HI-1 is one of the bluest of the blue, it's Obama's home district. There's a Republican in the seat now but he got their in a crazy 3 way race, where two Democrats split the vote during a special election earlier this year.

It was pretty much assumed that when the Democrats got behind one candidate in November, they would take it back. Well, maybe not. Behold, Congressman Charles Djou

According to a new Star-Advertiser/Hawaii News Now poll, Djou holds a slight 3-point edge over Democrat Colleen Hanabusa, but it is within the margin of error -- a statistical tie.

In a telephone poll of 399 very likely voters in the 1st Congressional District, representing urban Honolulu, Djou was favored by 48 percent, compared with 45 percent for Hanabusa.

Six percent said they were undecided or refused to answer; 1 percent said they would choose someone else.

The poll was conducted by Ward Research Inc. Oct. 12 to last Tuesday and has a 4.9 percent-point margin of error.

Here's more about Djou from his website.

Congressman Djou previously served on the Honolulu City Council and in the Hawaii State House, where he was Minority Floor Leader. He also served as Vice Chair of the Hawaii Republican Party.

A child of immigrants, Congressman DjouÂ’s parents emigrated from China and Thailand. The Congressman grew up in Hawaii. He graduated from Punahou School in Honolulu and the University of Pennsylvania earning degrees in Political Science and Economics from the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce. He received his juris doctor from the University of Southern California Law School.

The Congressman has been an active member of the community in Honolulu. He served on the Board of Directors of the American Lung Association and the Neighborhood Board for his area. He is a member of the Kamehameha Lions Club and has been a member of the Young Business Roundtable, the Rotary Club, and the Hawaii Telecommunications Association.

Consider this my official announcement that I volunteer to fly out and cover this race on election night. We have the money in the budget for that, right?

Thanks to NavyCopJoe for the heads up on the race.

In Case You Missed It Earlier: There's a Ruth McClung money bomb going on and we have a recap of the races we've been following.

Posted by: DrewM at 11:11 AM | Comments (53)
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As usual, the show was pretty lame. They did drop a birth certificate joke in the cold open, but it wasn't deployed very well. Hm, maybe liberals are right: They really can't make Obama funny. (They can't, mind you. Not that it can't be done.)

Couple of other decent sketches follow, but none of them are must watch. The last one, though, is pretty good. more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:29 AM | Comments (65)
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Dan Debicella is putting up a good fight to regain traditional NE Republican territory in the tony 'burbs of Fairfield County.

Cap'n Wunnerful and Billy Zipper will be campaigning here this weekend for first-term incumbent Jim Himes.

They will be working the nearby shithole of Bridgeport (euphemistically referred to as a 'faded industrial city'), which came out overwhelmingly for the Dems and Obama in 2008.

Himes is a reliable vote for Pelosi and the whole Elitist Bastard Agenda in general.

Debicella's site is here.

Recent Survey Shows Dan Debicella with a 46% to 42% Lead Over Himes

Dan now leads Himes in several important categories, including those who are most likely to vote (48% - 42%), and among voters who have an opinion of both candidates (60% - 34%).

Holy. Crap.

Guys: I had no idea this was possible.

Posted by: LauraW at 10:13 AM | Comments (45)
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In a below post, not terribly well received, I tried to fight complacency and the idea that this is just going to happen. It's not "just going to happen." Things don't "just happen." People make them happen. Or they don't.

Regarding enthusiasm, it's great that so many of us are enthused to vote, but our enthusiastic votes count just as much as their indifferent votes. You don't get to vote three or four times just because you're enthusiastic.

Unless you're a Democrat, of course.

There is one way that one person's high enthusiasm translates into more votes: If he can activate, convince, persuade, or cajole a non-voter or non-enthusiastic potential voter to cast his vote his way.

That's the way that high enthusiasm translates into higher vote tallies -- when the enthusiastic share their enthusiasm with the unenthusiastic, and get the unenthusiastic to cast votes, too.

Those votes count just the same as ours, of course. But now we've got more.

