, repped vulture capitalists over PR debts), Noel Wise (CA, may oppose gender-based bathrooms), and Anthony Brindisi (NY, co-sponsored trans rights legislation) would almost certainly be party-line votes, assuming they can retain Manchin and/or Sinema.
There are also 37 seats with a GOP blue slip that won't be filled this congress, but a President Harris would be able to fill most of them even without eliminating blue slips, at least with a Dem senate. Biden's filled 33 district seats with a GOP blue slip, including 28/36 that opened before the current congress.
One tax court nominee, two for the DC Court of Appeals, and 8 for the DC Superior Court are also pending; loss of the senate for a Harris administration could dictate a portion of the senate's time during the lame duck for key confirmations. Biden sits at 213 Article III confirmations, and could reach as high as 242, and while passing Trump's single-term record of 234 won't require good luck per se, it will require avoiding bad luck.
Great summary! I really appreciate this.
I closely follow "On the Bench", a weekly summary from The American Constitution Society. But they failed to post an update last Thursday, and have yet to do so this week.
https://www.acslaw.org/judicial-nominations/on-the-bench-tracking-president-bidens-judicial-nominations/
Chuck Schumer has given Democratic incumbents an extra long break to campaign, which is surely wise given that Democrats are facing a very tough map this cycle. However, Schumer really needs to pick up the pace with confirmations. When the Senate returns on 12 November, there really is no excuse NOT to maximally use the Lame Duck Session to confirm as many Biden judges as possible. This will be particularly true if Republicans manage to flip the Senate!
(Also, the JUDGES act, adding 66 district judgeships over the next decade, has a strong chance of passing as part of the managers' amendment to the NDAA in the lame duck.)
GoUBears, below is my draft of a letter to Russ Feingold, who as president of the ACS writes excellent blogs about America’s judiciary and President Biden’s and Democrats’ fight to improve it. (But I haven’t found his email address.)
Perhaps you can share some insights on the questions I raise?
.
Re: SENATE CONFIRMATION OF JUDGES
There has been lots of focus on Blue Slips, but I believe it would be valuable with a column that highlights and explains Senate rules, and explores what Democrats can and cannot do to hasten the confirmation of judges. Russ Feingold’s last “In Brief” column was “Judges and Democracy” on 26 January. I believe it is time for a new blog entry.
Can Chairman Dick Durbin call extra committee hearings for nominated judges, and Executive Meetings to vote on them? Why have so many Executive Meetings been cancelled?
Why doesn’t Majority Leader Chuck Schumer file far more cloture motions on judges? Can Schumer file cloture motions on all judges who are awaiting floor votes? Why not at least file cloture motions on a handful of judges at the end of each week?
If multiple cloture motions are ripe, can Schumer choose which cloture and confirmation votes to bring up – taking advantage of known Senate absences? Does each specific vote need to be announced ahead of time? Does Minority Leader McConnell have to concur?
Can uncontroversial or less-controversial judges be voted on en bloc?
SENATE CONFIRMATION OF JUDGES (continued)
Is there any objective reason why Senate votes often take an hour or more?
Who are the worst culprits that cause such lengthy votes? Why not more discipline, at least amongst the Democratic caucus?
What power does Schumer have to shorten the voting time? The Senate does occasionally have very short votes (30-, 20-, even 10-minute votes). How is this enabled? Can the Majority Leader demand this for cloture and confirmation votes on judicial nominations?
Can Schumer just say: The Senate WILL hold these three confirmation votes before we adjourn this Thursday afternoon – so it is in everyone’s interest that we vote quickly.
What would it take for the Senate to introduce electronic voting.
How about actual roll-call votes where, if your name is called three times without response, then your vote is not registered?
Would it be an advantage for the full Democratic caucus to “sponsor” each of the judicial nominations? And then quickly enter their votes so the count is waiting only for Republicans?
Are there other Senate rules that slow down the pace of judicial confirmations? Are there rules that could be exploited to hasten the confirmations?
The answer to many of those questions boils down to the sheer amount of power held by the minority leader. So much of what the senate does is done by unanimous consent, and the minority leader essentially has as much power as the majority leader, except with regard to what comes to the floor. They could gum things up so badly, and the only reason they don't is the threat of retribution from their counterpart when their fortunes are reversed. Much should be modernized about the senate (electronic voting with correspondingly streamlined voting timelines, elimination of cloture votes at least when the threshold is 50), and having Manchin out of the caucus will make achieving that easier. We shall see in the coming years who the next rung of remaining traditionalists are.
