The KaWAAAAHnsas senate race

So a few weeks back I did a blog where I apologized to Sarah Palin, because it turns out you CAN in fact quit to win.  Now in that blog I covered two stories, one of which involved the state of Kansas.

Ok so to recap for those who didnt read the earlier blog: The incumbent Republican Senator, Pat Roberts, isnt doing so well. Most polls taken at the time of my earlier blog only had him getting about 36% of the vote.

The thing was, that actually meant he win, and get to keep his seat because Kansas was having a 3 way senate race, with the Democrat and the Independent basically evenly splitting the remaining 64% of the vote (so 32% each for those not good at math).

Then the Democrat dropped out of the race, and as predicted most of his supporters went over to the Independents campaign. Which now means Pat Roberts is getting his ass kicked.

Which normally wouldnt be that big a deal, well except in Kansas.

But the thing is, at the start of this election cycle Republicans needed 6 seats to take control of the United States Senate, and (since its assumed they will hold the House as well) Congress as a whole.

And 6 seats is actually quite doable assuming polling holds out.

But that number assumed that Pat Roberts, running in arguably the most republican state in the country was in a safe race for his reelection, which no longer appears to be the case.

And polling suggests that 7th seat republicans would need to win to replace the seat they lose if Roberts loses, is well much much much less unlikely to materialize.

So yea, basically the senate race is Kansas, specifically the Democrat dropping out of that race, could have just cost the GOP the senate for the 3rd election cycle in a row.

So the fact that Roberts is losing is a BIG problem.

Now one caveat, Pat Roberts now only opponent Greg Orman is an Independent, NOT a Democrat. So if elected he COULD hypothetically caucus with the Republican Party and give them control of the senate.

Consider that, if Republicans pick up the 6 seats they are expected to and dont unexpectedly lose any others, the current balance in the Senate, not counting Orman would be 50 Republicans, and 49 Democrats.

Now because the Vice President votes in cases of a tie, and the Vice President is a Democrat the Democrats only need 50 seats to control the Senate, the Republicans need 51 (so the VP cant vote).

So a 51/49 split in this case is a tie, with control going to which ever party Orman chooses to join.

Now of course the problem for the Republicans is, although Orman agrees with them on some issues (immigration) he disagrees on others the Republicans tend to consider more important (Abortion).

Also Orman will basically owe his victory to the Democrats in Kansas, and when it comes down to who in the senate can give him better favors, its usually hard to beat the Presidents party in a situation like this.

So basically Republicans are assuming its much more likely Orman joins the Democrats, and gives them control of the senate.

Which is why the Republican Secretary of State, Kris Kobach, sued to keep the Democratic Challenger on the ballot, claiming he hadnt correctly withdrawn,  Even if not campaigning Kobach and other Kansas Republicans believed just having a name on the ballot might get enough people to vote for the Democrat (presumably believing he was still in the race) to give Roberts a chance.

And in all fairness to Kobach, political motives aside, legally he actually appeared to be correct, the laws of Kansas give specific reasons to drop out and the Democrat hadnt given one of those reasons.

Yet, yesterday, the Supreme Court of the State of Kansas ruled unanimously AGAINST Kris Kobach,
They claimed basically that the law needed only a broad explanation to drop out, and that the Democrat had git under that broad interpretation, as had a few other other candidates Kobach himself had allowed to drop off the ballot during his tenure without challenge.

Now this was actually a very fast case, the suit only got to the Court about a week ago, and they already ruled. Which is an insanely short time for deliberations.

But it turns out the speed was not the courts decision, it was Kobach,

See in court Kobach claimed that in order to insure ballots had time to reach members of the United States military they had to be printed TODAY (9/19/2014). So in order to do his job and get the ballots out, he had to know before then WHO was actually on the ballot.

So given that he lost, and he needs to be printing ballots as we speak, this story is over right?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA o ye of little faith, of course its not over.      

As I explained a few months back, the official republican election strategy this time around is "Fuck the Troops".

You see Kobach is now Demanding the Democrats place a NEW candidate on the ballot, and gave them until September 26th to do so.