I don't know why anyone would say this, but someone objected that GOTV efforts don't matter. Bullshit. That is excuse-making on stilts. GOTV is the entire name of the game. That's how we won in 2004 -- the Democrat who noted that Republican voters just kept pouring into suburban Ohio polling places. "It was like Night of the Living Dead," he said, as the 2004 turn-out effort brought so many unlikely voters to the polls.

That's how the Democrats won in 2006 and 2008. That's why there's a Democrat currently in the King of Pork John Murtha's old seat.

This is how it's won. By turning out the vote. By identifying unlikely voters who are likely to vote Republican, if they just get off their asses and go down to the polling place and are confronted with the choice they've been not bothering to think about.

And that's what GOTV is about. It's about lending our enthusiasm to the unenthuiastic, to let them know our candidate's name so that the name isn't completely new and alien to them when they see it on the ballot, but rather familiar and reassuring. Giving them a little bit of bio of the candidate, so they have a quick bullet-point read on him (again, so he seems familiar), and his policy positions.

An indifferent voter will usually not vote for an unknown. It's our job to make the unknowns known to them.

This works. I've done it twice now-- once phone-banking, and once knocking on doors -- and in both cases I got unlikely voters to agree to vote. I sold them on the candidates. I assured them that if they voted, it would not be a throw-away, futile vote -- if we vote, we will win.

I didn't get a lot of people like that -- but I got about ten each time I did it. And a couple of times I got highly enthusiastic voters to in turn volunteer for the candidate -- in some cases, they want to volunteer themselves; they just don't know who to call.

In one case I got an old woman who sounded pretty pissed off. I asked her if she'd heard of Sean Bielat. "No," she said. Then she interrupted my pitch, and said to me, in a sort of hostile voice, "Tell me -- is he a Republican?"

"Yes he is," I said, in half-cringe.

"Then he's got my vote. I want them all out. All of them." After prodding her a bit I got her to commit to voting, which she hadn't planned on doing -- she didn't even know Frank had a credible opponent.

A marginal voter. An unlikely voter. Now a likely one.

That's what it's all about, especially in midterms. If our marginal voters, our loose-identifying conservatives turn out, and theirs do not, we win. If a lot of our marginal voters turn out, and theirs do not, we win big.

If they can manage to gin up their marginal voters -- blacks, hispanics, and union members are being most seriously targeted -- enough to offset the gains we're making, then we win, but only a little bit.

This is what worries me. That we have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make a truly historic Change but we're going to squander the opportunity for failure of translating our thoughts into actual actions, and thereby, actual votes.

The Democratic base is in fact finally thinking about the election. The fact that they are only thinking about it now doesn't make their votes count less. We've been fired up since summer of 2009 but our votes will count precisely the same.

We need more votes. That simple: We need more votes. We have to turn out everyone who leans Republican to the polls.

Okay, so apologies for getting on people -- but my post wasn't just "reverse psychology." It's direct, forward psychology: Make a difference. Because if we don't, I promise you we will not get 60 seats. We will get what the more conservative estimates show -- somewhere between 40 and 50. And that will be... nice.

But it won't hurt the Democrats, and it won't repudiate Obama. It will not scare the shit out of everyone left that they had better begin considering voting for a repeal of ObamaCare.

That said, Geraghy's Obi-Wan sees it the same way, pretty much. It's hard to tell what's going to happen -- the Democrats may get bruised, the Democrats may get bloody, the Democrats may get battered, and the Democrats may get broken.

Obi-Wan: No, not much has changed — though the Battleground poll was interesting. More on that in a second. I just thought readers who will be reacting to every new poll over the next few days might want a larger guide that tries to put things in context – four ways this could go, and what to look for as the week progresses.

Jim: Four scenarios?

Obi-Wan: First, THE FADING-GOP WAVE SCENARIO: This one is easy. If the generic GOP lead starts to fade and this continues through the weekend to a few points or nearly even on Election Day, then the GOP makes gains in the House but fails to take control, and gains three or four in the Senate. (With disappointments in places like Pennsylvania, Colorado, California and maybe Nevada.)

