My predictions

I'm trying not to get too far into the hype of a Democratic tidal wave and keep in mind that if there is any party that can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, it is mine. But here goes....

Governor - Jim Doyle wins with 52% of the vote. Mark Green just never seemed to catch on because this year voters just weren't buying the cookie cutter "Democrats are going to raise your taxes and I'm a fiscal conservative" crap campaign. The biggest indicator that Doyle is going to win is the last minute money coming in. The money is coming in almost two-to-one for Doyle. That means folks think Doyle is going to win and want to say they were with the winner.

Attorney General - Kathleen Falk wins, but by a little less than Doyle. Republican J.B. Van Hollen pulled the wool over more eyes than I thought he could, but not enough to win. At the end of the day, he is still too conservative to fit the entire state.

State Senate - Dems pick up three seats and control. I'm not positive which three will go for us and all four races in play might go our way. But if I had to guess... The national feelings will trump the missteps like Kathleen Vinehout's poetry press release and corrections will be made this year in Dem seats like the 31st held by Ron Brown. William McReynolds will get beat by John Lehman because McReynolds is the definition of a dirty politician. And while I'd like to think our state would stop supporting Tom Reynolds, we need so many Republicans to vote our way in that one that it might not be doable. That leaves Dave Zien getting beat by Pat Kreitlow and since according to a comment on an earlier post about Zien on my blog that Zien was out last night drunk with Glenn Grothman, I'm going to say that's our third seat.

State Assembly - The Dems pick up about five seats. Rep. Mark Pettis will lose to a far superior candidate - Ann Hraychuck, Gordon Hintz will pick up the seat being vacated by Rep. Gregg Underheim and one of my two sleeper races (Rep. Steve Freese in the 51st or Garey Bies in the 1st) will go to the Dems. Two other races of the ones in play will go Dem too just because they contained Repubs sitting in Dems seats and this is the year for the correction. Brett Davis could be one and the open Andy Lamb seat, Debi Towns, Jeff Wood or Judy Krawczyk could be the other.

Amendment to ban gay marriage and civil unions - Wins with about 56% of the vote. Fair Wisconsin for the most part ran a really great campaign. But there were two errors that helped sink the effort to beat back discrimination. One, they should have stuck with talking about the second part of the amendment despite what many of the people writing checks probably wanted to focus on for this campaign. The second part of the proposed amendment was a gift that should have been used to bury this piece of trash. While I'd like to think most people in Wisconsin would like to see happily committed gay couples have the same rights to benefits that I do, I unfortunately know too many that don't and they will vote. Just as a campaign is no time to convince new people to vote, a campaign is also not the time to convinve people to think a new way. You have to work with what you have, not with what you wish you had. Two, the ad that said something like nothing will change if this doesn't pass was a mistake. When you run an entire campaign about all of the bad things that can happen to people if this passes, putting out an ad saying nothing will happen only confuses people. My father called and asked me which way he should vote after seeing that ad and I knew all was lost. However, even a perfect campaign might not have pushed enough people far enough away from their prejudices for this to go down. At the end of day, unfortunately life isn't fair.

Death penalty advisory vote - Passes easily. There was hardly any attention to this because there was so much going on this election cycle that not enough information got out there about why this is so wrong. (And I count myself as part of the group that should have spent more time on this)

Dane County Sheriff - Dave Mahoney wins. The Republican, Mike Hanson, says he'll bring the H.E.A.T. as part of his plan. I don't remember what it means because I was laughing so hard when I saw the ad. I really hope some guy with a lame ad using abrevations doesn't win. The ad also says if we elect him, we'll get more bang for our buck. Yeah, we don't really want the sheriffs shooting people. We want the sheriffs to stop the shootings.

U.S. House of Representatives - Dems pick it and some of my least favorite Republicans finally get sent packing. The ones that aren't really Republicans. They are just hate-filled opporunists with no core beliefs. Folks like Senator Rick Santorum (yes, I know he's in the Senate but it fits better here), Rep. John Hostettler and Rep. J.D. Hayworth could all be job shopping very soon and I couldn't be happier. I'm gonna guess Dems come away with 223 seats.

Wisconsin 8th CD - Kagen wins by a hair despite his mouth. And then let's get that guy some media training.

U.S. Senate - Until Monday night, I really didn't think the Dems were going to be able to get control of the Senate. I thought the Dems would come up a seat or two short. But all the talking heads on Hardball with Chris Mathews said it is going to flip. One of them had a good point on why it will flip. He said the Dems will not pick up five. It will either be three or six because the Dems will either have a good night or they will not. Plus, there are races like Virginia and Montana where the Repubs don't have a full ground game in place because they weren't expecting to have a race. If Tucker Carlson thinks it's going to be a Dem Senate, it's good enough for me. Personally, I'd almost rather see it tied so Vice President Dick Cheney has to sit and swear a lot while casting tie breakers. Almost.

Oh no, I've been swayed by the hype of cable televison just while writing this post.