John Chancellor, Dan Rather and Oreo

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What do John Chancellor, Dan Rather and our own Oreo have in common? Take a look:

In 1964, NBC reporter John Chancellor was ejected from the floor of the 1964 Republican Convention:

Senator Barry Goldwater's conservative supporters were increasingly unfriendly to television reporters, and during a demonstration by delegates, guards ejected Mr. Chancellor for blocking the aisles.

"I've been promised bail, ladies and gentlemen, by my office," he said on the air. His sign-off was, "This is John Chancellor, somewhere in custody." - NY Times.

In 1968, Dan Rather was essentially assaulted on the floor of the 1968 Democratic Convention.

Some classic lines:
Rather: "Unless you intend to arrest me, don't push me"
Walter Cronkite: "I think we got a bunch of thugs here, Dan"

And today, our own Oreo, attending a media briefing at Invesco Field, was rudely escorted by an security guard out of the building. Well, actually, he wasn't rudely escorted anywhere. He had wandered to an entrance he wasn't supposed to be at, was scolded for being in the wrong place, and directed to the proper entrance.

But hey, that's good enough for us. Chancellor, Rather, and Oreo. Just some intrepid reporters trying to do a thankless job in the face of overbearing security. Or something like that...

Senate Forecast - July 31 - Baked Alaska II

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DCW Senate Forecast: 56.1 (up from 55.9). More Alaska movement, from EV.Com, CQ and Crystal Ball. The Forecast has broken 56 for the first time!

The DCW Senate Forecast is an average of the projections of the Democratic held seats in the 2009 Senate. (We count Sanders and Lieberman as Democrats in the Senate Forecast. Feel free to subtract one if you so desire!) A history of the Forecast going back to November 2006 is at bottom and in the left sidebar.

For analysis of the races, be sure to check out the latest installment of Sunday with the Senators.

Be sure to also check out our Presidential Forecast and our House Forecast.

The following seats are unanimous strong and are not shown in the table below (We do show VA as it is a pickup):

Solid Democrat: AR (Pryor), DE (Biden), IA (Harkin). IL (Durbin), MA (Kerry), MI (Levin), MT (Baucus), RI (Reed), SD (Johnson), WV (Rockefeller)
Solid Republican: AL (Sessions), ID (Open), KS (Roberts), MS (Cochrane), NE (Open), OK (Inhofe), SC (Graham), TN (Alexander), TX (Cornyn), WY (Barraso), WY (Enzi)

The sources are sorted by each sources Senate Projection:

DemConWatch Senate Forecast
State	Current	EV .com	538 .com	Crystal Ball	Cook	CQ	Open Left	SSP	Roth	....
Date		7/31.	7/28.	7/29.	7/31.	7/31.	7/29.	7/29.	7/30.
Dem-Strong		13	15	12	12	12	13	13	12
Dem-Lean		4	2	5	3	5	4	3	2
Tossup		2	1	1	5	1	0	1	4
Rep-Lean		4	3	4	2	3	4	4	2
Rep-Strong		12	14	13	13	14	14	14	15
Dem '08 Projection		18	18	17	17	17	17	17	16
Dem '10/'12 Seats		39	39	39	39	39	39	39	39
Dem Senate Projection		57	57	56	56	56	56	56	55
Dem-Gain		6	6	5	5	5	5	5	4
AK (Stevens)	R	DL	DL	DL	DL	DL	DL	T	T
CO (Open)	R	DL	DL	DL	T	DL	DL	DL	T
GA (Chambliss)	R	RL	R	R	R	R	R	R	R
KY (McConnell)	R	RL	RL	R	R	R	RL	R	R
LA (Landrieu)	D	DL	D	DL	DL	DL	DL	DL	T
ME (Collins)	R	RL	R	RL	RL	RL	R	R	R
MN (Coleman)	R	RL	R	RL	T	RL	RL	RL	T
MS (Wicker)	R	T	T	T	T	T	RL	RL	RL
NC (Dole)	R	R	R	RL	RL	R	R	RL	R
NH (Sununu)	R	D	D	DL	T	DL	D	DL	DL
NJ (Lautenberg)	D	DL	D	D	D	D	DL	D	D
NM (Open)	R	D	D	DL	DL	DL	D	D	DL
OR (Smith)	R	T	RL	RL	T	RL	RL	RL	RL
VA (Open)	R	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	D

Here are the seats that span 3 categories:

• KY (McConnell): EV.Com has it as a Tossup
• LA (Landrieu): 1 at Dem-Strong, 2 at Tossup
• MN : 538 at Rep-Strong.
  
