President Barack Obama's sagging approval ratings and the rocky health-law rollout are expanding the map of competitive Senate races this year, giving Republicans new hope of capturing seats in states that the president carried in 2012.
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| In Virginia, Ed Gillespie plans to challenge Democratic Sen. Mark Warner. Reuters |
The GOP already had a strong opportunity to pick up a net six seats to win a Senate majority. Democrats have to defend many more seats than Republicans, including in seven states that Mr. Obama lost in 2012. Now, polls show tighter-than-expected races for Democratic-held seats in Colorado, Iowa and Michigan, while a formidable Republican is challenging the Democratic incumbent in Virginia and another is weighing a bid in New Hampshire. In 2012, Mr. Obama won all five of those states.
With Election Day more than nine months away, the question is whether this marks a low ebb for Mr. Obama and his party, or a lasting trend.
"I'd be more worried if I were a Democrat than if I was a Republican," said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report, which tracks congressional elections. "The Republicans' prospects in the existing targets are improving because of the president's approval ratings, and they are continuing to put other races on the board."
A Democratic lead of better than six percentage points in which party voters think should control Congress has collapsed since the glitch-plagued health-law rollout in October, leaving the parties at parity, according to an aggregate of polls by Real Clear Politics.
Adding weight to the Democratic burden: Midterm elections are historically unkind to the parties of sitting presidents, particularly in their second terms. And voter demographics should favor Republicans because the electorate in midterms tends to be older and whiter than in presidential-election years.
Last week, Americans for Prosperity, the well-funded conservative group, kicked off a $2 million advertising blitz that, in part, targets Democratic Senate candidates in Iowa and Michigan for supporting the Affordable Care Act.
Of course, Republicans still need a lot to break in their favor to recapture the Senate. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ended November with more than $12 million in the bank, according to Federal Election Commission data, nearly twice as much as Senate Republicans. Individual Democratic candidates claim a similarly wide fundraising edge in many top battlegrounds.
In addition, Democratic candidates are largely free of the contentious Republican primaries that have potential to inflame tensions and that some in the GOP fear will produce nominees less appealing to the general-election voting pool. This could play out in Kentucky and Georgia, where Republicans are having to defend seats against top-tier Democrats. The GOP has squandered previous attempts to reclaim the Senate majority by fielding nominees who lost winnable contests.Read the rest of the story HERE.
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17 comments:
If the Republicans WILL STAND with the TEA Party candidates, and quit fighting them for their own power structure, that could be very possible!
I can't stress this enough .... OBAMACARE .... OBAMACARE .... and OBAMACARE.
EVERYONE is getting screwed or knows someone who is getting screwed. Republicans...Independents, and yes even some Democrats.
If THEY WANT TO WIN..They need to HAMMER THIS for the next 10 months in 75% of what they talk about. Relate EVERYTHING they talk about back to ObamaMESS.
Yes, Obamacare should be front & center for Repubs, but we can't ignore all the other issues, because they can all be used to attract support for our candidates.
We can walk and chew gum at the same time.
Believe it or not, there are tens of millions of voters who don't care that much about Obamacare.
Not all voters are the same.
No, Republicans CAN'T walk and chew gum at the same time. I wish they could, but they have a tendency to say stupid things at the wrong time. (like Todd Akin, or Rick Santorum.)
So, YES, there needs to be STRICT party discipline! Nothing but OBAMACARE all the time!
I applaud Huckabee for his comments today about women. I just hope our people don't get off message, or side-tracked with something as utterly stupid as immigration. Plus, we need to prevent payoffs to the insurers. NOW.
I also hope no unelectable candidate wins a primary. We need a brain this time.
-Martha
Romney tried the "let's just talk about ONE ISSUE(the economy)" approach - how did that work out for him?
I would suggest that Obamacare is 30% of what Repubs talk about.
The Obama/Dem economic & fiscal debacle should be another 30% of what Repubs talk about.
The litany of Obama/Dem scandals - NSA, IRS, Benghazi, Fast & Furious, etc. - should be another 20% of what Repubs talk about.
