So avoidable….
Posted in POTUS08 Tagged: elections, Voting [...] Partly it’s the economy, mostly it’s just the fundamentals. Obama was always a stronger candidate in this election. The fundamentals favoring Barack and hindering McCain were the obvious things like
A while back I took a flier on a Australian stock tip and had to find an American broker to trade for me. I hooked up with Euro Pacific Capital and aside from the high commission, the only thing it got me was an endless stream of dire [...]
Wow, did Sarah Palin really pull that off? Well, sorta.
As most figured she could, Palin “won” by not losing. Every D in the land was hoping for a performance along the lines of her horrid interview series with Katie Couric. Palin not only did not bomb, she held her [...]
The Palin bounce (down the stairs) effect is now confirmed. After seeing acts like this, Dems no long need to point out Palin’s total lack of qualification to be veep, because the R’s are doing it for them. Palin is now an anchor on John McCain’s boat, [...]
I’m having a hard time not falling on the floor laughing every time Paulson opens his mouth, Bernanke gives a “stern warning,” and Dick Cheney is spotted coming out of a meeting with Congressional Republicans in which he begged them to support imposing socialism on America’s capital markets.
Fortunately in [...]
Anybody who has spent more than 2 minutes in politics in America knows that real political power lies in knowing, understanding and managing the myriad distinct constituencies we have in this land. For instance, Sarah Palin as a proud “Hockey mom?” As easy as it appears to be to draw [...]
Was covered marginally well by Stuart Rothenberg in RCP today. Rothenberg calls Colorado the single swing state if there is a single swing state. And he might even be right. He boils down his list of the top-5 most important states (Colorado, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia) to Colorado, [...]
The economy being the headline is not good news for the McCain campaign. You can see McCain reaching, groping for something, anything. And you can see Palin flailing with no answer. McCain’s “fundamentals are strong” comment was probably one of his biggest stumbles of late and unfortunately for [...]
Swimming amid the on-again/off-again currents, for the rest of this political season I’ll try to ramp back up to the steady stream of analysis I had going during the Dem and Rep primary season. I’ll be totally upfront about my biases: I have every desire to see Barack Obama [...]
August 12 has come and gone on the sun-burnt plains of Colorado CD-2. Jared Polis pulled out a good win against Joan Fitz-Gerald and Will Shafroth, keeping Will’s strengths in check while whittling down Joan to the very end.
Much can be said about this race and how it turned [...]
We knew that the mining industry was an enthusiastic supporter of Joan Fitz-Gerald before the CD-2 primary race started. And throughout the race she hasn’t even bothered trying to distance herself from those ties. As the race has worn on more of Joan’s mining support has come out, become [...]
It’s something I have been hearing about for a while but the actual paper just came out today. In 2004 Joan Fitz-Gerald, in her capacity as a State Senator, wrote a letter to Summit County telling them to drop their big ideas for a ban on cyanide heap leaching.
What [...]
Two days ago the Denver Post announced its endorsement for Will Shafroth for CD-2, a major feather in Will’s cap. This followed by a week the Rocky Mountain News’ own endorsement of Shafroth. The only other newspaper endorsement that means much to this race, that of the [...]
As indipol got very very busy in the past two months (having had yet another child and having seen work ramp up considerably) political writing plummeted. But indipol is still thinking about and following politics and hopes to return to writing soon, especially on the Colorado CD-2 race between [...]
I first used the word “inevitable” on February 10. Nothing along the way, through the ups and downs in momentum for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, has made me alter my perception. Barack’s nomination became inevitable after SuperTuesday and became a near mathematical certainty by the end of [...]
Sorry dear readers, but I’ve been decidedly un-bored for the past two weeks. In fact, I’ve been underwater mostly with little time to post. That will change shortly, I hope.
In the meantime, check out CQ’s new VP Madness game. Somebody at CQ (i.e. intern) had nothing to do [...]
In the biggest oops of the CD-2 campaign so far, the Denver Post today ran a placement story by the Fitz-Gerald campaign that has Polis looking like a big, fat environmental hypocrite.
Fitz-Gerald’s environmental liabilities in this race were already known by insiders (not by voters, yet) and Polis [...]
