Bingaman Bows Out

Democratic Senator Jeff Bingaman is expected to announce his retirement today, deepening the difficulty the party faces in its efforts to hold the chamber in 2012. Bingaman, who is in his fifth term, joins colleagues Virginia’s Jim Webb and North Dakota’s Kent Conrad in declining to run for re-election. (Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, an independent, also caucuses with the Democrats.) In each case, the retirement darkens the party’s prospects in tough states. Bingaman won 70% of the vote in 2006, and would have been favored to fend off any challenger. Democrats, who hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, have a lot of territory to defend: the party holds 23 of the 33 seats to be contested next fall. Their task just got that much harder. As for how the race to succeed Bingaman may shape up, Chris Cillizza suggests:

Reps. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Lujan will almost certainly be mentioned on the Democratic side as might that of former Lt. Gov. Diane Denish.

Former Rep. Heather Wilson has been mentioned as a possible Republican candidate and sources close to Rep. Steve Pearce say he is looking seriously at running.

President Obama coasted in New Mexico in 2008. Last fall Republican Susana Martinez easily won the statehouse, while Democrats held onto two of the state’s three seats in the House.

The Phony War: Obama and Romney Are Debating Character, Not Policy

More than five months from Election Day, the back-and-forth about Mitt Romney’s record at Bain already feels played out. Unfortunately, there’s good reason to expect the campaign continues in this vein indefinitely. Neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney are terribly interested in dwelling on policy platforms. Romney’s plan to slash spending and keep taxes low on the wealthy isn’t especially popular, at least not at any level of detail beyond a blithe promise to shrink the deficit. Meanwhile, Obama’s signature first-term achievements, like health care, the stimulus and Wall Street reform, are all unpopular or tricky to sell. (The Dodd-Frank bill is the most popular of these, but hyping it means offending wealthy donors.) So what we’re getting instead is a superficial duel about character–and, worse, one that’s based on the largely false premise that the better man can better “manage” the economy back to health.

newfreedomblog

Liberal La-la Land biting the dust, one libtarded dem at a time.
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Enjoy!!
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square1

I have to give credit to the GOP and the tea partiers. They are much more comfortable trying to win elections by picking inspiring politicians and trying to beat the other side by getting the base to come out and vote.

Sometimes it doesn’t work. And sometimes it really backfires spectacularly (e.g. Angle and O’Donnell lost Senate races that more mainstream Republican candidates could have won easily).

But the overall lesson of the 2010 House battle was that the GOP won despite having no polling advantage in general. They won because their polling advantage had been in “likely voters”.

In Virginia, Obama is desperately trying to get Tim Kaine to replace Webb. But picking Kaine — a thoroughly uninspiring party apparatchik — simply because he already has name recognition two years out reflects a real lack of creativity within the Democratic Party. Kaine for Senate cries out Martha Coakley 2.0.

If Obama actually stood for a coherent political ideology, it would be relatively easy for Obama to find a charismatic person in Virginia who shared the ideology and spend the next two years raising the candidate’s public profile.

One wonders whether Democrats in New Mexico wil choose to back a candidate with vision, or just the next Democrat in line.
freeinpa

“If Obama actually stood for a coherent political ideology”
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Sometimes you folks on the left make it too easy. Liberalism today is incoherent. You cannot come out publicly and say with certainty what they really want. As soon as the reality comes to light you have massive uprising from the general public. They have to mask it or like ObamaCare write it behind closed doors and vote on it before the public finds out.
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The Dems in 2008 with the complicit press ran as “moderates”. They tried to govern as liberals and were shown the door in 2010. Webb is considered a moderate and what he has come to see is that he is way out of step with the Democratic Party that at its heart is still wildly left.
http://erieangel.wordpress.com erieangel

free, by you are so far right you probably think Roosevelt was a liberal. Though he did start the short-lived “progressive party” that party was pretty conservative in most respects. And Roosevelt was a Republican.
pelhamite1

With an Hispanic population, according to the latest census, of 45%, I have to think the Democrats’ chances in New Mexico are pretty good. The Republicans will have to do their part by making sure the Hispanic population gets to the polls, of course, but all the evidence suggests they will be up to the task.

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There’s a lot to love about New Mexico, including the fact their main minor league baseball team is named the “Isotopes”.
paulejb

Like the Democrat State Senators who fled the state of Wisconsin, Dem US Senators are getting out while the getting’s good.