So Electoral-Politics.com has today's polling at 50 Senate seats for the Democrats, 47 for Republicans and now 3 tied. For the first time, Republicans have a 203-202 lead over the Democrats with 30 seats tied.
Nate the Great lowered his percentage for Republicans taking the Senate to 18%. Personally, I have the Democrats winning between 52 and 56 seats right now. The Senate looks secure. Remember the Democrats started this cycle by basically ceding Arkansas, North Dakota and Indiana. So they start out at 55 seats. My high estimate is a fantasy of Democrats either taking Kentucky or another Democratic seat and holding all the rest.
Is the American voter acting rationally? For the past year with all the hype about the Tea Party and the full reign of insanity shown on the conservative websites and Fox News, one begins to wonder. The media narrative is that we are facing an enormous Republican tidal wave because Obama has govern from the Left. Since we are supposed to be a conservative country, Americans are so outraged that you could run an empty suit or pantsuit with an R by his or her name and get elected.
At this moment--prior to the final money frenzy--is there any evidence of this? One reassuring phenomenon is that there is a great deal of difference in many states between the governor races and the Senate and--to a lesser degree-the House races. For instance, Ohio ,which is a really strange state the more I travel in it, shows that the race between Gov. Strickland and John Kasich is neck and neck, while the Senate race shows Rob Portman (R) walking away with it. Portman is Bush's former OMB director but is running as a normal Republican in a state that votes this way. He would be replacing Voinovich, a moderate conservative who has strongly condemned the influence of the South on the GOP.
Once the avalanche of Chamber ads hit Washington State, Patty Murray started opening the gap against Republican Dino Rossi. The Chamber ads only reinforced the view that Rossi is a crooked businessmen.
In Connecticut, Linda McMahon was a woman issue. Women voters can't stand her. This was what brought down Sarah Palin. Women in Connecticut report being repulsed by seeing her ads everyday.
Another positive sign is that general election voters are beginning to turn off on the teabaggers. In Maine Tom LePage had a 15 percentage lead for Governor, opening his mouth a few times more and he only has a 1% lead. By election day, it will be the third parties who will determine whether Le Page will squeak to victory. But the momentum is now on the Democrat's side.
Alaska's Senate race could become the surprise of election night. Joe Miller is disintegrating. His former boss, a Republican, finally made a statement about what he knows about Miller's seven years part-time work as an attorney for the small borough. Miller used the public computers of government employees to try and rig the election for the Republican party chair by submitting proxy votes in these peoples' names. It was a serious violation of the town's ethical policy and was a firing offense. But the city manager intervened and wanted Miller around to complete one last project, having to do with the taxing of the gasoline project. Then he left his job. This was one of the issues Miller kept hiding. Before this, the more he spoke the more his approval ratings fell and he had a 1 pt. lead over Lisa Murkowski. Again it comes down to a three way race.
Unfortunately, in Colorado, voters have on occasion sent madmen to the Senate. Senator Hank Brown was a straight libertarian, who wanted to cut off all USAID funding and end the entire National Endowment for Democracy because we had won the Cold War and all this was unnecessary. Their own party chairman Bruce Benson sought the governorship and would have won if his physically violent fights weren't recorded and aired on television. So, it is conceivable that someone like Ken Buck, who wants to eliminate the Department of Education, privatize Social Security, and have women who have been raped bear the child, could get elected. However, his own ethics issues are surfacing and his failure to prosecute a rapist, because the victim previously had an abortion, is beginning to draw a reaction. This comes down to voter turnout.
Would Florida voters really vote Rick Scott, a man whom many Republicans have publicly said should be in prison? Now that Alex Sink is focusing on Scott's record, she has moved out in front and the momentum is going her way.
So the gubernatorial races will be a mixed bag on election day and the Senate will simply reflect the usual attrition for the President's party. So far, this doesn't appear to be Mark Halperin's scenario that "Obama is in the Jaws of Death."
