A reader writes in:
Sir, I hope you will mention that O’Donnell is down sixteen points down in the latest PPP poll. Hot Air seems to be blacking out this detail. You have been a stand-up guy on this issue, refusing to sugar coat the facts for the Tea Party kids, I hope you’re not caving now. I look to your site for honest reporting, not the bloviating you get in certain other quarters.
Indeed, O’Donnell is down 34 percent to 50 percent but . . . in light of everything that’s come out about her, and considering that Delaware is a heavily Democrat-leaning state, doesn’t Coons’s lead seem a little small?
Rush Limbaugh is urging his listeners to go all-out for O’Donnell; she’s raised about $450,000 so far today. The once-massive funds gap won’t be so large after all.
Perhaps more significantly, 16 percentage points is about what Linda McMahon has shaved off Richard Blumenthal’s lead during this campaign. That race, too, features a first-time* candidate with a lot of actions and associations in her past that are usually a tough sell. So far this year, Connecticut voters don’t seem to mind too much. They’re much more worried about what Washington is doing to the country.
Look at Nevada. Sharron Angle has plenty of past comments and stances that ought to make her hard to elect statewide; she’s neck-and-neck with the Senate majority leader. So far this year, Nevada voters don’t seem to mind Angle’s offbeat statements too much; they’re much more worried about what Washington is doing to the country.
In Ohio, Ted Strickland tried to make a big issue out of John Kasich’s work on Wall Street. So far, Ohio voters don’t care; they care more about the fact that the Buckeye State hasn’t seen any of those new jobs Strickland promised.
Christine O’Donnell has a lot of baggage. But Delaware Republicans didn’t care; they’re much more worried about what Washington is doing to the country. Is it so unthinkable that a majority of voters in the state as a whole think the same way?
* O’Donnell is not a first-time candidate. However, considering how little attention her last two Senate bids received, this is probably the first year most Delaware voters have really examined her, her stances, and her record.
I'm having a hard time contributing to O'Donnell since she's using campaign cash to pay her mortgage and electric bills. If she can't scrape up enough money of her own to pay her bills how will we trust her to spend our tax money wisely?
Ultimately, I think O'Donnell will lose in DE by more than 10 points. Will she get closer than when she ran against Biden? Absolutely. Will the mostly-Democrat, mostly-moderate electorate of DE elect a conservative with Sarah Palin's stamp of approval? Nope.
And I say this with some, albeit not much, authroty. My parents live in DE. They're moderates. They were ready to vote for Castle. They won't vote for O'Donnell. There's 2 votes she can't get.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI want to believe Jim, but the numbers just aren't going to be there. She'd need an absurd amount of independents and Democrats -- more than any other candidate that I know of is getting -- in addition to locking up every single Castle voter.
I guess if the Democrat has a string of major gaffes, and GOP turnout is unbelievable high, there's a chance. Nate Silver is putting it somewhere around 16%, which I guess isn't that terrible.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusesparkked, I ask this with all due respect to your parents (since you brought them up)
Will they vote for the Dem, or just stay home? I'm curious (and will make no other comment)
The subplot of last night was turnout that the tea party candidate inspired that was quite unexpected. Turnout is always the wild card in election polls and actual results.
I don't think any polls had her ahead of Castle by 6+ percent, did they?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere's competing and valid arguments for both Castle and for O'Donnell, and I think Jim has presented them pretty fairly. She certainly seems to be less than a perfect candidate, but within the past year we also heard from various quarters that Rubio, Angle, Buck and others couldn't win, and 2 of those 3 are running away with their senate race. Plus I've no doubt McMahon will prevail over Blumenthal in CT which is a seat we're generally not expected to take. Blumie's always shied away from contested races, which I think will make him roadkill for the woman who's battle scars come from building the WWE from scratch.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBut let's say O'Donnell loses and Castle would have been the 51st GOP senator. So what? Does anyone have delusions that a majority Senate judiciary committee would turn back an Obama nominee? Or that a GOP led Senate committee would investigate corruption in the DOJ or with stimulus spending? I'll counting on Issa's House committee to show some backbone because the Senate GOP has rarely shown one. Maybe the Rubios, Bucks, Angles and the rest of the young guns will change that, but come January they'll still be too junior to chair any committees even if the GOP is majority in the Senate.
I'm with wtrach. Hard to be optimistic when you see numbers like 50% disapproval rating or that only 31% of voters think she's fit to hold office. Especially given the breakdown in Delaware. 47% of registered voters are Democrats, 29% Republican, 24% Other. So even assuming that O'Donnell can get GOP support similar to other Republican candidates (say around 90%) and wins independents 2 to 1 (as other GOPers seem to be doing), she still needs a lot of help.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI do not believe Sharron Angle is an example for others to follow. By all rights, the GOP Senate candidate in Nevada should have a visible, if narrow lead over Reid given his flame-broiled status. That Angle is, at best, neck-in-neck with Reid - she is under-performing and uncomfortably so. And the biggest reason she is doing as well she is right now is because she is taking in enough cash to trade blow for blow with Harry Reid in advertising.
