(Bumped, because you know it drives the UL crazy. - promoted by Dean Barker)
It's UNH, but I'll take it. Our Carol is showing significant gains, and currently beating every credible challenger. She's ahead of Guinta by 5, ahead of Ashooh by 8, ahead of Mahoney by 9, and ahead of Bestani by 11.
But of course, the pollster can't help himself from punditry:
It's a dramatic change from April, when the poll showed Shea-Porter trailing every major Republican candidate.
"Carol Shea-Porter seems to have benefited from staying out of the limelight for the last several months," said Andy Smith of the UNH Survey Center.
That's completely wrong.
Carol's House work has been extremely active, and the false hit jobs run against her by her rivals and their media enablers have been non-stop in her district. What's been out of the limelight, mostly, is her actual campaigning, which is par for the course for her at this time of year. So I'm really looking forward to seeing what the numbers show when her campaign is in full gear.
Adding: What's so funny about the timing of this is that I literally have seven or eight different, and positive, items about CSP in my to-do box, and am so behind on them I was going to put them in a round-up tonight. But now I'm going to let these numbers sit for a while, and post the roundup tomorrow.
"Kuster again is largely unknown," Smith said. "Eighty-five percent of those polled don't know anything about her. They can't even say if they have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of her."
But the poll also indicates that while Bass has strong recognition, his unfavorable ratings have climbed sharply since February. Currently, 34 percent of those polled have a favorable opinion of him, but 34 percent have an unfavorable opinion, with 33 percent neutral or saying they don't know enough to say.
Bass' zero percent net favorability is down sharply from his 25 percent net favorability in February.
To recap:
1) Folks don't know Annie's name yet. That's where you come in.
2) Folks know six-termer Bass' name. Yet he still can't crack 50% in matchups.
3) The more folks remember the man behind the name Bass, they less they like him.
Over to you, DCCC!
Actually, there is one more thing to know about this poll when look at the .pdf: Swett's net favorability is down 1% to -5%, while Kuster's is +8%.
I've spent a lot of time on this blog talking about how we need to end business as usual in Washington. Earlier this week, we got another disheartening reminder of what business as usual has become. Rather than stand up for the voices of the people who define and deliver democracy in this country, the Republicans in Washington resorted to political obstructionism and caved to the special interests, once again. They successfully filibustered the DISCLOSE Act, which is a crucial first step in undoing the damage inflicted by the Citizens United Supreme Court case. It would have allowed us to start closing the door on corporations trying to buy our elections.
You know what? I wasn't surprised by their filibuster. I was expecting it. I'm sure you were too.
But I think everyone here can agree - it is one sorry state of affairs that leads us to expect special interest-funded obstructionism from our public servants.
"What I want to know, what I want to know, is what in the world so many Democrats are doing supporting the President's unilateral intervention in Iraq?
What I want to know, is what in the world so many Democrats are doing supporting tax cuts which have bankrupted this country and given us the largest deficit in the history of the United States?"
The great thing about primaries is that they give people choices. Those choices then inform the future of the party and its principles. If that choice hadn't been around in 2003 after my getting kicked in the stomach, I probably would've just declared a pox on both houses and walked away, not having had much foreknowledge in what the parties stood for.
(Update by Mike: Adding Vid embed) The speech that motivated me to pay attention and get involved. Goosebumps start at the 30 second mark.
In New Hampshire, 36 percent of the (Bush) tax cut went to the top 1 percent of earners, those with an income of $368,000 or more, according to a 2001 analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal public policy organization. Those taxpayers received an average tax cut of $58,179, while taxpayers with an income of $41,300 - the average of the middle 20 percent of incomes - saved $712, according to the report.
Remove the deeper orange band, and imagine what our country could have been like had Democrats had done a better job being an opposition party and prevented Bush from this massive redistribution of wealth:
We're still paying for the days when Democrats thought winning meant being Republican Lite.
She's smart, she's connected, but she has never run for statewide office before. She is liked by the Republican establishment, and has worked as AG for both Republican Governor Craig Benson, and Democratic Governor John Lynch.
She may not be a professional politician, and neither is Palin (wink, nod.) But they have something many of their male counterparts may not. They are outsiders. They have a different perspective. Sotomayor put it on the record: a perspective different than that of white males.
