Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Hope you didn’t give up on Alaska

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Sarah Palin’s home state is moving closer to electing a Democratic Senator (from the source):

Begich, Mark DEM 125019 47.24%

Bird, Bob AI 10913 4.12%

Gianoutsos, Ted NA 1076 0.41%

Haase, Fredrick D. LIB 1961 0.74%

Stevens, Ted REP 125016 47.24%

Write-in Votes 670 0.25%

Convicted Felon Stevens had a notable lead on election night,. but the absentee and early votes are breaking hard for the non-criminal in the race.  That, plus a likely Franken victory, gets us to 58 + Lieberman.  C’mon in Judd Gregg, the blue water’s fine…

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    • All’s I know is that Judd Gregg has two choices in 2010: win as a Democrat, or lose.  If he wants option 2, I’m okay with that as well.  I think Paul Hodes would make a fine Senator.

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      p>But if we get to 59, I want to know if Reid has any tricks up his sleeve.

      • Does Judd Gregg have hidden progressivism in his record?  I thought of him as pretty solidly Republican, but I guess I haven’t examined his record.  Or were you just opening the option in case he wanted to have a conversion experience?

        • I know that given the last two cycles in NH if I were Judd Gregg I’d be pretty nervous.  If he does have a hidden progressive streak now would be a good time to start showing it.

        • But one doesn’t have to be overly progressive to be a Democrat. In other words, while most progressives tend to be Democrats, not all Dems are progressive. I’m not advocating for Gregg, just saying that being a New England Republican would, at a cursory glance, make it plausible that Gregg could fit in is a centrist Dem. Looking at Wikipedia, it seems he’s decent on the Environment, voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment and bucked his party on stem cells. He seems to be a moderate on gun control, but wiki also says he’s “solidly pro-life”.

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          p>Could Lincoln Chaffee won re-election in RI if he jumped parties two years before his race? I don’t know. Ask Sununu if he’d rather be the Democratic Senator from NH who flipped sides or the Republican who recently lost his job?  

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          p>I’d probably rather see Gregg replaced with a progressive Dem in 2010. But if I were Gregg, I’d look at fellow New Englanders Sununu, Shays, Chaffee and Jeb Bradley and look long and hard into his soul. Perhaps he’s made his peace and won’t be too upset if he looses re-election in two years, but if he wants to improve his chances of keeping his job, especially in light of national trends and the new Democratic grass roots momentum, he needs to shed any appearance of Bush-era Republicanism. Leaving the GOP would be an effective way of doing so.  

          • There’s a big difference between Chris Shays or Lincoln Chafee, on the one hand, and John Sununu on the other.  If the former had switched parties, it would have been believable, and they might indeed have passed as conservative Dems.  But a conservative like Sununu trying to suddenly change parties?  Unless he had a pretty compelling reason, I think that most voters would see it as a craven move to save his political neck.  Unless, perhaps, he had a compelling story about seeing a vision of FDR on the road to Manchester.

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            p>I’m not sure where Judd Gregg falls on that spectrum, but I think that random Republican office-holders claiming to be Dems in order to save their skins would not necessarily be a good thing.  Current Dems, especially progressive ones, would do well to ask why if anyone switches.

    • There’s another 30,000 votes or so to count, and they look to be favorable for Begich.  His margin is going to be much higher than in Minnesota.  However, if Stevens wants to divert some of his legal fund for the purpose, he’s welcome to do so.

  4. …is an effectively filibuster-proof majority.  Enough Republicans can be pealed away from filibusters – Olympia Snowe in Maine, the afore-mentioned Judd Gregg, Chuck Grassley in Iowa, and others – none of these folks want to face their voters while ads run saying that they opposed President Obama’s agenda to the point of filibustering it.

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    p>Look for Democrats to expand their majority to 65-67 seats in 2010…

    • Look for Democrats to expand their majority to 65-67 seats in 2010…

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      p>Have you looked at the map for that election?  The Republicans up for re-election are mostly in very red states, or they’re folks like Arlen Specter who are muched loved by their constituents.  Even with a wave of retirements, i see a few pickups as a likely best-case scenario.

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      p>Of course, making such prognostications now, before Obama has even taken office and before some races are even determined, is a recipe for being very wrong.

    • had to censor myself there =p

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      p>no way Reid holds those cats together.

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      p>60 is a magical, mythical number for the Democrats. It’ll be much easier to get bills passed with these numbers, but it’s going to be extremely tough to get good bills through the senate still because of conservative DINOs.

  5. Why is this taking so long?  It’s been 9 days- is that unusual?  I know it’s a big state and all, but if most of our cities and towns can get it done by 10pm of election night, what is the hangup in AK?  Even Minnesota was done with their initial count a week ago.

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    p>Seems to me, the longer it takes, the more doubt it sows in people’s minds.  

    • While in Massachusetts they need to arrive by election day, so most of the 9 days was waiting for all the absentees to trickle in.

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      p>Massachusetts does allow for oversees military to send in their absentees up to 10 days after the election, so if we had a really close race, we could theoretically be waiting 10 days here too.

  6. Even Stevens’ pollster admits that it’s game over.  Begich’s lead keeps growing, and will as ballots are counted.  Ideally, we’d get beyond a .5% lead so that Stevens would have to pay for the recount, but either way it looks really good.  He currently has a lead of over 1,000 votes, and ballots that need to be counted are from areas that lean his direction.

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