Second, THE OKAY WAVE SCENARIO: Polling stays about where it is — with strong generic GOP lead (5 to 9 percentage points or more) as GOP leads in many Senate races stay roughly the same; in places like Washington, California and Connecticut, Democrat candidates either break 50 percent or keep a steady gap or widen it. Still, a wave election, with House gains of up to 50 or 60. But GOP fails at Senate control by two to four seats, which shows that (1) to some extent the Democrats’ strategy of individualizing senate rates with harsh negative attacks worked or (2) voters just chose to channel their anger at the Obama administration in their House voting but were discriminating – picking and choosing — in the Senate races.

Third, THE HAPPY-TIMES WAVE SCENARIO: Polling stays about where it is — with strong generic GOP lead between 5 and 9 and GOP Senate candidates in Washington, California, and Connecticut still within reach (6 to 9 points down.) There you would see House gains of up to 50 or 60 or a bit beyond, and it’s a wave election that really does lift all boats and the GOP takes the Senate by a vote or two.

Fourth, THE SUPERWAVE: House gains of 60 to 90, even beyond. Senate races carried along as GOP ends up with three or four vote margin in Senate.

That last possibility is the one I have my mind fixed on-- but it's an extraodinary thing. Extraordinary things do not happen without extraordinary efforts.

It's up to us. Waves don't just happen. We are thought-leaders -- hate to tell you, but you're the thought-leaders too. You're opinionated and informed, and, of course, passionate. What you do will determine what happens in eight short days.

As Winston Wolf's clam-fisherman great grandfather Wesley Wolf advised: Gentelmen, let's not start shucking each other's conchs just yet.

Posted by: Ace at 09:51 AM | Comments (96)
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At Hot Air, Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen sees the writing on the wall.

While itÂ’s too early to proclaim the demise of job-based coverage, corporate number crunchers are looking at options that could lead to major changes.

“The economics of dropping existing coverage is about to become very attractive to many employers, both public and private,” said Gov. Phil Bredesen, D-Tenn.

The White House claims the $2000 per employee penalty for dropping coverage will keep them from doing so, but Ed has a good analysis of why that's just plain wrong.

For a long time economists and policy-wonks have had a narrative that employment-based health care was just inefficient, and a kind of kooky system that arose by accident due to WWII wage controls. (The country froze wages so companies began offering non-wage inducements, like health insurance.)

That said, there are orderly ways to encourage a volunatary move to people buying their own insurance -- such as John McCain's proposed voucher (which would have bought a nice plan) -- and there disorderly, coercive ways. Like employees suddenly dropping millions of people from health care coverage and turning them out into an individual market that might not be ready for them.

Like -- if you have, say, glaucoma. Your current insurer has to pay for those treatments because you developed it during the course of your insurance coverage, right?

But what happens when you old insurer dumps you and you enter the individual market? To them, it's an existing condition, isn't it?

This must be repealed. ObamaCare must be repealed. We need to have a Congress as full up as Republicans as possible, so that when companies do begin dropping insurance coverage, we need as few Democrats as possible in joining us to override Barack Obama's veto.

Posted by: Ace at 09:16 AM | Comments (84)
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Based on turnout models, polling, the generic advantage and "the gift" (a thin, yellow-orange fluid which a non-housed man handed to me in a jar marked "soul" while arguing with a crowd that wasn't there, somwhere around 6th and Alameda).

Even though Connecticut is no longer in the tossup or even leaning status, this doesn't mean you morons in New England should abandon the effort to defeat that Dick. I simply don't like the trendline but numbers have been wrong.

There are now 11 seats held by Democrats "in play", 9 of which I project going to the Republican and 2 are up in the air, including my home state of California: more...

Posted by: CAC at 09:00 AM | Comments (45)
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This cannot be said too many times.

Barney Frank has served on the (formerly named) House Banking Committee for 29 years. He became the ranking Democrat in 2003 and the chairman in 2007. In 2003 he opposed Bush administration efforts to rein in risky business practices at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying "Treasury would sacrifice activities that are good for consumers in the name of lowering the companies' market risks." (italics mine).

