For a guy who is supposed to be cruising to re-election Scott Murphy got awfully nasty last night at the end of his debate with GOP challenger and retired Army Colonel, Chris Gibson.

Murphy has been attacking Gibson for supposedly supporting a bill that gives tax breaks to companies which ship jobs overseas. Last night Gibson had enough of that.

"We need to make it a little harder to move jobs overseas," Murphy said, echoing a point he has made in advertisements.

Gibson bristled at the charge. The retired Army colonel from Kinderhook moved from an attentive posture to an excited hunch, saying "now is not the time to raise taxes." He has previously said he takes this charge personally, and to cheers from the crowd, proclaimed, "the only thing that I've shipped overseas in the last few years has been myself and my paratroopers to fight for this country."

Bang.

The 'vet card' can be a little tricky to play. Yes, vets deserve respect and success in the military certainly gives you some broad stroke information about a candidate but it's not a 'get out of jail free card' (see Joe Sestak, Rear Admiral, USN, Ret). Once you enter the political arena, you are fair game, like anyone else. Still, what Murphy has been accusing Gibson of is more or less disloyalty to American and American workers. Gibson pointing out that he's spent most of his life defending those very people seems pretty damn fair to me.

You can see video of the exchange here (about the 1:30 mark).

There's no recent independent polling on this race but I think the desperate attacks by Murphy and the fact that the DCCC is still spending money on the race means it's at least a toss up.

You can read more about Gibson here.

I have set up a Gibson NY-20 Be The Wave event for Saturday, October 30th. Sign up!

Posted by: DrewM at 12:26 PM | Comments (79)
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Red storm rising:

In the final survey before Election Day, likely voters say the GOP would do a better job than Democrats on handling the economy, creating jobs and running the government.

Most also think the country's headed in the wrong direction. More than half disapprove of Obama's job performance. And even more don't like the Democratic-controlled Congress.

AP confirms that ABCNews/WaPo Poll on the disappearing female Democratic voter:

In another worrisome sign for Democrats, women now split pretty evenly between the two parties, 49 percent favoring Democrats, 45 percent Republicans. In 2006, Democrats took over Capitol Hill in part by winning 55 percent of the female vote to 43 percent for Republicans.

Other findings: generic congressional 50 GOP/43 Dem; Obama approval 54-45 against; and this key finding--

52 percent have a favorable impression of the GOP; 44 percent view the Democratic Party positively.

On Twitter, David Fredosso says he's pretty sure he's never seen that level of positive impression for the GOP; that sounds right to me (excepting the post-9/11 era of false unity), but I don't have the figures at hand.

Posted by: Ace at 12:09 PM | Comments (118)
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Do the Blue Dogs go the way of the Pink Floyd song? more...

Posted by: CAC at 11:51 AM | Comments (71)
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It's not women per se, I don't think -- it's specifically white women, and important group, since there are so many of them.

Democrats have long counted on not losing the white vote all that much because white women would offset, mostly, white men's preference for the GOP.

Not this year.

In the House races, where women have sided with Democrats by an average of nine points since 1976, they are now about evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. That is a sharp drop-off from just four years ago, when women chose Democrats by a large 12-point margin and put them in the majority.

Of course, the news is not good for Democrats almost everywhere - and certainly much worse among white men, who are embracing Republican candidates by a greater proportion than ever before. But the women matter more: As a whole, men lean Republican, while women usually act as a counterbalance for Democrats.

"Women are not a shrinking piece of the electorate. They're a shrinking piece of the Democratic pie," Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, said, refuting the notion that female voters are simply unmotivated like the rest of the Democratic base. Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, said Democrats are seeing an erosion with women who did not attend college, especially because of the economy.

"They do not think the administration's economic policies are working for their families, and worry about the priorities of this administration, and wonder if they get it," Lake said.

To counteract the trend, Democrats have released a torrent of gender-based negative ads in recent weeks - attacking male Republican House candidates for bad behavior, underscoring Republican candidates' opposition to legalized abortion and other women's health issues, and, in the Kentucky Senate race, airing an ad that asks, among other things: "Why did Rand Paul once tie a woman up?"

...

Democrats argue that the gender gap in their favor isn't disappearing but simply becoming less of a sure thing.

This is big.

Posted by: Ace at 11:47 AM | Comments (73)
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Not just a statistical tie; 43.2% to 43.2%.

