A new Suffolk University poll in California shows Jerry Brown (D) with an eight point lead over Meg Whitman (R) in the race for governor, 50 percent to 42 percent.
In the U.S. Senate race, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) leads by nine points over Carly Fiorina (R), 52 percent to 43 percent…
A new Public Policy Polling survey also finds Boxer leading by a 52 percent to 43 percent margin and finds Brown leading 53 percent to 42 percent.
Less than a week after two incidents of tea bagger thuggery — a reporter in Alaska was arrested by private security goons hired by tea bagger U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller and, in Florida, a campaign tracker for Democratic Rep. Ron Klein was threatened and intimidated by volunteer leather-clad thugs working for tea bagger Allen West — a Rand Paul tea party supporter was caught on camera last night stomping on the head of Moveon.org activist outside the venue for a debate in the Kentucky U.S. Senate race between Paul and Democratic candidate Jack Conway:
WestOne of the oddest aspects of the 2010 midterms is how swing and right-leaning independent voters seem to be so willing to overlook troubling character flaws in fringe candidates, as long as the candidates repeat the tea party’s false narratives about bailouts, the Stimulus and the size of government.
There is no better example of this in the House races than in Florida’s 22nd District where voters appear set to replace Democratic Rep. Ron Klein with Allen West, a former U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel who was relieved of command in Iraq and forced to retire after he pleaded guilty to assaulting a policeman in his custody.
“Frustration and anger overcame his professional ethics and personal values, and he performed what he knew to be illegal and immoral acts,” according to a statement issued by the Army’s Fourth Infantry Division. In other words, he popped off under pressure and tortured a prisoner — just the personality type we need in Congress.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s favorable rating versus the same rating in the same poll [PDF] for Rep. John Boehner. This represents a decline in Boehner’s favorability from last month, when it was 22 percent.
This man [Allen West]. Scary. Frightening. We wouldn’t have a Civil Rights Act. I saw those signs that said, “White Man,” “Colored Man,” “White Woman,” “Colored Woman.” Now we have someone who happens to be African American saying that black people, people of color, African Americans, were better off before the Civil Rights Act. You have a man who represents our dark past. He wants to take us back but we’re not going back. Run, crawl, make it to that ballot box and vote for Ron.
– Civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga, campaigning for Ron Klein.
The first black members of the House and the Senate after during the Reconstruction period were Republicans and we’ve got to reconnect the Republican party back to the black community. Because on Sunday the most conservative people in the United States of America sit in black churches.
– Allen West, an African-American tea bagger running against Democratic Rep. Ron Klein in Florida’s 22nd House District. who is apparently oblivious to the fact that the Republican base is seething with hatred toward African Americans.
I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.
Kamala Harris, Democrat for California Attorney GeneralResults from the latest Los Angeles Times poll suggest that the Democratic base — particularly women, Latinos and liberals — is coming home and ready to elect Jerry Brown governor and reelected Sen. Barbara Boxer.
Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, a Republican, holds a narrow lead over Democratic opponent Kamala Harris [@kamalaharris] in the contentious race for California attorney general, aided greatly by voter support on his usually Democratic home turf…
The survey showed that Harris, the San Francisco district attorney, has thus far failed to captivate the Democratic stronghold of Los Angeles County, home to one out of every four registered voters in California and a near must-win for any Democrat running statewide.
Cooley, a veteran prosecutor seen largely as a moderate Republican, has won three D.A. elections in Los Angeles County, where Democrats outnumber Republicans almost two to one.
In the survey, Cooley held a 42 percent-33 percent advantage over Harris among likely voters in the county. Statewide, he had a 40 percent-35 percent edge among likely voters, according to the survey.
The biggest remaining wild card in the race is a large pool of undecided voters; 17 percent of the likely voters still have not made up their minds, the poll found — a common occurrence in the “down ballot” races. In the governor’s race, by comparison, only 4 percent of likely voters were undecided, according to the poll.
What makes this alarming is not so much the fact that Cooley is a Republican as it is the company he keeps:
It doesn’t bother him that maintaining tax cuts for the top 2 percent of income earners would increase the deficit by $700 billion. In his world, deficit spending is bad if it saves middle class jobs but good if it covers tax cuts for the wealthy.
