U.S. Senate
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(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
20%
Governor
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(D) Phil Weiser
(D) Joe Neguse
(D) Jena Griswold
60%
60%
40%↓
Att. General
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(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Alexis King
(D) Brian Mason
40%
40%
30%
Sec. of State
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(D) A. Gonzalez
(D) George Stern
(R) Sheri Davis
50%↑
40%
30%
State Treasurer
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(D) Brianna Titone
(R) Kevin Grantham
(D) Jerry DiTullio
60%
30%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd*
(D) Somebody
80%
40%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Somebody
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(D) Joe Salazar
50%
40%
40%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
October 15, 2008 05:43 PM UTC
31 Comments
Obama has always come across as likeable, people just hadn’t really been paying attention until now.
McCain can be likeable as well, but he hasn’t done a very good job of presenting that to voters. He just seems old, mean and pissed that some young upstart is stealing his final chance at the White House from him.
McCain has stopped coming across as likable. While Bush operatives ran a very nasty campaign, Bush personally never came across as angry or mean in his debates. It was Gore who got in trouble for disdainful eye-rolling.
If you’re going to have a campaign going so negative all the time the candidate him or herself had better come across as personally nice and there also needs to be a positive sunshiny message running in tandem with the hate the other guy stuff. Morning in America and all that.
McCain has been the insulting disdainful one, the get off my lawn candidate, so the negativity sticks to him where it didn’t stick to faux good ole’ boy Bush. All McCain can hope for now is a boatload of latent racism and the mother of all Bradley Effects to come through after all.
My guess for McCain post-election is that he turns into a Bob Dole-esque political figure. Once he retires from the Senate, I woul wager he’ll be back in the celebrity limelight again. Much like Dole was when he did those viagra ads, and the pepsi ads.
Except Dole is funny.
back when people were worried about the “Paris/Britney” ads. They hurt McCain much more than Obama.
The reason, as you say, that Bush never came across as nasty is that independent groups ran all the worst stuff. You’d NEVER see a Swift Boat ad or a “be scared of terrorist wolves” ad with “I’m George Bush and I approve this message.”
But all of McCain’s nastiest stuff had his name all over them. If there’s one thing to blame for McCain’s incredibly bad poll numbers, it’s that the RNC and other “independent” groups refused to do anything for him. I don’t remember EVER seeing an anti-Obama ad from anyone except McCain.
I hadn’t thought about it before.
It’s also worth pointing out that in non-battleground states they are only getting nice Obama ads. My mother called (from Arkansas) maybe two weeks ago, excited because she’d seen her first one. She said that it was really nice, just him talking about the economy. And the commercials have only gotten better.
I hadn’t noticed it before either. I thought for sure we were going to see 527 ads with Reverend Wright coming out of the woodwork.
What happened? Did the independent groups simply not want to cough up the dough? Why did McCain get stuck being the bad guy in every ad? The RNC has barely been advertising as well.
I am dumbfounded that they would want to destroy Kerry, but they don’t want to do the same thing to Obama. Maybe it was just because thye were all so in love with Bush, and they just couldn’t get the same feelings stirred up for McCain. Hence, not enough money.
They loved Bush, partly because re-electing him would piss off liberals (which is a main motivating factor to many conservatives).
They were never enthusiastic about McCain.
Still, kind of a weird thing for the entire party apparatus, as well as all the wealthy donors, to just fold like that.
coupled with what a tough job the next president is going to have cleaning up their mess might be leading some of them to believe they might as well stick Obama with the job, re-tool, hope times are still lousy in 2010, retake some seats and go for a GOP presidency in 2012 with someone they like and trust.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politi…
McCain is the one who is reluctant to bring up Wright in a more hard-hitting manner.
Politico:
As the nominee goes, so goes the apparatus set up to help him.
IIRC, all but Biden has an odd church story that would be downright uncomfortable.
Very curious that 527s haven’t been doing all the nasty negative stuff for him. That way they could get it all out there and McCain could take the high road and be the nice guy just like Bush during the whole swift boat thing. Why aren’t these people helping McCain more? If they really want to lose this election, fine by me.
Bring up Reverend Wright and remind everyone Obama is a Christian. Better to whip em up in a frenzy by implying he is a Muslim.
has been the lack of McCain bumper stickers on cars in Denver. It is like the base doesn’t want to support him. In 2004 Bush/Cheney and W stickers where plastered all over pickups and vans. This time around it is a rare sighting to see a McCain sticker.
I’ve been seeing more and more, but they’re nothing compared to the cavalcade of Obama stickers you see every day. A lot less rare than they were a month or two ago, that’s for sure.