Another one that can happen.

Posted by: Ace at 10:47 AM | Comments (99)
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Like Captain Ed at Hot Air, I don't know what to make of two polls (one of which has a very goofy turnout model, postulating more Democrats voting than in 200 putting Sestak ahead. Sure, Democrats may be paying more attention now, and sure, these races turn on individual characteristics and local concerns, but I still think the main drivers here are change and the Big Red Wave, and I don't see why Toomey would now be in trouble.

As Ed says, he's not really an unknown commodity. He served three terms as Representative and then sought the senate twice. And Sestak isn't really hitting him with explosive new charges.

Roll Call suggests the polls may just be phantom gains for Sestak.

While Rep. Joe Sestak (D) appears to have seized the momentum in PennsylvaniaÂ’s Senate contest, Keystone State Republicans are far more active than Democrats in early voting activity, according to absentee balloting figures released by the state Wednesday at Roll CallÂ’s request.

Pennsylvania voters have requested nearly 127,000 absentee ballots so far. Of that total, Republican voters made up 50 percent and Democrats made up 42 percent, according to figures collected Tuesday afternoon.

The state records show Republicans are returning their absentee ballots in greater numbers as well. The state has received about 40 percent of requested ballots, and Republican registrations outpace Democrats by 19 points, 56 percent to 37 percent, according to the state data. Absentee ballots made up 5 percent of total turnout in 2008.

Absentee ballots will probably make up a higher percentage of the total vote in a low-turnout midterm election, but not that much higher. So, Pennsylvania citizens, it is important to keep in mind the advice of Winston Wolf's great uncle, a poultry distributor named Wilheim Wolf, who advised: Gentlemen, let's not start plucking each other's cocks just yet.

Hey! How come there's not a single Be the Wave event scheduled in Pennsylvania? Are we all just going to blow it off and leave it to chance or what?

Posted by: Ace at 10:21 AM | Comments (120)
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I really have to watch the video -- which now I can't. I'm told there are two exchanges and my memory seems to be in error besides.

So I will rewrite that after I get a decent signal and can watch the video.

Posted by: Ace at 08:57 AM | Comments (231)
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I keep getting into this fight with readers.

Readers tell me, "The media lies; don't trust them." My response is usually "Well, they spin, they suppress, they distort, but they usually don't lie per se. A reporter who directly lies would be disciplined. Their own reputations mean too much to them to just flat-out lie."

I, the hyperpartisan crazy conservative blogger, keep taking the media's side on this point, of outright lying.

I keep being proved wrong by the Suckers of Cock I am defending.

In the Coons-O'Donnell debate, of course, there was some sparring over the exact wording of the First Amendment. The crowd of law students at Widener Law School giggled and hooted at Christine O'Donnell's answer, her questioning of whether "separation of church and state" appears in the Constitution.

Oh by the way: Don't laugh too hard, Widener Law School students. For one thing, check your enrollment: You're at Widener Fucking Law School. You aren't really law students and you won't really be lawyers.

Sorry. But if we're going to play the credentials game, I have to inform you, you're not credentialed, at least in the eyes of anyone who actually is credentialed from a real law school.

But anyway, back to the debate. I criticized O'Donnell for giving a vague statement -- a question, really -- which left her open to the claim that she didn't know what the First Amendment said.

Here's how the Washington Post "reported" the exchange. Keep your eye on the bolded text.

Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell of Delaware on Tuesday questioned whether the U.S. Constitution calls for a separation of church and state, appearing to disagree or not know that the First Amendment bars the government from establishing religion.

The exchange came in a debate before an audience of legal scholars and law students at Widener University Law School, as O'Donnell criticized Democratic nominee Chris Coons' position that teaching creationism in public school would violate the First Amendment by promoting religious doctrine.

Coons said private and parochial schools are free to teach creationism but that "religious doctrine doesn't belong in our public schools."

"Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?" O'Donnell asked him.

When Coons responded that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O'Donnell asked: "You're telling me that's in the First Amendment?"

Her comments, in a debate aired on radio station WDEL, generated a buzz in the audience.

"You actually audibly heard the crowd gasp," Widener University political scientist Wesley Leckrone said after the debate, adding that it raised questions about O'Donnell's grasp of the Constitution.