• NH (Sununu): Shaheen has opened up a 14 point lead in 2 straight polls, but Sununu has a big money advantage.
  

The Senate Projection for each source gives Democrats 1.0 seats in a state that is projected solid for the Democrat (or seats that are not up for reelection this cycle), 0.8 seats for a Democrat-Lean, 0.5 seats for a a Tossup, 0.2 seats for a Republican-Lean, and obviously 0 seats for a solid Republican seat or a Republican seat not up for reelection this cycle.

The DemConWatch Denver Daisy Challenge

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We wrote about the NY Times story which declared that the Denver Daisy was extremely hard to grow and was basically an embarrassment for the town and Mayor Hickenlooper.

The plight of the yellow flower was raised at a city meeting this week by municipal officials who said their own efforts to grow the flower had failed miserably.

“It’s like having a cake, and you can’t light the candles,” Councilman Charlie Brown said. “I’ve been a gardener for 40 years, and all I’ve got is a bare spot.”

After a comment by Steve Jones from the Denver Marketing Office refuting the daisy's demise we've decided to try our hand at gardening.

From Wash Park to the 16th Street Mall, almost 7,000 Denver Daisies are blooming in parks throughout the city. Some residents have found the germination process difficult, but the daisy is getting a lot of bad press that is, for the most part, based on the opinion and experience of one person rather than factual data.

And he also gave us some gardening tips:

The critical thing is to keep the soil moist throughout the germination process. That doesn't mean to make it into mud or a soup. It does mean, however, that you can't let the soil go bone-dry in the 100-degree Denver heat one day and not expect it to wipe out the seed. Some gardeners I know have started the seeds in small pots and then transferred the seedlings into the ground. I'm not a gardener, but they've told me that's a normal means of growing from seed.

Over the coming weeks we will do some Mythbusting of our own. Is the Denver Daisy a Dud?
Mr. Jones is going to send us some seeds and we're going to work our magic. Stay tuned!

And in case you're wondering, the picture above is from Denver's beautiful Washington Park (Wash Park for us locals). Click on the image to see it in full size.

NBC to broadcast all 4 nights of the convention

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The last few conventions the broadcast networks have been covering just 3 nights of each convention. NBC has always has the best excuse, saying viewers could always watch full coverage on MSNBC. Well, NBC has stepped up (at least a little) to its public responsibility, and will broadcast an hour all 4 nights:

"NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams leads the network's four nights of coverage from each convention, while MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews anchor coverage on cable. Tom Brokaw, who has covered every presidential election since 1968, will contribute unparalleled reporting and analysis on both the NBC network and on MSNBC throughout both conventions.

and in a nice touch

Luke Russert joins NBC News in his first assignment for Decision 2008 as correspondent at large for the conventions, focusing on youth issues. Luke Russert recently graduated from Boston College with a double major in History and Communications. Since March of 2006, he has co-hosted the critically acclaimed sports radio talk show "60/20 Sports" with political pundit James Carville on XM Satellite Radio. On "60/20 Sports" he has interviewed the likes of former President Clinton, former President George Bush, Bill Russell, Cal Ripken Jr. and Lance Armstrong. Luke is the son of the late Tim Russert and of Vanity Fair writer Maureen Orth.

It will be interesting to see if the two other major broadcast news networks, ABC and CBS, follow NBC's lead.

DNC Orientation Video Courtesy of Westword

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In advance of next month's Democratic National Convention, Adam Cayton-Holland, Westword's resident fake drunk cowboy, and his friends at Wrist Deep Productions, have put together a handy DNC Orientation Video. It should probably used by the city to help make conventioneers, GOP spies, and business-savvy strippers feel welcome.

