A roundup of last night’s panel on Special Report with Brit Hume:

—On Iraq—

FRED BARNES: [Maliki] seems to be defending al Sadr whose Mahdi army is filled with these death squads. Maliki has to decide once and for all, and soon, whether he’s going to be a national leader or a sectarian leader. Right now he is a sectarian leader.
MORT KONDRACKE: Maliki did the president no favors today. I mean, the president was stalwart in his defense of Maliki who has been under all kinds of criticism from the United States and both critics and supporters of the war, and he said, you know, that this guy has a tough job, et cetera, et cetera. So meanwhile over in Iraq, Maliki is saying—is denouncing a raid . . . and also saying that these benchmarks that our ambassador there has worked out are all election year stuff in the United States.
BARNES: . . . He’s got to act fast. I don’t care how long he has been in.
KONDRACKE: There has to be a national reconciliation or else civil war will take place.

—On the Elections—

KONDRACKE: . . . So, you know, what the leading Republicans that I’ve talked to say, that if they lose five seats [in Indiana and Ohio] that you can just figure that they’re going to lose a lot of seats in Connecticut, a lot of seats in Pennsylvania, a lot of seats in New York. HUME: The most important question is, how much of this poll disadvantage can be offset by the turnout operation, which appears to be from what we know about it, a larger effort even than was made two years ago?
BARNES: Polls don’t tell you much about turnout. They really don’t and so if you have a great turnout operation, you can thwart the polls.
MARA LIASSON: We know Democrats are more enthusiastic, we know Republicans can get out the vote and the Washington Post poll of Independents show that twice as many Independents are being contacted by the Republicans than the Democrats, that tells you something.