As reported, O'Donnell's question makes it seem like she's questioning Coons' assertion that the Establishment Clause appears in the First Amendment, or at least leaves her open to that claim. (I always thought that would be a false claim; my criticism was that she hadn't been clear enough about what she was questioning, letting the Suckers of Cock in the media misrepresent her.)

So, she was quoted as asking:

"You're saying that's in the First Amendment?"

...to Coons' more-or-less accurate recitation of the Establishment Clause.

It's the "That's" I had trouble with, because it's a vague word which could be referring to two different things. And my problem with O'Donnell was with not anticipating which way the media would interpret it. That is, one needs to speak defensively as a conservative, anticipating all the ways the media will twist your words, and making sure one speaks so clearly as to leave them all but untwistable.

But did she say that?

No, she did not.

What she actually asked was:

"The First Amendment does [establish what you claim]? ... So you're telling me that the separation of church and state, the phrase 'separation of church and state,' is in the First Amendment?"

In other words, she makes it perfectly clear what she's questioning. Not that the Establishment Clause says what it says, but whether the phrase "separation of church and state" appears in the clause.

And of course, on that point, she's 100% right.

Don't believe me? Well believe the Washington Post, which now reports the exchange as concluding thus:

She interrupted to say, "The First Amendment does? ... So you're telling me that the separation of church and state, the phrase 'separation of church and state,' is in the First Amendment?"

Guess which article that appears in?

It appears in the original article, the one making the erroneous, damning misreportage of her question, or at least it does now. The article has been scrubbed and edited to now accurately report what she said and what she questioned.

The same URL I linked to yesterday now links to an edited, accurate version of the article.

There is no notification the article has been corrected, or that it got anything wrong in the first place, despite the fact that the reporter Ben Evans did in fact blow the quote 100% to suggest an entirely different meaning than the accurate meaning.

I suppose it's possible that Ben Evans simply heard what he wanted to hear. A liberal, no doubt, he wanted evidence that Christine O'Donnell didn't even know the First Amendment, and so he heard that. In that case, it wouldn't be a lie per se, but a case of unconscious bias.

But in that case -- if it was accidental -- Ms. O'Donnell is now owed an apology and a correction, isn't she? Isn't she owed an owning-up to the fact that this entire controversy arose not from what she actually said, but from what a mistaken, sloppy reporter misreported her to say?

Or is the Washington Post going to claim there is no significant difference between the quotes?

Does Ben Evans claim that?

If there's no difference -- why was the article rewritten to put the accurate quotes in place?

Oh: As always, I find the term "cocksuckers" too insensitive a term.

That is why I prefer the more humane "Suckers of Cock," which makes it clear that I am not being dismissive or insulting, but am viewing these people as actual human beings, actual human beings who are Suckers of Cock.

My Own Correction: I have a bad connection right now and can't view videos, so I'm taking the WaPo's new reportage as authoritative.

However, my actual memory of the video - -I saw it last night on Maddow -- was that she says "That phrase is in the Constitution?" Again, not "that's in the Constitution?" -- making it clear she is arguing about the specific phrase itself.

That is my actual memory, but I can't check tape now. But, assuming that memory is accurate-- that she says "that phrase" -- that is a key part of the quote that makes it absolutely 100% clear is is not disputing the recitation of the Establishment Clause, but continuing to press on whether or not the exact phrase "separation of church and state" appears in the Constitution.

It doesn't. And the snide reportage, distorting her words to make her sound foolish, is in error, and most likely not even in error, but a deliberate distortion.

She is owed a formal correction and apology.

Corrected: I stand by what I wrote. There are two exchanges. A fair quoting of both exchanges makes it clear she is questioning, and continues to question, one thing and one thing only: Whether or not this particular phrase is in the First Amendment.

To truncate the quote, as Ben Evans did, or as local radio WDEL did, or as all the liberals on MSNBC did, is to deliberately make it appear that she is arguing about something she's not arguing about.

That is the what they intended, of course. And they got that. And now, 24 hours later, when that initial false impression has been put into the minds of voters, they stealth-correct and run the whole quote.

Posted by: Ace at 08:20 AM | Comments (295)
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Oh I know the reason. The question is rhetorical.

Does the media itself know the reason? I think they do. But Howard Kurtz assures me none of this is intentional. more...

Posted by: Ace at 07:40 AM | Comments (131)
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Humpday. Also I'm getting tired of these dates with nothing but ones and twos and zeroes in them.

Slublog!™

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 07:03 AM | Comments (164)
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