Sen. Patty Murray’s job approval rating ticked up slightly for the second straight month in SurveyUSA’s latest tracking poll, putting her in positive territory, 47-46, for the first time since January. Both Murray and Sen. Maria Cantwell saw their approval ratings plummet between January and March as the health care debate peaked, and both continue to recover, suggesting the pendulum may have started swinging back in their direction.
It is interesting to note that much of Sen. Murray’s sudden collapse came at the hands of self-described “liberal” and “Democratic” voters. Liberal approval has now climbed back to January levels, while Democratic approval as a whole is still languishing at 66%.
It is hard to imagine disaffected voters from either of these groups rallying behind Dino Rossi in November, and with a number of controversial initiatives on the ballot, a Republican voter enthusiasm advantage may not translate to that much of a turnout advantage, at least here in Washington state.
If Rossi declares tomorrow it’s buh-bye-bye, Patty!
Me: “She has the IQ of a carrot.”
Patty:”Not true! I’m twice as smart as a carrot!”
[Deleted — see HA Comment Policy]
One of my favorite political memories is watching the hysterical joy of the right-wing over their imminent take-down of Patty Murray in the last go around. They had a high-profile challenger, a positive political environment, and video (VIDEO!) of Sen. Murray explaining to a group of high school kids that the reason fundamentalist groups in the Middle East get so much popular support is that they do a lot of community work and don’t just throw bombs around.
By the end of the campaign, Neathercutt was reduced to running a blooper reel for a campaign commercial just so everyone did not think he was purely evil. And watching all the right-wing activists have to confront the fact that they just got absolutely creamed by someone they keep calling stupid was just priceless.
Perhaps 2010 is different. Maybe nominating Rossi is political gold. Maybe he will be able to ride a stealth campaign that will hide the right-wing positions that are needed to get support from the ever more conservative Republican – prefers GOP? – party. Maybe he will somehow be able to convince the press that asking about national questions such as birth control, abortion and torturing the hell out of dark-skin people if they look at you funny really has no place in a campaign for US Senate.
Or maybe not.
1. John425 spews:
No, no John425–
Patty sez “What kind of carrot?”
It amuses me to no end that the GOP party continues to beat the same, tired old horse and hope people forget that that horse is the problem and not part of the solution. They all point and scream “LOOK, FAMILY VALUES, THINK OF THE CHILDEREN!” while making sure that the revenue stream continues to feed the worst of them, and they aren’t ever held responsible for the actions they take.
Rossi’s entire platform is based on the fraudsters and flim-flam professionals that make up the Banking industry, the personal loan-shark industry and the mass-production housing industry.
Rossi is a hack. He doesn’t even try to hide the fact of his ties to organized crime fronts such as the BIAW and the national Chamber of Commerce, both being organizations that actively oppose regulations that are designed to prevent fraud, waste and abuse by unscrupulous buisinesses. The law, according to Dino Rossi, should never apply to any organization seeking to make a profit.
That all profit and buisiness should never be held accountable to the citizenry for any crimes they may commit, being the fact that buisiness cannot survive in this country without engaging in tactics that defraud and mislead people. Honest buisinesspeople cannot compete with dishonest buisinesspeople, simply because the dishonest ones tend to make a lot more money and are able to provide more funding to political candidates during a campaign. They therefore engage “freindly” political candidates who would allow them to continue their buisiness methods, no matter how unethical or criminal in nature. No matter how many people get hurt by such methods.
Its all good right? So long as the so-called “free” market is allowed to continue unfettered by the rule of law, nothing is forbidden.
Rossi, being an experienced fraudster, cannot resist the call of the bigger money, the highest bidder and so he attracts the most easily duped sections of the voting citizens who cannot, or actively refuse to examine the backgrounds of the people running slickest and most expensively run political campaigns. This is why such organizations oppose public education and free access to information. Educated people tend to ask disconcerting questions, and snoop around where they should not be.
People who do look, certainly would not like what they see and demand the laws that do exist be enforced. Rossi opposes such enforcement, and has said so many times.