Are You Excited?

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Earlier this week, Gallup came out with two polls that seemingly contradicted one another. In the poll of "registered voters", Obama came out ahead, and in the poll of "likely voters", McCain came out ahead.

The difference between a registered voter and a likely voter is the poll respondent's answer to the question: "Are you planning on voting in November?" or some variation of that question. If someone says "YES! I wouldn't miss it. This is the most important thing I'm going to do this year", they're a likely voter. OK, that's over the top: the truth is, it's multiple choice: some variation of likely, unlikely, unsure. Sometimes the poll will then push for a lean to likely or unlikely.

Then, the pollster weights the responses in extrapolating the polls out. They give less weight to people in certain demographics who tend not to vote. Therefore, since young people vote at a lower percentage than other age groups, the pollsters often consider that they won't necessarily vote in November.

In one of the NY Times op-ed pieces yesterday, they talked about the potential affect of third party candidates on the November 2008 outcome.

The NY Times raised an interesting point yesterday. They talked in an op-ed piece about the potential effect of third party candidates on the November outcome. One of the factors that they looked at in terms of whether actual voters stick with their candidate relates to the enthusiasm of a candidate's supporters.

I believe that the single thing that will turn "registered voters" into "likely voters" is enthusiasm. I've never actually seen any research on this point, but intuitively, it makes logical sense.

The Times looked at the enthusiasm gap over the last three elections.
If you look at the table, you'll see that no matter what the poll number, the person with the higher enthusiasm "quotient" won the election over the last three cycles. So, two poll questions:

Online Surveys & Market Research

Online Surveys & Market Research

Remember Katherine Harris?

WE'VE MOVED! Democratic Convention Watch is now at http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com

Sure you do. After she was done with the statewide Presidential vote, she decided to run for Congress, and ended up representing the Florida-13th for two terms.

In 2006, she decided to run for the Senate, and Vern Buchanan (R) mostly self-financed a run against Christine Jennings (D). He “won” by 369 votes. There was an issue of 18,000 “missing” votes, a recount, court cases, and finally a finding that allowed Buchanan to keep the seat.

The 2006 Jennings-Buchanan election actually had input to the 2008 primary season. You may recall that Florida decided to hold their primary a little before the proposed DNC date. The legislation passed the Florida Legislature with support from Florida Democrats. One of the major reasons was that the full bill also included provisions to ensure that all elections have paper trails, to preclude another wholesale theft of 18,000 votes. So here it is, July 2008, and Jennings and Buchanan are having a rematch. I could talk about money, polling and demographics, but why not go straight to the crime?

Vern Buchanan owns car dealerships. According to the Sarasota Herald Tribune:

Two former executives for U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan's auto dealerships said they were pressured to donate to Buchanan's 2006 congressional campaign and were offered cash and gifts as inducements, which would violate federal campaign laws.

They actually filed/are filing civil suits, but the upshot here is that if the allegations are true, we’re talking felony.

DNCC CEO Daughtry answers on-line questions

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Democratic National Convention CEO Leah D. Daughtry held an online discussion at Washintonpost.com. Here are some highlights:

Franconia, Va.: Is the convention later this year than in years past? Does it always come after the Summer Olympics, or is it usually before them?

Another question about timing -- were the dates chosen to coincide with the I Have a Dream speech anniversary, or was that simply a bonus once the time was picked?

Leah D. Daughtry: There is no rule to the scheduling of the Conventions -- other than an informal understanding that the Party that holds the White House holds its Convention last.

We actually chose our dates back in 2005 when we were preparing to solicit bids from cities to host the convention. And the fact that they align with Dr. King's historic speech is just a happy coincidence.

------------------------------------------

New Orleans, La.: Do you and your RNC convention counterpart Maria Cino ever meet and compare notes, and possibly discuss particular issues, or do the two of you keep totally apart?

Leah D. Daughtry: I have had the wonderful opportunity to meet Maria Cino, the CEO of the Republican Convention. And we've actually kept in touch fairly regularly over this last year. She is a wonderful woman and a consummate professional.