Interesting. I tried to find answers to some of my questions in the Senate Rules. Regrettably, I became none the wiser.
The rules are 400-odd pages long and don't clarify much if you read them. I remember Martin Gold's Senate Procedure and Practice being enlightening, though it's remarkable how much they've jacked up the price for the current edition.
I see that it’s affordable used through Abe Books. Do you recommend it for a non-specialist? Would it address my questions any more concretely than you have already done?
Can't really say, it's been 15-plus years since I've read it and I'm not sure how much they change from one edition to the next. It's not an exciting read, but it did give me a fundamental understanding of the senate in a way that other works failed to.
Incredible updates. Thank you.
"Sarah Netburn, voted down in committee for decision transferring trans woman to women's prison"
Huh? Which Democrat opposed her for that?
"Noel Wise (CA, may oppose gender-based bathrooms)"
Then why was he nominated?
Ossoff opposed Netburn, but I don't think he's said anything about it. I'd guess he was envisioning Cruz's attacks on his future opponent's ads ('voted for judge who sent 6'2'' child serial rapist man to women's prison').
The recommendations Butler and Padilla have sent to the WH for judicial vacancies seem to be pretty bad. I believe quite a few have failed background checks, and those that haven't have been difficult to confirm. Wise's very public and easily misconstrued stance (she wrote an article for Time) is pretty much in line with the others.
Fantastic work.
But, lord fo I detest the US Senate.
Polls out this morning include Trump up 51-46 and Cruz up 49-46 in Texas and Harris up 52-44 in Virginia (Emerson). Rosen up 53-38 (Noble Predictive) and Alsobrooks up 51-40 (University of Maryland).
None of those are terrible polls for us.
If by some miracle we were Ble to just one of Cruz, Hawley, or Skeletor (I genuinely can never remember his actual name), I would be over the fucking moon.
...or Skeletor (I genuinely can never remember his actual name)
I believe his name is Mr Medicare-Fraud.
Mr. I plead the Fifth 75 times!
Senator Batboy.
Ok; I give up; Senator Batboy??🤔
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Boy_(character)
Lmao.. Never saw that one..!!
Icky Rick or Sick Rick
Per a Bloomberg report today, Senator Gary Peters, the DSCC Campaign Committee Chair, announced that the DSCC is "expanding the map and going on offense" by "spending millions to defeat Ted Cruz in Texas and Rick Scott in Florida, where polls have shown the incumbents surprisingly vulnerable." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-26/senate-democrats-pour-in-millions-to-defeat-ted-cruz-rick-scott?cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-politics
When does Eric Adams do the perp walk?
Not sure who that pollster is in Ohio, but should we be worried about Sherrod Brown? He seemed to have a mid-single digit lead for most of this cycle...
Yes. He could lose. I give him a little better than 50-50. He’s lucky he got Moreno as an opponent.
Moreno also recently provided fodder: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/ohio-gop-senate-candidate-bernie-moreno-abortion-issue-women-over-50/
And Brown has a staunchly pro-choice voting record so this problem Moreno has can give him an opening.
It may, but that didn't help in 2022.
That's the real Rasmussen(not the fake one he sold out to)
We should absolutely worry about Brown.
And work and contribute to help him win.
Especially since we aren’t getting any better in the Buckeye State.
Yeah, but Deb Mucarsel-Powell is doing pretty well, and rising, in the Hurricane/Plywood/Alligator State.
Of course.
Yea that's Scott Rasmussen who was apparently the founder of Rasmussen before he left. I guess he's fairly credible? Hard to say tho since there's been limited polling in Ohio. There was also that online Activote poll showing brown trailing but it took place well over a month. There's also the Morning Consult poll that still shows him up by 2 recently too.
Imo activote has zero value
No. No he isn't.
But that said, I worry about Brown. I still think he is better than 50/50, but not by a lot.
Considering that J.D. Vance won in 2022, we can't feel sure any candidate is too bad for Ohioans to elect or any Democrat is too good for them to defeat.
JD Vance also led in the polls the whole time and Tim Ryan did not. Granted 2022 for the OH-SEN race was for an open race, the fact that Ryan didn't cut down the margin enough may have been in part because he was an incumbent.
Brown's led in the polls most of the time by 5-5+% points. The way they've moved recently seems to me that the GOP is now tuning in more than they used to. If Brown loses, I doubt it's going to be as much as Ryan lost in 2022 if polling suggests.
It doesn't matter how little he would lose by if he loses.
That is true.
