Movement in poll averages for eight Senate races over the last week overwhelmingly favored Republican candidates, affirming the prevailing wisdom that a stiff wind is blowing and gaining force that will make the elections this fall very difficult for Democrats.
The GOP still faces an enormous uphill climb to take back control of the Senate. Republican candidates lead in only 5 of the 10 Democratic-held seats they would need to win to gain the majority. But a Republican Senate is not outside the realm of possibility, since their candidates are within striking distance in enough races that a perfect storm could sweep them in.
Two Democrats – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal – saw their leads over Republican candidates reduced. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who is running as an independent but is expected to caucus with Democrats if he wins and they retain the majority – also saw his lead over Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio downsized. And four Republican candidates saw their advantages increase.
One Republican candidate – Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois – saw his slim 2.3 point lead of a week ago, as measured by the Real Clear Politics average, dissolve. RCP moved Kirk’s contest with Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, the state treasurer who benefitted from President Obama’s Aug. 5 fundraiser, to a toss up.
Showing posts with label House. Show all posts
Showing posts with label House. Show all posts
Friday, August 20, 2010
Friday, July 30, 2010
Democrats have charted a long-shot strategy to keep the House
Democratic strategists see a path to retaining their House majority.
To do so, they are aiming to pick off four seats held by Republicans, two open and two held by incumbents; then hold onto at least eight of their most endangered 16 open seats; and keep their incumbent losses down to less than 35 -- two-thirds of the Democratic incumbents in competitive districts, or just over 40 percent of the number if you include those who are potentially endangered.
In a normal election year, these would be very modest ambitions; today, it's a tall order. But it is plausible.
According to "Vital Statistics on Congress," in the last half century, a party has lost 35 or more incumbents only four times.
The first occurred in 1964, when 39 Republican incumbents were swept out in President Lyndon Johnson's landslide victory over Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz. In the very next election, Democrats lost 38 seats in a "six-year itch" -- a second-term, midterm election. Republicans lost 36 in 1974, another second-term, midterm election, just three months after President Gerald Ford's watch started in the wake of Richard Nixon's resignation.
The most recent was 1994, a first-term, midterm election like this one, under President Bill Clinton, when 35 Democratic incumbents lost.
To do so, they are aiming to pick off four seats held by Republicans, two open and two held by incumbents; then hold onto at least eight of their most endangered 16 open seats; and keep their incumbent losses down to less than 35 -- two-thirds of the Democratic incumbents in competitive districts, or just over 40 percent of the number if you include those who are potentially endangered.
In a normal election year, these would be very modest ambitions; today, it's a tall order. But it is plausible.
According to "Vital Statistics on Congress," in the last half century, a party has lost 35 or more incumbents only four times.
The first occurred in 1964, when 39 Republican incumbents were swept out in President Lyndon Johnson's landslide victory over Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz. In the very next election, Democrats lost 38 seats in a "six-year itch" -- a second-term, midterm election. Republicans lost 36 in 1974, another second-term, midterm election, just three months after President Gerald Ford's watch started in the wake of Richard Nixon's resignation.
The most recent was 1994, a first-term, midterm election like this one, under President Bill Clinton, when 35 Democratic incumbents lost.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
If Obamacare passes the House, GOP hopes to deliver a thousand cuts to kill it in the Senate
Democrats might like to think that health care reform is all but a done deal if it clears the House, but the Senate is where Republicans have been plotting for months to sentence it to a painful procedural death.
Republican aides have been mining the Senate’s arcane parliamentary rules for an attack that aims at striking elements both broad and narrow from the bill, weakening the measure and ultimately defeating it. Their goal is to force changes that leave Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) without 51 votes to pass it, or at the very least, that drive it back to the House for a second vote that drags out the process and saps Democratic resolve.
But the first step in the Republicans’ game plan is making sure they never need to use the rest of it.
“Our initial goal is to stop the bill in the House,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). “Part of convincing House members to vote for the Senate bill is that it can be fixed by reconciliation, and I think that is a highly questionable proposition.”
It’s a pre-emptive strike meant to scare jittery House Democrats into withholding their support from Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who needs 216 votes to pass the Senate bill and a companion measure that fixes unpopular elements of the bill. If she falls short, comprehensive health care reform dies.
Republican aides have been mining the Senate’s arcane parliamentary rules for an attack that aims at striking elements both broad and narrow from the bill, weakening the measure and ultimately defeating it. Their goal is to force changes that leave Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) without 51 votes to pass it, or at the very least, that drive it back to the House for a second vote that drags out the process and saps Democratic resolve.
But the first step in the Republicans’ game plan is making sure they never need to use the rest of it.
“Our initial goal is to stop the bill in the House,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). “Part of convincing House members to vote for the Senate bill is that it can be fixed by reconciliation, and I think that is a highly questionable proposition.”
It’s a pre-emptive strike meant to scare jittery House Democrats into withholding their support from Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who needs 216 votes to pass the Senate bill and a companion measure that fixes unpopular elements of the bill. If she falls short, comprehensive health care reform dies.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
WSJ: Obamacare vote scheme "is a brazen affront to the plain language of the Constitution"
This two-votes-in-one gambit is a brazen affront to the plain language of the Constitution, which is intended to require democratic accountability. Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution says that in order for a "Bill" to "become a Law," it "shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate." This is why the House and Senate typically have a conference committee to work out differences in what each body passes. While sometimes one house cedes entirely to another, the expectation is that its Members must re-vote on the exact language of the other body's bill.
