A Royal Flush of Bad News for Democrats?

At this time on Friday, I was sweating a little bit. No fewer than five different news stories were cutting against the Democratic Party and their quest to take control of Congress in (at the time) 11 short days. It's too soon to tell if there will be any significant damage from any of these stories, but polls in the next few days should tell the tale. In declining order of significance, these stories include.

5) The brouhaha over Michael J. Fox's stem cell ads running in Missouri and Maryland. Personally, I found them to be over-the-top. I have commented on this blog before that I fear Democrats are overselling the dividends of embryonic stem cell research, and I doubt I'm the only supporter of said research who feels that way. The inference that Jim Talent is willing to let Michael J. Fox die by not supporting federal funding of embryonic stem cell research is not the kind of message that I expect will play in pro-life and anti-Hollywood Missouri. Fortunately, I suspect the potentially negative consequences of this ad (particularly the Missouri version) have probably been neutralized by Rush Limbaugh's outrageously insensitive accusations regarding Fox's condition...and his unwillingness to back down from them since. The lame, low-budget ad that stem cell opponents in Missouri vollied back, complete with low-rent actors and local sports heroes, probably had little positive effect, but the ad featuring Michael Steele's sister in Maryland is much more effective. Overall, I think Rush Limbaugh may have helped the Dems dodge a bullet here, but I still believe that the Michael J. Fox ad in Missouri will hurt Claire McCaskill more than it helps her.

4) Speaking of the Maryland Senate race, it's my understanding that Democrat Ben Cardin blew off a debate with Michael Steele at a NAACP forum. What the hell could he be thinking? Steele is already pulling in a disproportionate share of the African-American vote in Maryland. Cardin should be showing up to forums featured by the NAACP two hours early rather than blowing them off. I'm not sure what kind of shellacking Cardin is getting from the media after dissing the NAACP forum, but the last thing he needed to do was giving African-American voters another reason to think the Democrats are taking advantage of them, particularly since he didn't manage any knockout blows against Steele in today's Meet the Press debate. Conventional wisdom is that Cardin will win next week, but I think it's more up in the air that we may currently think given the conflicting motivations of black voters here.

3) New Jersey's gay marriage ruling could awaken the sleeping evangelical lions at a time when Democrats have been tiptoeing around them hoping they'll stay in hibernation until November 8. I never believed that the GOP base was really gonna stay home, but one has to believe that a sizeable share that truly was "disillusioned" is ready to spring back into action after this ruling, which couldn't have come at a worse time. On the other hand, the Republicans have been so transparently jubilant about this ruling that they've spent much of the weekend shouting "Hallelujah!" at what is supposed to be devastating news for the future of the American family and thus civilization. They risk being viewed as the sleazy opportunists that they are. Gay marriage is allegedly not as big of an issue to conservatives in 2006 as it was in 2004, but I'm not convinced of that. If it motivates even a small percentage of the GOP base in Missouri, Tennessee, Ohio, or Virginia, it could be a dealbreaker for Democratic Senate candidates in those states, not to mention House districts in other red-leaning districts.

2) Harold Ford, Jr.'s campaign in Tennessee has been sidetracked for several days now by "backlash" over a potshot RNC ad that I'm sure all readers of this blog are acutely familiar with. Unfortunately, the "backlash" is coming exclusively from Washington Democrats and mainstream media talking heads that probably think they're doing Ford a favor by suggesting the race card was being played against him, just as they thought they were doing Jim Webb a favor in Virginia by dredging up former acquaintances who accused him of uttering racial epithets 30 years ago. One guy who smartly recognizes the futility of infusing racial politics in this contest is Harold Ford himself, who is on record suggesting that he finds the ad sleazy and idiotic, but not racist. Unlike the media and Washington Democrats, Ford recognizes that the last thing he needs to be talking about in the final 10 days of a campaign in Tennessee is that he's a black man. While political pundits may see racism in this ad, I highly doubt the average white Tennessee voter would. To hear breathless cries of racism tossed around by the very people Ford is trying to distance himself from is a ruinous situation for Ford. It simply reminds skeptical conservative voters from Tennessee that a Ford victory will simply mean six long years of the race card being slung around. I highly doubt Tennesseeans want that. Whatever momentum Ford had 10 days ago before ambushing Bob Corker's press conference (the Memphis Meltdown) is likely lost now. I can't imagine how he can win.

1) The leaked excerpts from Jim Webb's novels initially struck me as the early November equivalent to the sex scandal that was the Mark Foley scandal in early October, particularly after hearing just how extreme the smutty content was. The fact that the books were narrowly connected to his personal experiences in southeast Asia during his Navy tours didn't seem likely to quell the bleeding. I thought Webb was assuredly finished and that he might take some other Democrats down with them. Thankfully, my original instinct seems to have been too pessimistic, but I still think these raucous excerpts have ended Jim Webb's hopes of winning once and for all, particularly in Virginia. Followers of Pat Robertson (Virginia Beach) and Jerry Falwell (Lynchburg) reserve every morsel of their ire for sex scandals exactly like this one, and I except dynamic turnout against Webb from these communities....and also among women voters, who are already understandably skeptical about Webb based upon his chauvinistic comments about allowing women into combat back in the late 1970s. It all starts to pile on when Webb writes novels featuring women peeling bananas with their crotches to entertain voyueristic male neanderthals. This is a transparent Karl Rove dirty trick revealed 11 days before an election, but that will hardly matter to Virginia values voters who agree with Webb about the war but can't bring themselves to voting for some "filth peddler".

It's heartening to see that the Webb story hasn't gotten the MSM exposure I expected it to, and may in fact die down as we head into the final full week of the campaign, but the other four stories are all likely (or at least have the potential) to fester on, sucking oxygen out of the campaigns of McCaskill, Cardin and especially Ford who are all desperately trying to be on the offense. Whatever the case, the Democrats need to have a better week this week than they did last or expectations will certainly be on the downswing heading into November 7.