Was Vance that controversial in 2022 though? He was pretty close to standard right wing Republican if I recall correctly, though a political lightweight. Him winning really a surprise. Most of the issues only came out with his VP candidacy, which implies to be that Ryan wasn’t thorough enough in his opposition research.
That's definitely a fair point, but he was certainly on the record on abortion.
It's J.D's modest 53-47 win after being propped up for years as a national rising star & "intellectual" in a Dem Presidents midterm with 7% inflation that gives me hope Brown can squeeze out a win. Under no illusion, it will be easy though.
Yes, this has nothing to do with Brown who’s still a great senator and candidate. But sometimes the ground under you shifts and there’s little you can do. I still think he can hang on though.
I'm not worried about him but that's just me. The reason why the polls are the way they are is because more voters are paying attention to the OH-SEN race, namely those who are Republicans.
The problem for the GOP is, Brown has led in the polls for much of the election cycle by 5+% points. Sure, polls may tighten or move in different directions, but if the GOP couldn't cut down on his lead for this amount of time, it suggests the following:
1) Brown still has clout and incumbency status in OH.
2) Moreno is really a flawed candidate who hasn't presented a credible enough campaign. Maybe he's getting more attention now but he's polling worse than Tim Sheehy in the MT-SEN race, which is saying a lot.
Yes. Be very, very worried about Sherrod Brown.
Apparently Adams wasn't a very good criminal(easily indicted); the arrogance of the dude is mind boggling(and I can't wait for the underlings to start dropping the dime on him)
President Biden really needs to stop weaponizing his Department of Justice against all these Republicans: Senator Menendez, Congressman Cuellar, Hunter Biden, Mayor Eric Adams...
Oh, snap!
Adams is indeed arrogant. He's also making Bill DeBlasio look much better considering DeBlasio was becoming unpopular in NYC at the time of the race.
I seem to recall that deBlasio was very unpopular
He was. I misremembered that he had made the mistake of having a 3rd term, but actually, term limits would have prevented him from doing so, and it was his 2nd term that was bad and reminded me of third terms by Bloomberg and Koch. He won reelection by plenty but did not have a good 2nd term.
He didn’t have a third term. He was elected in 2013 and then in 2017. It wasn’t until after Koch that NYC implemented term limits. Remember that Koch ran for a fourth term in 1989 but lost his primary to Dinkins.
Read my remarks again.
UMass Lowell poll done by Yougov has Harris up 48-46 in PA and 48-43 in MI: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4901092-harris-trump-michigan-pennsylvania/
Republican Echelon has Harris up nationally 52-45.
https://x.com/IAPolls2022/status/1839340184992972840
Echelon Insights (R) (09.23-09.25.2024):
🟦 Harris: 52% [+4]
🟥 Trump: 45% [-4]
Trends
Aug. 25 - 🔴 Trump +1
Sept. 25 - 🔵 Harris +7
——
Full field
🟦 Harris: 49% [+1]
🟥 Trump: 44% [-4]
🟨 RFK Jr: 2%
🟪 Oliver: 1%
—
Generic Ballot
🟦 DEM: 50% [+2]
🟥 GOP: 45% [-3]
[+/- change vs 8/23-25]
Seems too good to be true, but still, on the pile.
This poll has Harris +1 with MEN. Massive outlier.
New Marist poll has Trump +1 in Georgia, +1 in Arizona and a tie in NC.
BTW, in the NC Gov race, Marist finds Stein leading 54%-43%.
Not being an election afficionado it seems to me that quite a few Senate incumbents are in close races: Baldwin, Brown, Tester, Scott, Cruz...if the poles are to be believed. Is this normal or is their an anti-incumbent vibe coming into play?
Mainly tracking the state presidential situation
Not all that unusual.
"...if the poles are to be believed."
Poles and Ukrainians are definitely to be believed! Polls, on the other hand...
/s
What a polarizing comment!
Can you think of a year in which there was a generalized anti-incumbent vote, irrespective of party and the partisan leanings of each state?
I've seen this type thing on a local level; never national
1976. A number of incumbent Senators from both sides were tossed out. Even a few Governors.
Interesting. I thought that was an anti-Watergate year.
Actually Ford did relatively well considering Watergate
It was a very close race, and it's obvious that the very unpopular and damaging pardon of Nixon cost him the race. But I thought a lot of Republican seats were turned over in Congress. Was that more in 1974?
I was thinking 74
1974 was very much a Watergate year. 1976 was not. If it were, it would have been a strong year for Democrats.
‘74 was.
