The WSJ (via RCP) has a great article out today on where the tide of voter anger is emanating from, and why the Dems lame attempts to blame the GOP keep missing the mark:

In American politics, people tend to think of “radicals” as those on the ideological fringes of the left or right. But what happens when the radicals are smack in the middle of the political spectrum?

That may be the picture we’re looking at today. Many of those seriously estranged from the political system and its practitioners appear to sit in the political center. They are shaping this year’s campaign, but equally important is the question of what happens to them after the election Nov. 2, and especially on the road toward the next presidential campaign in 2012.

Two big forces are driving this year’s congressional campaign, and pushing it in the direction of Republicans. The first is an exceptionally high level of intensity among conservatives and core Republican voters, who give every sign of showing up in high numbers on Election Day.

But the other big force is political independents—voters who have no particular allegiance to either party and who don’t tend to have strong ideological leanings. These are the voters who drifted toward the Democrats in 2006, allowing them to take over control of the House from Republicans. Then they jumped firmly onto Barack Obama’s bandwagon in 2008, ousting Republicans from the White House and making Mr. Obama the first Democrat to win a majority of the national vote since Jimmy Carter.

Now they have turned again, and are pushing the system the other way. “For the third national election in a row, independent voters may be poised to vote out the party in power,” summarized the Pew Research Center in a recent study of independent voters.

The fact is, the independents are doing exactly want they need to do – they keep throwing the bums out until they pay attention and get it right. That is why there is a huge shift to the GOP, while there is no support for the GOP. The only thing acceptable to independents (and their unique brand of conservatism) is small, lean government doing the minimal required, maximizing personal responsibility and choice (everyone must deal with their poor decisions) and working TOGETHER with respect and professionalism on common ground. The more to the fringe a party goes, the more they get whacked for missing the point.

This is not a cycle where social conservatism as the rule of law will be making a big come back. Social conservatism is best handled by the family, not schools or courts or bureaucracies. It is an individual choice as to how far down any path someone wishes to travel. The path and the distance will not be mandated, measured or monitored by government. Their will be no punishment for those who stray as long as they only impact themselves.

The caricature used by the WSJ (itself a tool of the rotten Political Industrial Complex) is classic elitist:

These independent voters have become something like a band of nomad marauders, roaming across the American political landscape, hungry, angry and taking out their frustrations on the villages of the Democrats and Republicans in turn.

The fact that their fury is aimed more at Democrats this year shouldn’t leave Republicans thinking they have won the permanent allegiance of these nomads, who, lest we forget, were just two years ago pillaging the land of George W. Bush.

We hold the keys to who shall get those cherished seats in DC. We are the managers, the civil servants are paid to make things work. When they fail we do not maraud, we fire and replace with someone new. We do not roam. We give a party a chance, supporting them when they are on track (Iraq, Afghanistan) and pulling back when they go to far (government take over of health care). We are not nomads – we have never left the center. It is easy to project on others, but the fact is those who wandered into the fringes where government became a tool for people to shape how others live are the ones who ran off the reservation.

Zealots never understand the concept of common ground. The corrupting power of DC turns people interested in solutions into demi-gods only interested in expanding their power base. We are not confused, but we can be brutal when it comes to failure.

Mostly they want solutions—economic and job-creating solutions—and they seem to think Democrats have failed to provide them. They also thought that of Republicans previously. And they seem to think this failure to produce in Washington is, at least in some measure, the result of both parties being in the thrall of “special interests,” a term with various definitions.

I think the old paradigm was failure was due to polarizing special interests – who tilted solutions out of balance and made things worse instead of better (which is the precise definition that each failed attempt at government-based solutions have met to varying degrees). The current definition includes the conclusion government-solutions are the last bastion of the incompetents. That it is best to let people, families and communities work out the solutions and keep the feds out of the picture. Failure now is to not unleash the potential of the American people. Failure now is to not check the cancer of the bloated and over reaching bureaucracy. It is a libertarian America, going back to its roots.

This ain’t rocket science. We don’t want more government of any flavor or interest. We want our hard earned money back and government shrunk down to its minimum required size. And I am sure we will debate what that size is for decades to come.

Update: Why is anyone surprised with these numbers?

All told, 85 percent of Americans are either angry about the economy or at least dissatisfied with it, according to the survey, produced for ABC and Yahoo! News by Langer Research Associates. That makes economic discontent even higher than anger or dissatisfaction with “the way the federal government is working,” at 71 percent in an ABC News/Washington Post poll last week.

