Senate Races Update
Brad Carson has moved ahead of Tom Coburn in the race for Senator of Oklahoma. If elected, Brad Carson would definitely be one of the five most conservative Democrats in the Senate. On the flipside, Tom Coburn is the worst kind of Republican, and the worst kind of Conservative (or, if you must, worst kind of Right-winger), and would find good company with Rick Santorum. If Coburn were running in Illinois, he would be Alan Keyes — but this is Oklahoma we’re talking about, so he has a realistic and good shot at it. As it is, Tom Coburn has opened himself up with comments that the RNC would like to distance themselves from, such as, “Too many OB-GYNs aren’t able to practice their love with women all across this country.”
No, wait. That was said by Bush. Nevermind.
In Colorado, Democrat Ken Salazar is now ahead of Republican Pete Coors by double digits. More importantly is the trend-line: Ken Salazar definitely has the momentum. This, perhaps, is due in part to the public’s aversion to the cat-pee taste of Coors Beer. We can only hope that the cat pee-taste of Coors Beer has a negative coat-tail effect, taking down Bush in Colorado at the same time. (I suspect Colorado might be moving bluer than — say — Minnesota, which would alter the current “2000 red-blue map” that’s supposedly the lynchpin to understanding presidential elections for the next twenty years.)
The current Republican candidate for the Senate in Alaska, if you google her name, is considered by the “Right” as being of the “RINOs” — and, apparently by the arbiters of this statistical breakdown, is the sixth most liberal Republican in the Senate. Which goes to figure… the Democrat that would replace her might well turn out to be the sixth most conservative Democrat in the Senate.
I wonder how reliable, even by the standards of polling for prognastication purposes, current Florida race polls are… what, with the constant barrage of Hurricanes and all that.
An interesting wrinkle comes in if John Kerry should win the election: the front-runner for the special Senate election will be… Barney Frank. Should Barney Frank win election, Massachusetts will then earn their “Liberal” label. (For the curious, averaging National Journal ratings out: Kerry is about the eleventh most liberal member of the current Senate. Edwards is in the 30-percentile. And, I’ve seen charts made by partisans on both sides of Americans for Democratic Action ratings charts (looking at the ratings, though, I find the numbers meaningless — even in the one-dimensional understanding of the “lib” “conserv” paradigm), American Conservative Union ratings, and National Journal ratings to prove the point — for Democrats, the point being to throw cold water on Liberal McCain fans –: the most conservative Democrat — probably out-going Louisiana Senator John Breaux, is more liberal than the most liberal Republican — the final Senate holdout to the Northeastern Liberal Republican tradition, Lincoln Chaffee. I’m counting that Georgian hillbilly dualing fan as a Republican.)
South Dakota, home of the nation’s most endangered incumbent, finds Tom Daschle peddling pork for the masses, working out the kinks of the voter-drive for the Indian Reservations, and the revving up the GOTV drive for what Democrats there are in South Dakota, while John Thune ties himself to Bush… the polls suggest what we know all along: close race…
Obama? Why is Bush acting like he’s trying to get Osama?/ Why don’t we impeach him and elect Obama?, hip hop star Common. Oh, and I love the Alan Keyes strategy: say something dumb once or twice a week from now until the election.