A new
McClatchey-MSNBC poll shows
Democrats pulling ahead in key Senate races. In the two states that the Democrats must hold,
New Jersey and
Washington, the incumbent
Democrats (Menendez and Cantwell, respectively) appear to be successfully fending off the challenges mounted by their
Republican opposition.
Remember that election day isn't Christmas and we aren't six; we probably aren't going to get everything we want.
Tennessee has
Bob Corker pulling ahead of
Congressman Harold Ford Junior. Ford is a scrapper, and the race is within the margin of error - but the polls say Corker will pull this one out. Ditto
Virginia. Even though
Norfolk is the home of the
Atlantic Fleet, and
James Webb was Reagan's Secretary of the
Navy, it looks like things that would make normal people run from
George Allen as far and as fast as they could, endears him to Virginians, since polls show Allen leading 47% to 43%. Go figure.
In
Ohio,
Sherrod Brown is not merely pulling ahead of the incumbent
Mike DeWine, he is pulling out of sight. The latest polls show him leading DeWine by 8 percentage points, safely outside the margin of error.
In
Pennsylvania,
Rick Santorum has spun out of control and is going down. His
melt-down during a recent debate with
Bob Casey set him back so far that the national party has turned off the money tap and written off the state. Casey leads Santorum 51% to 39%.
In
Rhode Island, the Democrats find themselves in a virtual win-win situation. The Democratic challenger,
Sheldon Whitehouse, leads
Lincoln Chaffee by a 48%-43% margin. This is moot. Chaffee might as well just switch parties - he votes with the Democrats far more often than he does the Republicans. A Chaffee victory (not likely) that resulted in a 50-50 split would be interesting, since no party would have cloture.
The two really interesting races are from two of the reddest of red states -
Montana, and my own state of
Missouri. In Montana,
Conrad Burns is trailing State Senator
John Tester, and the mood in Montana is one of "it's time for him to go." He didn't do himself any favors when he told the firefighters who battled this summers wildfires tht they did a "piss poor job" when the National Guard troops who normally take on a great deal of that responsibilty were bogged down in Iraq, an operation Burns has backed.
Missouri is really interesting this election cycle, and all over the country, eyes are cast toward the anachronism that is Missori.
Some of us have been calling for a McCaskill-Talent showdown since the 2004 general election. The series of debates wrapped up last Wednesday (although the fifth and final debate didn't air until Thursday, so as to not interfere with
Dancing With the Stars) and they helped Claire. She was a tough prosecutor, she knows how to work a jury, and really, what is the electorate if not the ultimate jury of ones peers?
Missourians like it when a politician answers questions. Jim Talent doesn't do that most basic thing. I will give an example...The following appeared on the letters page of the
Kansas City Star weeks ago, and Jim Talent has not answered.
Jim Talent
I recently came across a post on the Fired Up! Missouri Web site that stated Sen. Jim Talent had missed 65 of 95 meetings of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
To verify this, I pored over transcripts of the minutes of these meetings, which confirmed that he has missed a shocking number.
I then started calling the senator’s office asking for clarification. My questions have gone unanswered.
I have not seen this brought up in the so-called liberal media, so I wish to pose the question directly to Sen. Talent. I hope he sees fit to answer.
Senator, why have you missed so many of these meetings? I would think they would take top priority because the United States is involved in two shooting wars and the military has lost so many troops to death and injury in these conflicts that we have effectively lost a division of seasoned and trained troops.
These absences have occurred during a time when the Army is short 3,000 officers, and the Army Reserves are short nearly 11,000 lieutenants and captains in the ranks (source: the U.S. Army Web site).
I know if I were in your position, wild horses couldn’t keep me from them.
Jim Talent has not answered this constituents question, even though it was posed in public and is in reference to a war he supports and SASC service he flaunts. A war he would vote to authorize today, even knowing what we know now.
Jim Talent votes for force and against body armor, touts his SASC service but skips the meetings, and backs tax cuts that mean every child born enters life $30K in debt. Call that a Birth Tax.
We are grave robbers because we oppose repealing the estate tax? Well try this one on for size, if you want to fight the hyperbole wars.
They are cradle robbers. In every sense of the word.
Jim Talent flaunts his seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, but he has skipped 65 of 95 meetings of that body. In a time of war. The IAVA - Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America have given him a D- for his votes against veterans. He voted against giving our troops the best body armor. Still today he insists if we could take a mulligan, we shouldn't, invasion was the right thing to do.
