Elections Blog

…with 24% of likley GOP voters, but Condi is a surprise #2 with 18%, followed by McCain at 17%. 
In potential general election matchups, Rudy ties Hillary with 46% each, but leads Obama and Al Gore. 
Full results here…

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One of the more laughable post-election assertions by either side came from our good buddy Kos:
Lieberman has been neutered. If he leaves the caucus for short-term gain, he loses all leverage and power and harms his long-term interests. Yet he doesn’t stay in the caucus as a Democrat, but as an independent. And in that [...]

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…marred only by the appearance of MoDo (transcript here).  Said MoDo:

MR. RUSSERT: Maureen Dowd, here’s the cover of Newsweek magazine. “Father Knows Best.” With Bush 41, Bush 43, and it’s subtitled “With Congress Lost, Iraq in Chaos, Bush Calls In His Dad’s Team. Can James, James Baker and Company Save the Son’s Presidency?” Very similar [...]

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It’s the smartest move of his political career…Senator Russ Feingold, no doubt internalizing the push to the center that brought the Democrats back into Congressional power, has taken his hat out of the 2008 ring:
Feingold, 53, conceded that he faced long odds of winning the nomination.
“It would have required the craziest combination of things [...]

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Contra the ridiculous assertion by Kos that Lieberman has been ‘neutered’, he is, in fact, at the peak of his power:
The midterm elections provided radical left bloggers with, among many other results, their worst nightmare on Tuesday. They had succeeded, earlier in the campaign year, in helping defeat Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary in [...]

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Some very interesting results from a post-election poll by Newsweek:
Just about everyone believes the Republicans lost the 2006 midterms more than the Democrats won it. Presented with a list of factors that may have contributed to the Democrats’ success, 85 percent of Americans said the “major reason” was disapproval of the administration’s handling of [...]

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Was Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy a stroke of brilliance, or did it cost Democrats an even larger margin in the House? That’s the question behind a raging post-election controversy. Ryan Lizza of The New Republic:
Some big name Democrats want to oust DNC Chairman Howard Dean, arguing that his stubborn commitment to the [...]

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I’m not sure about the timing (people are sick of politics right now, I would imagine - he should have waited until after Thanksgiving), but the Democrats have their first declared candidate:
Democratic Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa, seeking an early jump on 2008, launched a long-shot bid for the White House on Thursday.
“Americans sent a [...]

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Could I resist blogging about a Christopher Hitchens piece in the Wall Street Journal focusing on John Kerry’s latest humiliation? No, I most certainly could not:
Regrettable though it might be for the United States military to become an untouchable “third rail” in American politics, there can be little sympathy for someone who keeps on brushing [...]

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Rich Lowry on the internal Republican polling…
Shock of the day: Kos doesn’t like Lieberman, and vice-versa (hilariously, Kos takes offense because Lieberman called DKos the leading left-wing blog; apparently Markos thinks he’s in the mainstream.  Bonus hilarity for complaining about Lieberman’s thuggish tactics (heard any Rape Gurney Joe jokes lately, Markos?))… 
Second shock of the day: massive Democratic [...]

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Confirming what was already pretty evident:
Sen. Barack Obama acknowledged Sunday he was considering a run for president in 2008, backing off previous statements that he would not do so.
The Illinois Democrat said he could no longer stand by the statements he made after his 2004 election and earlier this year that he would serve [...]

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Matt Stoller just can’t figure out why Joe Lieberman has such a big lead:
This race in Connecticut is puzzling.  The Q-poll is mostly nonsense.  It was completed last night at 9pm, with the Q-poll director Doug Schwartz pretending as if the second debate, which ended an hour earlier, figured into the results.  I don’t know [...]

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Where the hell are you people? Jane, snap to, your leader needs you!  The latest intrade quotes on the Connecticut Senate - Lieberman has a 81% chance of winning…ouch!  The bad news: the House staying GOP is only at 38%, but the Senate keeping elephants in charge is at 72%…

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I thought Markos and Matt “SEC Settlement” Stoller told us papa had a brand new bag, but it looks like the same ol’, same ol’ with Ned Lamont.  Rich ‘Man of the People’ can’t appeal to enough real people, and tries to buy his way into office:
Democrat Ned Lamont, seeking to erase Sen. Joe Lieberman’s [...]

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Kevin Rennie has been no fan of the Lieberman campaign, as regular readers of the Hartford Courant know, so when a man with friendly eyes looks at Lamont and finds the man wholly lacking in qualifications, you know there’s something to it:
Democratic Senate candidate Ned Lamont is having trouble moving from the small stage of [...]

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Hillary’s presidential campaign seems to be in real danger of running out of steam, and that’s bad news for Democrats, as, if the primaries were held today, the number one candidate would appear to be the not-ready-for-prime-time (and horrible campaigner) John Edwards:
Today’s Iowa Poll of the 2008 race for president in the Hawkeye state ought [...]

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I shi..er, kid you not:
Lamont’s campaign got a boost Wednesday from former President Carter, who offered a blistering critique of Lieberman’s support for the Iraq war. “He was one of the originators of public statements that misled the American people into believing that the Iraqi war was justified,” the former Democratic president said on CNN’s [...]

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Part of an excellent interview/profile in the Examiner:
Huckabee has an unusually keen understanding of the political threat posed to the GOP by Clinton’s wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is widely regarded as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. He says the New York Democrat, who spent years in Arkansas, has a [...]

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Survey USA: Lieberman by 13…and not a word from Jane Hamsher! What’s the matter, Jane? Cat got your tongue?…

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I suspect we’ll have a pretty good idea who’s running and who isn’t when the smoke clears in November, and that’s why I’ve been very negligent in covering 2008 news lately, but Al Gore isn’t coming out strong one way or the other:
Former Vice President Al Gore said Sunday he hadn’t rule out making a [...]

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