I’ve also been seeing more McCain-Palin lawn signs sprouting up in the neighborhoods around the Yale and Monaco area. There’s a really cool home-made “Obama 08” sign made out of wood and nailed to a fence off of Monaco between Yale and Hampden. It always makes me happy when I drive by.
Drove around a parking lot the other day, one Obama, no McCain. No downtickets, either. Drove through the neighborhood, fairly upscale, and it was 2:1 including downticket. Probably somewhat skewed because both candidate’s homes for Public Defender are within 200 yards of each other. What are the odds of that.
Just keeping my eyes peeled, it’s 2 or even 3 Obama for every McCain.
On both sides, bad words are being thrown out about the other candidate.
But what tells the tale for me is the faces of the crowds attracted to the rallies. While McCain/Palin speak to a sea of white faces, Obama/Biden address an ethnically diverse group of people.
Which crowd better reflects the way America looks today and will look in the future?
A Troll?
Registered just to post that, but hasn’t called anybody a liar yet.
Heaven forbid I should use a neutral comment to make a point about which candidates draws REAL Americans to his rallies. I was hoping to bring attention to the fact Obama’s rallies are a better reflection of America.
In all honesty, I think the McCain campaign tactics of late have been disgusting. But instead of sniping at each other, and the (perceived) opposition, we need to elect Obama to hopefully put an end to the theory that negative campaigns always win.
My kids loved the Care Bears when they were growing up.
I agree that we need to debunk the myth that negative campaigning guarantees a win. Like the west coast offense in football, negative campaigning will continue until it is conclusively proven to not get results. Until then negative campaigning needs to be addressed with swift counter ads otherwise you end up getting Swift boated and lose. Obama has done a good job fighting the smears with effective counter ads.
Thanks for your comments Hurley. There as been a lot of astroturfing at ColoradoPols lately so people are suspicious.
Mike Shanahan HAS proven that the west coast offense doesn’t work!
as Gen-X becomes the dominant voting block over the next two decades we’ll see a continual trend away from negative campaigning. The Boomers are a very contentious, polarized generation but that inclination to polarization will abate with time (thank god). Obama’s the first wave of this.
Bring people together, try to find common ground.
It started with his 2004 DNC keynote, and it’s continued since. We are more alike than we are different, and we can work together to make this country work for everyone.
It’s why I chose to support him in December, and it’s why I’ve continued to support him even as he’s had to get negative. The core of the campaign, the original message, is still intact.
I like that message too, but I don’t think it’s why the negative ads are not working so well anymore.
Ads used to be taken as gospel really, and there was almost always new information. There wasn’t the train wreck mentality that I would’ve expected, more like, “hey, I didn’t know that.” Now with fact checking on the internet and the local news running truth tests, you lose that edge to the information.
Anyway, McCain’s attacks just haven’t been that good. For instance, the ’60’s terrorist; most people learned that McCain deserved a parade and that Ayers was right in principle, but not in practice. Frankly opening a door to Vietnam in our current war situation was just stupid.
The other set of ads center around “liberal” leaders in congress. Are they hoping everyone forgot that Bush is a republican? The ads are also contradictory, blasting democrats for not forcing regulation. Hey McCain! You’re part of the GOP, you hate regulation. That’s the first rule.
I do hope that you’re both right and after the air clears this year, that’ll be it. I don’t have cable, so it’s possible to flip through all of the channels and literally see political commercials on every one, except for PBS. It’s starting to get to me.
Most of us that were carrying signs back then weren’t exactly into chucking bombs.
There were plenty of anti-war activists who were right in principle. Not the Weather Underground.
Hate to sound like an old fogey throwback (even though I am) but it’s all explained here:
I did mean protesters in general, not bomb chuckers, but I should have been clearer.
I certainly didn’t mean to over generalize the movement, sorry. You guys did good work.
BTW, post all the Beatles you want, they were some of my first vinyls. 🙂
I found that very first Beatles record in a store once, still sealed in plastic. Didn’t do anything but keep it.
Circa 1986 I came home and found that my roommate’s daughter and friends had opened it to play it……
Oh well, it’s just “stuff.”
So it was the right thing to do.
Music’s sole purpose is to make money. Specifically, it is to be written and performed so that it can be recorded and sold on plastic discs. All who think differently shall be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Sincerely,
The RIAA
….sounded just like my recordings on the Capitol label!
i did say coming decades. The Boomers will still be around and cling hard to power as all fading generations do, and I think that clinging will produce even more spit from the spittle set (Limbaugh et al.) but it’ll abate as Gen-X and the next set realize how pointless the polarization-for-polarization’s-sake is.