I mean, well duh! And guess who is on the receiving end of that anger? The incompetents that promised a peak of 8% unemployment, with less than 7.5% right now:

You Betcha we’re angry. These are our lives at stake. And the lives and homes of our children. Why WOULDN”T we be angry to see our life’s work wiped out? – end update.

President Obama and his liberal Dems have screwed up so badly in two short years that they face a historic backlash that should bury any hint of liberal, big government plans or proposals for a generation or two. All signs point to an electoral blow out for the GOP – a party not actually held in high esteem by the voters. But in comparison to the crew in power now, the GOP looks golden. The infamous Monty Python tear on wasteful government bureaucracy, embodied in the Ministry of Silly Walks, has finally come to fruition under Pelosi, Reid & Obama. Wasting billions of dollars on dog parks, window insulation and checks to 72,000 dead people seems to fold right in with the Python Ministries.

In response to the realization they have screwed up to the point that many liberal acheivements over the last century will begin to be rolled back starting in January, the Democrats have sunk to a new low – blatant lying. It has become so pathetic even the pliant old news media is starting to revolt. Let’s begin with this fact-check from ABC News:

“We learned that one of the largest groups paying for these ads regularly takes in money from foreign sources,” President Obama said last week, referring to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the second biggest spender in the midterm elections, behind only the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Apparently, the liberal brain trust just ‘learned’ that the Chamber of Commerce allows US interests overseas to become members. This means the Chamber takes in dues from these foreign entities – usually foreign companies with some form of US ownership. Having worked with one of these entities on a European Space Agency mission that decided to use US technology- you know, an export of American products – I can tell you this is how we export our products and increase our jobs here. So the Einsteins in liberal-land figure the American Voters are too damn stupid to unravel this tangled tale, and took this innocuous fact and created a big fat lie:

“Are you going to let special interests from Wall Street and Washington and maybe places beyond our shores come to this state and tell us who our senator should be?”

Democrats and liberal groups take the argument further.

A Democratic National Committee TV ad warns conservative third-party groups like the Chamber are “stealing our democracy” and spending millions in “secret foreign money to influence our elections.”

The fact is, the Chamber has a budget of $200 million a year, but only takes in $100 thousand in dues from foreign business entities. Money they take great care NOT to use on US elections, as ABC News confirms:

Yet while Obama is trying to tie Republicans and some of their backers to the specter of foreign interference in U.S. elections, an examination of the evidence provides little support for the claims.

“We have no idea if the Chamber or any 501(c) organization as defined by the IRS code, is taking foreign money for the purposes of playing politics,” said Dave Levinthal of the Center for Responsive Politics. “Saying that that foreign money is actually going toward attack ads or any type of messaging in the political realm, you just don’t know. It’s speculation and nothing more.”

Some funding for the Chamber of Commerce does come from foreign companies and foreign-based Chamber affiliates (called “AmShams”) similar in operations of some international nonprofit groups and labor unions.

Chamber of Commerce director of media relations J.P. Fielder said that money goes to the group’s general fund and then to the international division, keeping it away from any political activities.

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Tags: Chamber of Commerce, Democats, Obama

Last week was interesting because, just as Rasmussen was detecting a bizarre shift to the Democrats in his ‘likely voter’ generic congressional ballot question (down to a +3% for the GOP), Gallup finally released its ‘likely voter‘ generic poll (two actually) showing a +13-18% GOP tsunami. It was doubly interesting since Rasmussen had been showing a GOP advantage of typically around +10% for the GOP for weeks prior.

Clearly one of the pollsters had some fluke data in their sample. Dems prayed it was Gallup – but sadly for them it was not. Gallup has now come up with their second weekly ‘likely voter‘ results, and it should be no surprise the range is still a staggering 12-17% tsunami for the GOP (Dems gained a single, statistically insignificant 1%). Rasmussen, on the other hand, jumped back to a +8% GOP lead. Rasmussen’s 39D – 47R spread is now very close to Gallup’s lower estimate of 41D-53R.

It seems that it was Rasmussen who had a couple of strange samples in the mix. Finally, now RCP is using only ‘likely voter‘ polls in their composite generic ballot poll index, and we see a +8% GOP landslide at RCP as well. Sort of a, kind of, trend peaking out from the data.

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Tags: 2010 Elections, Gallup, Generic Ballot, Rasmussen, Tsunami

Hey there folks.

