More Electoral Ephemera

Electoral-Politics.com has the House tightening. This afternoon has the Democrats at 202 and Republicans at 197 with 36 seats tied. I've read more polls on these races and I can't decide. I'm bug-eyed.

EP has the Republicans taking the Senate at 50 to Democrats 49 and 1 tied. They have Republican pick ups in Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Let's unpack that. From the beginning, Arkansas, Indiana,and North Dakota were Republican. I would mark Colorado, Illinois, Nevada, West Virginia as toss-up states, where neither party looks like they can deliver a knock-out blow.

Feingold claims he is in reach in Wisconsin. Some say he is frozen back in the 1990s when campaign law was a popular issue, but he won't accept outside help even from the Democratic Senatorial Congressional Committee. Feingold issued a statement that he's always campaigned according to his principles and if he loses this way fine by him.

Joe Sestak is beginning to fight back with cutting ads against Pat Toomey and defining him as the fruitloop he is. These ads are running in the Philadelphia area. And President Obama will be campaigning there soon. Two weeks ago showed both the Republican candidate and Toomey as wobbly but Toomey has strengthened his position. The next polls will show if Sestak has gained any traction.

Illinois is still a horserace. This was going to be an automatic pick-up for Republicans until Mark Kirk committed serial lies about aspects of his life and just yesterday said he had one of the best voter suppression (not kidding) operations in the state and made sure he named where, which not coincidentally were the black and Hispanics communities. My gut says he will not make it.

Colorado--Michael Bennett is no house on fire but he is sane. The Republican candidate is positively nuts. Ken Buck is trying to run his campaign without any interviews or press whatsoever because his views are too off the wall. But Colorado has elected kooks to the Senate before. This is a race where Buck leads by a couple of points with likely voters, but trails by nearly double digits with registered voters. This one is tight to the wire.

Nevada--I've written more than the subject is worth. This comes down to whether the unions and the Hispanics can organize enough to pull Harry Reid over the finish line.

West Virginia--this was an automatic Democratic seat. The NRSCC's recruitment of "hilly-billy types" for their ads has become a story in the state and now Republicans are trying to pull the ads. This allowed the governor to go on attack against out-of-staters who condescend about his citizens and to point the finger at his Republican rival, whom he says lives so much of his year in Palm Beach he forgot what his state is like. Zing! I still believe Manchin is going to pull this out.

That would bring us back to 53. Dailykos's pollsters have the Democrats at 51 now, a slip after three polling sessions at 52.

I'm very disappointed in the failure of Democrats to support Elaine Marshall against Burr in North Carolina. Burr still has incredibly low approval ratings and the Marshall campaign ran a contest to see whether anyone could name a thing Burr had done since he was in the Senate. There was one winner. Burr passed in 2005 (that's after 9/11) a law that would loosen controls over the export overseas of enriched uranium. That is madness.

Sarah Palin's approval rating has hit 22%, with a vast majority disapproving of her. With her new call to make abortion an issue in the mid-terms, she has suddenly ignited women's groups to start fighting back, especially against the candidates who want to prohibit abortions to women who have been raped or impregnated by relatives. By the way, the lack of an approval rating will not deter Palin from seeking the 2012 presidential nomination.