Enough Fluff, Let's Bash the Kos

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, from the Daily Kos, is in Newsweek with his 2006 election predictions. For the most part he's correct on the GOP folks who are in trouble, but he's overly optimistic about the Demcrats who have tough races. He's also (I hate agreeeing with him) right that the Democrats probably won't take the House or Senate in 2006, and need to concentrate on gains they can make, and try and get the whole enchillada in 2008.

His thought that only the Minnesota Governor race, and Florida's Senate seat are tough one's for Democrats is pretty funny. He missed two governor races in the Midwest that are going to be bloody for the Democrats, and my guess is they definitely lose one of them, and probably both.

The states I'm referring to are Wisconsin and Illinois. Hell, if Kos made it to Minnesota to look at their race, he could have crossed on state line to look at another.

Jim Doyle in Wisconsin is in trouble, big time. While he has no outstanding indictments on him, what he does have is the new title "Diamond Jim" because of the amount of money Indian casino operators have been giving him. In exchange he gave them a new gambling compact that was incredibly generous, and very unconstitutional according to the State Supreme court. He rewrote it this year, and it'll get tossed again.

Jim has also made a lot of bold claims about taxes, in a state known as a tax hell. That would be the reason I moved south of there. He's been constantly against a Tax Payer Bill of Rights, that would require local tax bodies to put most increases to a public vote, and lock money into the area it was appropriated for. His proposal that was going to keep everyone frozen on property taxes didn't, and he's getting killed over it.

And he's got a little "Pay for Play" scandal going on with the states travel contract, which didn't go to the lowest bidder, but did go to a company that gave his campaign fund thousands.

Right now both Scott Walker, the Republican County Executive of Milwaukee County, and Mark Green a congressman are neck and neck with him in the polls, and neither have really done anything but say they will probably run for the job.

The Illinois Governor, Rod Blagojevich was rising star 3 years ago, with possible presidential aspirations. The Dem's loved him for taking a governors seat from a Republican, and talked highly of him. Now they won't talk about (or with) him at all. What did he do? Screwed the pooch on his promise to 'end business as we know it in Springfield'.

The truth was, he won in 2002 not because of his great ideas, but because George Ryan had tarred most of the state GOP with his scandal ridden administration. He's now on trial. And, the GOP contenders were so busy backstabbing each other all you heard about them was bad.

The problem is, Blago has turned out to be just as corrupt as Ryan, or so it seems. He's widely speculated to be "Official A" in this indictment of 3 democratic operatives, including former DNC financial wizard Joseph Cari. They basically strong-armed investment firms for cash if they wanted to do business with the Teachers Retirement System pension fund.

He's also be out publically calling companies on the carpet for not fully funding pension funds, but has balanced the state budget by deferring payments to the states own pension funds.

Judy Baar Topinka, a popular GOP figure, and current state treasurer who has gone head to head with Blagojevich on his budgets is going to run against him, and I'm giving her a 70/30 chance of winning the election.

The Fix has his 2008 Hopefuls list up.

Technorati Tags: Kos, politics, GOP, Democrats, Wisconsin, Illinois