Sunday, November 05, 2006

Election

Before returning to the Rumsfeld Dilemma, a few late thoughts on Tuesday's election.

Last evening I decided to check in on the Republican gameplan and watched Fox News's Hannity and Alan What's His Face...the Fox token liberal. Thought I'd gotten a re-run; the subject was Kerry. Two days after the Kerry gaff had departed from national news, Fox was still talking about it as if it was going to change the entire election. Hannity couldn't leave it alone; that and the "Where's Nancy?" line.

The general consensus among neutrals and even Democrats is that the Kerry incident probably cost Democrats two-three days of "news cycle," but wouldn't have a significant impact on the election. A) He's not running for anything; B) It was clearly a bad joke and not an attack on our troops in Iraq. The only way you can even come close to the Republican "talking point," is by taking one paragraph out of context.

My conclusion is that they have stayed focused on Kerry because they have nothing else to talk about. Even the "economy" seems to have taken a back seat on the Republican agenda. Values? Hardly...with the Reverend's problems, Nye's resignation, lingering Foley stories, etc. Iraq? With the President standing behind the only two politicians less popular than himself, Cheney and Rumsfeld...nope. And, terrorism isn't a popular subject when you've failed to come up with a plan to establish border controls.

Meanwhile, the consensus seems to be that a Democratic "wave" is building. Part of that is certainly Democratic wishful thinking, but it is also based on some reasonably objective analysis. Tim Russett interviewed three leading and supposedly non-partisan voting gurus: Rothenburg, Cook and a third from the "National Standard," whose name escapes me. Their consensus was that while the Bush base is holding, Independents are going Democratic 2:1.

If all of this holds and it turns into a Democratic landslide, we may want to thank Kerry, who gave Republicans a chance "too good to pass up" and took THEM off message for 4-6 key days. Was Rove outfoxed?
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1 comment:

tommythestone said...

I looked at my prediction and it looks like I got the Senate numbers wrong...my prediction would result in 48 D; 50 R; 2 I. So, even if it's a tie (the two I's are Lieberman-Lieberman Party (sadly not a joke) and Sanders-socialist, Cheney's the tie-breaker. If the D's pull off an upset in TN or AZ, in addition to holding the ground they have to in MD, NJ and WA, and taking PA, OH, RI, and VA, and take MO too, resulting in a 51-50 advantage counting Sanders and Lieberman, Lieberman suddenly becomes the most powerful man in the Senate. He knows this and has already begun to backtrack on his promises to caucus with the D's. A timely party switch and he becomes more powerful than that evil Senator Palpatine in Star Wars. Or another scenario is that he's appointed Secretary of Defense after Rumsfeld resignation and Connecticut's Republican Governor appoints a Republican in his stead. In any case, when you include Cheney's vote, the R's would hold the Senate.

On the other hand, it might be good if the Democrats didn't gain control of both houses of Congress. Things are only bound to get worse in the next two years and their chances in 2008 would be greatly improved if they hold onto minority status in one chamber and do not hold the presidency.

11/05/2006 2:25 PM

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