Rossi will run multimillion-dollar ad campaigns on every TV channel, he’ll dress nice, keep his hair pristine, his $4000 suits immaculately pressed and use all the codewords that the crooks, liars and flim-flam artists want to hear. His will be the first political campaign to depend on the supreme courts ruling on corporate campaign money to candidates.
It’s all about the money, and if you have money, you have the power to do anything you want to. If he somehow wins, he’ll be the man inside to make sure that his financial backers are not held accountable to the law, because there would be no laws that would adversly affect them. Certainly a conservatives paradise.
I wonder how much money he’s getting from BP and Westinghouse? Not to mention the local towing company and strip-club owners. I’m sure there are good reasons why that fat old bastard has Rossi stickers on his Cadillac and in the front window of his office on Lake City Way. The old Pennsyltucky Klansman I used to work with thinks the man is practically Jesus returned to save buisiness from all those nasty laws that people want to keep themselves from being ripped off, killed or injured. It’s their own personal responsibility to prevent such occurrences, they should be more careful who they do buisiness with.
Right?
@2 ROTFLMAO
Now THAT is funny! “all the politicians Goldy told you to vote for are messing up badly”. Were you ALIVE during the last 8 years of the last Republican administration we had? You think Patty Murray or Obama are ‘messing up’? Compared the the insanely incompetent and corrupt last administration, by COMPARISON these folks seems golden. They ain’t perfect, but compared to the Republican total fail group that ran the country into the ground from 2000-2008, this ain’t bad.
Republicans don’t win with high turnout–they win by suppressing turnout. Rossi is 3-time toast.
# 5: On the radio this morning, they mentioned that the last Senate campaign (Cantwell/McGavick) spent $27 million combined, and this one was expected to be considerably higher.
With $6M plus already in hand, Murray is about one-third of the way she needs to go to keep up with the advertising war. But Rossi is in considerably worse shape, unless he’s got corporate or “independent” money already lined up that hasn’t been made public.
If so, Rossi might be courting another lawsuit like he faced at the end of the last election, where he tried to hide corporate & interest group donations to his foundation on the presumption that as long as he didn’t actually declare his candidacy, he wasn’t subject to public disclosure laws.
Which is yet another reason to vote against Rossi – he doesn’t want anyone to know who’s really pulling his strings, and he wants his opponants to be subject to the campaign financing rules, but avoid them for himself. We can only imagine what other shenanigans he would engage in if actually elected to the Senate.
If Rossi runs I think it is a huge mistake for his career. He will lose and lose worse than he did in 2008 against Gregoire.
At that point, he will become a three time loser and, having screwed the state state Republican Party by waiting so long to declare, he will lose the 2012 GOP nomination for Governor to McKenna. He may not even run in 2012, depending on how badly he is beaten.
May Rossi is expected some corporation to exert person hood and spend money like water to get get Rossi elected?
rhp @8,
It takes money to raise money, so if you’re looking at the total dollars spent column, Murray is much more than a third of the way there, having raised over $10 million by the end of March. Expect her to raise maybe another $5 to $7 million through the end of the campaign. And that’s not counting independent expenditures.
I can only assume Rossi is counting on big IE’s to keep him dollar competitive, but if he is, all that money is coming in from out of state.
Rossi’s qualifications for the U.S. Senate:
(1) Lost first election.
(2) Won second election, but quit before finishing term of office.
(3) Ran twice for governor and lost.
(4) Rossi’s mentor in real-estae was convicted of crimes related to his real estate transactions.
(5) Rossi’s most recent real estate ventures have involved profiting off the misery of others – buying a foreclosed apartment/condo building, and then being paid to headline a seminar encouraging others to profit off foreclosed real estate.
(6) Rossi’s other career – as a founding investor in a small bank – is also tarnished by the fact that it failed and was taken over by the FDIC at taxpayer expense.