Well they kept risking, and Barney and his pals kept protecting them. These jackasses have hung taxpayers out to dry, frigging billions of dollars, and presided over a cataclysmic financial disaster. Barney Frank ought to be headed to the Big House, instead of the House of Representatives.

NiceDeb (tip via Andy over at the Splitters)

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 07:51 AM | Comments (56)
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I"m still watching this; I am told it's awesome, but I haven't come to the awesome bits yet.

Nick F. Popaditch (the F. stands for "Fucking") for Congress for CA-51.

UPDATE: from lauraw below the fold. more...

Posted by: Ace at 07:50 AM | Comments (70)
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It's like his plan is to hope voters forget he's a Democrat or something.

Gov. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, declined over the weekend to endorse Barack Obama for a second term for president or Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) as Senate majority leader in interviews with Politics Daily.

"That's such a hypothetical thing, but basically I think there's two more years that have to play out," Manchin said when I asked him if he expects to endorse Obama for a second term. "Things have got to change. People will have time to evaluate and make a decision over the next two years and four years. I just think there's a lot of correction, a lot of changes, a lot of things that need to be fixed before I would say anything about anybody running for office."

As for ObamaCare, he was for it before he was against it.

The Democratic Senate candidate from West Virginia, Gov. Joe Manchin, says he didn't understand key details of the health care reform legislation when he publicly endorsed it in March — an endorsement he has since withdrawn.

"Reaching as far as they did in the — in the weeds of the bill that we didn't know about, no one else knew about until it came out — knowing that, I would not have supported that or voted for that at that time," Manchin said on "Fox News Sunday."

Asked about areas where he disagrees with President Barack Obama, Manchin cited the health care reform legislation Obama signed in March.

"The health care reform is far overreaching in areas that I don't agree with — the 1099 part of that, the mandates. Also, the firewall's not strong enough for abortions. I'm pro-life. And we're just a different type of Democrat here in West Virginia," Manchin said. (The "1099" reference is to a revenue-raising provision that requires businesses to report more transactions to the IRS.)

So his defense is, "Hey, I was too stupid to understand what you all knew at the time but now I get it"? Yeah, um, good luck with that.

Charlie Crist emails to say: "Wow, Joe Manchin is pretty shameless with the lying and the flipping".

As of last Wednesday Rasmussen has Manchin down by 7 to John Raese. But...the RCP average, based mostly on a Marshall University poll, has Manchin up 1.5%. Which one is right, which one is wrong?

We're on the edge of great things here and other places. It's not the time to let up but to push down on their necks even harder.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:41 AM | Comments (34)
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Nate Silver can be trusted, in the main -- he's objective when it comes to poll analysis, even though he tilts liberal.

So when he concludes the Republicans are in for a "pretty good night" but not the huge night we'd been hoping for, you can trust that.

And the reason? A lot of people are sitting on their goddamned asses waiting for things to change instead of fulfilling their patriotic duties as American citizens and making the change happen.

Based on this analysis I am giving up on my big predictions and scaling back to something like 44 seats or so. We will lose all the close races (we always do), and people like Ruth McClung and Sean Bielat will lose. Only the lock seats will come through for us.

You know what the Democrats call a loss of 44 seats after they've socialized health care and blown up the budget to Greek levels? Acceptable losses. They'll take that, all day and twice on Sundays. Because they've now set the country on an inexorable path to socialism. They're playing the long game, while we're... well we're not playing any game at all.

A lot of conservatives express their political views by not engaging with politics -- after all, government is a threat, so why participate in its functions?

Well, as Geroge Bush said about terrorists:

You may not be interested in politicians, but believe me, politicians are interested in you.

And if you want them off your backs you have to fire those who are taking an undue interest in your private, personal decisions.

If you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem. And unless you're giving money or a little spare time which might even turn out to be a little bit fun you're not part of the solution.

Posted by: Ace at 07:19 AM | Comments (196)
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