Led by the two biggest states, California and New York where Tunney and Buckley lost.
Seems like the year after the House minting scandal came to light dumped incumbents? Mid 80s maybe?
Otherwise I'd guess an election either in the 1910s or 1930/32.
Normally it's a 1 party thing imo
Agree. That's why I was thinking the franking scandal (not minting) because it hit both parties I think, or during antitrust or after 1929 where everyone was mad. But my comment is informed by no research. .😁
WI (Baldwin) & PA (Casey) statewide races are usually close but both should hit 53%. MT (Tester) is a red state that got a little redder. Tester got lucky to win close races because he was rational politician. OH (Brown) is a swing state turned red. Brown's been in the public eye for 40 years & been a high quality guy the whole time. Brown needs to get truly lucky for the first time. TX (Cruz) & FL (Scott) are pink states with super unpopular Senators. Trump is going to drag Cruz to 50.2% while the state kicks & screams. Scott is the one GOP incumbent in trouble but might get bailed out by former NY snowbirds who made Florida their permanent residence post-COVID.
Rick Scott has surpassed 50% exactly 1 time in his political career; topping out at a whopping 50.06% in 2018(my point is; he's NEVER been popular; just rich)
Maybe I am behind, but I don't think Baldwin's race will be very close.
The only Dem Sen incumbents I am worried about are Tester and Brown..
NBC News/Hart (D)/POS (R) poll on Project 2025 (09.13-17.2024):
Approval/Disapproval/Neutral of Project 2025:
Total: 4%/57%/16% [-53% net disapprove]
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/poll-project-2025-broadly-known-severely-unpopular-voters-rcna172660
wow. When's the last time legislation/policy had 4% approval?
I'm getting Jason Kander vibes from Lucas Kunce in Missouri. Could this be another sleeper race like in 2016 where Trump wins big but the Senate race is close, Josh Hawley doesn't appear popular?! 💙🇺🇲
Yes, it's certainly possible he loses narrowly.
Kander smoked Blunt (holding him to under 50%; which is actually remarkable); if Kunce is even in that ballpark, it's A Blue Wave
Panic! At Tedisco
Yes. 100% agree.
The difference between 2016 and 2024 is that Roy Blunt was never really a lightning rod. He had a lower profile than most Senate Republicans and not as much of an ego as Josh Hawley. However, if Kander got the percentage of the votes that he did in 2016, that means it's still possible to mount credible Senate races in Missouri.
Kunce's rallies have been packed as of recently and he's getting in serious fundraising that has surpassed even Hawley's.
4 vulnerable Republican long shot seats than can absolutely be achieved if everything goes right for upsets:
1. Rick Scott (R-Florida).
2. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri).
3. Deb Fischer (R-Nebraska).
4. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
💙🇺🇲🙏🌊
Kander's key advantage was that he served in the Missouri house and moreover, served as the Secretary of State of Missouri. A major issue in many red states for Democrats is not necessarily that the states are too conservative, but rather they lack name recognition. Serving in a statewide office is definitely one such way to get name recognition. Without name recognition, it becomes harder to engage constituents and communicate your platform. Kunce lacks the advantage of serving in a state office, but he has had some exposure thanks to his previous senate election. We will see how far Kunce can establish his brand and build up a network and infrastructure.
I'm hoping kander decides to run again
He could although last I remember, Kander postponed his political career because he was still suffering from PTSD from having served in the War in Afghanistan.
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/former-missouri-lawmaker-jason-kander-featured-new-documentary/story?id=100408506
Kunce also, like Kander, is a war veteran who served in combat (to my understanding, in the Iraq War and Afghanistan War).
I'd caution that what happened in 2016 doesn't necessarily suggest anything about this year. Missouri could be a lot more Republican now,
8 years later.
Missouri....where Democrats keep getting candidates out of central casting but they all go to waste!
Edit: Misery...where Democrats...
😁
Harris getting some republican endorsements and not from the usual bunch. Ex. reps Charles Boustany from Louisiana, Bill Paxon from New York and Dan Miller from Florida. Also ex Bush guy Robert Zoellick.
I did a double-take at Boustany.
Question for our NYC contingent; weren't there long-standing accusations of corruption against Adams back to his time as a cop?
"...I still think Eric Adams would be in my top 5 for “who will be the next Democratic presidential nominee after Joe Biden?”.”
– Nate Silver (3 January, 2022)
Nate is no longer relevant imo
The quote aims to further underscore Nate’s irrelevancy.
