The Republican U.S. Senate hopeful says he knows Colorado. Apparently, though, not as well as he thinks.

Schaffer and his Democratic opponent Rep. Mark Udall (an undeclared superdelegate, by the way) released their first video ads of the campaign. The result, for Schaffer, quickly turned embarrassing.

The campaign for Colorado senate hopeful Bob Schaffer has been nothing if not silent.  Unlike most 21st-century candidates for public office, Mr. Schaffer includes no specific information on his website about his positions or plans for Colorado should he be elected.  

Perhaps his campaign manager is hoping to avoid another ‘macaca moment’ such as Allen's unscripted remark virally blasted across the intertubes and the MSM.  

Thus it was with great expectation that many of the good citizens of Colorado were awaiting some word from this man, who would be our senator, about his campaign and what he stands for.  

We need wait no longer.  Today the Schaffer campaign released its first video.  Short on substance the ad makes up for that deficit in raw humor.  

Now, an embarrassed Dick Waddams, campaign manger, has noted that the ad has been pulled.  

More after the jump

The first in a series of reports exploring the ramifications of a controversial state ballot measure winding its way through Colorado.

Hard-line, socially conservative activists are gearing up to enact state laws to restrict abortion since President Bush and Congress have all but abandoned the federal cause. To that end, Colorado is once again serving as a political incubator in yet another attempt to chip away at Roe v. Wade.

But for all the hue and cry, do efforts at the state level have a chance of success and what cost do they exact from the larger conservative movement in a watershed election year?

We have a huge opportunity this year to turn Colorado into a very blue state.  We can elect a wonderful woman, a progressive by both values and political beliefs, and we can defeat Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave.  

Defeat Marilyn?  Yes We Can!  It takes a fabulous candidate, in the name of Betsy Markey, and hard work by hundreds of volunteers.  

And, an opportunity to raise $5000 by 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time - by going to http://www.progressivepatriotsfund.c... and scrolling down on the right and clicking on Betsy's name.   If you, the reader, and you the next reader, vote for her she just might make it.  She is oh so close!!!

Please join me by voting for Betsy today.  You need no Indiana ID card or a way to get you to the polling booth.  Just do so by coping the above URL and vote for Betsy.

Thanks good Dems and Independents (and perhaps even some Republicans).

Ann

Protect Colorado's Future, a progressive group in Colorado,
kicked off 2 ballot drives yesterday at the state Capitol.  One of the initiatives could become a model for other states seeking to end Corporate abuses. This initiative is called the Corporate Fraud  initiave and has the support of 8 out of 10 Coloradoans polled.

It is designed to legally stop the kind of Executive fraud that brings to mind people like Ken Lay or Joe Nacchio, and others who made a fortune by engaging in illegal practices such as robbing the pensions of employees or overstating the budget or illegal stock sell offs.
No more CEOs laughing all the way to the bank while the workers are stuck with no job or no retirement.
The other initiative is to secure employees' jobs by ensuring that their employer has a reasonable cause to terminate employment. This ballot iniative is the Just Cause iniative and has lots of public support.
From the site...

In yesterday's poll something happened which I haven't seen done in such an obvious and blatantly stupid way in any other poll before. The voting on the next Sec. of the Interior was pretty much done, maybe a vote here and there was still coming but it was pretty much over. Then I noticed how the vote total for Les AuCoin (who had somewhere between 5 and 8 votes before this started) was slowly rising. At first it looked as if someone just wanted him to surpass Olypia Snowe who was in second place with 11 votes at that time. But that person didn't stop there. While the vote count for everyone else remained pretty much stagnant (Robert Kennedy, Jr.'s went from 60 to just 63 in this time frame), Les AuCoin's went from the single digits to a total of 42 votes. So, one person actually took the time to vote for him more than 20 times to get him into a runoff with Robert Kennedy, Jr.

Yesterday's Attorney General poll needed no runoff as John Edwards won more than 50% in the first round. Results below the fold.

With the Obama Veepstakes poll now concluded and Gov. Bill Richardson as your chosen running mate (which was covered by the Santa Fe Reporter) it's time to take this a step further:

Who would you like to see in an Obama cabinet?

Today you can vote on the next Secretary of the Interior:

Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D-Denver) will participate in a live 30-minute Q&A with Colorado Confidential readers on Friday, May 9 at 11 a.m. MDT.

