Democrats,

It seems we’re very close to the end of a long, trying fight that has lasted nearly the entire course of Barack Obama’s young presidency and cost him most of his political capital. The House tonight, in spite of unanimous Republican opposition, passed the most comprehensive and historic social legislation since Medicare and Medicaid. This is a momentous occasion, and the credit is largely owed to (more…)

This weekend’s controversial “Tea Party” convention, boycotted by some fiscal conservative stalwarts such as Michelle Bachmann, may have been hindersome to the GOP’s populist momentum. With a recession-friendly price-tag of over 800 dollars (to see all of the convention speakers and the keynote), Tea Partiers were treated to Sarah Palin’s down-home rhetorical flashes (read straight from the palm of her hand) and the superstar power and charisma of other familiar faces from the far-right, such as Tom Tancredo, who decried President Obama as a “committed socialist ideologue” elected by “people who could not even spell the word vote or say it in English.” (more…)

With Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts last week, our party’s fears of hemorrhaging House and Senate seats in the 2010 cycle were drastically exacerbated.

President Obama, who attempted to salvage Coakley’s flagging candidacy with an eleventh hour visit on the weekend proceeding Tuesday’s election, has moved to centralize control over his party’s strategy for November, recruiting former campaign manager David Plouffe to oversee all House, Governor and Senate races, apparently a slap on the wrist for DNC head Tim Kaine, who so far hasn’t enjoyed a successful tenure (as Democrats are continuously outraised by Republicans on a month-by-month basis). This is a high stakes move for a President who often prefers compromise (though largely by necessity) to rolling the dice on more controversial, left of center measures (as he proved by quickly abandoning the public option). (more…)

Dems: Don’t freak out.

If you have read my posts on this blog with any regularity, I probably have begun to ring hopelessly optimistic. I like to think of myself as an optimistic realist, but really, who cares?

Anyway, we’ve just a tough election cycle coming up that won’t get any easier, especially with the departure of Senators Chris Dodd and Byron Dorgan. Bill Ritter’s exit in Colorado has Democrats afraid that Ken Salazar’s caretaker, Sen. Michael Bennett may be facing a politically toxic environment on the western front. (more…)

While the U.N. conference in Copenhagen fell flat in yielding substantive commitments in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and the Democrat’s Cap and Trade bill is dwindling on the floor of the U.S. Congress, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, likely headed for a landslide defeat in Britain’s June elections, has unveiled a two-pronged approach to employ “smart” power throughout the country. By placing smart energy meters in every British home by 2020 that read consumption levels and calculate costs in real time, along with a smart grid system that connects the entire country and estimates energy demand and production, affording U.K. consumers the ability to be energy and cost efficient. British Gas estimates that the company will create 2,600 jobs by 2012 by converting to smart meters. (more…)

Christmas Eve, early in the morning. The United States Senate came together to pass a comprehensive health care reform act in a historic and dramatic session. After a century of inspiration, months of hard negotiations, and twenty-five straight days in session (almost a new record), the Senate came up with a compromise that passed the sunrise session with a vote of 60-39 (retiring Republican Jim Bunning of Kentucky decided not to show). Thus, as with all legislation, the package moves to conference committee with the House of Representatives before final votes in Congress on whether to send the agreed compromise to the President for his more-than-willing signature. (more…)

Hello, everybody,

I’m Chris Z., a GW freshman. Starting tonight, I’ll be toiling in order to make at least one blog posting per week–my posts may all-in-all be multifarious in nature, with no specific interconnection amongst them.

So, tonight is of course election night. In just twenty-one minutes, the polls will be closing across the Potomac in the Commonwealth of Virginia, where voters all day have been casting their ballots in one of this year’s most influential and foreshadowing political races.

Let’s make some quick analyses based upon data and the factors that may serve as indications of tonight’s results:

Despite:

1. Explosive population growth in Northern Virginia that–with such an educated, affluent, and politically liberal to moderate populace–has favored Democratic candidates, particularly in Arlington, Alexandria, and Fairfax County’s inner suburbs;

2. President Obama’s public support of Deed’s gubernatorial candidacy in Virginia;

3. President Obama’s recent visits to Virginia’s Virginia Beach/Hampton Roads area, Virginia’s swing area in last year’s election;

4. Bob McDonnell’s contentious graduate school thesis paper that highlighted the incompatibility of working women and a productive world, which marginalized suburban Washingtonian women from his campaign,

and

5. Virginia’s trending towards the Democrats in all recent statewide elections, particularly because of the explosive growth of NOVA,

McDonnell has consistently (in fact, has always, in terms of the trendline) polled ahead of Deeds according to Pollster’s posted statistics.

According to Nate Silver at http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/, McDonnell has a 98% chance of winning.

With only 21 1 (less than!) minute until Virginia’s poll stations close, I’m predicting that Deeds will lose and McDonnell will emerge as the race’s victor.

Well, we’ve seen what the right has wrought on what seems to be the Frankenstein health care bill coming out of the Senate. Its a concoction made from the blood sweat and tears of Finance Chairman Max Baucus with heavy influence of right wing states rights concerns. It seems the Republican party will go however far it takes to defend these things, even when it is clearly an issue that the Federal government can tackle successfully without trampling on the rights of states. (more…)

Down to its final days, the race for New Jersey Governor has become far more dynamic than almost anyone expected. With unpopular Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine facing off against Chris Christie, a law-and-order Republican claiming to have the guts to shake things up in Trenton, the outcome seemed a foregone conclusion as recently as August. After over a decade of marginalization, it seemed that this would finally be the year Republicans would take back the Governor’s mansion.

Many observers, myself included, warned our conservative brethren of overconfidence, reminding them that Republicans typically look competitive in summer polling only to suddenly lose their luster with New Jersey’s voters around Labor Day. Indeed, it seems that this prediction has yet again come to pass.

Christie’s collapse, though particularly breathtaking this year, is nothing new. Neither is Corzine’s stagnant support, a reflection of his profound unpopularity. What is new, especially by Garden State standards, is that yellow regression line traversing the low double digits. That, my friends, is Chris Daggett. (more…)