I’ve heard people say that Rossi knows how to work a room and make personal connections with his supporters, which they allege makes him a great candidate. That might be true, but it doesn’t translate over the television, where the great majority of voters make their decisions. And since Rossi decided not to mingle with average voters in the last election (using security to ensure he had only a pre-screened, friendly crowd), he negated his only advantage.
Rossi’s schtick is going to be the deficit and how irresponsible Patty was for supporting those pesky U.S. veterans the way she does. Oh wait…
@9) What career?
He doesn’t have a future. He’s already lost the nomination to McKenna, because a lot of his former supporters have given up on his Governor prospects and hitched their wagon to McKenna already.
Rossi has no future as a gubernatorial candidate, and won’t win the Senate seat.
I’m thinking that he negotiated a good consolation prize in exchange for him agreeing to run against Murray. That is what the holdup was. Rossi: “What’s in it for me if I lose”?
That question apparently has been answered to Rossi’s satisfaction.
Does anyone really think this guy gives a shit about serving the public? Dino Rossi does what is in Dino Rossi’s best interests. That’s how Republican’s roll. Altruism is for losers.
@ #8 RHP
Certainly he would engage in manufacturing laws that insure the continuing availability of foreclosed property to the marketeers he represents. It’s easy to word laws in such a way as to make sure that people who buy houses or set up businesses with loans from financial institutions cannot ever fully comply with the full obligations of the contract, especially when those contracts are fraudulent in favor of the contractor.
The GOP has specialized in re-engineering the relevant legal structure to favor the largest financial institutions, and make it nearly impossible for the ordinary citizen to have laws enforced in their favor without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars that they don’t have. Rossi would only serve the people and companies that can hire the legal staff to maintain the loopholes in the laws that they write for themselves to present to Congress for rubber stamping. Too many Congresscreatures are out there falling all over each other to approve such laws, and they have the propaganda machines to support them. After all, money is all that is important, and the more money you have, the more important you are. If you’re broke, you can fuck off.
When you have the law on your side, you can do anything you want, even if it fucks people over.
Especially so, in the case of mortgages and small business loans. I can hardly wait for Sarah’s endorsement of this fool.
Rossi cannot win.
1. He will not outraise Murray by a long shot, and for him to even compete with the Senator he would need to significantly outraise her.
2. He will not get any money from the national Republican Senate Campaign, which, as of now has the same amount as it’s Democratic counterpart. There are about a dozen Senate races much more competitive than this one. Both parties will spend money in those first.
(PS KY is setting up to be a drain of resources for the GOP. Thank you Rand Paul! And we just got the better candidate in PA)
3. Her positions are more in line with the state than his. Polling shows that health care reform is popular here. As a Senate candidate he will now have to discuss issues that he has avoided in the past, like abortion.
4. She already has key endorsements from industries and companies that have supported Rossi in the past.
5. The banking industry and big business is not very popular right now, even amongst the Tea Partiers. The fact that his company makes money off of foreclosures will only hurt him more.
6. Democratic turnout will be good in WA State, especially if the marijuana legalization and the Bill Gates Sr income tax initiatives make it to the ballot. Plus, WA is now almost all vote by mail.
7. Labor groups will spend big defeating any Tim Eyman initiatives that make it to the ballot. This will also help Murray.
8. Murray has been a fighter for agriculture and veterans.
9. WA Sate is becoming more progressive, not less.
Last year, in an off year election, we voted for the first time to defeat a Tim Eyman anti tax initiative. We also became the first state to vote to increase the rights that gay and lesbian couples have.
I just don’t see us going more conservative this year.
10. Even though this is supposedly an “anti incumbent” year, most incumbents will win. Those that don’t will be those from swing states and those who piss off enough of their base.
Utah’s Bennet lost in the GOP primary because he was seen as not being conservative enough for the tea baggers. PA’s Specter lost because he was a Republican until a year ago. AR’s Lincoln is in a primary battle mostly because of her votes against health care reform and because she is seen as being too conservative to her base.
