30 Days To Go

So here we are a month out. This morning it was 51-49 Dems in the Senate, 202-201 Dems in the House and the rest tied. The Dailykos pollster again put Dems back to 51 Senate seats.

Today, American banks have $1.8 trillion in cash and American corporations $1.7 trillion in cash. The DOW is above 11,000. Yet Depression stalks the land. Now if you want to go back to the time America was losing 750,000 jobs a month, be my guest and support the candidates supported by the American Chamber of Commerce and the intelligence services of Russia, India, China and Saudi Arabia.

I don't know why some group doesn't run ads in the election: "the American Chamber of Commerce wants us to go back to the days when we we're losing 750,000 jobs a month. Their funders do. We don't." And list the top 18 companies who are members.And keep playing it around the country.

Barack Obama's first forays into the mid-term campaign was his stock speech about how Republicans got us in the ditch and now we got the car back on the road they want the keys back. Delivered with fun it was a good speech but did not make the visceral impact to translate into the campaign. Obama also made the point that Republicans were doubling down on Bush policies. I also thought this was not alarmist enough.

So how do you make this theme kick in? Enter Boy Genius Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, the masterminds of the George W. Republican Party, with their anonymous billionaire's club. This are the very guys who ran the car into the ditch and they are coordinating their campaign with the Chamber. Beltway punditry says that Democrats are making too much over nothing here. The Chamber sends out a PR notice that none of their money comes from abroad. Don't believe them. But as Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who is pretty straight, said on Rachel Maddow last night the polling on this issue is a big score for Democrats. Voters are starting to focus as we run down the stretch and they are beginning to connect the dots--Bush cronies versus America.

Y0u wonder why I think Karl Rove is a net plus for Democrats. Yes, he can rig elections in Alabama and mobilize voter suppression in Ohio, but he lost the 2000 election, he barely won 2004 with a sitting war-time President and lost both the Senate and the House in 2006. The Bush people basically had a covert economic and foreign policy. If you want to influence elections quietly, why would you brag to the Washington Post and New York Times you are meeting at your home with wealthy people to plot strategy in this year's elections? You have to be so egotistical or totally clueless or both. And if you are an anonymous billionaire donor, why would you like to see Rove and Gillepsie all over the television screens? I know much of this is psychological, but now that the fat is in the fire, why would you brag as Ed Gillespie did to the New York Times that an anonymous donor just gave you a million dollars yesterday?

Then the Chamber of Commerce, now convinced it neutralized Democrats' attacks on its ad campaign, vowed to increase its expenditure in defiance. If I were a legitimate business, I would run from these guys. Remember the Chamber spent billions upon billions to stop healthcare reform, wall street reform, credit card reform and the reform of the student loan programs. AND THEY LOST. Now they figure the expenditure of a few million around the country will literally buy them the Congress they need. This really should be a Democratic ad, "the Chamber fought reform with billions paid to lobbyists, now they want to buy Congress for a few million. Tell them No."

As Celinda Lake pointed out, not only is the anonymous aspect of this gigantic ad campaign an issue in the campaign but voters are connecting this to the issue of outsourcing in the key Midwestern states. I never thought "outsourcing" could have become a viable issue since it has been going on for over a decade. But the Chamber has made it so by their heavy-handed campaign and ensured that the more conservative blue-collar voter will stay in the Democratic column.

Tantrums by George Will and other conservative columnists that unions are doing the same may get the Republican base enthused but no one else believes this stuff with the Chamber spending three times Labor will be on the election.

What is strange in all this is that the psychological dynamic has changed. Democrats, who control the Presidency and the Congress, are now perceived not as incumbents but as underdogs. Congratulations, Karl Rove. Notice how seamless the faux populist Tea Baggers has melded into the GOP and how Karl Rove and the Chamber are funnelling millions to their campaigns. Since this alliance has become so overt, even the teabaggers like Art Johnson in his debate with Russ Feingold had to admit he couldn't stop these anonymous ads and had no influence over these groups. That's pretty damaging that you can't even control your own campaign.

These tea baggers are beginning to look like the carpetbaggers of old. Rand Paul kicks off his campaign in New York City for a run for the Senate in Kentucky. Joe Miller commutes from Alaska to fund-raise among corporate donors in D.C. Sharron Angle receives mega-millions from anymous donors. So the great popular uprising against Barack Obama is kaput. The teabaggers are just the astro-turf corporate fronts their critics always said they were.