[On the back of some urging that I track my predictions and tell you how I've done throughout this campaign (thus saving you from having to track back through all these weeds and figure it out), within the next few I'll look back through the very first v-- political [...]
PolitickerCO ran an early story this evening on today’s campaign finance reports released by the Shafroth, Polis and Fitz-Gerald campaigns and while there are a few conclusions to be drawn, the main one is obvious: Will Shafroth is hammering Joan Fitz-Gerald. “Hammering” may seem a dubious choice of [...]
Jared Polis now has a big perception problem and things have worked out exactly as Joan Fitz-Gerald must have hoped before she started the tax release game in CD-2. A few days ago Polis and Shafroth followed Fitz-G and released their tax returns. The Daily Camera ran [...]
The hits keep coming for Bob. A new story in today’s Denver Post follows on yesterday’s bad news about Schaffer’s ties to federal inmate 27593-112 (otherwise known as one Mr. Jack A. Abramoff). If you read the Denver Post story yesterday you might remember crowd-favorite Dick [...]
Bob Schaffer’s campaign is dead. It probably already was, what with a probable imbalance in D-R turnout this November (favoring the D’s), but now it’s really dead. Schaffer was already linked with FCI inmate number 27593-112, but now he’s linked with 27593-112 in a sleazy, slushy Congressional “fact [...]
Thirteen days to the Pennsylvania primary. The race has mellowed a bit. Both campaigns have continued to campaign hard, with HRC being very aggressive but BO stepping it up as well, but their attacks on each other have abated a bit. Continual movement in the polls, combined with continual [...]
A story out of the Rocky Mountain News this morning has Joan Fitz-Gerald playing the tax return card in the 3-way. The upshot:
Congressional candidate Joan Fitz-Gerald intends to release her income tax returns for the past five years today and call on her opponents to do the same.
By [...]
Up until very recently I was still agnostic on the Colorado CD-2 race. Now, after many months of keeping a half-eye on this race, and a few weeks of keeping a very close eye on it, Will Shafroth has won my support. It’s hard for me to [...]
A former colleague is running as a D for the Senate seat in Wyoming, going up against incumbent Mike Enzi. Check out the Chris Rothfuss for Senate ‘08 campaign site and see if you can find a way to support him.
Wyoming is a big R state but currently [...]
No jokes here. First, Jared Polis is pouring yet another ewer of his own wine into his campaign operation. The more Polis pours from his own wallet, the more his opponents’ best talking point against him — that he’s trying to buy the race — sticks. Polis needs [...]
Excuse my tardiness. Colorado is voting for a new Senator to replace Mr. Allard (who, seemingly deservedly, has accrued the reputation of having done absolutely nothing as a Senator) and I haven’t yet begun to cover the race.
The contenders are Mark Udall, currently CO’s CD-2 rep, and [...]
A dedicated reader emailed me this HuffPost article extolling a new Rasmussen poll that shows HRC’s lead slipping to 5 in Pennsylvania. A few takes from this:
I never got around to wrapping up the Colorado CD-2 energy and climate debate from last Tuesday so here goes.
I’ll start with this: I agree with Will Shafroth’s opening premise that climate and energy are the defining issues of our time.
Health care, education, war, crime, poverty, taxes. These [...]
It’s pretty clear that HRC has the voter momentum after winning the popular votes in Texas and Ohio and seeming to have a big lead in Pennsylvania. It’s also pretty clear that where momentum actually counts now, in the upper levels of the D party echelon, Obama still holds [...]
Matt Bai does well by the blogouniverse again, postulating an answer for the question, “why are some politicians coated in teflon and other in krazy glue?” Matt’s answer:
Heres a political postulate for you: whether or not a bad moment sticks to the candidate depends on how closely related [...]
I’ve written about Mark Penn (Hillary’s “chief strategist”) and his dizzying spin quite a few times, as have others. The important take-home message about spin is this: it’s effective if you use it sparingly and credibly. If you pursue the shotgun route as does Mark Penn [...]
The last remaining iota of Hillaryspin is this: Clinton won the big states and Obama didn’t, so therefore Clinton should get the SuperDelegates because she is a better candidate and is going to run better against McCain. Most coverage I’ve seen has been uncritically biting on this bait and [...]