Goobergunch Political Report

2012 Republican National Convention
(1144 delegates needed to nominate)
Gingrich Huntsman Paul Romney Santorum Unallocated
Selected 29 2 8 73 3 2039
Automatic 3 1 22 1 105
Total 32 2 9 95 4 2144

17 November 2010

Obama’s Second Veto

Goobergunch @ 00:28 CT
Posted in: Banks and Banking, Election 2010, Food and Drugs

A while back, President Obama vetoed H.R. 3808, the Interstate Notarization Recognition bill, because of concerns about how it would impact the current mortgage foreclosure issues. (Given the amount of fraudulent foreclosures that are running around, any limitations applied to this process are definitely a good thing.) Anyway, now that Congress is back in session, the House has to formally dispose of that veto, so the motion to override is scheduled for probably somewhere between 15:30 and 16:30 Eastern Time tomorrow. It’ll probably be the only even vaguely interesting vote in the House tomorrow.

In the other body, look for three cloture votes starting at 11:00 Eastern on motions to proceed to:

  • S. 3815, the Natural Gas and Electric Vehicles bill
  • S. 3772, the Wage Discrimination Remedies bill, and
  • S. 510, the Food Safety bill.

Of these, the motion with respect to S. 510 is the only one considered to have a decent shot at passage, given that it’s got a fair bit of bipartisan co–sponsorship and committee report. I haven’t had a chance to look over the bill, so I won’t try to dive into any kind of description on what it does other than a vague “increases enforcement powers over unsafe food”.

In election news, I’m now prepared to project that:

  • In the Alaska Senate race, incumbent Lisa Murkwoski (R/W-I) has defeated Joe Miller (R) and others.
  • In the IL-08 House race, Joe Walsh (R) has defeated incumbent Melissa Bean (D).

There are now projected to be 241 Republicans and 191 Democrats in the next House, with 3 races still too close to call.

14 November 2010

The Quacking of the Limp

Goobergunch @ 00:00 CT
Posted in: The Federal Government
Tags: ,

There have been a lot of rumors flying about regarding the content of this year’s lame duck session of Congress. DADT repeal, the DREAM Act, ENDA, START… not to mention certain non–optional items like keeping the government funded. But it looks like any of that is going to have to wait until after Thanksgiving, because the House agenda for next week doesn’t show much that’s likely to be controversial. Most of the bills scheduled are boring commemoratives, and I don’t see the substantive bills attracting much dissent. The one item that isn’t scheduled to pass with a 2/3 vote is a motion to concur in the Senate amendments to H.R. 1722, the Telework Enhancement bill. The original version of that bill passed the House 290–131 back on 14 July.

The Senate doesn’t look to be that more exciting. The first votes of the week aren’t scheduled until Wednesday, and they’re just a few more cloture votes on proceeding to bills. I haven’t heard much about whether these votes have any chance of actually succeeding or whether we’re looking at another show of how the Senate Republicans are obstructing things. I’ll update before Wednesday with another look at these votes.

Unless anything new and unexpected shows up, it looks like a quiet start to the lame duck session.

13 November 2010

Site Cleanup

Goobergunch @ 20:02 CT
Posted in: Election 2010, Meta

Well, the sidebar is back and the big maps are gone from the top of the page. This concludes another edition of GPR election coverage.

The election results have been moved to the 2010 General Election Results page. There are still four House races left to call: CA-11, IL-8, NY-1, and NY-25.

I’ve also take the predictions off of the sidebar. You can still get to them through the History page, or by clicking the links below:

All in all, not a bad year for predictions—my Senate picks were off by exactly Colorado. The House ratings were roughly accurate too, I’d say, with a few outliers (the defeats of Oberstar, McMahon, Ortiz, and possibly Bean were pretty unexpected). And it’s only 103 weeks until the next go–round!

On that note, a delegate count for the 2012 Republican field is under construction and something will be posted whenever the Republicans actually start announcing their Presidential runs. There might be a slight delay to make sure that the 2012 Republican National Committee membership list is finalized. While Republicans don’t have as many “superdelegates” as Democrats do, there’s still a good ~150 that need to be counted. I’m not bothering with a Democratic delegate count this year because I fully expect Obama to be renominated without much fuss.

4 November 2010

Calling the Senate

Goobergunch @ 19:37 CT
Posted in: Election 2010, GPR Live
Tags: ,

At this time I can now project that Patty Murray (D) has been re–elected to the Senate from Washington. With party control of all Senate races called, the margin in next year’s Senate looks to be 53 Democrats (and allies) to 47 Republicans. That’s enough to prevent Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson from pulling too many shenanigans.

Of course, it’s still unlikely that the Democrats will be able to get anything done without some form of filibuster reform, especially with Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R)(KY) promising that his first priority will be unseating President Obama in 2012 as opposed to actually trying to govern. So we’ll see how that goes.

In other news, I can now project that Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn (D) has been re–elected. That’s a pretty big surprise, especially given the Republican pick–up of that state’s Senate seat.

3 November 2010

The Day After

Goobergunch @ 17:03 CT
Posted in: Election 2010, GPR Live
Tags: , ,

The line it is drawn,
The curse it is cast:
The slow one now will later be fast….

I don’t have too much new to say on the election results. There’s been plenty of speculation on what message the American people were trying to send, but I’m more interested on what the 112th Congress is actually going to accomplish. There hasn’t been a lot of detail on that so far.