Notice how quiet the media is now about the great populist Tea Party movement? Yes, there are stories about the fun and crazy aspects of these candidates. But is anyone really writing that they are serious as a group or movement?

I've written many times that Barack Obama changed our political language and that his language will be the dominant vocabulary for the next period of our political history as Ronald Reagan controlled the terms of the debate for a generation. I still maintain this. The optics--everyone loves the word "optics"--have changed back to his agenda and he and the Democrats are again portrayed as the underdogs and the insurgents. The GOP tried 20 months of this imitation of what they think is the Left and simply exposed themselves as shameless defenders of large corporations and the very, very wealthy.

The GOP strategy could only work in this mid-term. This is the last chance for white males to dominate the electorate for the foreseeable future. By 2012, we will be back with millenials, gays, women, African-Americans, Hispanics and Muslim-Americans. The GOP electoral strategy for the last several election cycles is to suppress turnout, narrow the electoral pool. Right now the GOP only dominates the oldest demographic, which will continue to die off. This is the last chance they have before they must change their ways.

If only a small percent of Obama's surge voters come out in the mid-term, the GOP advance will be neutralized. Do the Democrats have enough time to achieve this? I don't know. The biggest financial assaults on the electorate are soon to come. But we know from polls in California that the barrage of Meg Whitman ads turned the voter off. We know from the last election that the GOP's robocalls against Obama in Maine created a backlash. We are seeing some this happening now in races in lower population states.

Of course, if you rent a candidate, strange things can happen. Carl Paladino's anti-gay remarks only sparked a Daily News article how he owns Cobalt and Buddies, two gay clubs in Buffalo. Sharron Angle warns about the threat of sharia law citing a town in Texas that doesn't even exist anymore-it's just a cemetary and a few houses incorporated into Dallas. Joe Miller can't seem to explain how he's earned a living since graduating from Yale Law School. Republican Iott, the Nazi re-enactor, can't explain what he does for a living except to claim he's a local businessman. But his Ohio records show he claims to be a soldier. These people are self-destructing.

Or you can shoot your self in the head like Rand Paul. Barely escaping from his social security and Medicare snafus, he came out yesterday for replacing the income tax with a flat tax. Apparently, Rand doesn't keep abreast with what happened to teabaggers Ken Buck in Colorado who proposed the same thing. He was slammed with an endless series of ads showing how everything you purchased would cost more by 35%. He since reneged on this position. But Rand marches bravely forward.

Local polls are emerging in specific races showing gains for Democrats in both the Senate and gubernatorial races. Early voting apparently has benefited Democrats. The Republican take-over of all the Midwest governors' mansions now seems shaky. The race in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Ohio are now toss-ups, when they were leaning Republican. Democrats will pick up the governorships in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Hawaii,and probably California and Florida. And, as I've written for over a year, Texas is open. Rick Perry just stepped into another scandal yesterday of giving away millions in state funds to his contributors.

The Senate races in Washington and West Virginia are breaking into the open. Dino Rossi in Washington looked competitive until the barrage of Chamber ads reminded voters of Rossi's own dubious business background. Who knows what RFK, Jr.'s endorsement of Charlie Crist will do in Florida? That race is looking more like Rubio.

In Alaska, Teabagger Joe Miller is now close to 35% to Lisa Murkowski's 33%. That's almost a 15-point drop in a week.

The interesting question I have is whether this year's polls will get more accurate as move to election day or less accurate. Some of the local polls in Washington state and Nevada appear to me to be giving a more accurate picture of most national polls.

The other question I have is where will the money go that Sharron Angle, Joe Miller and Christine O'Donnell have accumulated after the election? Any bets on a little theft by the Grifters?

Remember the October 30th Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert rally in Washington,D.C. Musical guests are Mavis Staples and Wilco's own Jeff Tweedy. So it's worth going to if you are nearby. KEEP FEAR ALIVE!

Finally, Meg Whitman has tossed another $20 million into her campaign to buy California, bringing her over $140 million. She makes the Chamber of Commerce look like pikers.