— St. Petersburg Times editorial titled, “Rubio’s Rigid Ideology,” which ends, “Rubio embraces an inflexible ideology, not practical solutions. The Republican leaves no room for compromise or consensus — and that is what is wrong with Washington.”
Bagman BoehnerYou have to wonder what the tea party rank and file would think about the fact that their own anti-bailout, anti-government candidates are taking donations that are, arguably, derived from the same taxpayer bailouts they despise.
It’s also a shame that swing voters who are ready to put the Republicans back in charge are not aware that those Republicans have not changed one iota in the four years since they were fired by the American electorate. They are still completely in the tank for the mega-corps that want to turn the clock back to the free-wheeling days of the Bush era — to the same unregulated system that led to the economic collapse and the Bush recession.
Here’s how the laundering of the bailout donations works. First, Speaker Wanna-Be John Boehner and the GOP take donations from bailed out corporations:
The United States and Ukraine no longer seem to be in synch,
After Trump lifted Russia sanctions with a grin and a wink.
Trump coordinated it with Putin,
Who ramped up the drone shooting,
After Trump and Elon Musk throttled Ukraine’s Starlink.
“Take, for example, the French Revolution. Remember when Marie Antoinette said, ‘Let them eat cake’? Now, is that a problem of accountability and tyranny, a corrupt government? Or is it a problem of affordability and standard of living? It’s both! Authoritarianism and tyranny are extremely expensive for the people. And it’s the exact same thing when you go down the line with Donald Trump. So, are we going to go after the corruption? Yeah, you’re damn right. And are we going to go after affordability and making people’s lives easier? Yeah, you’re damn right. We’re going to do both of them.”
“Here’s the problem with the red meat: It becomes an addiction. Once you go there and you put that out there, then you’re forced to defend it. So what do they do? They double down. They triple down again.”
— Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed (D), quoted by the Washington Post, on Republicans relying on anti-Muslim attacks in the Michigan U.S. Senate race.
“If it wasn’t for President Trump the United States of America would not exist right now. This man saved America. He saved our military from collapse. He saved our economy from destruction. He saved our border from annihilation. He saved our country from threats at home and abroad which would have been the end of the American dream for ever.”
— Stephen Miller, quoted by The Guardian, pledging “total devotion” to President Trump.
A record number of women are running for state legislative seats this November, more than two-thirds of whom are Democrats, reports Florida Phoenix. Across the 46 states with legislative seats on the ballot, a total of 3,824 women are running — up from 2022’s previous record of 3,621 women candidates, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Women make up 35.5% of all state legislative candidates this cycle. Currently, women hold about one-third of state legislative seats across the country — a record level of representation but nowhere near parity.
“Prediction markets about the 2026 midterm elections have surpassed $1.4 billion in trading volume as Election Day fast approaches,” CNN reports. “This year has seen massive growth in the prediction industry, where people can bet on real-world events like sports, entertainment and the weather. While small-scale election markets have been around for a while, they gained traction before the 2024 presidential election and have seen huge numbers for the 2026 midterms.”
G. Elliot Morris: “Low-knowledge 2024 voters say they backed Trump by 8 points, according to our poll. Today they give him a net job approval of ?27, a 35-point shift. Compare that to Trump’s approval rating among voters who got both questions right: These voters backed Harris by 1 point and now give Trump a net ?24 approval, a 23-point shift. … Low-information voters have moved against Trump at a higher rate than high-information voters, by 12 points.”
President Donald ?Trump’s approval rating fell to a record low as Americans worried about high gasoline prices and appeared ready to punish his Republican Party in the November 3 congressional elections, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Monday. Some 31% of Americans approve of Trump’s ?performance in office, down a percentage point from two weeks earlier and the lowest level in ?either of his presidential terms, the four-day poll showed.
KFF Poll: “With the 2026 midterm campaigns in full swing and early voting about to begin, there is a wide enthusiasm gap between partisan voters, with Democratic voters 25 percentage points more likely than Republican voters to say they are ‘more motivated’ than usual to vote (63% vs. 38%).”
