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October 22, 2010 09:54 PM UTC

And...Now This is Getting Silly

  • 67 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

Over the years at Colorado Pols, we’ve been accused of being biased in a variety of directions and for a variety of reasons. But whatever your opinion or perception of our biases (or is that pronounce “bias-ees”?), you’ve got to admit that we rarely, if ever, have tried to argue that the sky isn’t blue and the grass isn’t green. In other words, there are some things in Colorado politics that are just factually true, whether you like it or not. Some things are as easily predictable as saying that fans are going to be pissed off at the Denver Broncos at some point every fall.

We’ve all heard ad nauseum about the coming “Republican wave” and how it will destroy all Democrats in its path, etc., etc. We think that story has been a bit overplayed, but nevertheless, there is certainly more enthusiasm for Republicans than there is for Democrats in 2010. Yet we should all be careful not to confuse enthusiasm with reality.

Case in point…

Today we received a press release from Republican Mike Fallon, who is running against Democrat Diana DeGette in Denver’s CD-1. The title of the release is “NEWS ALERT: Fallon Closing Gap in CD1.”

We have very encouraging news to share!  A recent poll has found that Dr. Mike Fallon is gaining ground in Colorado’s First Congressional District.  The win is now within our reach – we trail our entrenched incumbent by just 10 points (margin of error +/- 3pts), with 22% of voters undecided.

In reporting about the poll, blogger Joshua Sharf noted:  “After 18 years, DeGette’s a known quantity and she probably can’t say much about herself that will move the needle in her direction.”

We clicked on the link to the blog post mentioned, and here’s what conservative blogger Joshua Sharf had to say:

Does this mean that the race is winnable?  That last 10 points is going to be awfully hard to make up, but the pollsters look at that 22% undecided as a gold mine of potential votes.  After 18 years, DeGette’s a known quantity, and she probably can’t say much about herself that will move the needle in her direction.  More Republicans are undecided than Dems, indicating, perhaps, that they still haven’t heard much about Mike. And over 45% of Unaffiliated voters are undecided.  Of those unaffiliated voters, though, many are probably Dems no longer willing to call themselves Dems to pollsters, who are still probably inclined to vote Democrat.  ccAdvertising thinks that the undecideds could well break 9-1 for Mike.  While I think that’s an extraordinarily optimistic projection, in reality, they’d only have to break a little better than 5-2 for him to actually win the seat, assuming that the partisan breakdown is correct.

All in all, this has got to be good news for Fallon; I just wish it had come a month ago.

So, does this mean that the race is winnable?

NO. IT DOESN’T.

Sharf makes sure to note that the polling sample “appears to over-weight Republicans considerably,” although he cruises right on by this point to make the above statements. Instead of “considerably,” Sharf more accurately could have said “absurdly, to the point of irrelevance.” The voter registration in Denver is 50-20 Democrats over Republicans, but the sample for this “poll” includes 40 percent Democrats and 31 percent Republicans. We’re fairly confident that we could find a poll that showed Fallon is beating DeGette, so long as the sample size was 10 percent Democrats and 60 percent Republicans.

But we digress. The point here is that all of this talk of a “Republican wave” has most definitely gotten completely silly now. Mike Fallon is going to beat Diana DeGette as soon as Tom Tancredo turns into a flying unicorn and moves to Mexico. DeGette will be re-elected, just as Rep. Jared Polis will be re-elected, and just as Reps. Mike Coffman and Doug Lamborn will be back in Congress.

Yes, there is definitely more excitement among Republicans than Democrats this election year. But to pretend that this “Republican wave” might even sweep up DeGette? Silly. Just, silly.

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67 thoughts on “And…Now This is Getting Silly”

  1. You mean uber-conservative who constantly runs for a hopeless HD6 seat?

    He’s got reality issues.  And that’s really who the campaign’s best analysis comes from?

        2. Even shill-poll Magellan has him down by 1 point.

          R-leaning rassy has him down by 4

          everybody else down 8-10.

          And Perlmutter will beat the part time city councilman.

