Posts Tagged ‘Charles Wilson (Ohio)’

LinkSwarm for Thursday, November 11, 2010

Thursday, November 11th, 2010

Another LinkSwarm of sundry sundries:

Post Election Analysis: Bart Stupak’s Turncoats Go Down in Flames

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

One of the most satisfying results of last night’s election was just how many of Bart Stupak’s block of ObamaCare flippers went down in flames.

If you remember back to the ObamaCare debates, Stupak’s bloc of “Pro-Life Democrats” was never, ever, ever, ever going to vote for a bill that included government funding of abortions. That is, right up until they did.

As shown below, on November 2, the clear majority of them paid the price for betraying their principles as well as their constituents. Unless otherwise noted, the election margins below are taken from this CBS table. Since WordPress doesn’t let me set font colors to red, I’ve marked GOP pickups in bold.

  • Rep. Jerry Costello of Illinois’ 12th district defeated Republican Teri Newman
  • Rep. Joseph Donnelly of Indiana’ 2nd district edged Republican Jackie Walorski by less than 3,000 votes.
  • Rep. Brad Ellsworth left his Indiana’s 8th Congressional seat for an unsuccessful run for the Senate. Republican Larry Bucshon flipped the seat by defeating Trent Van Haaften by almost 40,000 votes.
  • Rep. Bart Stupak retired from Michigan’s 1st congressional district when it became apparent his ObamaCare betrayal doomed his electoral chances. Republican Dan Benishek flipped the seat by defeating Gary McDowell by 25,000 votes.
  • Rep. James Oberstar of Minnesota lost to Republican Chip Cravaack. You may also remember Oberstar for racking up only a single in-district donation to his reelection campaign.
  • Rep. Steve Driehaus of Ohio’s 1st district lost to Republican Steve Chabot by 23,000 votes.
  • Rep. Charles Wilson of Ohio’s 6th district lost to Republican Bill Johnson by 10,000 votes.
  • Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio’s 9th district beat James Iott (AKA Nazi Costume Guy) by a wide margin.
  • Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania’s 3rd district lost to Republican Mike Kelly by over 20,000 votes.
  • Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania’s 11th district lost to Lou Barletta by over 15,000 votes.
  • Rep. Solomon Ortiz of Texas’ 27th district loses to Republican Blake Farenthold by less than 1,000 votes.

That’s eight out of eleven Stupak bloc flippers whose seats are now in the hands of the GOP. And of those eleven races, I correctly picked ten, missing only Donnelly’s narrow victory in Indiana’s second district (which I originally had down as a longshot).

A few lessons:

  1. Voters hate ObamaCare.
  2. They hate congressmen who break promises. (Republicans should take special note of this one anytime they contemplate letting a GOP-controlled congress slip back to the old free-spending ways of the Bush43 years.)
  3. They hate Blue Dog Democrats who vote like liberals when the really important issues are on the line.
  4. Voters may be wising up to the fact that it doesn’t matter how much a Democrat swears up and down how Pro-Life, fiscally conservative, pro-gun, etc. they are; when push comes to shove, they’ll always cave in and vote with their liberal leadership.

As a reward for laying down their careers in the cause of ObamaCare, at least Blue Dogs have the consolation of the respect and gratitude of liberal activists everywhere. Ha, just kidding. The Daily Kossacks are saying “we can do without their sabotage.”

Oh yes, I’m sure that running Democrats ideologically closer to Nancy Pelosi than Dan Boren in places like Indiana, Pennsylvania and Ohio is a great way to pick up seats. I encourage you to get started on that right away.

BattleSwarm Blog’s Election Prediction for 2010: GOP Gains 67 House Seats, 10 Senate Seats

Monday, November 1st, 2010

With the election tomorrow, I thought it was high time to offer up my own election predictions.

I have carefully and scientifically evaluated each and every House and Senate race, taking into account length of incumbency, previous voting trends for each district and state, fund-raising advantage, the most recent polls, and the fact that every preceding clause in this sentence prior to this one has been a complete and utter lie.

I have looked at a lot of polls and data but damn, there are only so many hours in the day. My predictions are based on general national mood, gut-feeling, and detailed looks at trends for select races.

This is going to be worse for the Democrats than 1994. The rise of the Netroots and the overwhelming support among the traditional news media dangerously blinded liberal insiders from how badly out-of-sync with the rest of the country they had become, and their insistence to push onward with ObamaCare despite widespread opposition and a lousy economy turned what was already going to be a bad year for them into a once-in-a-lifetime political slaughter.

