Who will become the next Senator from Delaware?

[Beet]

Christine O'Donnell has raised $860,000 online in about the last 30 hours. But everything depends on the campaign.

Discuss this issue here.

[Beet]

This has become borderline trolling.

How is it borderline trolling?

[Beet]

By the way, only a small minority of voters actually determine their votes by the political spectrum in such a way.

Some guys from Michigan looked into this back in the fifties and they found that only 6 percent of voters determine their votes by where someone stands on the ideology spectrum. 94 percent of voters vote based on perceived group interests, the 'goodness' or 'badness' of the times, or completely idiosyncratic and stupid reasons. Check it out.

Usually when an extremist candidate who somehow gets into competitive position loses, it's not because voters found that candidate 'far right' or 'far left' and therefore rejected them out of hand, it's because there was some stance of theirs that voters found really distasteful and that became the driving force in the campaign. O'Donnell sure has some of those issues, potentially, but the problems is, in a year like 2010, there's no guarantee that it'll become the driving force of the campaign, because people can potentially be brought to care more about other things.

[Beet]

I'm not sure I want Christine O'Donnell to win.  If she does, we will continue to see Tea Party Candidates usurp establishment candidates, and we cannot afford this, especially in years where the political climate is unfavorable for the Republicans.  This Tea Party "movement" needs to die out as soon as possible.

I see where you're coming from too, but if there's one thing these "tea party" candidates can do on a dime it's go from "insurgent" to establishment. Heck, Scott Brown has already joined Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins as the Senate's 3rd "liberal" Republican, while Rand Paul held fundraisers with McConnell before he even made it to the General. I may be in awe of the power of the tea party, but I pity their naivety

[Beet]

It started with the Community Reinvestment Act and groups that would make sure banks complied.
But I do agree banks themselves were complicit towards the end of the crisis.
Once some genius figured they can package the loans and sell them and the bad risk as investments, they gladly went along with it.

This has nothing to do with the Community Reinvestment Act. The entire subprime housing market melted down, and when you look at the proportion of those broken loans that were CRA loans, they were a very small proportion. A vast majority of the subprime meltdown was in non CRA loans.

The even more absurd thing though is... if CRA was the cause... how do you explain the Commercial Real Estate Bubble? How do you explain the Spanish and Irish and British bubbles happening at the same time? This has nothing to do with the CRA. "Blame the CRA" is a lie invented by totalitarian propagandists because was ideologically convenient.

[Beet]

she's raised $1.3 million as of this hour

http://christine2010.com/

Still no indication from Coons' site of how much he has raised, but earlier today a new estimate for Coons from HuffPo:

"Daniel McElhatton, a spokesman for Democratic Senatorial candidate Chris Coons, told the Huffington Post on Thursday that in the 24 hours since O'Donnell's win, more than 1,000 online donations had been made to their campaign bringing in more than $125,000. This falls well short of O'Donnell's haul. But Coons's people didn't make a broad fundraising push. And the County Executive's campaign has yet to be granted the same type of national spotlight as his competitor."

The numbers we have for Coons is more sketchy and has to be readjusted based on when news reports came out. This is why I conservatively estimated a 10 to 1 fundraising gap in my original report despite my own numbers showing 20 to 1 (note to wormguy). $1 million to $125k is about 8 to 1.

Also, it should be noted what Rachel Maddow blogged- most of O'Donnell's support was from out of state and that has certainly continued.

[Beet]

It started with the Community Reinvestment Act and groups that would make sure banks complied.
But I do agree banks themselves were complicit towards the end of the crisis.
Once some genius figured they can package the loans and sell them and the bad risk as investments, they gladly went along with it.

This has nothing to do with the Community Reinvestment Act. The entire subprime housing market melted down, and when you look at the proportion of those broken loans that were CRA loans, they were a very small proportion. A vast majority of the subprime meltdown was in non CRA loans.

The even more absurd thing though is... if CRA was the cause... how do you explain the Commercial Real Estate Bubble? How do you explain the Spanish and Irish and British bubbles happening at the same time? This has nothing to do with the CRA. "Blame the CRA" is a lie invented by totalitarian propagandists because was ideologically convenient.

I'll tell you my theory. The banks or financial institutions were stuck writing these sure to lose mortgages forced on them as a quota of their loans by the CRA, and like "smart" capitalists, they figured a way to dump their almost certain losses onto other entities. But it all started with government meddling in private enterprise.

I'll tell you my theory. The earth was created by green fairies who went around sprinkling fairy dust everywhere. I have no evidence that this theory has a basis in external fact (that is, external to my cranium), but it's my theory and I'll tell it to you.

[Beet]

I've mentioned this to a couple of people privately, but I might as well add it here as well. No matter what happens later, this primary will probably turn out to be one of the most significant for decades. It might even be up there with the defeat of Howard Smith in 1966. It was ordinary voters that did this. O'Donnell is - in theory at least - completely unelectable, and it was ordinary voters that selected her regardless. Usually when lunatics of this sort become official candidates in winnable seats it's because they're part of a group that has taken over local party structures, or because they're a useful tool of local party structures. But here we have the lynchpin of the local party establishment beaten by someone unfit to catch rats at public expense. This is amazing.

Jesus, the most significant in decades? Why??? Are candidates "unfit to catch rats at public expense" somehow going to start winning GOP primaries around the country? I suppose the story of Howard Smith was that conservative southern voters were shifting to the GOP while the Democratic party was becoming liberal in the south. But what's the story out of this?

[Beet]

Why are you guys making fun of me? I've already said Cuomo's going to win. I said that in the first post. I explained the FB thing...

... it's no different from any other anecdotal evidence. "Oh I was out driving today and I saw tons of signs for X, but I saw no Y signs. I still think Y is going to win..." If somebody said something like that, you wouldn't make fun of it, would you? It would be just another comment. Yet I bring up FB, which is just the same thing except numerically larger, and suddenly it's something to be dismissed? Come on.

[Beet]

I don't know. I disagree. If you looked only at poll numbers, you would have predicted a Trey Grayson win in the summer of 2009. You would have predicted a Hillary Clinton win in late 2007. You would have predicted a Martha Coakley win in December 2009.

The point is, you would have nothing better to go on but the polls. I do not believe this. I think you can get ahead of the polls -- predict not just what the vote will be based on polls, but predict what the polls will be based on other things, such as
1) fundraising
2) volunteers
3) signs, likes, comments, and other signs of enthusiasm online
4) quality of ads
and so on and so on. Granted, it's not as "scientific", and there's a greater chance of being way off, but it's better than sitting around waiting for the polls and then robotically interpreting them. Anyone can do that.

[Beet]

So O'Donnell has no desire to serve in the US Senate, and just handed the seat over to the Democratic nominee solely so she could get her pretty face on TV and make money?

[Beet]

So O'Donnell has no desire to serve in the US Senate, and just handed the seat over to the Democratic nominee solely so she could get her pretty face on TV and make money?

None at all. She knows that she can take home a lot of money and possibly make tons more after the campaign, that's what her run was about in the first place.

But don't you have to be a hardworking, serious lawmaker to reform the country the way that the tea party wants it reformed? Why do tea party people support her then?

[Beet]

I think O'Donnell may get closer than we think but at this point there is more of a chance that Coons wins.