To start with the obvious: You
don’t have to be Nate Silver to calculate the Democrats’ chance of
taking control back of the House of Representatives to be a
percentage hovering around zero. In all likelihood, the Republicans
will be gaining seats in the House. Writing for the Associated
Press, Donna Cossata wonders just how many they’ll get and analyzes
the Democrats’
triage-like campaign funding shifts:
Democrats cut $2.8 million in spending in northern Virginia,
where John Foust faces state Del. Barbara Comstock in a seat that
Republican Frank Wolf has held for 34 years. The party also scaled
back its spending in the Denver suburbs by $1.4 million despite its
high expectations that former state House speaker Andrew Romanoff
could upend three-term Republican Rep. Mike Coffman in a district
with a growing Hispanic population.Democrats have raced to rescue freshman Rep. Ami Bera in the
Sacramento, California, suburbs as he tries to fend off a challenge
from former Republican Rep. Doug Ose, and shore up first-term Rep.
Bill Enyart in his southwest Illinois race against state Rep. Mike
Bost. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn’s struggle in his re-election bid is
making life tough for Enyart and another freshman, Democratic Rep.
Brad Schneider.
But whether the Senate will flip red as well is the question of
the mid-terms, and cable news viewers should expect to learn lots
and lots of trivia on Election Day about the voting habits of
various counties in states like Louisiana, Iowa, Kentucky, and
especially
Kansas. Prognosticators are predicting that the elephants will
trample the donkeys, but there’s
significant disagreement in their confidence of their own
prediction. Silver and his crew say there’s a 58 percent chance the
Republicans will take the Senate. The Washington
Post‘s Election Lab, on the other hand, believes it’s nearly
certain, at 94 percent.
The National Journal goes through some of the hottest
Senate races
here and analyzes and ranks the likelihood of a Republican win.
It’s a breezy and easy-to-understand list of 17 pivotal races for
anybody who just wants to know why things are the way they are
right now.
One of the races on the list is Democrat Alison Lundergan
Grimes’ campaign to unseat Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell of Kentucky. Grimes seems to be trying to campaign from
McConnell’s right,
shooting guns in her campaign ads, promising to fight for coal
jobs, and claiming to have a
tougher anti-immigration stance than the senator. Her lack of
interest in pushing the party line came to a head in her debate
against McConnell last night, when she
continued to refuse to indicate whether she voted for President
Barack Obama in 2012. Doing so, she said, would undermine the
privacy of the good citizens of Kentucky. From the
National Review:
“This is a matter of principle. Our constitution grants, here in
Kentucky, the constitutional right for privacy of the ballot box,
for a secret ballot,” Grimes said during her debate with McConnell.
“I am not going to compromise a constitutional right provided here
in Kentucky in order to curry favor on one or other side, or for
members of the media, I’ll protect that right for every
Kentuckian.”Asked directly if she would say who she voted for Grimes
refused. “Again, you have that right, Senator McConnell has that
right, every Kentuckian has the right for privacy at the ballot
box,” she said. “If I as chief election official, Bill, don’t stand
up for that right, who in Kentucky will?”The questioning, prompted by Grimes’s refusal to tell an
editorial board how she voted, came after debate watchers had
already heard McConnell accuse Grimes of trying to hide her true
beliefs.
She’s protecting all Kentuckians by not indicating
where her political loyalties lie, you see. Watch below:
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