I believe that conservatism is a winning message. But a good standard bearer for the message is also needed. If the candidate running the general election is not a good advocate, even a winning message may not be enough for the candidate to win at the polls. The logical conclusion is also true - a truly awful advocate will lose because they could not present a winning message properly.
Then we get to the Colorado governor's race, but perhaps the less said about that situation, the better...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHave you seen this?
O'Donnell is a creationist. Not just someone who made ambiguous noises to avoid offending a voting bloc, but a full-throated advocate. Not just someone sympathetic to "intelligent design', but someone who repeats "young-earth" creationist talking points.
Or she was, anyway - probably when she was being paid for it. IMHO this is the killer for anyone who isn't a fundamentalist Christian.
If she announces - and can show by evidence - that she learned better and discarded these views well in the past, she can survive.
If not, she's toast. And the best thing that could come out of this would be that Palin announces she didn't know about the creationism, and will have nothing more to do with O'Donnell. That would help Palin immensely with those who have bought the "ignorant right-wing fundamentalist crank" version of Palin.
O'Donnell is now a huge gift to the Left, which will use her to discredit the Tea Party, Palin, and Republicans.
Besides Delaware, she could tip other elections to the Democrats.
Side note: I'm in Chicago, and I listen to classical music station WFMT. They have a "news summary" every few hours. The first item at 4 PM just now was O'Donnell.
Yes, that's right - the Republican primary in Delaware is headline news in Chicago.
This will be a national story, and Left and their media friends will beat us over the head with it. It might just be the turn of the tide.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJim, she's not a first-time candidate.
Nevada and Ohio are much friendlier states to Republicans than Delaware. Both states also feature Gubernatorial races where Republicans are also favored (in Nevada's case, it may end up saving Angle).
And her baggage is off-the-scale compared to Kasich, McMahon, or even Angle.
The Tea Party, Jim DeMint, Sarah Palin, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, and others involved in this trainwreck, should be proud of the upset victory they were able to pull off. For the rest of us, there's no use crying over spilled milk. Delaware now becomes a race like any other, like Jim Huffman in Oregon or Eric Wargotz in Maryland--- a minor candidate running uphill in a blue state with no real hope of winning. I should hope after a week or two, coverage of this race will resemble that.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRich R: Creationism is hardly a toxic position for a Republican in Delaware. For Palin's base in the South & West it's probably a positive. Stop freaking out over what Hyde Park liberals might or might not say.
When Christine O'Donnell is elected, she'll be a reliable vote for the Republican agenda. That's the important thing to keep in mind here.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYes, all these crocodile tears over O'Donnell's win are making me re-think what it means to be a Republican. Maybe I will stop being a conservative and being that I am in FL will no longer pull the lever for Marco Rubio and happily go for Charlie Crist.
It seems to me that there was a time, looong ago, maybe last week, when the extremist would be the self-proclaimed 'bearded Marxist.' And the same self-proclaimed Marxist would not be electable, not even in San Francisco. Well, maybe that is carrying it too far, but not in DE.
Yes, the EXTREME politician in America would not be someone who may believe in creationism, or a smaller gov't with less taxes, or perhaps a strong national defense, etc, it would be the MARXIST.
Marxism, that wonderful theory that has never worked anywhere its been attempted, where now one of its elder statesman admits it hasn't worked, in who's name more people have been murdered than any other ideology in the 20th Century, is the professed political affiliation that COD's opponent uses to describe himself with.
Instead of worrying about COD and her views, a loud wake up call to the electorate of DE is in order so they don't have the excuse that a good portion of the electorate has about Obama: we didn't know what hos views really were.
So, please allow me to start the shouting here on NRO:
COD'S OPPONENT CHRIS CON'S IS A SELF-PROCLAIMED MARXIST
PS-NRO's filter is not allowing us to spell out his name?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI just drove down route 1 in Delaware last week. It's a short walk to church no matter where you are. So I don't think creationism is the problem.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThat poll was taken from Sept 11 - 12, and PPP previewed the results on Sept 13, the day before the election:
External Link
Now that there's actually a winner, I wonder if the data isn't seriously out-of-date.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf Delaware voters prefer to send a self-avowed Marxist to represent them in Washington because Christine O'Donnell is too extreme, it is their choice to make. As long as the candidates are honest about who they are and what they stand for, voters can make a reasoned decision about which candidate will best represent them. They might not get exactly the representative they want, but they'll know the representative they've got.
Mike Castle is a mixed bag and Republican voters weren't sure what they would get with him, so they voted for authenticity instead. What's the point of winning a two-seat majority in the Senate if three or four of the Republican Senators vote with Democrats more than 50% of the time? A majority doesn't mean anything if that majority doesn't know what it stands for.
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