Category: 2010 Election

Political grave misspelling, that is. In an effort to belittle voters who she believes might need to be edumacated on how to write in the name Lisa Murkowski on the general election ballot this fall, her web ad misspelled her own name. Some commentary by one political online consultant:

Hey kids, check those details before you post that web video! Lisa Murkowski’s staff apparently didn’t, and they misspelled HER OWN NAME in the original version…

Yep, the ad listed “www.lisamurkwski.com” in its first incarnation, an error caught by the online press with much mirth and joy. And of course, someone moved fast to buy up the misspelled domain name, which now plays host to a site that’s not exactly flattering to the sitting Senator (it starts here and gets worse: “Lisa Murkowski is an elitist, Big Government, Tax and Spend career politician who was given the seat by her daddy.”).

Here’s the revised version of the ad:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4nnCZ6jQRc[/youtube]
I think I’d be insulted by it if I lived in Alaska. Not that it matters since her sore loser moves aren’t exactly gaining a lot of ground up there.

Clayton Cramer has a look at the races for November, and notes that he doesn’t have much faith in the GOP. In that case, the beatings need to continue until things improve. I don’t recall people being this upset in 1994, and that gives me some faith that the GOP might actually have to do something this time. I also don’t see Barry transforming himself, and remaking the Democratic Party in a centrist image the way Bill Clinton did.

Fred Bauer talks about how O’Donnell actually pulled it off, after a career of being somewhat of a joke in Delaware politics. Overall, I think her victory ends up being a good thing, even if I think she’s a lousy candidate. Not so much for the practical impact, but for the message it sends. Castle is obviously dumbfounded, and is, so far, not endorsing O’Donnell. Jonah Goldberg thinks it was a tactical mistake to nominate her, but correctly notes:

When you have an organic grassroots uprising, it’s sort of silly to expect that it will make every decision with surgical skill and perfect foresight. Indeed, the attempt to play mincing games of compromise threatens to cool the very passions that have gotten us this far. In this Rush, I think, is basically right.

Jim Geraghty also relays a letter from a Delaware native that seems to grasp the First State’s political climate quite well:

Both parties in Delaware have been led by blue-blood patrician types for eons. That probably isn’t unusual in most states, but in a small state it plays out in a very interesting way. The big donors and loyalists of both parties are members of the same bar association, members of the same country clubs, do business together and send their kids to the same private schools. They live in the same neighborhoods, too. This co-mingling created a genteel centrist quality in Delaware politics that has not been challenged in any significant way, until now.

Last, but certainly not least is from the Belmont Club:

It’s news that nobody from the establishment wants to hear. The Democrats may win Delaware, but at the price of watching a new political fault line define itself without being able to take much advantage of it. To the traditional horizontal divide between Republican and Democrat is added a vertical one: Washington insider vs outsider. It has divided politics into quadrants.

I think, in the end, O’Donnell’s victory may be a tactical loss, but strategically, it probably needed to happen. What surprising is that Mike Castle was able to avoid a significant primary challenge for as long as he did. It was his time to go.

NRA can now put Mike Castle’s proverbial head on a pike outside HQ, and start carving Lindsey Graham’s name into the next sharp stick. It’s one thing to be a RINO, it’s quite another not to understand which groups you don’t want to piss off and mobilize. While I think that O’Donnell is, well, nutty as a fruitcake, I do hope she beats the formerly bearded marxist. Given the choice between crazy and nuts, I’ll take nuts.

I truly feel sorry for Delaware voters. The sad thing is, I would still feel the same way if it had gone the other way. I don’t shed any tears for Mike Castle. The electorate is pissed. He’s just the latest career politician that’s gotten what’s coming to him. I don’t think the anger is over yet, as I’m sure they are going to find out come November.

Click here and watch this. It’s great commentary on the Delaware senate race. (Link stolen from @Collins_Joe.)

I’m currently catching up on the insanity in Delaware, where it seems enough crazy broke out over the last couple of weeks to entertain folks on both coasts nearly 24/7 on Twitter.

But, there’s this bit of interesting news from one of my favorite local political news sites:

That means some Democratic-held seats have become more competitive, most notably Patrick Murphy’s 8th District, which now sits at No. 4 on the rankings. Republican challenger Mike Fitzpatrick’s strong fundraising, an anti-Democratic climate and polling data we’ve seen all contributed to this change. Political forecasters increasingly see the Bucks County race as a battleground. No race has become more competitive since we inaugurated the Power Rankings—it’s moved from No. 10 all the way to No. 4.

This fascinates me, and likely will until the morning after election day. Talking to people on the ground, there’s not much enthusiasm for Fitzpatrick – the GOP candidate looking to reclaim the seat he lost in 2006. However, there is quite a bit of enthusiasm for voting out Patrick Murphy – the Democratic incumbent who ran as a Blue Dog and has voted fairly far left.

Of course, nothing we see here in Pennsylvania compares to the level of political engagement we saw out in Hawaii. Their primary isn’t until next weekend, and yet we saw sign wavers every single time we got in the car (with some exceptions when we were driving late at night). There are signs in lawns and banners hanging off the sides of a huge number of homes. We found it was even common for businesses to get in on the political game by showing their support for various candidates. It’s very clear that the Djou special election win has energized the GOP there, and they are out in full force showing their support for their candidates. On the Democratic side, Mufi Hannemann, the primary challenger to former Congressman Neil Abercrombie for the Governor’s office, appears to have quite the enthusiasm advantage. His volunteers were out everywhere. We never saw any Abercrombie supporters (at least in person – beyond a sign in the yard) until our next to last day. Even then, it was one group doing one sign waving event.