            1. I do find sarcasm and satire difficult in blogspeak because there is no tonal quality to demonstrate the satire.

                That’s a great dress Susie. You look so good in Orange. (sincere)

                And

                That’s a great dress Susie.  You look  sooo

              goood (snicker, snicker) in Orange.  (sarcasm)

               read exactly alike, without the editorial comments.

    2. but I voted for Fallon, just to get DeGette out of there. I don’t harbor any delusions that Fallon will win, but I also think DeGette has done little to earn another 2 years in DC. She is a political roadblock in front of many promising young Dems who actually might do something in Congress. When you’ve got a seat as safe as Denver, you have the license to become a leader in Congress. DeGette is not and will not become one. I used to be proud to have Pat Schroeder represent me. DeGette just makes me remember how DC wallows in dull, uninspired mediocrity.

      2. But Fallon is possibly the dumbest person with a medical degree ever.  And I’m including the fictional Dr. Nick Riviera.

        So I plan to vote Swing.  He’s more the crazy I like and matches my ideal more of the time.  Or like me on crack running overboard.  (Abolish the CIA!!!)  But still.

        Anyway, I’d like her to get 60% or so and take the hint.  When the GOP gets more than 20% I get sad.  That happened last year.  Yuck.

        1. is that he’d be a one-termer. There are many Denver Dems who’d be better than DeGette.

          And Voy… so DeGette was a leader in the stem cell fight. Meaning what — she ran stem cell bills that never passed under a Republican president, then stopped running the bill under a Demo president and Demo Congress, and then the courts ruled against stem cell research? So now it looks like the House will go Republican, which means there’s no hope for stem cell again. She had a chance and blew it.

          In other words, on the signature issue of her political career, she achieved nothing.

          Can you think of anything else she has achieved? I can’t.

          Denver deserves better.

                  1. the real full-time editor of Colorado Pols is Satan.  We know this because of the diligent research of a certain graduate student at CSU who claims he discovered that shocking fact in a mathematical regression study that demonstrated pro-evilution dairies were consistently promoted while red-blooded 100 percent world-was-created-in-six-days were consistently ignored.  

                      What can you do?  When they find you out, they find you out…

                  2. she got the stem cell bill–The DeGette-Castle bill–passed. I don’t think it’s fair to blame her for Bush using his first veto ever on a bill that made it all the way to the White House’s desk. She wrote a book on the subject as well.

                    She is also responsible for introducing the Colorado Wilderness Act of 2007, reintroduced it in 2009 and is a co-sponsor for the Udall Amendment to the House Energy Bill. She served a major role in re-authorizing the CHIP program and getting it passed in the House.

                    She’s done some good stuff and one area that few people acknowledge is her work on making our Department of Agriculture more accountable about where our food is coming from, and labeling and protection issues.

                    One area that I think she could significantly improve in is communication with constituents and being more supportive, in time and funding, for fellow Democrats during election seasons.

                    Hope this helps a bit.

                    1. You shouldn’t list introducing something as an accomplishment.

                      Your good Denver congresswoman got talked into a wilderness bill and it hasn’t gone anywhere because she’s never bothered to get buy-in from the Western Slope.

                      That’s where the wilderness is, by the way, for you Front Rangers.

                      The wilderness bills that have managed to pass have taken years, but not cost thousands of lives except for the trees it took to publish all the studies.

                      They passed only when the entire state delegation was on board, and not because the Denver congresswoman had an idea.

                      Pat Schroeder never took it upon herself to decide what parts of the Western Slope should be wilderness. She was a damned good congresswoman for Denver, and the Western Slope respected her for that.

                    2. but I appreciate the rest of your comment. And DeGette is not my congresswoman. I don’t live anywhere near Denver.  

      3. She’s chief deputy whip.

        She finances other Ds in swing districts.

        She’s strong on her issues (Choice, Stem Cells, Health Care) which also happen to be my issues.

        She’s not a dummy.  Have you been to her town halls?  Heard her speak live?

        She is a leader.  What do you want from her?

      4. Not to take away from DeGette, but I’m not a big believer in people clinging to the same public office for, basically, forever, which seems to be DG’s intent.

        IOR is correct: there ARE plenty of talented Denver Dems who deserve a shot at the seat. Andrew Romanoff is only one of two dozen or so names that come to mind….  

