Last night the ad above started airing in New Hampshire. Bad news for Status Quo Joe, who depending on which poll you're looking at, is coming in first, second or third.
Last night I had a long working-dinner with a world-famous author and neuroscientist whose new book on the aging brain is coming out early next year. He was explaining to me why the average person reports that their happiest years were around 80, if they live that long. There were quite a few reasons but one big one had to do with a tendency to shut out negativity and to focus exclusively on good news and happy memories (or happy manufactured memories). This is working out extraordinarily well for Biden, whose support among extremely old Democrats is overwhelming.
Mike Siegel didn't win his nearly impossible race in TX-10, a district with an R+9 PVI where Obama lost by 20 points to Romney and Trump beat Hillary 52.3% to 43.2%. The Republican incumbent, Michael McCaul is rich, powerful and very entrenched. The DCCC ignored the race but Mike ran a classic grassroots campaign that held McCaul down to 50.9%, his weakest showing since first being elected in 2004.
Polls are all based on "likely voters." A campaign manager I was talking to last week was in a rush because he was still dragging homeless people onto buses to feed them sandwiches, etc and get them to the early voting stations. Over a thousand. Likely voters? Not a chance. Early voting shows "unexpected" upturns for women voters, black voters, Latino voters and millennials voters. How many extra seats is that worth to the Democrats beyond what the pollsters and prognosticators predicted? 10? 20?
On Monday we looked at a new poll from Reuters showing that white educated voters who went for Trump in 2016 are less favorable towards him now and plan to take it out on Republican congressional candidates in November.
Mostly old and in the wayYesterday NBC News and the Wall Street Journal released a poll, from which the sclerotic Beltway Democrats, who are utterly steeped in denial about their own national rejection, will take solace. These are the 5 top priorities respondents gave the pollsters:
Last week Rickie Lee Jones was in Orlando helping Alan Grayson turn out the voters in front of his 75% primary victory on Tuesday. A fews weeks before Peter Case did two concerts for Grayson supporters in the Bay Area.
The 26th Amendment to the Constitution is a simple one: "The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age." After being ratified by the 38th state legislature, North Carolina's, on July 1, 1971, it became part of the Constitution 4 days later on July 5. It has passed the Senate on March 10, 1971, 94-0, and the House March 23, 401-19.
Gary Peters, the Democratic candidate for the Michigan Senate seat Carl Levin is giving up, is a careerist and a New Dem with a mediocre and distinctly uncourageous record. Look as hard as you want at the Blue America Senate page but you will never find Gary Peters or anyone like him. That said, his likely GOP opponent, Koch puppet candidate Terri Lynn Land, is far worse. He's a nothing; she's a negative.