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Dunn Loring, Va.: Has the Obama campaign begun coordinating with the DNC committee yet, after not informing it of his plans to accept the nomination at the stadium?

Leah D. Daughtry: We work in close coordination with the Obama team, and have ever since the Senator became the presumptive nominee.

Regarding our decision to move to Invesco on Thursday night, this was a decision that the DNCC and the Obama campaign made jointly after many, many meetings and discussions. We were only able to even suggest and consider such a move because of the wonderful headstart and ongoing progress we'd made in our planning. Without that, such a move wouldn't have been possible.

Obama aide: Clinton to speak on Tuesday. Will she be Keynote?

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As we noted yesterday, the tea leaves are pointing to Hillary Clinton speaking to the convention on Tuesday night. Now comes some unofficial confirmation:

Hillary Clinton has agreed to speak on Day 2 of the Democratic convention to commemorate the 88th anniversary of women's right to vote - a move seen by delegates as another sign she won't be on Barack Obama's ticket, the Daily News learned.

A top Obama aide told party leaders in a conference call last night that Clinton has accepted the offer to be the featured prime-time Tuesday night speaker, a high-profile slot that some of Clinton's own people have floated in recent days. Aug. 26 is the anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote in 1920.

That historical tidbit was shared by Obama aide Jennifer Koch, one of Obama's deputy political directors for the Northeast, in a conference call last night night with a group of Massachusetts delegates, among them DNC Rules Committee co-chair James Roosevelt.

Koch added that Obama's vice presidential nominee - whomever that turns out to be - will likely speak Monday and Wednesday evening as part of the traditional build-up to Obama accepting the nomination on Thursday night.
...
Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, had no immediate comment on when or in what context Clinton might be addressing the convention, in keeping with a general policy on the planned Denver pow-wow. "We are not talking about any convention decisions," he told The News.
...
"For me, Barack Obama is the nominee and we all have to get together, because this is not going to be an easy election," said Bickford, a longtime Clinton supporter. "Having her be the keynote on one night is enough for me."

The article is headlined:"Hillary Clinton agrees to Denver keynote", but there's really no confirmation of that in the article.

And the VP speaking Monday and Wednesday? He or she had better be a great speaker...

Update: CNN has confirmed:

Sen. Hillary Clinton has agreed to speak on the second night of next month's Democratic convention, headlining on the 88th anniversary of the day women earned the right to vote, sources say.

Two sources close to Clinton said the former presidential candidate will speak August 26 with all female U.S. senators on stage with her.

"Tuesday night is Hillary night," said one supporter.

Dueling Conventions

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We've digressed before over to St. Paul in the first week of September. The GOP has reserved 16,000 hotel rooms to host what they claim will be 45,000 attendees. I'm not sure whether that means they will be encouraging unmarried (to each other) attendees to share rooms, or whether even they realize their attendance expectations are wildly optimistic.

We know about the Senators that don't "have time" to attend, like Liddy Dole, and the Senators who won't be allowed to come, like Chuck Grassley. They can't get the projected number of volunteers. And it seems that there are more than 7,000 potential attendees that have committed to being elsewhere. No, not at the beach for that one last shot at summer, nor home getting their kids ready for the first day of school. Rather, across town at the Ron Paul "Rally for the Republic". Tickets went on sale, and they have put a counter up on the site, and the last time I looked, they were up to 7,390 attendees. The Paul site says that it is a "clear call to the Republican Party to return to its roots." I know we like to talk here about the professional polls, but gee-whiz, when the party faithful won't show up....perhaps this is a sign the pollsters have missed.

Probably that means that people who actually have committed to attending won't have to share hotel rooms, if even the pictures insinuate that perhaps they want to....

Your Senate Forecast

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The new Senate forecast is up, and suddenly the professionals are moving Alaska. But why should they have all the fun? How many Senate seats do YOU think we're going to win? Please use the comments section to list your picks.