As Stanford law professor Michael McConnell pointed out in these pages yesterday, "The Slaughter solution attempts to allow the House to pass the Senate bill, plus a bill amending it, with a single vote. The senators would then vote only on the amendatory bill. But this means that no single bill will have passed both houses in the same form." If Congress can now decide that the House can vote for one bill and the Senate can vote for another, and the final result can be some arbitrary hybrid, then we have abandoned one of Madison's core checks and balances.
Yes, self-executing rules have been used in the past, but as the Congressional Research Service put it in a 2006 paper, "Originally, this type of rule was used to expedite House action in disposing of Senate amendments to House-passed bills." They've also been used for amendments such as to a 1998 bill that "would have permitted the CIA to offer employees an early-out retirement program"—but never before to elide a vote on the entire fundamental legislation.
We have entered a political wonderland, where the rules are whatever Democrats say they are
As Stanford law professor Michael McConnell pointed out in these pages yesterday, "The Slaughter solution attempts to allow the House to pass the Senate bill, plus a bill amending it, with a single vote. The senators would then vote only on the amendatory bill. But this means that no single bill will have passed both houses in the same form." If Congress can now decide that the House can vote for one bill and the Senate can vote for another, and the final result can be some arbitrary hybrid, then we have abandoned one of Madison's core checks and balances.
Yes, self-executing rules have been used in the past, but as the Congressional Research Service put it in a 2006 paper, "Originally, this type of rule was used to expedite House action in disposing of Senate amendments to House-passed bills." They've also been used for amendments such as to a 1998 bill that "would have permitted the CIA to offer employees an early-out retirement program"—but never before to elide a vote on the entire fundamental legislation.
We have entered a political wonderland, where the rules are whatever Democrats say they are
Sunday, March 7, 2010
NRO simplifies a complex, evil proposal to let government decide who will live and who will die
...if the House passes the Senate bill then Obamacare would become law, complete with its massive, overbearing, costly, intrusive, inefficient, and clumsy combination of mandates, taxes, subsidies, regulations, and new government programs intended to replace the American health-insurance industry with an enormous federal entitlement while failing to address the problem of costs. Just about everything the public hates about the bill is in both versions. The prospect of reconciliation is just one of the means that the Democratic leadership is employing to persuade members of the House to ignore the public’s wishes and their own political future and enact Obamacare.
The fate of Obamacre therefore now rests not in the Senate but in the House. It is members of the House who must decide if it will be enacted, and it needs to be clear to voters exactly where their opposition to the Democrats’ approach to health care should be focused now.
The fate of Obamacre therefore now rests not in the Senate but in the House. It is members of the House who must decide if it will be enacted, and it needs to be clear to voters exactly where their opposition to the Democrats’ approach to health care should be focused now.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Can the Dems muster supermajorities for ObamaCare in a Senate guarded by Blue Dogs
The Democrats wheedled, cajoled, begged, and finally abandoned its defense of abortion — truly a watershed moment — in order to get their version of ObamaCare passed … in the House of Representatives, where they enjoy a 75-seat majority. In the end, they could only muster a five-vote win on Nancy Pelosi’s bill out of that strong majority. Until this week, most had assumed that any ObamaCare bill would pass the House easily, but that the fight would be in the Senate.
So what does this 220-215 vote tell us? Capitol Hill Democrats know that this bill is an albatross. It’s true that Pelosi was able at the end to negotiate votes to allow a few at-risk Democrats that supported the bill to oppose it in the final vote, but even that tells a tale of fear and consciousness of unpopularity. The razor-thin vote, as well as a number of earlier, more sincere defections, show that this bill was a radical and expensive approach to fix a 13% problem — and even most of the Democrats know it.
Now the focus swings to the Senate, where Harry Reid will have to gain supermajorities at least twice to allow the bill to proceed to a final vote. That seems unlikely, although not impossible. The process will slow down considerably from the jam-down Pelosi conducted in the lower chamber, perhaps even to a crawl if Tom Coburn makes good on his threat to have the bill read in its entirety on the Senate floor. That will leave plenty of time for ObamaCare opponents to find all of the taxes, mandates, and government intrusions that will make it even less popular as it sits in the Senate. Even before Coburn’s threat, Democrats had pushed expectations for the bill out to late January — which makes the politics of the bill even more fraught for Democrats, at the start of an election year.
So what does this 220-215 vote tell us? Capitol Hill Democrats know that this bill is an albatross. It’s true that Pelosi was able at the end to negotiate votes to allow a few at-risk Democrats that supported the bill to oppose it in the final vote, but even that tells a tale of fear and consciousness of unpopularity. The razor-thin vote, as well as a number of earlier, more sincere defections, show that this bill was a radical and expensive approach to fix a 13% problem — and even most of the Democrats know it.
Now the focus swings to the Senate, where Harry Reid will have to gain supermajorities at least twice to allow the bill to proceed to a final vote. That seems unlikely, although not impossible. The process will slow down considerably from the jam-down Pelosi conducted in the lower chamber, perhaps even to a crawl if Tom Coburn makes good on his threat to have the bill read in its entirety on the Senate floor. That will leave plenty of time for ObamaCare opponents to find all of the taxes, mandates, and government intrusions that will make it even less popular as it sits in the Senate. Even before Coburn’s threat, Democrats had pushed expectations for the bill out to late January — which makes the politics of the bill even more fraught for Democrats, at the start of an election year.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