I want to thank all those who donated to the Strata-Sphere in the last few weeks – it has helped us out immensely. I am humbled by your generosity.

As you may recall, we at the Strata-Sphere are now facing the full brunt of Obamanomics and are trying to stay above water until some potential work shows up. As I wrote in this post initially asking for donations, what is really hurting us is the fact the Democrats skulked out of town without passing a budget this year. Now the entire government is on Continuing Resolution, which means it is frozen in last year’s scope and funding. We were hoping to get new work this month, but lack of a budget has delayed that indefinitely. This is hard for a company that only employs a handful of people.

We are experiencing the brilliance of liberal economic genius first hand – and it is painful.

Anyway, for those who did not donate last round we would greatly appreciate your support. It does not need to be a large amount if everyone just chips in a little. We have kept this site going for over 5 years with only the occasional plea for financial assistance. It has been an honor and a pleasure to punch out posts, analyses and observations on topics as far ranging as Able Danger, to FISA-NSA, Global Warming, Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Downing Street Memos, Katrina – and of course all things political.

It has been a labor of love which has resulted in 7,373 posts and 72,143 comments (that latter number just boggles my mind!). I find it strange that this country has fallen so far, so fast. But no one really knew the potential for liberal economic havoc until this crew was put in office. I find it even harder to admit this economic disaster has reached us as well. If you good people could find it in your heart to help your virtual neighbors here at the Strata-Sphere, we would be forever in your debt.

Alternate Title: Doubling Down On Stupid

Update: As Ed Morrissey notes, when the New York Times calls foul, is must really be foul – end update

Watching the Sunday shows this past weekend I think the topic which had me most disgusted with the Democrats was the crap about the Chamber of Commerce supposedly funneling ‘secret foreign money‘ into election races. It was a grotesque and amateur attempt to portray the GOP as beholding to foreign influence. It was also an outrageous and unsubstantiated charge, made by an incompetent White House and aimed at law abiding citizens who are participating in the political process.

As Karl Rove, Ed Gillespie, The New York Times and the Washington Post all noted: there is no evidence of any wrong doing or foreign money going into campaigns. More laughable is how lame the charge would be, even if true. The Chamber’s annual budget is something like $200 million dollars, yet it only receives about $100,000 in dues from American corporate interests overseas. That would not pay a single campaign consultant for a single year.

The Chamber has vowed to spend on the order of $75 million this cycle, and is no different than other organizations left and right, many who backed Obama two short years ago. This will be a billion dollar election year cycle, so how is $100K out of $75 million Chamber dollars the end of democracy as we know it? What moron would think this kind of conspiracy theory up? It wouldn’t fly as a Sesame Street skit!

When challenged about the ludicrous nature of the charge, Joe Trippi came out saying there was no proof of innocence, and the Chamber would be assumed guilty until they proved themselves innocent. Talk about stomping on the Constitution! Sadly, I know which moron thought that rebuttal up.

What this dipstick attack indicates is how stupid DC liberals are, especially those inhabiting the White House and leadership posts in Congress. Coincidentally, Mark Halperin notes today in Time Magazine how Emperor Obama’s vaunted intellectual robes have finally been discovered missing:

With the exception of core Obama Administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters. This view is held by Fox News pundits, executives and anchors at the major old-media outlets, reporters who cover the White House, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders and governors, many Democratic business people and lawyers who raised big money for Obama in 2008, and even some members of the Administration just beyond the inner circle.

Apparently, outside the band of self proclaimed geniuses, no one is finding this crowd all that bright. No surprise really, given their pathetic performance on the economy, deficits and debt, international priorities, etc. This White House crew has spent more money screwing up than any group of people in all of history (and that probably includes the latter half of the USSR prior to its fall).

And so this group of liberal lame brains (please, consider that one a literal adjective) have decided they need to sling mud to shore up their image of incompetence. Why didn’t anyone else think of that!? Probably because most people would know it would only make the argument of incompetence even stronger.

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Tags: 2010 Elections, Obama, White House

There has been a serious bout of denial in the media of late, with stories about a resurgent Democrat Party somehow holding the House and saving Nancy Pelosi’s failed Spearkership. Ain’t going to happen. As Nate Silver has noted the GOP has been marching towards a higher and higher probability of a GOP take over – now sitting at 72% in his model.

