I have to disagree with Jon about the Democratic Party’s prospects in the mid-terms. I think the Democrats do have a fighting chance this fall, especially if they are prepared to fight like Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-NC). He didn’t take any crap off these two Flipcam-wielding punk students — he just opened up a can of whup-ass …
Or was he just drunk?
UPDATE: (6/18/10) After Rep. Bob Etheridge (D) was seen in a video confrontation earlier this week, a new Civitas Institute poll shows challenger Renee Ellmers (R) with a slight edge in their race for Congress, 39 percent to 38 percent.
You are asking for substantiation. I can’t go to a page in the bill but what I can tell you is the country is over $13 trillion in debt.
– Dan Fanelli, a Republican opponent to Rep. Alan Grayson, the liberal firebrand who represents Florida’s 8th district, responding to Politifact.com after they’d rated his ad as a “Pants on Fire” lie. In the ad, Fanelli falsely claimed that under the new health care law, the elderly will be denied care when they have “passed the age limit for treatment.”
Speaker-to-Be BoehnerYesterday, Buck found a slight uptick in approval of Democrats in congressional races in a new Public Policy Polling survey. According to PPI, Democrats are preferred on a generic ballot, 43-41 — an improvement from March, when Republicans were preferred 46-43.
But now a new poll of specific House battleground districts conducted by Democrat Stan Greenberg and Republican Glen Bolger for NPR suggests that Republicans are well within strking distance of regaining control of the House:
For this poll, Bolger and Greenberg chose the districts where incumbents are considered the most vulnerable, and, in the case of open seats, the ones most likely to switch party control in November. Sixty are currently held by Democrats — many of whom won these seats even when voters in the same district preferred Republican John McCain for president in 2008. The other 10 districts are the flip side — held by Republicans in the House, even though their voters went for Barack Obama in 2008.
These are this year’s swing seats — the political terrain where the battle for control of the House of Representatives will be won or lost. In this battleground, voters are choosing Republicans over Democrats 49 percent to 41 percent.
Another dire indicator for Democrats is that Pres. Obama is unpopular in the battleground districts, where his disapproval rate is 54-40, according to the pollsters.
Separately, here’s yet more evidence that MSNBC’s White House correspondent Chuck Todd is fully in the bag for the GOP this year. He promoted this NPR poll showing Dems in trouble on his aptly named “Rundown” show this morning, while ignoring the PPI poll results showing improvement in Dem chances.
In the diplomatic ranks, trained professionals toil,
To keep the peace and tamp down foreign turmoil.
But for Greek ambassador,
Trump picked an artful dodger —
The grifting, drunken blackmailer Kimberly Guilfoyle.
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%).”