That’s not going to happen here. While some Democrats are frustrated by how slow DC changes, we are mostly happy with Senator Murray.
11. The only way Rossi wins is if we take it for granted that he cannot.
Murray is a fighter and will not let him gain any momentum.
And I will be donating money to her campaign the day Rossi announces. I will also start volunteering immediately.
I saw siomething that pissed me off this morning. CNN ran the Washington Poll results that show Paty up 44-40 over Rossi (with a 3.9% MoE), and the idiot announcer said what so many of them do: “Of course, because the the margin of error, they are in a statistical tie.”
No, they’re not.
There is about a 95% probability that they are exactly where the poll put them, at 44% Murray v. 40% Rossi. Around each of those numbers is a bell curve if decreasing probabilities for numbers further away from those most probable values. The possibility that they are at 42%-42% is low. I don’t have the computational tools nor do I remember enough of my statistics training (although I have a degree in mathematics) to work out the exact numbers, but I am estimating that probability that BOTH of them are 2 percentage points away (in the proper direction as opposed to 46% Murray/38% Rossi) to be something like 5% or less.
People, that’s not a statistical tie.
oh yes the “liberals” are all back on the bus now that there is someone to hate on the other side of the aisle. and think of all the blog posts!! see e.g. sarge @14
Rossi still has to get through the primary. I’m waiting for him to run right. Already he’s claiming that the mighty USA is no better off than puny, mismanaged Greece.
Why does Dino Rossi hate America?
@19
True, he will have to spend some of his $0 to take out Diddier. If Rossi gets only 70% or less it will look bad for him.
18 not
Actaully, it has nothing to do with liberalism. We just don’t like smarmy self-serving liars like Dino Rossi.
And the GOP loves losers, so I’m happy for them getting what they want. Morans.
rossi/murray will vote to fund war. rossi/murray will approve corporate enablers like ken salazar. rossi/murray will champion corporate interests of boeing & m-soft in the name of “jobs.” what’s the difference really?
@ 19 DL
He doesn’t hate America, he loves it. He and his friends can do things here that would get them long prison sentences and huge fines in most other civilized countries.
Thats why he wants the office. In such a position, he can make sure that the practices can continue, and his friends stay happy and fat.
The Dems are DOWN 8% in the Generic Congressional Polls.
Oba-Mao is -20 in the Strong Approval vs. Disapproval poll.
Dems nationwide are in big trouble in virtually every swing District they now control plus others they should easily win…but hey, don’t worry. Light up another bowlful and suck on it while the Tea Party kicks your lazy, shiftless asses!!
Mocking & ridiculing the Tea Party by Oba-Mao and his Henchmen will turn out to be the single dumbest move of all-time in politics.
Instead of engage them in a discussion, Oba-Mao arrogantly used his BULLY PULPIT to ridicule.
That has NEVER worked well folks.
It always backfires.
And it will again.
The e-mails I get from all around the Country are astounding.
The Tea Party is highly charged.
The Republican Party is wisely embracing and understanding some of the old deadwood must leave. I hope McCain loses to Hayworth.
Primaries are the time to cleanse the genepool for both party’s.
Funny how Rossi and other Republicans are trying to use the deficit to scare voters into voting for them.
These were the same guys who took a balanced budget in 2000 (and it took a LONG time to get it that way), and then started to spend money like drunken sailors on liberty who had just inherited the old man’s estate. First they gave away lots of money to their friends (tax cuts for the wealthy). Then they paid ridiculous prices to buy things they didn’t need from the friendly salesmen (like the Iraq war), and refused to write it down in their checkbook (off-budget spending). Then they ignored the basic fundamentals of running a business, and when things started to collapse (FEMA after Katrina, the real estate markets, then wall street, then banking), they threw money at the problems as fast as they could, spending far more than what it would have cost simply to work the problems in advance.
Now they finally think the deficit is a problem. It’s like the arsonist complaining that it cost too much to fight a fire, so they should have let the building burn down.
@ 24
You took a lot of acid back in the 70’s didn’t you.
