Carney speaks at a 9th grade level – Coons speaks at a 13th grade level – Carper speaks at a 9th grade level

9 Comments
Fairly predicable. Coons is the erudite egghead in the bunch. Carney knows enough words to give a good pep talk to a JV football team and after 80 years in politics, Carper naturally speaks down to everyone. These are the findings of Sunlight Labs which crunched the numbers. Among their macro-findings, Congress talk more dumb this year.

Good News.

2 Comments
In case you were wondering where El Som's Pre-game / Post-game posts are this week, well, they will not be appearing as the General Assembly is on a two week recess while the Joint Finance Committee meets to mark up the budget. And on that front, the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council (DEFAC) announced yesterday that the state's revenues are much more than expected.

Back to the Tracking Poll

5 Comments
Starting today, we will once again be doing our tracking poll, a completely unscientific and non-random sampling of our readers who voluntarily chose to vote in the online poll. So with all those caveats, the poll will be simply for entertainment purposes only, or, if you will, informative only as to who DL readers will be voting for. Unlike our prior tracking where we asked only about your opinions on one candidate at a time, this time, and continuining on until the primary and general elections, we will be asking about one office at a time. Yes, horse racing time is here. We will start off with the County Executive Democratic Primary Race

An Alternative Universe without the Filibuster

8 Comments
Two months ago, former Senator Ted Kaufman spoke to the monthly meeting of the Progressives Democrats for Delaware, one of the things he said that took me by surprise was his opposition to filibuster reform. Kaufman viewed the filibuster as an indispensable part of the check and balances of our government, and while he agreed that the Republicans have abused it, he would hate to see what a Republican President, a Republican House and a Republican Senate would do if minority Democrats had no power to stop legislation. But Kaufman was almost acting as if it were a fait accompli that the filibuster was going the way of the dinosaur, because he quaranteed that the Republicans, whenever they regain control of the Senate, would immediately do away with it, especially if they have a Republican President and House to work with. So what would the last four years look like without the filibuster?

Tipping His Canoe into the Race

40 Comments
It seems as though Jack Markell might have a primary opponent. Magnolia resident Doug Beatty, whose only claim to fame is being the son of actor Ned Beatty, has announced that he is going to challenge Markell in the Democratic primary. That is if he can raise the filing fee. In what has to be the biggest understatement of the year, Beatty said that he is "an extreme long shot" but thinks he can win if he can get on the ballot. I think he's watched The Candidate too many times. His run is more like the wet dream Bobby had in Deliverance.