Our model now estimates that the Republicans have a 72 percent chance of taking over the House, up from 67 percent last week. Moreover, they have nearly even odds of a achieving a net gain of 50 seats; their average gain in a typical simulation run was between 47 and 48 seats. However, the playing field remains very broad and considerably larger [gains] are possible, as are considerably smaller ones.

Nate’s models are very slow to adjust because his reference base are races from 1999 onward. He has no real wave elections in his historical data to rapidly detect massive changes in voter attitude. But as slow as his models are to respond, they are responding.

What caught my eye was a table at the Cook Political Report, which Nate referenced showing 85 Democrat seats in jeopardy. Cook includes the PVI index [I believe this stands for Partisan Voting Index] for each race and I wanted to do a very simple analysis of what differing size waves would do to the House. What I am assessing is the damage to the Dems if the November wave were to consume all or most races below a certain PVI.

So I am going to assess 3 wave heights related to PVI: R+1, D+2 and D+6. I do not know of any direct correlation between the generic ballot and the PVI, but one could argue a generic ballot that is tied between the parties would move R+1 districts to the GOP, a generic ballot gap that has the GOP +3-5% would move the D+2 districts into GOP hands, and a generic ballot greater than +8% for the GOP would take out D+6 districts. Right now the generic ballot is sitting in the GOP +5-6% range, but some pollsters have it well above 10+% in their likely voter models. So this should be interesting.

Continue Reading »

Tags: 2010 Elections, Dem House Losses

The unemployment numbers for September are out and, for the umpteenth month running, the liberal experiment in Keynesian stimulus policy is still a failure. As the chart below shows unemployment (U3) is still stuck at 9.6% (click to enlarge):

The only reason it is not reflecting the more realistic 10+% level is because the work force level is still well below the 2000-2008 levels (64.7% now verses the average of 66.7% of the population through the Bush administration). The underemployment rate, which covers people without career level jobs who may be working part time as well as not working at all, jumped to 17.1%. That is the same level the country experienced last fall, at the peak of the recession and unemployment.

The Department of Labor says the nation lost 95,000 jobs in September. Which is strangely close to the 89,000 stimulus payments which went to dead people and folks in prison. And this crowd in DC has the audacity to claim they can do better with our health care than we can?? Pulleaaase.

“Remember When It Was YOUR Health Care!”

In every election there are unexpected, pivotal moments that tip the electorate irreversibly. When these turning points hit in October, they are called an “October Surprise“. In this election, the October Surprise was provided by an unelected, liberal judge in Michigan who believes freedom of choice ends with aborting children – everything else in life will be mandated from DC:

U.S. District Court Judge George Steeh ruled Thursday that the so-called individual mandate — a requirement President Barack Obama opposed during the presidential campaign but later embraced as part of sweeping changes — falls squarely within Congress’s ability under the Constitution to regulate interstate commerce.

Let’s just ignore the minor fact that health insurance cannot be offered or purchased across state lines – so therefore by definition it falls outside the ‘interstate’ commerce clause. The fact is, anyone can make up a rationalization to hang their arrogance on. It is a trivial exercise, as we see with this nonsense.

If the Tea Party movement – and I mean the grass roots, left-of-center to right-of-center, libertarian core of America who rose up for the first time in their live to protest at Town Halls and Tea Party gatherings – needed any rallying point, this is it. This is what created the movement in the first place. It was the rejection of the federal government’s over reach into OUR health care options that caused the backlash we now know as the Tea Party. It was the idea of Obamacare that propelled a little known GOP challenger into the Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy in January of this year. There were other concerns with the liberal mess being deployed by Reid, Pelosi and Obama – but the invasion of our health care was the straw that broke the back of the American voter. This is one place few want the federal government poking their incompetent noses into.

This judge’s decision can and should be overturned. But what we see from this ruling is how the Federal Bureaucracy has grown in all three branches to the point it is almost all cancer, not resolution. (The military and many other isolated areas are still of value). If you want to REALLY keep your health care, you cannot hope for the judicial system to stop the liberal march on our constitutional rights. If you REALLY want to keep your health care (and 70-80% of us do), then you have to get out and vote on November 2nd and throw the Democrats out.

And if the GOP screws up again when it is their turn, we can throw them out in 2 years. The point is, We The People will need to keep throwing them out until they pay attention. Right now, it is imperative we start tearing down this bureaucracy that is a more monument to arrogance and greed than to freedom and individual spirit.

