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House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's gloomy November forecast. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer gave a gloomy assessment of his party's prospects at a media breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor this week. When reminded that political handicapper Charlie Cook is predicting a loss of 30 to 40 seats and perhaps more for House Democrats this fall, Mr. Hoyer didn't push back. "It's an accurate view of what the polls reflect right now. Yes. I have great respect for Charlie Cook." Democrats would lose control of the House if they drop 40 seats. Mr. Hoyer went on to say he...

House Democrats Are About to Become Unemployment Statistics House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's gloomy November forecast. By JOHN FUND House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer gave a gloomy assessment of his party's prospects at a media breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor this week. When reminded that political handicapper Charlie Cook is predicting a loss of 30 to 40 seats and perhaps more for House Democrats this fall, Mr. Hoyer didn't push back. "It's an accurate view of what the polls reflect right now. Yes. I have great respect for Charlie Cook." Democrats would lose control of the House if...

General Electric's Obama-backing CEO Jeffrey Immelt celebrates Ronald Reagan. General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt hasn't been popular with conservatives of late. GE was a major backer of the cap-and-trade climate bill that passed the House last year, in part because the capping of carbon emissions would boost demand for its wind turbines and solar panels. Then there are GE's media properties. It owns MSNBC, the cable news channel that employs liberal frothers such as Keith Olbermann. GE also owns CNBC, whose top on-air talent was ordered last year to a secret meeting with Mr. Immelt and NBC President Jeff Zucker...

The "deem and pass" rule has set off complaints among Democrats.

The Senate may trick the House into passing its bill. Nancy Pelosi is trying to shoo House Democrats into voting for the Senate health care bill, but members are more worried than ever that the Senate won't then implement the necessary changes through the reconciliation process to make the final bill acceptable. They have good reason for concern. Now they're hearing from Senate colleagues that the GOP can be expected to make Senate reconciliation as difficult and drawn-out as possible through delaying tactics. President Obama may wind up just signing the Senate bill into law no changes whatsoever -- preserving...

A full 48% of voters want Congress to start over, and 25% want lawmakers to stop working on health care altogether. When Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander opened the Republican response to President Obama's remarks at yesterday's health care summit, he asked Democrats to renounce the idea of using parliamentary maneuvers such as reconciliation to pass health care with a simple majority vote. Mr. Obama tried to swat him down by claiming Americans wanted a straight up-or-down vote on his health care bill and don't care about what methods are used to get it. "You know, this issue of reconciliation has...

"Mr. Bayh knows something about high-water political floods. As a 24-year-old law student he helped run his father's 1980 Senate re-election and saw him go down to defeat under the Reagan landslide. In 1994, Mr. Bayh was governor of Indiana and thankful he wasn't before the voters when they revolted against Bill Clinton. "Every 14 or 16 years we seem to have to relearn this lesson," Mr. Bayh said. "I do have a sense of deja vu, and the movie doesn't have a happy ending." He isn't the first observer to note the misfortune that befalls modern Democrats when they...

"Sarah Palin is the honorary Queen Bee of the Tea Party convention. The Tea Party convention held this past weekend in Nashville wasn't the biggest such gathering (600 people) or the most representative (the ticket price was more than $500) but it did give the national media a pretty good angle on the views and direction of this disparate movement. First, it's clear the group has no leader, although Sarah Palin is certainly the honorary Queen Bee in the eyes of many attendees. Her Saturday night speech was given rapturous applause. Second, the Tea Partiers are unlikely to succumb to...

<p>Democrats privately lay into President Obama for his lack of a health-care strategy.</p> <p>President Obama's session with Democratic Senators yesterday was carefully scripted, with the questioners all selected in advance by the Democratic leadership to address issues such as partisan gridlock and GOP obstructionism. Senators Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln, both of whom are facing serious opponents this fall, went off message with concerns about the liberal drift of the administration, but all other questioners stuck to their talking points.</p>

'And leaders should figure out they're better informed now than ever.' Boston When I arrived at his cramped state senate offices, Scott Brown had just opened one of the many packages he's received since his stunning U.S. Senate victory 11 days ago. A local artist has done up a version of the iconic red, white and blue collage from the 2008 presidential campaign that shows Barack Obama with the word "Hope." This one features a smiling Mr. Brown instead, but the word below is different. It reads "Change." By filling the seat vacated by liberal lion Ted Kennedy in a...