      5. I do think that she has accomplsihed much more than people give her credit for. But as much as I am an opponent of term limits I agree with your comment that “promising young Dems” who might bring some new energy to the game do not have that option.  We do have a lot of tremendous Democrats in Denver who I think would be great. My first choice Terrance Carrol.  

        That said voting for a Republican aint cool.  

        1. Get you facts straight, David is not a Democrat.  And by the way I already voted for Degette. We will be on top in Colorado at least in 2 weeks.

      7. When you’ve got a seat as safe as Denver, you have the license to become a leader in Congress. DeGette is not and will not become one. I used to be proud to have Pat Schroeder represent me.

        DeGette’s spot was the only blank I left on my ballot. She needed a good primary challenge. Just because Denver is a safe Dem seat doesn’t mean we must accept mediocrity. Pat Schroeder was a real representative of all Denver and a vocal leader in congress. For her unwavering, if ineffectual, stand on women’s issues, DeGette must be applauded, but otherwise, is there any “there” there?

        Clearly, intellectualy and passionately, she’s out of her league. But try to dislodge her? Whew. She’s got the local Dem power structure solidly behind her.

    3. Republicans:  take every cent you can spare and throw it into the CD-1 race!  Be part of the greatest upset in Colorado history–well at least since CSU beat the Buffaloes.

  3. Somebody thinks CD-1 is in play?????

    Just when I think an R might have said the stupidest thing ever, they kept talking.

    Diane DeGette would have to get caught with a dead boy and a live girl at the same time to make that remotely believable.  Even then it would still require fiddling with the numbers.

    As much as I don’t particularly care for her, there is no way that that seat is even remotely in question.

    1. Do we have to dig up all the comments from a year and a half ago when Coffman’s seat was “in play”? Everyone’s guilty of some starry eyed optimism now and then.  

      1. only because it was open, no incumbent. It would not have been entirely (though certainly still extremely close to entirely) impossible to take it with  exactly the right big name wildly popular candidate (we didn’t have one) and tons of money (CD6 has never come close enough to be considered worth the bother for targeting).  

        I’ll grant you that anyone who saw it as in play in any reality based sense was a naive, starry eyed, lets-raise-the-money-by-putting-on-a-show-in-the-barn newbie. Now that Coffman is incumbent that tiny ghost of a shred of the slimmest possibility is over for the duration.

        1. Same thing with 2006 and the CD-5 seat. We always said that it was going to be nearly impossible for a Democrat to win that race. But if it was ever going to happen, that was the year, because Lamborn had been bloodied by a very close 6-way primary. Now that Lamborn is entrenched as an incumbent, there’s no way a Democrat ever wins that seat.

        2. but I’m talking about a year and a half ago, when Flerlage and what’s-his-name were vying for the chance to take on Coffman. There was plenty of talk on this site about consolidating the challenge by picking the more “electable” Flerlage, and what a good chance that gave Dems. Of course, this was when the Obama presidency was young and hopes were, justifiably, high. My point was, every side is susceptible to getting carried away.

    2. I saw a video clip recently where Jared’s opponent actually calls on him to withdraw from the race “with honor”, because of unemployment and spending.

      Funny thing is, Jared could announce he’s dropping out today, and he’d still win.  

  5. Tancredo blasted out a Magellan poll today too, showing him within a point of Hick. Maybe Republicans are voting way above historic performance and Dems way below. After all, that’s been the story for months now. Or maybe not.  

  8. Tancredo blasted out a Magellan poll today too, showing him within a point of Hick. Maybe Republicans are voting way above historic performance and Dems way below. After all, that’s been the story for months now. Or maybe not.

    I think there might some truth to this ^

  9. Poll the yard signs.

    Fallon beats DeGette 10:1.

    Hit University from 6th south to Belleview.

    I never knew so many Rs lived in Wash Park.  I guess my neighbors are emboldened to show their colors in this “wave year.”  

  11. Tancredo won’t turn into a flying unicorn and move to Mexico?

    There is an R wave, but don’t think it will wash over Colorado like in some other states.  

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