Tags: Constitution, Federal Judge, Interstate Commerce, Obamacare

Two of Obama’s chief allies in destroying America are well on their way to being fired by the American People. As I noted in an earlier post, Pelosi may still be in Congress come January 2011, but she will be there as a has-been Speaker. Sen Harry Reid apparently will fair even worse. He will not be Majority Leader, because he will not even be in the Senate come 2011:

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Nevada Voters shows Angle hitting the 50% mark for the first time since mid-August, while Reid earns 46% of the vote.

Reid has been running around 40-45% for months – the sign of certain political death for incumbents. Angle has reached the magic 50% mark, which for challengers usually indicates a win. It is heartening to think both Reid and Pelosi will have been rejected so soundly by We The People in only a few short weeks.

Update: Karl Rove points out a crystal clear indicator as to why the Dems will be fired en masse this election cycle:

Democratic voters are noticeably less enthusiastic than Republican ones. Pew found last week that 83% of Republicans said they would “definitely” vote, compared to 69% of Democrats. The GOP’s 14-point advantage is twice as big as in 1994.

Independents are energized: 65% said they would “definitely” vote, the highest since Pew began asking the question in 1994. According to a Pew poll released Sept. 23, independents prefer the GOP by 49% to 36%, a 31-point swing since the 2006 midterms.

Maybe someone will finally pay attention. If you anger the middle of America you will die politically. This ain’t rocket science. Never push outside the comfort zone of the center of America.

Tags: 2010 election

Update: Hotline has compiled a list of Dem House seats currently polling under 50% for the incumbent and they have tallied 66 such instances!

And a staggeringly high number of Democratic incumbents are below the 50 percent mark, including members in much of the polling conducted by Democratic firms released to counteract the GOP narrative. House Race Hotline editor Tim Sahd compiled an invaluable database of all the House race polling conducted this cycle and found 66 Democratic incumbents sitting below that magic 50 percent number.

This to me is the GOP floor for November. Sadly the actual list is behind a pay-wall, but that overall news is stunning enough. – end update

We are one week into October and the House is slipping out of the hands of the Democrats already. Barring something very bizarre (and therefore questionable), it looks like the reign of Nancy Pelosi is coming to an end. RCP has the GOP up in the house race 210 to the Dems 186. For comparison the current make up is GOP 178 – Dems 255. That means the GOP has the lead in 32 Dem held seats and is 8 races away from the majority. A goal easily within their grasp.

In the “toss up” category there are 38D seats and 2R seats. A solid indication of how bad this cycle will be for Dems is the HI1 seat, which is currently R and thought to be an easy D pickup in the blue state of Hawaii. Apparently not anymore, as the latest poll has the race a statistical tie with a 1% difference. The fact this race has moved to this stage is another indicator of the breadth of voter backlash across this nation.

The worst that could happen here is the GOP loses 2 seats. The worst for the Dems is they lose all 38 seats. I don’t see that happening, but I do see them losing a vast majority of them.

A quick sample of the latest polls (Sept or later) in this group shows the following incumbents behind or below 50% (45% is the death zone for any incumbent):

CA20 -2%, 48D-46R
CT5 +6%, 44D-50R
FL22, -5% 48D-43R
IL17 +3%, 38D-41R
MI9 +4, 41D-45R
NC7 +1%, 45D-46R
NJ3 -4.3%, 40.3D-36D

NM1 -7%, 49D-42R
NM2 +2%, 44.3D-46.3R
NV3 0%, 45D-45R
SD-AL -2%, 47D-45R

These 11 races look to almost all go to the GOP since district level polling is the most imprecise of all, and the least consistent in dealing with ‘likely voters‘ in a wave election (I struggled with keeping NM1 in the list) . Many of the other 27D races in the RCP “toss up” category simply do not have recent polls. Only a handful look winnable for the D’s. I could go into the “Leans Dems” category and find other races that should go GOP as well. Clearly the GOP has the races in place to take control of the House of Representatives as it is. It really is coming down to how big a blow out this election cycle will be.

And that all comes down to how angry the American voters are for runaway and wasted spending, bailouts for the fat cats and unemployment and food stamps for Main Street, and the arrogance of DC elites telling us we are too racist and stupid to understand the problems facing America. It really comes down to what is motivating the voters, this election cycle. As Gallup shows in their “likely voter” model, it is not a pro big government, pro big government party year.

Tags: 2010 Elections, Control Of The House