Which is a week LATER then the time Kobach said he would need to make sure all Kansans in the Military actually got their ballots on time to vote.

So yea, as I see it, Kobach is now left with only 3 explanations:
1) Kobach believed that less time to deliberate in court would increase his chances of winning, and therefore lied to the court, and attempted to abuse the powers of his office. Which, I would assume is illegal
2) The troops are going to get different ballots with different candidates on them then everyone else.....which basically means they dont get to vote in the same election as everyone else. But hey fuck fair elections.
3) Fuck the troops, who gives a shit if they get to vote on time or at all. I mean hell they should have stayed home if they expected their right to vote to be respected.

Actually, come to think of it, 2 and 3, are basically two different methods of the same idea......

Oh and actually, turns out lying in Court, or screwing over the troops isnt the only problem here.

--------------------------------------------------------UPDATE-----------------------------------------

It appears option 2 is our winner. Earlier tonight Kobach announced he is attaching disclaimers to the overseas ballots informer voter this ballot may not count if the democrats name a new candidate, and the person in question must vote again. 

So much for 1 person 1 vote......not to mention honest, free and fair elections.

UPDATE 2
It seems the text of the disclaimer includes a line "To ensure that your vote is counted your ballot must be received by November 4th 2014, UNLESS A LATER DEADLINE IS COMMUNICATED IN OUR SUBSEQUENT CORRESPONDENCE TO YOU" (Caps mine)

So yea, the election will be nov 4th, unless its not, which we arnt going to tell you until later.....

Other parts: "You may vote using the ballot accompanying this letter as soon as you receive it, or you may wait to vote until you've received further notification from us,"

Again, no rush folks who knows when the fuck this election will be.....

 "If a replacement ballot is sent to you, and you have already returned the ballot that accompanies this letter, only your replacement ballot will be counted."

Even if you dont send the replacement ballot back......because hey YOUR SUPPOSED TO VOTE FOR THE DEMOCRAT SO THE REPUBLICAN WINS.....otherwise we dont count your vote (presumably for the independent) so the Republican wins.

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The other problem is that........Kris Kobach doesnt actually have the power to force the Democratic party to do a damn thing.

Consider; How many times have you heard of a 3rd party candidate dropping out, then never actually being replace? All the freaking time.

Also have you ever voted Libertarian or Green or any other 3rd party for president? Did you also vote for that same parties candidate for State or National House and Senate? Probably not, because those candidates didnt exist.

Or how about an unopposed election? Hell I dont think my hometown has had a competitive election for Mayor in my lifetime.

Cause parties are free to run who they want for what ever position they want.....or dont want.

No one can compel them to run anyone for anything.

So this is basically Kris Kobach crying like a baby, with a nice side of fuck you to the troops.

Now what Kris Kobach DOES have the power to do is strip a party of its "major party" status if they fail to meet state standards for such.

Of course theirs a problem here too, namely the requirements in Kansas are about the GOVERNORS race, and say nothing about the Senate at all. And since polls suggest the Republican Governor may actually lose, the chances are 100% the Democrats will clear the 5% of the vote threshold needed to remain a major party in Kansas.

So yea basically this is all just a bunch of WAAAAH WAAAAH WAAAAH from Kobach, but it turns out even that is good news for Democrats. You see just like Senator Roberts and the Governor, Kobach himself is facing a tight race to keep his job. So the more whining he does about this, the more likely he is to annoy voters and lose his job.

At which point he will have plenty of time to sit at home and get the poopy out of his diaper.

I quit: an apology to the visionary Sarah Palin and the 2014 election.

Since 2008, Sarah Palin has been a household name, and the butt of an ungodly number of jokes.
Most of those jokes involve one of two things: shes a moron and she quit.

Now on the charge of her being stupid well:

BUT on making fun of her for quitting......well on that one we may owe Mrs. Palin an apology. In fact the last week suggests Mrs. Palin was merely a trendsetting ahead of her time.

See early last week Byron Mallott the Democratic Candidate for Governor of Alaska, basically the guy running for Palins old job, 1 uped her and quit before the election even happened.

Which means for the first time in the history of the State their wont be a Democrat on the ballot for Governor. 