Will Harry Reid retire at the end of this year?/ In the end, I don't believe Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will run for re-election. Whether or not the health care bill he muscled through the Senate becomes law, the 70-year-old will bow out of his race for a fifth term. The major reason has nothing to do with his many verbal gaffes, the latest of which exploded over the weekend. The simple fact is that he probably can't win re-election -- almost no incumbent senator as far down in the polls has come back to win. Asked if Mr....

<p>Confronted with their gloomy poll numbers, Democrats have decided the solution is to discredit the pollsters they blame for dragging down their standing with the public. Politico.com reports that the No. 1 target is the proprietor of Rasmussen Reports, source of widely reported polls tracking the declining popularity of President Obama and his legislative initiatives.</p>

Christopher Coates, the man who approved the civil rights complaint against New Black Panther Party for its behavior at a Philadelphia polling place in the November 2008 election, has been removed from his post as chief of the Voting Section of the Justice Department. Reportedly he is being transferred to the U.S. attorney's office in South Carolina.

They believe the liberal base expects them to deliver and will punish them if they don't. Voters are increasingly worried about unemployment, but Democratic leaders in Congress remain obsessed with passing health- care reform. Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin was asked recently if a health-care bill would pass the Senate by the end of this month. "It must," he said. "We have to finish it." Still, many in the trenches are uneasy about the sprawling, complex bill they privately acknowledge has no bipartisan support, doesn't seriously tackle soaring costs and will increase insurance premiums. That may explain Majority Leader Harry...

NOVEMBER 27, 2009 She Wants to Reboot California After chemotherapy, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina says taking on Sen. Barbara Boxer isn't so intimidating. By JOHN FUND Washington When Carly Fiorina sat down to speak with me recently, I was briefly taken aback. The former CEO of Hewlett Packard and current candidate for U.S. Senate from California was sporting a close-cropped, salt-and-pepper hairdo. Having completed six months of treatment for breast cancer, the 55-year-old Ms. Fiorina has dispensed with the auburn wig she'd been wearing as her hair grows back. She says her health is now fine, and that "after...

Inhabitants of the self-obsessed Beltway political world already have a beef with Sarah Palin's new memoir, "Going Rogue." Political types in Washington make a show of turning up their noses at actually buying and reading such books, but familiar faces can regularly be spotted in store aisles anyway scanning for their names in the index. Sarah Palin's book won't have an index, denying Beltway habitués the instant gratification of knowing whether they are included. Instead, political and media types who want to know if they figure in accounts of her conflicts with the McCain campaign or with major news media...

OK, here's what should be the nail in the coffin for conservative claims that ACORN is poised to steal the New Jersey governor's race through rampant voter fraud. Brian Kettenring, an ACORN spokesman, tells TPMmuckraker that the much-maligned group has conducted absolutely no political or voter registration activity in the state during the 2009 cycle. And Kettenring added that ACORN had done very little such work during the 2008 cycle. In a column published yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, John Fund sounded the alarm about the threat from ACORN -- but a close look reveals that even here he...

ACORN: Bizarre and Corrupt Allie Winegar Duzett, November 6, 2009 According to John Fund of The Wall Street Journal, there is one question above all that Americans should be asking with regards to ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now): “How did they get away with so much for so long?” Fund posited two possible answers at Accuracy in Media’s 40th Anniversary Conference held on October 23, 2009, the first being a “presumption of good intentions. ACORN was a community organizing group,” Fund said. “When their offices were raided in Nevada,” he noted, they told the world, “We’re just...

The New Jersey and Virginia governor's races aren't the only contests in which Democrats are feeling pressure from the growing unpopularity of President Obama's policies. A GOP upset may also be in the making in a California House special election on November 3. Democratic Lt. Governor John Garamendi and Republican attorney David Harmer are battling for the Bay Area congressional seat vacated by Democrat Ellen Tauscher, who left to join the Obama state department. Normally a staunch Democratic seat, there is a growing chance it could swing to the GOP given the state's latest budget collapse and the 13% approval...

Thirty-eight forged or fraudulent ballots have been thrown out, according to records at the Rensselaer County Board of Elections in Troy, N.Y. Enough votes, an election official admits, to likely have tipped the election to the Democrats. Brian Suozzo voted with an absentee ballot in the Working Families Party primary on Sept. 15 because, as his application stated, he was "at home recovering from medical procedure." Jessica Boomhower's application said she would be attending a "work conference in Boston." Michael Ward couldn't vote in person because he was "taking care of elderly parent." Kimberlee Truell was on a "Bus trip...