I predict that the Democrats will lose 67 House seats.

As I admitted above, that’s not a wild-assed guess, but a guestimate based on current polling data and news on individual races. I don’t see Republicans gaining less than 50 seats, and there’s an outside possibility they could get 100. To my mind, it’s much more likely they’ll gain more than 67 than less than 50.

Among the individual House races, I predict all the Stupak-bloc flippers except Marcy Kaptur (who had the luck to draw Nazi Uniform Guy as her opponent) and Jerry Costello (much as I appreciate GOP candidate Teri Newman popping in to say the race is tied, I just don’t see any traction at all in a 54% Obama district; I’d love to be surprised) will lose, including:

  1. Rep. Joseph Donnelly of Indiana
  2. Indiana’s open 8th congressional district (formerly held by Brad Ellsworth)
  3. Michigan’s open 1st congressional seat (formerly held by Bart Stupak)
  4. James Oberstar of Minnesota
  5. Steve Driehaus of Ohio
  6. Charles Wilson of Ohio
  7. Kathy Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania
  8. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania
  9. Solomon Ortiz of Texas

Additionally, I’m predicting that all of the following Democrats representing districts that voted for McCain in 2008 lose their jobs:

  1. Bobby Bright of Alabama
  2. Arkansas’ open 1st congressional district (formerly held by Marion Barry (AKA “the other Marion Barry”))
  3. Arkansas’ open 2nd congressional district (formerly held by Vic Snyder)
  4. Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona
  5. Harry Mitchell of Arizona
  6. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona
  7. John Salazar of Colorado
  8. Betsy Markey of Colorado
  9. Allen Boyd of Florida
  10. Suzanne Kosmas of Florida
  11. Jim Marshall of Georgia
  12. Baron Hill of Indiana
  13. Ben Chandler of Kentucky
  14. Louisiana’s open 3rd congressional district (formerly held by Charlie Melancon)
  15. Frank Kratovil of Maryland
  16. Ike Skelton of Missouri
  17. Travis Childers of Mississippi
  18. Gene Taylor of Mississippi
  19. Mike McIntyre of North Carolina
  20. Heath Schuler of North Carolina
  21. Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota
  22. Harry Teague of New Mexico
  23. Michael McMahon of New York
  24. New York’s open 29th congressional district (formerly held by Eric Massa)
  25. John Boccieri of Ohio
  26. Zack Space of Ohio
  27. Christopher Carney of Pennsylvania
  28. Mark Critz of Pennsylvania (serving the remainder of the late John P. Murtha’s term)
  29. John Spratt of South Carolina
  30. Stephanie Sandlin of South Dakota
  31. Lincoln Davis of Tennessee
  32. Tennessee’s open 6th congressional district (formerly held by Bart Gordon)
  33. Tennessee’s open 8th congressional district (formerly held by John Tanner)
  34. Chet Edwards of Texas
  35. Tom Perriello of Virginia
  36. Rick Boucher of Virginia
  37. West Virgina’s first district (held by Allan Mollohan, who was defeated in the Democratic primaries)

That’s 46 seats right there, and I think there’s easily another 21 seats to be had in districts that went narrowly for Obama in 2008 to provide the final margin of victory.

I predict that the Democrats will lose 10 Senate seats.

The Senate is a tougher nut to flip this year, and as I set down to gauge Republican chances, I was shocked to find that, despite insider predictions, I actually had them winning ten seats to take control of the Senate. Running down the Senate races that Real Clear Politics shows as tossups I was only getting nine seats, but then I remembered that Blanche Lincoln is losing so badly in Arkansas that they had that down as a safe Republican flip.

Republicans should take over the following ten Senate seats:

  1. Arkansas
  2. Colorado
  3. Illinois
  4. Indiana
  5. Kentucky
  6. Nevada
  7. Pennsylvania
  8. Washington
  9. West Virginia
  10. Wisconsin

Much as I’d like to see an upset in California, I don’t see Carly Fiorina getting any traction in an overwhelmingly blue state; I think the out-migration of California’s best and brightest due to the high tax rates, crummy economy, the overwhelmingly powerful public sector unions and a near-bankrupt government (all related phenomena) has, ironically, made Californian even bluer.

The two races of the ten that will be most difficult for Republicans to pull off are Washington and West Virginia. Washington may be the tightest, simply because the Left Coast is so blue, but Rossi has been steadily gaining on Murray, and actually pulled ahead in the latest PPP poll. And PPP usually has a Democratic bias, so in a wave election, you have to give it to the Republican if polling is within the margin of error.