And I bet your assuming the Democratic party of Alaska is FURIOUS right?

No actually they are freaking overjoyed.

You see, the Alaska Governors race was a 3 way race, and while the incumbent Republican was beating BOTH the democrat and the independent, polls suggested he would have a much harder time head to head with either one individually.

Oh and Mr. Mallott isnt out of the race, he was just announced as the candidate for Lt. Governor on the 3rd party ticket, basically ensuring his supporters wont vote Republican.

Which means Mr. Mallott may be on his way to successfully completing the very stunt that tragically ended the political life of the trailblazing Mrs, Palin, he may be about to win by quitting.

And a word of warning, this ISNT just another Alaska phenomenon. Its taking place ALL over the country.

It happened in Kansas this week too (sorta).

Democratic Senate candidate Chad Taylor announced HE too was quitting his 3 way senate race.
Now their is no "Lt. Senator" so clearly Taylor doesnt expect personal advancement from this.
But what he did expect was to totally fuck up the GOP's chances of taking the senate.

See most people believe the GOP will quite handily take the 6 seats they need to take the senate. In fact most polls only give the Democrats a 35-45% chance of retaining the senate (to be fair, this is similar to the 2012 numbers where Democrats actually gained seats)

The problem is that 55-65% chance of the GOP taking those 6 seats and the senate assumes the GOP wins all the seats they currently hold.

Kansas WAS one of their safest seats, despite having a very weak incumbent. The current senator was leading in the polls despite only drawing 36%, which is actually a winning margin in a close 3 way race.

But now, in a head to head race 36% is a landslide LOSS for the incumbent. You see the independent was a centrist, midway between the Democrat and the Republican, so its unlikely any of Taylors supporters would move to the Republican and not the Independent who is now the candidate most closely aliened with their views.

In fact the polls that have come out since Taylor quit have moved the Democratic chances of retaining the Senate up to 55-85% (no thats not a typo).

It seems that now needed 7th seat may be a "seat too far" for the republicans, especially with other should be safe seats (like McConnell's) more competitive then they should be.

EXCEPT it turns out the story has a twist......the person who oversees the election the Secretary of State of Kansas, Kris Kobach who is a Republican, is refusing to let the Democrat drop out claiming he legally can not drop out of the race.

Now in fairness, it does appear Kobach is legally correct. Kansas law only allows withdrawal from a race if the candidate would be unable to discharge the duties of the office. 

Now at the end of the day this may not matter much, even if his name is on the ballot, the law cant actually force Taylor to campaign or prevent him for campaigning for and endorsing the independent. But if his names on the ballot at all he will get some small number of votes....which could determine a close election.

But yet their is one more twist to go.  Taylor is claiming he actually talked to Kobach's office prior to announcing he was dropping out and got approval from the office to do it. Because of that, Taylor is indicating he may in fact sue.

If he does this could create a situation where the Republicans are actually in favor of the Democrats running, and the Democrats are in favor of not challenging the Republicans for the seat.

All in the name of quitting for that the entire party wins.

So yea like I said, I should stop making fun of Sarah Palin, it appears she was on to something when she quit........she was just too stupid to time it right or get an advantage out of it.     

A republican primary pre-mortem.

I know I know. your thinking the title is supposed to say POST mortem not PRE mortem, because you cant examine something untill its dead. to which I say, you clearly havnt been watching the unofficial republican primary for 2016.

I truly believe and have stated previously that many inside the Republican Establishment, namely RNC chairman Reince Prebus and House Republican Leadership (or at least the leadership team prior to Eric Cantors departure) actually think Hillary Clinton's quest to the presidency in 2016 is this close to a fait accompli.

One needs only look at Republican attacks in the last few months to see this. After all we've all been told the person 100% responsible for the fictional version of Benghazi that exists only in Republican's minds is Barack Obama.....I mean Hillary Clinton.......I mean Barack Obama......I mean Hillary Clinton.  Now ever since they started waffling on whos at fault, suddenly theyve gotten a lot less traction because no one takes them seriously. Yet they HAD to do it because they had to find SOMEWAY to attack President Elect in waiting, Hillary Clinton.

