MSNBC Analysis: Midterms look like fight to the finish

[sabra]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14911557/

Still waiting for a trend ahead of midterm vote
Things are tough for the GOP, but Democrats don't have a lock on 2006 yet

ANALYSIS
By Charlie Cook

WASHINGTON - So, has this election changed or not? The conventional wisdom in Washington certainly seems to have changed in the last week or two, from "Republicans are toast" and the GOP majority in the House is history to, well, nobody's really sure.

There is no question that President Bush's approval ratings have ticked up a bit, from averaging 38 percent in July and August polls to 40 percent in those released so far this month.

But in terms of the generic congressional ballot test, there's no sign of net movement in the national polls. Three polls have the Democratic margin diminishing, three others show it growing, and the average hasn't budged at all.

Several Republican pollsters report that they have seen some closing in the generic ballot test in state and district-level polling, with "soft Republicans" coming home, though explanations vary.

...

But for me, and many other analysts who have seen other elections that demonstrated characteristics like this one (e.g., 1994, 1982 and 1974), the upper end of that range seems more likely (or even higher). Why? Republican voters seem to be considerably less motivated than Democratic voters, there's a strong chance that there will be no losses of seats currently held by Democrats to offset gains, and a diminished financial advantage by the national Republican committees over their Democratic counterparts, just to name a few.

[Greeby]

1. The electoral Big Lie that the MSM likes to tell

:eyes:

[truebrit71]

2. MSM doing their bit to help the gop steal another election...

...good God this has to end. Doesn't it?

[bluerum]

3. It's not only the MSM that likes to lie.

This thread has been floating around on DU for a few days.

[Junkdrawer]

4. Here in Pennsylvania, I witnessed first hand how hard the "no paper trail"

forces fought to successfully implement touch screen machines with no paper trails. Gov. Rendell(D) actually fought to have the PA Supreme court set aside the PA Constitution to make it happen.

All this "wow, at the last second 20 point advantages have disappeared" stuff does not surprise me in the least.

[Flying Dream Blues]

5. This has to STOP...can we get Olbermann on this??

[AX10]

6. The MSM will do their part in ensuring the GOP continues....

their stranglehold on our country.

[mike_c]

7. we are embracing a culture war in the U.S...

...that has us pretty close to evenly divided. Partisans are pretty much implacable-- and I count myself among that group. Right wing partisans have subjegated every ideal to their hope of holding on to power at any cost. They are not amenable to reason-- these are the people who are not ambivalent toward the destruction of the foundations of our legal justice system, for example-- they embrace torture, indefinite detention, secret trials, an Amerikan gulag, and so on. These are the Amerikan taliban, christian fundamentalists who use closed echo chambers as sounding boards for theocratic ideals.

On the other side are people like me, equally committed to progressive ideals-- including defending the rights of wingnuts to their partisanship. It is a culture war. America must face some fundamental cultural decisions in the coming decade or two. One path leads to the neocon's generation war against much of the rest of world to maintain U.S. corporate and economic hegemony. The other leads to repudiation of much of our foreign and domestic policy for the last 50 years, admitting some painful truths, and enduring some equally painful consequences of our hubris.

[Leopolds Ghost]

8. Culture war is a distraction

As Thomas Frank and Michael Lind have said, we are in danger of being ruled by two competing parties of the overclass, as has been true throughout most of history. If Dems don't care about working class religious people, or seek to sell them on the idea that their religion does not entail greed (a tough sell given the number of affluent, self-satisfied "liberals" who have sat through this entire mess and done nothing but collect money on urban real estate) then they will likely ignore the continued exploitation of working class religious people under the new theory of "world city economy" and "economy ruled by the creative class" theory that is now being spread by nominally liberal upper-class interests. They are the people waiting in the wings to take advantage of the new economic climate when the Republican revolution peters out. They already control politics in our urban areas and have sold out the working class in the name of defending the importance and moral superiority of the childless "cultural class".