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
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(R) Sheri Davis
50%↑
40%
30%
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(D) Brianna Titone
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(D) Jerry DiTullio
60%
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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*
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CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd*
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80%
40%
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(R) Lauren Boebert*
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90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank*
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CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
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State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
October 24, 2008 11:43 PM UTC
59 Comments
but Satan is on your side!
These are supporters of the candidate who claims as a major selling point that he reaches across the aisle? What are the chances God-fearing Obama-haters will have any interest in reaching across the aisle if they believe Satan is on the other side?
But once again you can tell from the video that there’s something off to the right they’re using to provoke the crowd that we never quite see (it may just be a cut-out of senator Obama).
The question you have to ask yourself is, are there really more Republican fringe people who will say ugly things at rallies, or are there really more Democrats who have the time and the inclination to go to a rally of the opposing party’s candidate in an attempt to capture some footage of ugly things? It seems to me that its probably about even money between the two possibilities. Either way, what we’ve witnessed, while disturbing, is far from reliable evidence that senator McCain’s supporters as a group are more ignorant and/or dangerous than senator Obama’s. That’s not to say its false (or true), its just that these well-edited videos don’t prove nearly as much as they’d like to.
But show me ONE Obama supporter who has called for McCain to be killed. Or called him a terrorist, a Muslim, or an enemy of America, or anything close.
Didn’t think you could.
The Republicans are desperate.
They’ve been saying it about George W. Bush for the last eight years though.
That’s bullshit…(lol!, people respond to my posts this way)
Describing Bush as the worst president in the history of the USA does not compare to
the vile, racially biased mob vitriole in the Republican video.
The one above I received from Moveon.org and it doesn’t attack Bush at all. The swearing lady that stands in line calls the non voter names for being too lazy to vote.
Cliff May and I use to ahve fun arguing and he taught me to use I misspoke when I make errors. He’s a Republican and former assistant editor of the RMN. He went to work for the RNC, and is a real right wing lobbyist now.
I still like him even if he thinks I’m a left wing idealogue.
the moveon link is below. It’s funny :
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3127…
Way to go.
JeffCOBlue was making it sound like the left never went too far in villifying its enemies.
I’m not excusing the racism, not by any means.
This is my theory: May dyed his hair and beard so no one would know he was old enough to have dodged the draft during the Vietnam War.
http://open.salon.com/content….
Is this laid at senator Obama’s feet?
Also, as far as calling senator McCain a terrorist goes:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/…
This took about 35 seconds. But this isn’t the point. The point is that there are crazies on all sides and people who say really ugly things on all sides. There’s probably even a larger point that saying “Who is the real Barack Obama” 18 seconds after saying senator Obama pals around with terrorists appeals to this particular side of people. All I’m saying is that these videos are presented as evidence that senator McCain’s supporters are evil without any attempt whatsoever to determine whether the results would be any different at a rally for senator Obama. That doesn’t make the people in the video positive contributors to our democracy, it just makes the video unreliable as a broader gauge of senator McCain’s supporters.
… is what possible “provocation” justifies the kind of behavior captured on that video?
And if that provocation was “just a cut-out of Senator Obama” – as the shot of the guy attempting to punch a cardboard cutout in the video suggests – what excuse then?
(I’m not even going to get into the young girl aping a monkey….)
Can you imagine the winger fury if some ratty-haired lefty tried to punch a cutout of Sen McCain?
This video doesn’t prove anything – except that there was a set of folks in Denver today that are … well … a flat-out embarassment.
No matter how you slice it, it comes up ugly.
Those looking to cast shame upon the individuals involved have all the evidence they need to do so. My beef is with the implication that this carries a broader truth about senator McCain’s supporters as a whole.
John McCain did the right thing – partially – when he responded to the wild-haired lady who accused Obama of being an “Arab.” But his response – “No, Ma’am, he’s a decent man” – failed as Colin Powell noted because it still left unanswered the implication that someone who IS a Muslim can never hold high office in the U.S.
But neither McCain nor Palin have done a thing to counter this type of vicious, over-the-top comments by their supporters.
A true leader would use such comments as a “teachable moment” – and in the process earn the admiration of many, many independents and undecideds. Can you imagine how many people would have given McCain and Palin a second look had one or both of them simply said something like:
“Now stop right there. That is disgusting, wrong, and I won’t accept it. Someone making statements like that is not welcome in our party. We have Muslim Republicans, we have African-American Republicans – and your comments slurring them and their Democratic fellow Americans are beneath contempt.”
There would have been incredibly positive support for these candidates – many, many times more than the few lunatic extremists they may have offended.