But I think the bigger indicator of the "Hillary effect" on the GOP is the fact that they basically started the 2016 Primary on the Republican side the hour after Mitt Romney lost in 2012. And the single factor they seem to use to pick candidates is who matches up well in polls with Hillary Clinton (I say matches up well because to the best of my knowledge I dont believe their has been a poll yet saying a republican can BEAT Hillary Clinton, of course to reasonable people a poll this far in advance doesnt mean shit and it totally worthless).

And because of that desire to get the "Hillary stopper" republicans have burned through a TON of now presidential ex-candidates.....because no one alive could ever withstand a two year primary.

Now in all fairness to Hillary Clinton, there is 1 republican ex-candidate who managed to implode without her help, former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell.

For those who havnt been paying attention, McDonnell was elected governor of Virginia in the 2009 governors race, one of the first two (new Jersey being the other) state wide races after Obama's election. His win (and Christie's in NJ) was seen as a major push back against the Obama Administration, and he was  even picked to give the GOP response to the State of the Union back in 2010.

And now its possible that as soon as tomorrow,  Bob McDonnell might be headed to jail, depending on how the jury (currently deliberating as this is written) finds him on his 13 counts of corruption, 11 of which basically have to do with him accepting bribes, and 2 of bank fraud.  His defense by the way, is that basically his wife was actually the one taking the bribes on his behalf, he never knew they were actually bribes so never did any special favors

So yea, my guess is even if he's found not guilty on all counts (which doesnt seem likely) his presidential aspirations are over, you cant blame your wife, call her corrupt, and throw her under the bus and have any real chance of surviving an election

-----------------------------------UPDATE: -------------------------------------

In the time it took me to write this the Jury has decided that Bob McDonnell is GUILTY of  11 of 13 corruption counts. 

Still no word if the ex-governor is going to jail, sentencing has been set for JANUARY of 2015, however at this point, no matter the sentence McDonnell is out of basically every presidential race for the rest of his life. So he is now 150% an ex-candidate.

----------------------------Original blog resumes below------------------------------

And theres a second possible candidate who also may be out of the race in a way that has NOTHING to do with Mrs. Clinton......Kentucky Senator Rand Paul.

Rand Paul currently has two problems, the first is Jesse Benton, his former senate 2010 campaign manager, and assumed campaign manager for any presidential campaign. Until late last week Mr. Benton worked on the reelection campaign of Senator Mitch McConnell, until he was forced to resign after evidence surfaced that he had previously illegally bribed and paid off people for endorsements in the 2012 presidential election.......when he was working for Rand Paul's father Ron Paul.

Now thats clearly not a crippling scandal for the younger Paul, hence why I still call him a "possible candidate", but its definitely one of a number of issues that might dog Paul should he run, and the only one that ventures beyond the realm of whats legal.  

But like I said, Mr. Benton is only one of Rand Paul's problems. The other is the state of Kentucky itself.

See used to be policy in every state that you could only run for one state wide office at a time, until LBJ got the rules changed in Texas so he could run for Senate and President together. Many if not most states followed suit. However one of the states the didnt is Kentucky. And Rand Paul is up for reelection to the Senate in 2016.

Which means he has to pick one, he can either try to keep his current job or try for the super long shot of being president. And most people always saw his father as the "protest candidate" no one expected him to win and I believe the younger paul is being seen the same way.....so basically everyone admits he wont be president any time soon

Thing is if he runs for president and loses, thats it, he's out of national politics for at least 4 years.....at which point he would have to decide once again to run for president or for what is currently Mitch McConnells senate seat, losing that, its another 2 years till he could challenge for his own seat again.

However should Mr. Paul skip this election (which I actually believe he will do), he CAN run for president in 2020 with no conflict, he wouldnt be on the ballot for Senate that year. In fact he could run for president without this conflict popping up again until 2028.

So I assume for mechanical reasons, Mr. Paul is effectively out of the race, until 2020.

Which brings us to the first ex-candidate Hillary Clinton can actually take some credit for: Senator Marco Rubio.