Speaker-designate John Boehner has announced that a committee, chaired by Rep. Greg Walden (R)(Eastern OR) going to be looking into some reforms of the legislative process in the House. As one of the few people that actually cares about legislative transparency, I’ll be interested to see what his panel comes up with. More on that when there’s something substantive to discuss, obviously, but I am a bit skeptical considering that the Republicans weren’t exactly a paradigm of openness the last time they controlled the House.

We haven’t seen many surprises in the House leadership roster, but rumor has it that Rep. Mike Pence (R)(Muncie, IN) is looking at running for governor of Indiana in 2012. I still wouldn’t be surprised to see him run for President one day—he’s ambitious and popular among conservatives.

Meanwhile, we’re still counting the votes from yesterday. In the Senate, I am projecting that Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet has been re–elected in Colorado. I’m also projecting that a Republican wins in the Alaska Senate race, although whether they’ll be Sen. Lisa Murkowski or Joe Miller remains to be seen.

The Washington Senate race remains too close to call, because Washington’s mail–in system means that many of the ballots haven’t even arrived to be counted yet. Ditto WA-02. As for some of the other outstanding House races, the Republican is up in CA-20, TX-27, and IL-08 (by 559), while the Democrat is up in AZ-08, NY-25, VA-11 (by 920 votes), KY-06 (by 600 votes), and CA-11 (by 121 votes). We probably won’t know the winner in some of those really close races for a while. Finally, Democrats are clinging onto narrow leads in the Minnesota and Illinois gubernatorial races; Republican Chris Dudley leads slightly in the Oregon race, but much of the outstanding vote is from liberal Portland.

End of the Night

Goobergunch @ 04:52 CT
Posted in: Election 2010, GPR Live

Just wrapping up where things stand for now:

  • Senate–side, Alaska looks pretty bad for Democrat Scott McAdams. While I doubt we’ll know whether Sen. Lisa Murkowski or Joe Miller actually ends up with the seat for a while, it might be declared a Republican hold pretty quickly.
  • Colorado is really really really close and will probably go to a recount. Washington is a bit harder to characterize because only about 65% of the vote is in.
  • On the House side, we’ve got 239 Republican seats, 183 Democratic seats, and 13 races still too close to call. That’s the best Republican performance in over half a century. Assuming the new House majority carries through on their promises to block the Obama agenda, look for a whole lot of nothing to get done for the next two years.
  • Democrats also got owned in statewide and downballot races. However, gubernatorial races in ME, VT, CT, FL, IL, MN, and OR are still too close to call. That’s a lot.

I’m calling it for the night. More updates tomorrow, plus maybe some actual analysis.

2 November 2010

The Contiguity is Closed

Goobergunch @ 22:24 CT
Posted in: Election 2010, GPR Live

It looks pretty clear that the Republicans are going to have a big House margin right now. It’s also pretty clear that Democrats are going to retain the Senate, although I’m not sure what the margin will be and whether it will be safe from any party switching. I’m still kind of stunned that the House margin might be bigger than it was back in the early part of 2000s. I’m guessing we’re not going to see a whole lot actually pass the 112th Congress.

Mixed Signals

Goobergunch @ 19:43 CT
Posted in: Election 2010, GPR Live

Good news for Democrats right now: They hold both the Connecticut and West Virginia seats. This means that they’re unlikely to lose the Senate—the last competitive seat on the left side of our board is California, which I rated as “Leans DEM” going in.

Bad news for Democrats right now: The third seat of the night to flip is VA-09, which I ranked all the way down as the 87th most likely to flip. That’s just painful—and so have other returns been in Virginia, Indiana, and Florida.

A Bit of Irony

Goobergunch @ 19:14 CT
Posted in: Election 2010, GPR Live

So far initial indications don’t look great for Democrats in the House. Chandler’s really close in KY-06 and Indiana is just kind of painful. There’s a bunch of other seats I can also point to where Democrats are trailing.

However, the very first House seat to switch hands is in favor of the Democrats, due to Tea Party influence. I am now projecting that John Carney will win the at–large Delaware House seat. Since I am also projecting that Chris Coons will win the Delaware Senate seat, it’s not a good day to be a Delaware Republican.

At the moment: The Senate has 43 Democrats and 32 Republicans (+1) projected and the House has 60 Democrats (+1) and 110 Republicans projected. Most everything interesting is still too close to call, although the KY–03 call for Democratic incumbent John Yarmuth means that it won’t be an absolute nightmare for the Democrats.

First Polls Closed…

Goobergunch @ 17:00 CT
Posted in: Election 2010, GPR Live

This is the story of men destined to fight without end.
Two years into Barack Obama’s presidency, voter discontent remains high. Although Congress has been productive, the economy remains in the doldrums and the Republican Party may be poised for a resurgence. But are people really willing to give them another chance?
The answers will become clear on this episode of the Goobergunch Political Report.

It is now 6 o’clock on the East Coast and 3 o’clock on the West Coast, and polls are now closed in portions of Indiana and Kentucky. At this time, the Goobergunch Political Report is prepared to make the following projections:

  • IN-03 — GOP Hold (Stutzman)
  • IN-04 — GOP Hold (Rokita)
  • IN-05 — GOP Hold (Rep. Burton)
  • IN-06 — GOP Hold (Rep. Pence)
  • IN-07 — DEM Hold (Rep. Carson)
  • KY-04 — GOP Hold (Rep. Davis)
  • KY-05 — GOP Hold (Rep. Rogers)

At this time, KY-03 and KY-06 are too close to call. So the House board starts out with 6 Republicans and 1 Democrat.

(I’m not planning on doing this post every hour, but I figured it was a fun way to start off the night. Generally, watch the maps for the latest projections.)

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