Way too much methinks.
Oh and it looks like in CT we just got the weaker opponent, the CEO of the World Wrestling Federation.
http://www.ctmirror.org/story/.....s-drop-out
I know the Republican Party likes candidates who can fund their own races, but I just don’t see multi millionaires doing well in this type of economic climate, with Wall Street universally hated.
Awesome!
The Tea Party is against the Civil Rights Act. The Tea Party is against DADT repeal even though the 78% of the people (you know, the vast majority that constitutes the “not really Real Americans”) support the repeal.
Cynical reads too much Rasmussen; so much so that he can’t see reality any more.
Ummm, PassionateJus, have you forgotten about the gift (NOT) bestowed upon us by Sam Reed? If Rossi gets 70% in the primary, then the other 30% would be shared by Diddier, Benton, Salazar, Akers, …, and Patty Murray. It’s that goddam “top two” primary.
What Rossi needs to do is come in second behind Patty. Perhaps that’s what you meant to say. Perhaps you were actually suggesting that Rossi needs to take 70% of the non-Patty vote in the primary.
I disagree with that thought. He’ll be satisfied coming in second, no matter how small the margin over the other whackos. If it’s close, he can always say it’s because he had so little time to get his message out, whereas the others have been campaigning for months and months.
Finishing second will get him to the November ballot, where he’ll lose. Then again, “he’ll lose” describes whichever wingnut/teabagger/prefers GOP candidate comes in second in the primary.
The other thing Rossi needs to do is encourage all of the crazies to stay on the primary ballot. The more the merrier for Dino, since that will scatter the vote count.
Hey, the internals of that Survey USA approval poll looks really good for Patty. For example, her approval/disapproval ratings among those 50-64 are 63%/35%, and among those 65 and older, 64%/34%. Those are solid voting blocs; they turn out and they vote.
She’s at -7% with self-described “Independents,” but I think that’s colored these days by Republicans who are ashamed of the GOP legacy 2001-2009, and who thus call themselves “independent” when they’re really not…
You really believe he ever could see it?
One of the KLOWN’s crowning moments was when he dropped all kinds of hints here in the comment threads about the evidence BIAW and the Republicans had gathered about illegal voting back in 2004.
That silly balloon deflated in a micro-instant when it got to trial.
But did that deter him? The WHOLE WEEK before Bridges’ decision he crowed like a gibbering idiot at (un)SP, “Goldstein’s going down! Goldstein’s going down!”.. i.e. Goldy. Look it up. It’s hilarious..
At least he had the grace to call himself “Mr. Irrelevant” after that.
LA Times reports construction gains:
That’s all we needed to have happen. In 2010, the Red Wave will be just the same old Red Whine.
Good god, I agree with Cynical, who wrote:
That would certainly make it more likely that the Senator sworn in in January 2011 would be named Rodney Glassman (D-AZ).
31 YLB
They love to do that. I remember that during the late 1990s I ran into (in the meaphorical sense in politics fora) many, MANY Republicans who repeatedly warned darkly of absolutely devastating revelations of rock-solid evidence that would fry Bill Clinton once and for all that were “just about to come out.” Yep, that’s stuff’s gonna come out any day now.
waiting…
34 – Heh. Yeah I guess that hot air keeps them going.
# 34: Even in October 2008, it was either Rove or Cheney (I forget which ) who was promising Republican base/contributors that there was a “November Suprise” just around the corner which would seal the deal for McCain.
I’m guessing he was just trying to make sure the money kept flowing into the Republican “system”. Nobody wants to risk money or effort on a long shot when the race is just about over and the long shot is far back in the pack.
@1 & @4
That’s Senator Carrot to the likes of you.
Kind of funny how Sen. Murray’s political opponents keep underestimating her and thinking her last political success must have been some sort of fluke.
RE: Chris Stefans “Senator Carrot”. Kinda like ventriloquist Jeff Dunham’s “Jalapeno on a stick”. I wonder who does the voice for Senator Carrot on a stick?