The remaining 20% of what Repubs talk about should be tailored and customized to their particular campaigns, with NO ISSUE being off-limits, as long as it's framed in a politically SHREWD & SAVVY manner.
30%? NOPE! Bosman has it right. Obamacare is hurting EVERYONE. He is right that it should be 75%. No question about it.
Some issues SHOULD most DEFINITELY be off limits. Such as a woman can't get pregnant from a rape. lol.
-Martha
"Women can't get pregnant from rape" is NOT an issue. It's a GAFFE, just like Romney's "47% of Americans are bums" GAFFE, among others.
Not even close. Romney's gaffe hurt him, but NOT NEARLY as much as Akin hurt us! Plus, Romney was smart enough to say he made a mistake! Akin dug in, and made things worse!
So heaven's, please don't let any stupid Republican man talk about rape.
-Martha
Plus, Romney was RIGHT.
Akin was DEAD WRONG.
Big difference.
-Martha
Romney was NOT right. The percentage of Americans who are "bums" is WAY LESS than 47%. And even if he was correct, he should NEVER have said it, because it was NOT a politically shrewd & savvy thing to say.
Yeah, I think everyone knows he shouldn't have said it. But he's still right. Half the country is on the gravy train. No doubt about it.
-Martha
The main problem we have is that the fix is probably already in for 2014. No doubt Obama isn't worried because he's most likely already done what he did in 2012. The IRS problem is still out there, along with fraud. He got away with it already, so I see no reason to believe things have changed. Unfortunately.
-Martha
Obama has thus far "gotten away with" his scandals because Republicans in Congress and the media have LET HIM GET AWAY WITH THEM by not relentlessly demanding investigations by House oversight committees & special prosecutors.
If you don't think official investigations can bring down a popular public official - and Obama AIN'T so popular - then I suggest you google "Christie/ Bridgegate", "McDonnell/Corruption", "Blagojevich/Bribes" & "Nixon/Watergate". Even Ken Starr's "Monica Lewinsky" investigation - despite being HORRIBLY communicated and explained to the public by Starr and other Republicans - played a MAJOR ROLE in Al Gore losing the 2000 presidential election to George Bush, and Hillary losing to Obama in 2008.
....................
As for Romney, he did NOT say 47% of Americans are on the "gravy train".
He said there are "47% OF AMERICANS WHO PAY NO INCOME TAXES, WHO ARE DEPENDENT UPON GOVERNMENT, WHO BELIEVE THEY ARE VICTIMS, WHO BELIEVE THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD TAKE CARE OF THEM, WHO BELIEVE THEY ARE ENTITLED TO HEALTH CARE, TO FOOD, TO HOUSING, TO YOU-NAME-IT, WHO WILL VOTE FOR OBAMA NO MATTER WHAT. MY JOB IS NOT TO WORRY ABOUT THOSE PEOPLE. I'LL NEVER CONVINCE THEM THEY SHOULD TAKE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND CARE FOR THEIR LIVES."
As far as gaffes go, they do not get any WORSE than that.
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/09/dependency-and-romneys-47-percenters/
You are living in your own dream world, where facts don't matter. EVERYTHING Romney said in that comments was 100% CORRECT. You are so fixated on ripping Republicans you don't like that you can't see straight.
-Martha
Everything Romney said in that gaffe was 100% WRONG, as my factcheck.org link PROVES.
You, on the other hand, have NOTHING BUT EMPTY RHETORIC to back up your argument.
But of course, we all know that's nothing new for you.
"Living in a dream world", "facts don't matter", blinded by political partisanship - look in the mirror, my friend.
DENIAL ain't just a river in Egypt.
You are just lucky I made my New Years Resolution to lay off your past comments. Of course, I might fall off the wagon. lol
-Martha
I think Cruz Country.is right on strategy. Half the nation is already on govt. insurance so they don't care about the ACA. The people who now have medicaid, or children under 26 now on their insurance, pre-existing condition people, have all been helped by the ACA. Most of the people hurt were already Republicans. Of course, this will get some of the couch bozos up and to the polls. We also need to do an end run around the Democrats and legalize marijuana, but I realize the social conservatives will stop that. We will be late to that party, as usual.
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