Evening Songs

++I got an e-mail from the Democratic Campaign Committee saying that 11 Senate races are divided by its.

++I get another that says Nate "the Great" Silver at FiveThirtyEight says the control of the Senate rests with Georgia. Actually go read this column because Nate explains his probabilities and what they mean if it was baseball. Without Georgia,the Democrats would only have a 25% chance of retaining the Senate. He cites Michelle Nunn leading in the last several polls and that she has the momentum.

++Andrew Sullivan pays attention to the South Dakota race where Governor Rounds is mired in scandal that has surfaced with gale wind force in the last few days. Andrew is of the opinion that Pressler is the most likely to knock Rounds off, not Weiland. He argues the state has gone almost completely Democratic and that Pressler, a former Senator and Republican,is more likely to siphon off Rounds support. Read the article. Then he has a link to his previous musings on South Dakota. 

++As anyone who reads this blog knows,I caught on to South Dakota early on with Weiland's campaign of stopping in each town. But step back,the state has the lowest unemployment rate in the country. Doesn't Rounds reap the benefit of that?

++I have been musing on whether corruption isn't a political attribute. Consider the present candidates--Rick Scott is even with Charlie Christ and everyone knows he built his fortune on Medicare fraud and should be in prison;Scott Walker has faced the John Doe investigation and will have another one after the election as well as been blatantly involved in giving mining rights for contributions and he is even with Mary Burke,Michigan's Rick Snyder has seized cities and put management teams in place without a democratic process but is either tied, according to PPP, with Mark Schauer. Is there truly no accountability? Chris Christie's Bridgegate pales in comparison to his sweetheart contracts and the pipeline across southern Jersey. 

++Maybe voters think since politicians are corrupt, then it's better to elect people who know how corruption works. None of the contenders this year have charismatic personalities. None are articulate. And none pay any attention to the media. Maybe that's the new recipe for success. Chris Hayes quipped that Rick Scott is the worst candidate of all time--but here we are less than two weeks out and he is tied with an articulate,smart candidate who has already been governor and has a winning personality.
Somewhere lurking in the voters' subconscious is the awareness that corruption makes government work.
Governor Brownback faces another issue--ideology doesn't make government work and Kansas' financial picture is so bleak because of his ultra right ideology that economists say the state can't come back.

++I have read James Ellroy's Perfidia about Los Angeles around the time of Pearl Harbor. All our favorite characters show up like Dudley Smith. Besides the joy of reading Ellroy's prose,isn't the honest reaction to the corruption and sleaze in the story is that is preferable to a reformist tradition. It seems more real and human than the Good Government types. Isn't that the American dark side? And isn't that why so blatantly corrupt politicians win? They seem to have more of the juices that make humans interesting.