See at first Rubio seemed like the best choice to combat Clinton. Like her he had appeal to minority voters (latinos in his case) and even had an immigration policy plan that could help hit hillary were the former Secretary of state is likely the weakest, domestic policy, but that early attention to Rubio also brought early attention to his plan......which it turns out wasnt a plan in its current form that the GOP base could stomach and Rubio was forced to lead the charge to block his own bill.

In otherwords he was totally for it, before he was against it. And despite that fact that given the way congress works that CAN actually sometimes be a consistent logical and coherent position (it wasnt in this case) we all know how well that kind of stand can work. Just ask Current President Romney and Former President Kerry.......

Now had he not been elevated so early its possible Rubio could have gotten his plan passed, actually gotten Latino votes for the GOP and had a major accomplishment under his belt to point to in his campaign, but because Hillary had to be stopped yesterday, he was elevated prematurely, and is now basically totally out of the 2016 presidential race.....or possibly any presidential race which given his relative youth (he'd be 45 in 2016) could have been any race in the next 20-30 years.

Next up was Chris Christie. Now I'm tempted to put an asterik on Christie, in that I have always believed Christie was DOA. He had a scandal right when he first took office that involved him screwing up, costing his state billions of dollars, and then blaming a subordinate for his mistake and firing him, Despite Christie getting caught on tape making the mistake he lied about and said he didnt. He then proceeded numerous times to try to "redirect" money from other parts of NJ to cover up his mistake....and was repeatedly overruled by the supreme court of NJ.

And none of that got national attention, however given the narrative there (no accountability, seeming incompetence, attempted coverups) I think that would have ended his campaign had he ever run.

And thats before Bridgegate and the allegations "misuse" of hurricane sandy relief funds, which I believe in the public eye have basically ended his future aspirations, reguardless of what if anything hes actually found guilty of/corrupt, in the trial by public he already lost. Here's the thing though, had he not be elevated to "front runner" status by the GOP need to counter Hillary, theres a good chance those two scandals would have gotten as little attention as the first one I mentioned. So assuming he was cleared by the investigations he could have easily claimed they were "water under the bridge" (all puns intended) and at least attempted a run (although I still think he'd have been sunk when the 3 stories would have simultaneously come to national attention)

Next up was Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin. Like Christie before him, he was next to be [briefly] elevated to "front runner" status. Now Walker had made a name for himself because he survived a recall election after he basically destroyed unions in Wisconsin (although last I checked the legal fight over if that bill is actually law is still on going but most people dont know that). Now destroying unions is like crack to the GOP base, they went totally nuts in love with the guy, who then basically dropped off the map keeping his head down (a good move for anyone actually looking to run for president this early on). Then Christie imploded, and the GOP came a calling.

And for about a week Scott Walker was king of the world.....until he was suddenly revealed to have been under investigation by the FBI for electioneering and campaign finance fraud, an investigation that has already put 3 of his aids in prison.

Now at the end of the day it doesnt look like there's a good likelyhood Walker will be joining them, so this is another scandal that might have been totally missed by the national media and one Walker might have been able to explain away after the fact. But as the then current "front runner" of the non existent "shit we need to stop Hillary now" primary,  well the story got national media attention and now no matter what the outcome EVERYONE is going to want proof the governor isnt corrupt (this being the second investigation into that, and the 3rd if you count the possible illegality of the union busting). Meanwhile and perhaps much more problematic for Walker, one of his 3 aids in prison right now is gay, and his boyfriend was also indicted and sentenced (although not to jail) for corruption in this scandal. Now most Americans arnt going to give a shit that the gov has two gay aids who are dating, but the problem for Walker is the Republican Base he needs to win the real primary arnt most american's. So now thanks to his elevation they have a whole new disqualifying fact that they never would have known about had the media picked up on this after the fact.

Next up, Republican Governor Rick Perry. Now Perry kinda ko'ed himself the last time around with this line:     

But still, mostly out of desperation, some republicans still saw him as a front runner to counter Hillary....cause hey a Texas Republican Governor whose kinda an idiot, what could POSSIBLY go wrong.