Not only have McCain and Palin failed, through cowardice and contemptible playing to peoples’ worst instincts, to deter such racist behavior, but ironically they have harmed their own election efforts.
Yes you have people charged up at things like this and having the Obama supporters at what they view as their event will be upsetting. But the consistent chant of communist from person after person – it’s a really weird term seeing as how it has not been in the McCain talking points.
I think it may be a tribal thing, that they are the righteous and that the evil ones still get called communist even though the cold war is 20 years old – because that was the term used for anyone outside the tribe.
Definitely weird.
but “Socialist” has, and I tink for most people there’s not too much of a distinction between the two.
among the more outspoken of McCain’s supporters.
Those lines he delivered at the Alfred E. Smith memorial dinner were straight out of Groucho! Now, can the young man play a harp?
Each of them were terrific at that dinner. I wish their comments had been broadcast in full somewhere – they would have made people realize that deep down both of these men are great people.
Oh man I wanna puke
of parents teach their children to do an impression of a monkey when referencing an African American?
I guess the same variety that fosters a home environment in which the teen son gets the message that “Slavery Gets Shit Done” posters on your MySpace page is acceptable…
These people are sick, sick, sick. I don’t care what the “provocation” was.
Folsom Field, mid 80’s, after the Cornhuskers had just laid a whipping on the home team Buffs. The cornheads are giddy, and some Buffs fans, angry that their team had been humiliated again, were bombarding the Nebraskans with increasingly rude and vulgar taunts. Many of the Nebraska fans returned the insults in kind, but they were outnumbered, so they tended to “just keep moving.” It is sad that this is what politics has come to for some people, hooliganism.
I think the anger has some root in the fact that the McCain supporters have spent so much time and energy in what they now realize is a lost cause. Graciousness in defeat does not come easy, and when your nose is rubbed in it (I am assuming that is what we can’t see), some respond in very vile fashion. To me the worst (after monkey girl) is the man at the end, cursing at the protesters as he carries is young grandchild.
Haven’t they been paying attention?
This kind of crap has been going on for years and years within the Republican Party. As you all know, I know having been the Chair of the Republican Party in the largest voting county in Colorado. This is the type of person that the so-called “social conservatives” have drawn to the party. For the most part, “social conservative” is a code-word, not only referring to abortion and gays, but to any persons who aren’t white. Interesting to note that all of the people making these slurs, whether racial or calling him a communist or socialist are white.
Frankly, this tape should be sent to social services and the parents of the girl with the monkey impression ought to be brought up on child abuse charges. What they’re doing to their daughter are nothing less that that.
In short, this is what opening up the party to the kooks since 1978 has done to the party. As I’ve said, the only thing is to let the Republican Party die and resurect a new third party when the carcus that used to be the Republican Party is dead and gone.
I have numerous close Republican friends, and of course I am not associating them with these offensive acts. Anyone like you who, as a Republican, condemns this behavior should be thanked and commended.
You will eventually – probably very soon – get back your party.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/…
About the “terrorist,” “Muslim,” “communist,” “kill him” chants, the racist and bigoted anti-Obama e-mail smear campaigns, and the hate-crime-inciting Obama-and-a-noose graphics is that this level of disrespect and public hatred is being spewed at a sitting United States senator. Please name one other United States senator that people have chanted “kill him” or “kill her” about.
RedStateBlueState rightly points out that some liberals — and I’ll bet some conservatives too — have called George W. Bush a terrorist. Is the “terrorist” label appropriate for George W. Bush? Probably not, given that terrorists, as understood within political theory, are recognized as individuals or groups that act to intentionally destabilize the existing government or political structure, and that use the tactic of terrorizing — i.e., instilling fear among — the general population to carry out their agendas. By these standards, Bush isn’t a terrorist. However, Bush has been responsible for the nation’s foreign policy for the last 8 years, and it is undeniable that he has neither acknowledged nor taken responsibility for any of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Public denunciation of Bush’s leadership is justified; calling for him to be killed is not. In fact, I’ve only read about calls for George Bush to be killed — or at least, insinuations of such — from protests held by radical factions in Middle Eastern (and perhaps European, but I could be wrong) countries where effigies of George W. Bush are burned.
What can be said about the sitting United States Senator from Illinois that justifies the hate speech directed at him? What justification is there for any American to call for the assissination of a sitting U.S. Senator, let alone a presidential candidate? Have these people no shame? Does John McCain have no shame?