But we still have no clue as to the House. The reason control of the House this year is vital is because Republicans intend not to fund the Healthcare and Wall Street Reform bills. They know they can't repeal it. Also, they want to conduct a series of prolonged investigations into the imaginary crimes of the Obama Administration. They know at this point they can't impeach because of the Democratic majority in the Senate. Also, the Republicans are still clueless about the economy. John Boehner released a new plan last week to create jobs but economic think-tanks have studied his proposal and said it would cause another 1.1 million jobs to be lost. Also, the continuation of the tax cuts for the wealthy would only cost another $80 billion for two years and if permanent at least $750 billion.
We know Boy Genius Karl Rove has thrown in the towel on the Senate because he announced a new push on House seats. This is also in coordination with the Chamber of Commerce. People who have been canvassing the districts have been reporting dread and fear about the deluge of ads coming. Some of the expenditures on House districts are over $10 million. With most Americans in wobbly financial shape, won't this ostentatious flaunting of wealth back-fire? 47% of Americans say that they are less likely to vote for a candidate who is aided by anonymous donors. Only 7% were more likely to vote for such a person. And if you really believe everyone is a Glenn Beck he made it publically clear he has donated $10,000 to the Chamber today.
We simply have never seen such media bombardment of the electorate in such a short time. To get some idea about the magnitude of the problem, Karl Rove's Crossroads America--the American Chamber of Commerce and the anonymous conservative front groups--will spend more than the entire DNC and all their election committees and the RNC and all its commitees combined. That is stunning and potentially destabilizing to the American political system. What you now have is a gigantic Third Force, with no transparency and accountability, trying to directly determine the outcome of the election.
Now the next problem with this is that the ads both Rove and the Chamber are running are false in their accusations against candidates. Many local news stations and the media are pointing this out. In Pennsylvania, some of the ads had to be pulled because they were so inaccurate. But oftentimes the damage is done. This takes Willy Horton to the next level. In many states, where some of Rove's ads have run, people note the fear-mongering aspect and the deliberate distortion of the candidate's record or ,many times, total non-record on the issue.
While we are used to this with the Swiftboaters and Willy Horton. Candidates could fight back--even though Kerry didn't--against the other party and the deliberate smears. Now we have anonymous assassins, who can smear politicians without consequence. One of the Republican candidates ,who has been endorsed by the Chamber, is getting nervous about this and called for the FEC to audit the Chamber on the source of its funds.
Shareholders in Fox and other corporations are demanding answers about the directors' use of funds for political purposes. But this will not affect anything for another two years and it may be too late.
The interesting aftermath of this anonymous money was brought home by Howard Fineman, now writing for Huffingtonpost.com. Fineman claims that this opens a bag of worms for the Republican presidential primaries. You will have all these secret front-groups launching ads against various candidates and saying anything they please. There will be utterly no accountability and no one will know who is backing whom. This is a recipe for total chaos. Fineman speculates on a Mormon-Harvard-Bain frontgroup to get behind Romney. But remember the teabaggers like Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell and Joe Miller will have scads of money left-over, which can be funneled into the presidential primary. In this case, Barack Obama will be the prime beneficiary. The odds this money will produce a real extreme rightwing Republican candidate.
For a different opinion, Karl Rove claims that the Center for American Progress, which released their investigations into the Chamber, doesn't release its own donors and is run by John Podesta, who was on the transition team of Barack Obama, who knows Bill Ayers, who blew up the Pentagon's toilets. Unfortunately for Karl and the Chamber, Think Progress continued its investigation and found even more foreign funders for the Chamber, despite their assurances they received only $100,000 from abroad.
There is one other thing about the media narrative. How do we get to a massive republican landslide with one party significantly lower in approval than the current party in power? Also, why is it a great things for billionaires and businesses and banks to secretly fund campaigns when this class of people have significantly less respect than politicians. It's like the slime leading the slime.
Hopefully, in the words of Woody Guthrie "You fascists will lose."
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