And then, as great a candidate as Perry was, well it turns out he has something in common with fellow ex candidates Walker, Christie and McDonnell......he got indicted for a crime, specifically abuse of power as he punished only democratic government employees for drunk driving and not republican ones (although in an ironic twist his indictment is totally because of actions by republicans)

Now look not gonna lie of the 4 governors currently being investigated for crimes, Perry has the smallest chance of actually going to jail, most likely he will be acquitted and may actually be innocent, and no one would ever have heard about this at all if it wasnt for all the national attention.....

And to be honest he might have even survived even with the attention, EXCEPT he felt the need to address the issue to the national media, and said this to ABC news: "I’ve been indicted by that same body now for I think two counts, one of bribery, which I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t really understand the details here,"

Now that sounds fine, until you try to figure out how bribery fits into the scandal outline I listed above. Hint it doesnt. Because no one is actually accusing Rick Perry of bribery......but he seems to think they should be.

So yea, either Rick Perry's memory hasnt gotten any better in 4 years and may be getting worse, or hes so corrupt he forgot what corrupt things he hasnt been caught doing yet, or both. Either way, thats a fatal attachment to the preexisting narrative he's an idiot.

Which brings us to the "new" republican Front Runner, Mitt Romney. You remember Mitt Romney right? The guy who lost in 2012, the guys whose lose in 2012 kicked off this massive "we need a front runner NOW" crisis before he even gave his concession speech? Well he's apparently now the best person to solve the problem he created by losing.

or he's just the only one left.

I mean basically we havnt even hit the 2014 midterms yet and the republicans have already burned though an entire primaries worth of candidates trying to find some one ANYONE who can take the aura of inevitability off of Hillary Clinton.

By the time 2015 rolls around I'm actually not sure the GOP will have any remotely viable candidates left.   Consider that so far, in 10 months they have gone through 6.5 candidates (.5 being Rand Paul, cause as I said he COULD run and nothing massively disqualifying has happened to him yet, I just dont think he will), given that the primaries wont start for another 10-12 months, its likely more than a dozen possible GOP candidates will fall before the election even begins.

And its all for naught to. I dont expect Hillary to be the Democratic nominee. As much as republicans are loath to admit it shes actually a conservative fiscally, and is at least more conservative than most democrats on a number of social issues. On top of that her inability to give straight answers on simple questions like "greatest achievement as sec of state?" or "did you evolve on gay rights" dont bode well for her ability to take on those kinds of challenges that presumably the entire democratic field will throw at her. I mean dont forget we've been here before. Hillary was the President in waiting in 2008.....then a guy who sounded liberal (but wasnt) ran to her left, and tripped her up on simple questions like supporting the iraq war, and went on to be president. The blueprint for beating her is there and I have seen nothing to suggest hillary has done anything to address her deficiencies.

Which means when the GOP heads into the general election against whatever democrat actually beats Hillary Clinton, they will be doing so with a much weaker candidate than they ever needed to, because they have preemptively set pretty bad national narratives for their top tier candidates. Not only that, but I expect the GOP is going to get caught with their pants totally down, and will have spend every moment up to the 2016 Democratic Convention attacking Hillary and will have to do both opposition research and attempt a massive narrative switch to attack whoever wins the nomination, which makes it highly likely the attacks will be disjointed and likely to fail.

So while Hillary WONT be our next president whoever it is (I assumed Deval Patrick the gov of Massachusetts until he took himself out of the race last month by announcing he wasnt going to run, no idea anymore who it will be) is going to owe Mrs. Clinton one hell of a debt for clearing the field.

Granted they are also going to owe Rence Prebus one hell of a debt too, I mean its mostly been his belief in the inevitability of Clinton that's driving this whole thing, and he was already nice enough to remove the Republican primary debates from any network not named FOX, thereby ensuring no one will actually know who his candidate is.

Actually that removal is pretty much indicative of my point here. Prebus removed the GOP from the other networks because of rumors the other networks would be doing documentaries of Hillary Clinton.

They arnt, but by the time that had become known, Prebus' RNC had already passed the motion to preemptively officially bar republican participation in ANY debate (including general elections?) on a non fox network. All over something that never happened.

it seems if they know history of not, the GOP seems condemned to repeat the same mistake now.