Yes, I get that these people represent an extreme minority of McCain’s supporters, but correct me if I’m wrong that McCain has touted his leadership as a reason to cast your ballot for him. What type of leader lets these hate-filled, vitriolic attacks continue? You’ll excuse me if I don’t find McCain taking the microphone away and saying, “No ma’am, Sen. Obama is a good family man whom I disagree with,” as a resounding renunciation of this behavior. When I see that people in “your camp” are freely spewing racist hatred and religious intolerance, I have the expectation that you — who are asking to be elected to the highest office in our nation, an office that people turn to for leadership and a sense of the national spirit — will take the extraordinary steps necessary to send the message that in America, that is not acceptable.
Remember when Obama delivered his major speech on race relations in America? Why hasn’t John McCain done the same? This is equivalent, especially at this juncture, with more and more publicized invectives popping up. Where is John McCain’s major speech on the melting pot that comprises the great country that he purports to put first? How is he putting the interests of America first by letting this hatred and bigotry continue unabated? Does he really expect me to believe that it’s better for the country to be so bitterly divided? Is he practicing the old medical technique of lancing a boil, hoping all this hatred will spill out, and then the nation will miraculously heal?
To bring it back to the man in the video above who said Michelle Obama made Barack say he’s a Christian so he could win the election (really?!? who comes up with this?), I empathize more and more with the Michelle Obama who wasn’t as proud of her country as she was during the Democratic primary, when a black man and a woman were the front-runners for the presidential nomination of a major political party. I’m not very proud to claim those Americans who spew this hatred, and I’m not very proud to claim those who just pass it off as politically charged extremism. There’s something fundamentally wrong with the statements these people make, the impunity with which they deliver them, and the fact that they show no qualms, no shame, and no trepidation about saying this stuff in public.
If you go by the PNAC authors’ other document – the one they wrote for Israel before joining the Bush Administration – then the purpose of the Iraq war was to destabilize things in order to set things up for toppling Iran and setting the entire region back.
That, and I’m guessing the other two members of the “Axis of Evil” felt afraid of the terror of their own country becoming another Iraq.
I personally don’t think Bush is a terrorist. War criminal, perhaps. (Likely?) Terrorist, no. But it’s easy to see how people justify the word when pointing to the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Extremely well put.
I didn’t make it clear in my first post, but I in no way think that the racism espoused by some regarding this is OK. I have heard uglier language in those lines of people than I thought was possible. The fear and the resentment is so deep. Really, it’s hate.
This video, and all that come before it, are a strange new part of American politics. It might be too soon, but I think we can start calling this the You Tube election. SO much of what we’ve been looking at the past few months have been videos shot by amateurs, reporting (somewhat) unfiltered from the source.
I agree that the anger in this election rests with the McCain campaign. However, in 2004 it was with the left. The right didn’t like Kerry, but the left hates Bush. I think it might be fair to say that the same level of resentment towards Bush is now being felt by a few on the far-right about Obama.
But to say that the people in that line who say “terrorist” or “communist” or “socialist” are somehow worse than those on the left who’ve called the Current Occupant a terrorist and a fascist and worse–that’s just like saying it’s OK if you’re a Democrat.
…not so much the terrorist or communist thing…hell, Sarah’s been saying that for weeks and is much better dressed when doing so. The monkey thing was un…..fucking…believable. Except that it’s very believable to anyone who doesn’t ignore that race still matters a lot in USA 2008.
Anyone who thinks that it’s not only OK to let your daughter do that, but actually laughs at her when she does, is just… an awful parent. I have no sympathy for racists, or racists who breed more racists.
Is it okay for me to characterize some of those who oppose Obama as racists now?
…Laughing Boy.
Unless I’m mistaken, LB never claimed that it was wrong to describe ANY of those opposed to an Obama presidency “racist.” Newsie did, several months ago, when I stated that McCain’s success in this campaign depended on the racists coming out. Newsie took offense to that, but I think he misunderstood my point.
LB, on the other hand, has always commanded my respect because he has no blinders on when it comes to the character of some of his fellow Republicans. He knows most ‘pubs are good, decent Americans and also knows that about most Dems and liberals. In fact, it’s his disgust with those racists still in his party that drove him to vote for Obama.
I do have to say one good thing has come from all this ugliness – the right wingers who liked to talk about Democratic racism (as though it were still a facet of today’s Dems) have been quited.
…but he accused me of “race-baiting” when I said that many people will oppose Obama for racist reasons. He did so often, and I don’t remember his retracting that point.
I haven’t been here is a while. Did she go back to hiding under the bridge and surprise unsuspecting people trying to cross?