DeGette will take your questions on the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, her third attempt to pass this landmark legislation following two vetoes by President Bush.

Read the congresswoman's comments from her dKos diary posted yesterday below the fold.

Colorado's remaining Supers say they are staying neutral because of Convention fundraising considerations.

http://cw2.trb.com/...

The Secretary of Defense runoff poll between Chuck Hagel and Jim Webb was a real nailbiter. Results below the fold.

With the Obama Veepstakes poll now concluded and Gov. Bill Richardson as your chosen running mate (which was covered by the Santa Fe Reporter) it's time to take this a step further:

Who would you like to see in an Obama cabinet?

Thus far, Joe Biden won the Sec. of State poll and Michael Bloomberg won the Sec. of the Treasury poll (results below the fold). Today you can vote on the next Attorney General:

The big story this week is CAP4K, Governor Ritter's cornerstone education reform package, which quietly passed and awaits the Governor's signature.  The legislature adjourned one day early, having failed to reform TABOR and having failed to implement some minor policy changes the governor asked for.  Now, the insurance bill was pretty major, but is this session a win or a loss for Colorado Democrats?

Synopsis: In an effort to cover their asses after the North Carolina robocall scandal erupted, Women's Voices Women Vote (WVWV) planted an article in a small-town Colorado newspaper solely for the purpose of reposting it on the WVWV website.  Their intent was to mislead people into thinking WVWV had a multi-state press strategy aimed at voters to correspond with voter registration mailings.  In fact, their "press strategy" was aimed not at voters, but rather was part of a desperate PR strategy to quell the controversy exploding around them among the progressive blogosphere.

WVWV wanted to make it look like the NC catastrophe was in fact well planned out, so they created a press release after the fact (that conveniently addressed concerns about the timing of their mailings and calls in relation to the upcoming primary) and false implied that it had already been sent to the NC press.  Then, the next day, they planted an article in a Colorado newspaper to make it look like their press campaign was actually national.

Colorado appears to be a bellweather state AND a state in which the tide may be turning for Democrats.  Yet it is a difficult state for Democrats to win.  Remember, Bush beat Kerry by 5% in 2004 and Gore by 9% in 2000.

          1992     1996     2000     2004
Rep         36       46       51       52
Dem         40       44       42       47
Ind         23        7        5        1

So the Democrats will have to scrap for Colorado and capitalize on the record turnout in the February caucuses.

There are many people in Colorado who have been waiting decades for basic tenant rights. Now finally, with a double Democratic majority and a Democratic Governor, one of the most backwards legal quandries in our state can be remedied. Colorado, it seems, is the only state in the Union besides Arkansas, that has no legal protection on the books that guarantees that if you are a rentor of a property, you are entitled to have a living space that is, in fact, livable.
Believe it or not, Colorado has no Warranty of Habitability - or guarantee of basic living conditions for a rentor of an apartment or other housing.
That means if your landlord decides to cut off the heat in your building in March and refuse to turn it back on - even during the Blizzard of 2003 (yes it happened), you have no legal recourse to break your lease without being liable for the remainder of the rent. Or if you discover that your plumbing doesn't work, or your roof is caving in, you are also in a position of no legal recourse.
Shocked? Read on...

If I've seen the word "electability" once I've sen it a thousand times. And it's a product of lazy thinking, which Democrats can't afford.

Electability doesn't mean anything. You're electable if people vote for you, that's it. Anyone's electable. The question is whether the party (be it Democrat or Republican) stands behind you and gives all the support it can.

Then there's experience. "Obama is inexperienced" you say. Well, so was JFK. So was Dubya. People voted for them anyway.

So I am going to do two things: a little math and a little history, to show why we need to kill these two memes now and kill them dead.

Hey everybody, hope you're all having a rockin' Friday.

I'm writing this diary today because I need your help.

By now I'm sure that you've heard the Clinton campaign's absurd claim that she can win more swing states than Obama. Earlier this week Kos debunked that theory here.

Well, Hillary's latest straw grasping has left me with an idea: a fundraising project to show Obama's support in swing states.

Follow me below.

The Mountain West has huge growth potential for the Democratic Party, which is why the DNCC is in Denver this year. Colorado is leading the way and is definitely a winnable state ... with the right candidate at the top of the ticket.