Online Surveys & Market Research

Senate Forecast - July 30 - Baked Alaska

WE'VE MOVED! Democratic Convention Watch is now at http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com

DCW Senate Forecast: 55.9 (up from 55.8), highlighted by OpenLeft, SSP Cook and Rothenberg all moving Alaska in the Democrat's direction.

The DCW Senate Forecast is an average of the projections of the Democratic held seats in the 2009 Senate. (We count Sanders and Lieberman as Democrats in the Senate Forecast. Feel free to subtract one if you so desire!) A history of the Forecast going back to November 2006 is at bottom and in the left sidebar.

For analysis of the races, be sure to check out the latest installment of Sunday with the Senators.

Be sure to also check out our Presidential Forecast and our House Forecast.

The following seats are unanimous strong and are not shown in the table below (We do show VA as it is a pickup):

Solid Democrat: AR (Pryor), DE (Biden), IA (Harkin). IL (Durbin), MA (Kerry), MI (Levin), MT (Baucus), RI (Reed), SD (Johnson), WV (Rockefeller)
Solid Republican: AL (Sessions), ID (Open), KS (Roberts), MS (Cochrane), NE (Open), OK (Inhofe), SC (Graham), TN (Alexander), TX (Cornyn), WY (Barraso), WY (Enzi)

The sources are sorted by each sources Senate Projection:

DCW Senate Forecast
State	Current	538 .com	EV .com	Open Left	Crystal Ball	Cook	CQ	SSP	Roth	....
Date		7/28	7/19	7/29	6/18	7/17	7/29	7/29	7/30
Dem-Strong		15	13	13	12	12	12	13	12
Dem-Lean		2	2	4	4	2	3	3	2
Tossup		1	4	0	2	6	4	1	4
Rep-Lean		3	4	4	4	2	2	4	2
Rep-Strong		14	12	14	13	13	14	14	15
Dem-Prediction		18	17	17	17	17	17	17	16
Dem '10/'12 Seats		39	39	39	39	39	39	39	39
Senate Projection		57	56	56	56	56	56	56	55
Dem-Gain		6	5	5	5	5	5	5	4
AK (Stevens)	R	DL	T	DL	T	T	DL	T	T
CO (Open)	R	DL	DL	DL	DL	T	T	DL	T
GA (Chambliss)	R	R	RL	R	R	R	R	R	R
KY (McConnell)	R	RL	T	RL	R	R	R	R	R
LA (Landrieu)	D	D	T	DL	DL	DL	DL	DL	T
ME (Collins)	R	R	RL	R	RL	RL	RL	R	R
MN (Coleman)	R	R	RL	RL	RL	T	T	RL	T
MS (Wicker)	R	T	T	RL	T	T	T	RL	RL
NC (Dole)	R	R	R	R	RL	RL	R	RL	R
NH (Sununu)	R	D	D	D	DL	T	T	DL	DL
NJ (Lautenberg)	D	D	DL	DL	D	D	D	D	D
NM (Open)	R	D	D	D	DL	DL	DL	D	DL
OR (Smith)	R	RL	RL	RL	RL	T	RL	RL	RL
VA (Open)	R	D	D	D	D	D	D	D	D

Here are the seats that span 3 categories:

• CO - Two projections have it as strong D, 3 as Tossup. Udall is up by 9 or more points in all polls since June.
  
• KY (McConnell): EV.Com has it as a Tossup
• LA (Landrieu) (NEW): 1 at Dem-Strong, 2 at Tossup
• MN (NEW): 538 at Rep-Strong.
  
• MS (Wicker): Rothenberg has it as a "Clear Advantage" for Wicker, but Rasmussen's poll out on 6/24 shows Wicker with a 1 point lead.
  
• NH (Sununu): Shaheen has opened up a 14 point lead in 2 straight polls, but Sununu has a big money advantage.
  

The Senate Projection for each source gives Democrats 1.0 seats in a state that is projected solid for the Democrat (or seats that are not up for reelection this cycle), 0.8 seats for a Democrat-Lean, 0.5 seats for a a Tossup, 0.2 seats for a Republican-Lean, and obviously 0 seats for a solid Republican seat or a Republican seat not up for reelection this cycle.