Mullings An American Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Altitude and Airspeed

Rich Galen

Friday October 8, 2010

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From Saint Louis, Missouri

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There is an old saying among old pilots when speaking of a colleague who had run into trouble: "He (or she) was out of airspeed, altitude, and ideas."

That is where the Democrats find themselves in as the November 2 election looms ever closer.

Take the White House. Please.

President Obama has been on what can only be termed a crusade to recapture, re-assemble, and re-ignite the highly motivated coalition that swept him into office just two years ago.

He is even doing a town hall on MTV. If only (a) Obama played the saxophone and (b) Arsenio Hall still had a syndicated late night show, he could channel Bill Clinton's famous turn from June 1992.

Unfortunately for Democrats, there seems to be little evidence that college students, independents, or minority voters are gathering themselves for a last-minute dash to the polls.

In fact according to a Pew poll released late last month:

"Political independents now favor Republican candidates by about as large a margin as they backed Barack Obama in 2008 and congressional Democratic candidates four years ago."

Among likely independent voters in 2008 the margin was 52-44 for Democrats. This year that has swung to 49-36 in favor of Republicans. The analysis goes on to say:

"They are motivated by highly negative feelings about the government's performance and harsh judgments about the political status quo."

Meaning, if the GOP doesn't perform - and quickly - after the 112th Congress convenes in early January, those independent voters are just as likely to swing back to the Ds in 2012.

The airspeed, altitude and ideas situation is best demonstrated in Nevada where Senate Majority Leader Harry Byrd (D-NV) is behind his tea-party opponent Sharron Angle somewhere between two and four percentage points which is within the margin of error but which is still behind.

This, in spite of the fact that Reid actually spent money to help Angle become the GOP nominee by running ads against her primary opponent.

According to the RealClearPolitics.com analysis:

"Angle has inched ahead in the RCP Average for the first time in several months. Reid has only led in two of the seven polls taken since mid-September. It's still a very close race, but Angle gets the edge."

The CNN/Time poll has the race at 42-40 for Angle.

Everyone is talking about Angle being only plus two over Reid. But that's not the big news. The big news is Harry Reid, in spite of having been a United States Senator for nearly a quarter century is getting only 40 percent of the vote. You have to believe the string has run out.

This last week a buzz suddenly began that Ds were on the move. Remember that the Washington Post poll showed that the generic ballot had closed to "only" a six point advantage for Republicans.

Toby Harnden, about whom I've told you about before, writes for the U.K. Telegraph newspaper from Washington. Harnden's take was this:

"It looks like the Democrats are engaging in wishful thinking and deliberately talking up their chances to try to build some momentum - the old self-fulfilling-prophecy gambit."

Undermining all of the political tricks of the trade the Administration and its allies in Congress can perform is unemployment. According to estimates (and you may know the answer by the time you read this on Friday morning) the unemployment rate may rise another tenth of a percentage point to 9.7 percent.

Blaming George W. isn't working any more. Americans are smart enough to understand that the Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate since January 2007, and have had their feet on all of the pedals of power since January 2009.

Is that the ground looming in the windshields of Democrats?

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Links to Arsenio Hall, the Pew Poll and the U.K. Telegraph piece. Also what could have been a creepy Mullfoto and a Catchy Caption of the Day.

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