Like Obama, they don't have to talk the talk of change. They are change.
"Ayotte did not need Palin's endorsement to secure the nomination," PPP President Dean Debnam said in a statement. "With over 50 percent of New Hampshire voters less likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by Palin, Ayotte may pay for the former Alaska governor's endorsement during the general election."
There was data-driven evidence from 2008 that Sarah Palin was a drag on the New Hampshire ticket, but the Ayotte campaign appears not to have figured that out.
Adding: have you noticed that every homunculus-esque thing surrounding Vitter has to do with women? From the prostitutes all the way down to this. What's up with that?
While I do appreciate how viral and national the news is of what a drag Palin is on a ticket in New Hampshire, there is a simple answer to that question.
Sure, she'll probably get creamed here by Romney. But that didn't stop an equally incompetent and pernicious former governor from winning the White House and ruining the country.
New Hampshire again ranks No. 1 nationally in an annual survey on children's well-being.
...In composite rankings for all indicators, New Hampshire ranked highest, as it has in eight of the last nine years. This year, it was followed by Minnesota and Vermont. Mississippi ranked last.
"That's an incredible record, and it says a lot about how well kids fare in this state," said Ellen Fineberg, president of the Children's Alliance of New Hampshire, a nonprofit group that does research on children in the state.
Whatever your policy or political disagreements are with Governor Lynch (I sure have some), there is no question he has been a far superior steward of this state than the days of Craig Benson.
I'm glad they did, because I was surprised, when researching my "War" post, to hear her on NH Outlook say the following after her support for the Iraq war, and I was interested in learning more.
"I don't favor a rollback of those tax cuts. You know, we're possibly still in a recession or in a very weak recovery, and I think that increasing taxes is the wrong thing to do at a time of recession. We want to stimulate the economy."
We are in a much deeper recession now than we were in 2002, but Swett now says she would repeal the cuts on those making over $250,000. I don't understand the difference in approach, if the idea in 2002 behind preserving the cuts was for economic stimulation.
But I'm going to leave the bigger issue of the Bush tax cuts aside for the moment and focus on a related one that resulted from yesterday's news.
Target Corp. Tuesday defended the use of its new freedom to spend money on political campaigns as employees and gay organizations criticized a $150,000 donation that will help a Minnesota GOP gubernatorial candidate who opposes gay marriage.
But I'm done shopping there now. Which is a shame, because in the rare cases now and then when circumstances have forced me to resort to a big box store, I've always chosen Target.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is expanding its list of ad reservations to 60 seats, bringing the total amount of money it plans to spend on races this fall to more than $49 million, according to a senior Democratic official.
...Here is the full list of seats in the DCCC's new set of reservations: Arkansas's 1st District, Arkansas's 2nd District, Delaware At-Large, Florida's 25th District, Hawaii's 1st District, Illinois's 10th District, Indiana's 8th District, Louisiana's 2nd District, Massachusetts's 10th District, Maryland's 1st District, Michigan's 1st District, New Hampshire's 1st District, New Hampshire's 2nd District, Oregon's 5th District, Pennsylvania's 7th District, Pennsylvania's 15th District, Tennessee's 8th District, Washington's 3rd District, Wisconsin's 7th District, and West Virginia's 1st District.
How many clickthroughs did Clickitico get during that two or three day non-story? How will the UL headline this one? So many questions.
Most of the movement both in feelings about Ayotte and in the horse race has come with moderate voters. Moderates make up the largest bloc of the New Hampshire electorate at 47%, and Hodes' lead with them has expanded from just 8 points at 47-39 in April to now 21 points at 51-30. Ayotte's favorability with them has gone from +5 at 32/27 to -19 at 27/46.
The Palin endorsement may well be playing a role in this. 51% of voters in the state say they're less likely to back a Palin endorsed candidate to only 26% who say that support would make them more inclined to vote for someone. Among moderates that widens to 65% who say a Palin endorsement would turn them off to 14% who it would make more supportive.
What's so LOL funny is how obvious this is to anyone with even a casual acquaintance of the reaction to Palin in New Hampshire in 2008. But Ayotte campaign manager Brooks Kochvar is from the Michelle Bachmann and Club for Growth wings of the GOP, so they had to go ahead and spend lots of time seeking out the endorsement only to find out the hard way it would be an albatross.
