◼ Republican poll advantage soars to 11 points - John Hayward/Breitbart
The latest Wall Street Journal / NBC News poll says Republicans have soared to a mind-blowing 11 point lead, with voters saying they want a Republican-led Congress by a margin of 52-41. The generic lead for the GOP was only 5 points in the same poll last week. The Tea Party wave elections in 2010 rolled in with only a 7-point lead. It’s relatively rare for the Republicans to have a lead on this question at all, even in years when they do fairly well.... a big polling lead like this could make for wind in Republican sails as the finish line for those close races draws near. At this point, tea-leaf reading is down to political voodoo about the probability that a candidate X points ahead in the polls Y days out from the election will win. There is much talk of "momentum" - with a couple of weeks to go, a candidate 1 or 2 points down who has been steadily gaining ground would seem to have a good chance of pulling into the lead if his party is sporting an 11-point generic polling advantage.◼ Poll: GOP Expands Advantage Days Before Midterm Election - Wall St. Journal
By historical measures, an 11-point lead on the question of which party should control Congress is large. Republicans held a seven-point lead on the question at this point in the 2010 election in a Journal/NBC survey, which used a different method to determine which voters were most likely to cast ballots. Republicans went on that year to make big gains in the Senate and to retake the majority in the House.◼ "Years of disappointment and tension between Democrats and their president are now on open display as politicians..." - Althouse
In the new survey, Republicans also led on the “congressional control” question among registered voters, a broader group than likely voters, with 46% favoring GOP leadership and 42% favoring Democratic control. The GOP lead had been two percentage points a week earlier.
“The GOP appears to be solidifying its lead...
◼ The Democrats' Coming Blame Game - Bloomberg
...While Democrats' pre-midterm frustration is being fueled largely by his recent missteps and bad poll numbers, their disenchantment with the president was seeded back in 2011, when Obama kept waiting to strike a bigger debt limit deal with House Speaker John Boehner, one that never happened. Stumbling responses to the Syrian civil war, the emergence of the Islamic State, and a scandal that toppled the head of the Secret Service all contributed to a Republican mantra that the Democrats can't govern.◼ Liberal Sad Trombone: “We are such losers” - Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion
(I’m just going to post an excerpt of this. There is nothing I could add that would make it any more satisfying to read. So I will not put my own thoughts between Thomas Frank at Salon.com playing the sad trombone and the readers.)◼ “We are such losers”: - Thomas Frank/Salon
Liberals yearn to believe in post-ideological blank slates -- and get disappointed every time. Will we ever learn?