…pulling down the big dollars.
to Pennslvania Pols.
for carving a backwards B on her face and saying it was a big black Obama supporter.
I think the RNC and their 527’s have pulled out of Colorado.
The same folks that Richard Nixon, Strom Thurmond, David Duke, Tom Tancredo, and Trent Lott have been nurturing for decades.
I like even less Progress Now’s role. They went to the rally specifically to get video of Republican attendees acting badly. I wonder, as have several folks, what Progress Now did to create the “gotcha” situations shown. Also, how many reasonable folks were edited out.
For a campaign touting a new brand of politics bringing people together,someone ought to give Progress Now the memo. Or, maybe this is how an Obama administration is going to operate.
…from Progress Now.
If you want to find right wing bigots, what better place to go than a right wing rally.
Probably lots of nice folks were edited out. They aren’t the story, they aren’t the crack pots.
PN filmed people saying horrible things….and PN is more to blame than the people?! Obviously the person most to blame is the person who invented cameras…or the person who invented language, perhaps.
Obama doesn’t have any choice but to “operate” as an African-American. And that will always be viewed as a “provocation” by horrible people like those in the video. These people are pissed off because Obama is black – pure and simple. They are racists.
Opponents always attend political rallies. The acceptable, time-honored responses are to say: “Go to hell!” “F*** you!” Et cetera. Nothing wrong with that type of “healthy debate.”
What’s amazing about these comments, in my mind, are the racist ones: the girl imitating a monkey with her parents’ total encouragement and approval. The man claiming Obama is a secret Muslim. This is exactly what Colin Powell was talking about.
I have news for you:
America is a country that supports diverse views.
I have my views, these people have theirs.
I have but two words for them:
“President Obama.”
See you November 5, people.
I have personally spoken with blatant racists right here on the Western Slope. Ones who make no pretense about it. These are the worst of humanity. I don’t care which direction racism goes, from White to Black, from Hispanic to White, from Black to Asian. It is absolute filth to me. Even from the recent Palin event here, we get reports about these brain dead racists.
If there was ever a godsend to America, IT IS BARACK OBAMA. I truly hope his presidency will provide an antibiotic to the oozing putrification of racial hate in America.
Unfortunately, there are still those institutions, like the Daily Sentinel Editorial Board who suggested that Muslim enrollment in our collages is down because we are keeping terrorists out. Then there is the subtle, like the former publisher of the Sentinel, writing a column during the Katrina disaster, telling us how different the people of New Orleans are from us. Or like the former Mayor of Grand Junction Gene Kinsey, in his own blog, making reference to seasonal affective disorder as “Black Monday” on Martin Luther King Day when everyone knows seasonal affective disorder is termed “Blue Monday”. Or like our DA, Pete Hautzinger, refusing to prosecute when a little black girl was attacked with stones and threatened with lynching. Or like the race baiting McCain campaign worker who just got caught lying about being attacked by an Obama supporter and having her face carved. (she was too stupid to realize that when branding your own face in a mirror that the letter would be backwards)
And this hate is further fueled by the likes of Sarah Palin speaking about who are the “real Americans”, by the likes of McCain spokesperson Nancy Pfotenhauer saying the R parts of Virginia are the real Virginia, by the likes of McCain’s brother Joe referring to northern Virginia as “communist country” and by the likes of Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann spewing her anti-American rhetoric about Senator Obama and her fellow congresspersons.
John Sidney McCain III, has forever disgraced his own image. Historians will note this campaign as defining who he was. Since being old enough to give attention to presidential campaigns, this is by far the filthiest, ugliest, gutter campaign out of the eleven I’ve witnessed. Even the despicable George Wallace campaign was more honorable than this McCain campaign. At least Wallace did not use surrogates to spread his vile racism or hide behind a woman’s skirt. You knew where Wallace was coming from.
There was once a time in which I had respect for John McCain. Never again.
“Terrorist,” “communist,” “Muslim”…never mind the facts, that’s what these people want and choose to believe.
Our ability to distort reality to fit preconceptions.
As David T. said some months ago, “Man is the rationalizing animal,” or similar.
One of many reasons I am such a cynic!
What makes me the most sick is Intelligent, Educated, Elected Republicans saying ignorant, dangerous things:
Sarah Palin – Obama = Terroist (about 30 times a day every day) Why? What is the expected outcome?
Colin Powell, “Senior members of my Party saying Barack = Muslim, Barack = Terroist”. Why are the Senior members saying it? Who is their audience? What is the expected outcome?
OK, OK. I would guess her IQ to be in the 110-120 range. Above average, but definitely not presidential timber.