Rasmussen. 4/16. Likely voters. MoE 4.5% (3/17 results)

Obama makes Colorado competitive, Clinton kills it for us. And that's not just relevant at the top of the ticket. We have a top-tier Senate race in the state, and you better believe Mark Udall is better off with Obama at the top of the ticket than having to make up a 14-point Clinton deficit. Throw in CO-04, which is already on the DCCC's target list, and once again, it's clear why having Obama at the top of the ticket is so helpful to the Democratic Party not just at the presidential level, but down below it as well.

Same goes for another Red state we can flip with the right candidate (that "right" candidate being Obama): North Carolina:

Rasmussen. 4/10. Likely voters. MoE 4.5% (3/20 results)

Clinton might make this one competitive, but it'd be tough. Obama immediately makes this a top-tier pickup opportunity in a state that McCain can ill-afford to defend. We also have a potentially hot Senate race and at least one solid House pickup opportunity (NC-08), both of which would benefit from 1) having the state be a presidential battleground, and 2) having a competitive candidate at the top of the ticket.

What about those "big states" that Clinton thinks only she can win? How about California?

Rasmussen. 4/16. Likely voters. MoE 4.5% (3/12 results)

Not that either Democrat would lose California to McCain (even in the best-case scenario, he wouldn't have the money to contest it), but funny how Obama runs stronger than Clinton in the Golden State. And even those two points will matter to candidates like Charlie Brown in CA-04 fighting to eeke out tight victories in tough districts. Indeed, Brown only lost by three points in 2006.

What about the purple states, like Minnesota?

SurveyUSA. 4/11-13. Likely voters. MoE 4.3% (3/14-16 results)

Minnesota won't be a state we can take for granted this fall. It will be a tough one for either Obama or Clinton, but it's clear that Obama fares better. And remember, this is all post-"Wright" and all that other nonsense that has supposedly crushed Obama time and time again. Same goes with Wisconsin, Iowa, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington:

SurveyUSA. 4/14-17. Likely voters. MoE 4% (3/14-16 results)

Check out that Obama surge -- it was also post-"Wright", post-"Bitter", post all that bull. Yet after all that crap, they've decided they still like Obama and have now given him a comfortable margin in the must-win Democratic state. Clinton? She makes it a nail biter.

Obama even makes a difference in the "blowout" states, like McCain's home of Arizona.

Rasmussen. 4/15. Likely voters. MoE 4.5% (No trend lines)

"But", say the Clinton apologists, "what does it matter if we lose by 28 points or just 20? A loss is a loss!" It matters to the two House Democratic freshman running tough reelection campaigns this year (Mitchell in AZ-05 and Giffords in AZ-08). It matters to the Democrats running in our two targeted races in AZ-01 (Renzi's old seat) and AZ-03 (Shadegg's seat). The smaller the margin at the top of the ticket, the fewer ticket splitters they need to win their races.

Really, I can go through polls all day (and likely will over the coming two weeks), showing how in most states Obama runs stronger and has greater coattail potential than Clinton. I'm even ignoring pre-"Bitter" polls to ensure the numbers aren't just fresh, but include all of Obama's baggage. Yet as we'll see in the vast majority of cases (the biggest exception being Florida, though there are several others), Obama does far better.

What about the daily national tracking polls? In Rasmussen's latest, Obama trails McCain by 3, Clinton trails McCain by 6. Advantage Obama. Gallup has one of those tracking polls as well, and they have Obama and McCain tied at 45, while Clinton trails McCain by (a statistically insignificant) 1 point.

So remind me again how is Clinton "more electable" against McCain than Obama?

She's lost more contests to Obama than she's won. She's raised less money than he has. She fares poorer in the polling against McCain than he does. She trails in the popular vote.

And somehow, despite the fact she runs behind Obama in the general, the supers are supposed to overturn the will of the primary electorate and spur intra-party civil war on her behalf? Is she really that narcissistic?

Apparently so.

Race tracker wiki: CO-Sen

"In five days, I did not observe a forced abortion or meet anybody who had any knowledge of them," he said, adding that no subsequent examples were ever brought to him.

So goes the report at today's TPM here:
what forced abortions?

Yet another hippo-crite mascarading as a Conservative Family Values candidate.

He took a vacation to the Marianas with Black Jack Abramof, seeing wonderful factories, filled with happy smiling people. Except without that sappy song.