Whatever small respect I had for Nate Silver evaporated when he started working for Polymarkets, a prediction market that is owned in part by Peter Thiel. Simply put, I don’t approve of Mr Silver’s bedfellows.
Perhaps I am overly cynical, but I wouldn’t put it past Nate Silver to have placed a major bet on the presidential election, and to use his own widely-distributed predictions to influence the odds.
He would risk incarceration
So, if he is an addicted gambler that would create all the more rush.
He let his success go to his head, thinking because he was good at one part of election analysis that he would be good at the other type.
The unique thing he contributed that did not exist yet was a data-based based system. The model itself is ultimately subjective (there's no inherent law about how that data should be weighed) but the data that the model relied on was objective: polling numbers, economic data, previous election history in a region. He was offering something different from what we usually got from people like Wasserman or Sabato or Walter who primarily work with what they hear behind the scenes and their own personal mental assessment of how everything ties together without using a specific model or algorithm.
When Silver decided to offer his "gut feel" assessments as a part of what he offered, he steadily shifted into being just another pundit. We have no shortage of pundits.
There is value in data/model based assessments and also value in personal evaluation based assessments. That doesn't mean someone providing one of those is capable of providing the other with any value or worth.
That's really well stated. At first, he was a breath of fresh air. He became really stale because he stopped trying to be so statistics-based. However, his project of applying baseball-style sabermetrics to polling was also greatly damaged by the fact that polls are not hard numbers like bases on balls or the more sophisticated stats Silver created based on defensive range as well as fielding percentage, on base percentage plus ballpark adjusted slugging and so forth. Ultimately, no matter what corrective measures you may seek to apply to polls, they are still educated guesses, even when they are completely honest, and there is a constant risk of garbage in, garbage out.
As you note, garbage in garbage out put a shelf-life on him approach anyway, but he shortened that shelf life unnecessarily by abandoning what he was good at.
Although, polling isn't strictly dead in the water. I think 2022 polls were fairly accurate, weren't they? We could have had a nice model for that year if it was a proper focus.
I'm generally pretty skeptical of the value data-based election models to begin with, particularly the way that its used in 99.9% of instances. I think what's true of elections and I think this is true of sports as well is that this data is very good as an explanatory tool after the event, I'm pretty skeptical of its value as a predictive tool before the event.
It's worth noting that Silver's first big success was in creating a predictive tool (PECOTA), which was pretty good, though of course such tools can only be so good as there's just too much data that simply can't be input into an algorithmic model.
I think he got pundit brain because he knows the model can only do so much. On top of that, I think the model is just inputting garbage now (because polls are garbage, just universally).
Believe me, I'm aware of Silver's background. But the reason I've been skeptical of him pretty much since day 1 is that I think if you asked baseball scouts, managers, GM's and asked them to predict a player's performance, you'd get just as accurate of information
I get where you're coming from, but in reality we're all relying on data for all of our predictions. What we lack is a thorough and consistent process for applying that data.
Having a model is a way to formalize that data process and make it consistent. We will never see a perfectly predictive model, and that's OK. We shouldn't expect one. Just like we shouldn't expect it from more traditional pundits.
I think we all know that tossup/lean/likely/safe all have degrees within them. Sabato has WI, MI, AZ, NV, PA, GA, and NC all as tossup states for the presidential election. That doesn't truly mean each of them is exactly as likely to go to Harris, but more that they exist in some spectrum of maybe something in the range of 45-55 to 55-45. Similar idea for lean and likely. There's little practical difference between "Lean D" and "70.3% of D win" in that sense. They're both the result of models, one informal and one formal. The exactness of one prediction is a result of it being a formal model and the consequences of it being mathematically based, rather than it having anything approaching that degree of confidence.
So long as we take into account the limitations at play I rather like formal data models. If a prediction changes, it will be known an obvious why. If you feed it the same exact data to two different elections, it will give the same prediction. There's no fretting about emotions and secret sources and personal bias. There's a place for them if they can source good data.
I've heard this before, I just haven't seen any reason to believe that these models are any more accurate than simply asking the people who would know like Sabato and asking them to put percentages on a candidate's likelihood to win
Fyi sabato put out a newsletter yesterday and today; I recommend both
Anything you'd particularly highlight from them?
2 main points imo; 1 he moved Nebraska -2 to likely D for the single EV (which bodes very well for the congressional race against Bacon) and 2\he moved NC-Gov to likely D(taking it off the table); today's newsletter was interesting in the analysis of how the 7 swing states move in the EC According to some bellwether county's and what to look for on election night