In West Virginia, I’m going to go out on a limb and predict a victory for Republican John Raese even though Joe Manchin is up four points in the most recent poll, for the following reasons:

  • McCain won West Virginia by 13.1 points in 2008, which was four points above the poll RCP average. Asking Manchin to run 14 points better in 2010 than Obama did in 2008 is a pretty tall order.
  • The state has been trending Republican for years. It went for Clinton over both Bush41 and Dole, but for Bush43 over Gore by 6.3%, and Bush43 over Kerry by 12.9%.
  • West Virginia fits the classic demographic pattern for “Reagan Democrats”: It’s 94.4% white, and is relatively rural and blue collar, and with a household income significantly below the national average. Those are the very voters that are abandoning Democrats this year.
  • Along those same lines, Hillary Clinton beat Obama handily here in 2008, even though Obama had all but clinched the nomination at the time. West Virginia voters fit the classic “Jacksonian” profile, the portions of the Democratic base that has been most alienated by Obama’s policies.
  • Say what you will about the late Senator Robert Byrd, but he was extraordinarily popular in his home state right up to the end. But his name isn’t on the top of the ballot this time around, and without that reminder of their old “born and bred” Democratic allegiance to remind them, 2010 may finally be the year when remaining West Virginia conservative Democrats make the switch to the GOP.
  • The areas that have been most fruitful for Democratic fraud efforts in the past have been urban enclaves with strong Democratic minority machine politics, which are pretty much absent here.
  • Logic dictates that if that this truly is a nationalized “wave” election, it will show up strongly here.

Honestly, I think the Democrats taking the Washington senate seat is more likely that West Virginia.

So the Republicans take both House and Senate in an electoral slaughter unprecedented in modern times. So I have foretold, and so it shall be!

And if you disagree, post your own predictions below.

Here’s a Site Estimating Republicans Will Gain 57 Seats in the House

Monday, October 18th, 2010

According to Freedom’s Lighthouse. I don’t know much about them, so caveat lector.

Among the races BattleSwarm has previously covered, they show the following incumbent Democrats losing:

  • Suzanne Kosmas (FL 24)
  • Trent Van Haaften (IN 8 ) (not an incumbent, running for Brad Ellsworth’s open seat)
  • Gary McDowell (MI 1) (not an incumbent, running for Bart Stupak‘s open seat)
  • Steve Driehaus (OH 1)
  • Kathy Dahlkemper (PA 3)
  • Paul Kanjorski (PA 11)
  • Chet Edwards (TX 17)
  • Ciro Rodriguez (TX 23)

So, all eight of the vulnerable democrats I profiled here are currently down as GOP flips.

Further, Charles Wilson (OH 6) is rated as a tossup.

Again, I’m not that familiar with the source, so take this with a grain of salt, and just another data point on how high the tidal wave might reach.

After Getting Them to Flip for ObamaCare, National Democrats Says “See Ya!” to Kosmas, Driehaus, and Dahlkemper

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

So right after I put this piece on vulnerable Democratic House seats, this New York Times story appears stating that three of the Dem Reps we profiled, Steve Driehaus (OH 1), Suzanne Kosmas (FL 24) and Kathy Dahlkemper (PA 3) have been “triaged” and will no longer receive national Democratic TV advertising buys. As I noted yesterday, all three flipped their ObamaCare votes from No to Yes, two of them (Driehaus and Dahlkemper) as theoretically Pro-Life members of Bart Stupak’s bloc.

So the same party that pressured them to abandon their “deeply held beliefs” to pass ObamaCare is now tossing each of them aside like a used condom. I hope they enjoy the sour lemony tang of those just deserts.

The Times piece goes on to state that the Democrats are now targeting ad buys for Rep. Charles Wilson (OH 6) (not to be confused with late Texas Rep. “Goodtime” Charlie Wilson, of anti-Communist fame), another Stupak-bloc flipper who was not on that list of 72 endangered Democrats, which would indicate there are fewer and fewer “safe” Democratic seats in this election. In addition to ObamaCare, Wilson voted for TARP and the Stimulus, but against Cap-and-Trade. Wilson’s opponent is Bill Johnson, who’s drawn endorsements from Sarah Palin and other GOP heavy hitters.

Although it’s always wise to heed Instapundit’s “don’t get cocky” advice, I like the way Power and Control’s M. Simon Rockford put it: “Republicans at 100+ House seats is looking better every day.”