Well, thanks for that. Ideological clarity is always useful: Tim Pawlenty has political courage, Mitt Romney doesn’t. Good to know.
For as long as he’s been mentioned as a serious presidential candidate (say, about 2007), I’ve always harbored a vague dislike of Romney for reasons that were hard to articulate, and which had nothing to do with his Mormonism. Just looking at him made me think he was a smug, dishonest creep, no matter how much the good folks at National Review gushed over him. If you had asked me to explain why I disliked him I would have had to admit that it was an entirely irrational, gut-level reaction. (The vast majority of liberals have the same gut-level, irrational hatred of Sarah Palin, but they just won’t admit it’s irrational.)
But the more I hear from Romney, the more I think that my gut-level reaction was right, that Romney is an empty suit that doesn’t believe in anything except his own awesomeness. If Romney got elected, I bet within a year we’d be getting New York Times editorials praising him for how much he’s “grown” (i.e., abandoned conservative positions).
Romney was never going to be my choice for the GOP nod, but his latest pander has finally dropped him to dead last among the serious contenders in my book, even below New Gingrich, Ron Paul and Herman Cain. At least with Ron Paul, I have some idea of where he stands. Romney has the ideological consistency of store-brand guacamole.
Let me be blunt, liberal America: no one, outside your own fever swamps, trusts you to decide what discourse is “fair”, or where the “Climate of Hate” begins and ends. You don’t get to drop buckets of blood on Palin for days, then call her a hatemonger for responding. Your behavior over the last few days is a crime against discourse, and you did not get away with it.
Paul Krugman managed to bring up one example of conservative “eliminationist rhetoric”…and it was a lie.
In truth, I don’t cover Krugman a lot, because: A.) Plenty of others are covering that beat, and B.) Like much of the rest of The New York Times, I view Krugman’s blinkered liberalism as a major strategic advantage for conservatives. But John Steele Gordon is right: “He is the Joe McCarthy of our times.”
I was going to post another piece on the shooting, but Instapundit has already covered pretty much everything I wanted to say. (Shakes tiny fist in impotent rage. “Damn you, Glenn Harlan Reynolds! Damn you to Hell!”) By now the story is less about a crazy man killing political figures and innocent bystanders than it is the left’s desperate and distasteful attempts to pin the act on the Tea Party.
“There also was a second sickness on display, and it was the swiftness and the vigor with which the left-wing blogosphere and some more mainstream Democrats immediately sought to blame Sarah Palin and right-wing ‘vitriol’ in general for the shooting.”
Has any political movement ever been as obsessed with a political figure as the left is obsessed with Sarah Palin? Especially one that no longer holds any elected office?
Federal charges filed. I think we can all agree that, if Loughner is found fit to stand trial (I doubt he will be), then he should eligible for the death penalty, yes?
Since Loughner was obsessed with mind control, here are some of his fellow crazies discussing his obsession. However, just to be fair, I should make clear that I don’t blame the Nutso American Community for Loughner’s spree. The vast majority of people on Above Top Secret and InfoWars are honest, hardworking, non-violent Americans who just happen to be deluded cranks. Most of them wouldn’t harm a fly, unless it was aiming a tiny parabolic microphone at them. (You know the CIA has those now, don’t you? Don’t you??????)
I seem to have drifted off-track. There’s nothing funny about Loughner’s shooting spree, but I think we all need to take a step back and enjoy a little levity in the midst of grim times. And the David Ickes and Gene Rays of the world aren’t the ones we need to worry about.
Did accused shooter Jared Lee Loughner assassinate Judge Roll for political reasons?
Hell no. Loughner killed Roll and five other people because he was a violent, unstable lunatic, and more and more evidence is coming out to that effect. As Arizona Senator John Kyl put it: “It’s probably giving him too much credit to ascribe a coherent political philosophy to him.”
Sometimes people do commit horrific acts of violence for easily-identifiable ideological reasons. Maj. Nidal Hasan’s Ft. Hood shooting spree is a classic example. Jared Lee Loughner’s shooting spree is not.
The evidence is now in, and what little seems to be known about accused Arizona shooter Jared Lee Loughner from people that knew him was that “he was leftwing” and “liberal in wanting to change the way the world was run, we both wanted to. He took it to an extreme I never would’ve.”
Does that mean that Arizona Democratic Congressman Gabrielle Giffords was shot by a “left wing extremist?” No. When you read his manifesto, you see that his political leanings, such as they are, were not “left” or “right” so much as “completely farking loony toons batshit insane.” His manifestos jump from subject to subject more quickly than a jittering tweaker flips channels on a TV remote. To paraphrase an entry in the Bulwer-Lytton contest, ideas seem to tumble around randomly in his head, making and breaking connections like a load of laundry in a dryer without Cling Free. They have some of the same quality of argument as Time Cube Guy: It’s less that his manifesto is wrong than that you can’t actually understand what he’s trying to say.
(Boing Boing has even more of his manifestos up, and the Time Cube Guy vibe only gets stronger. Except for the fact that Gene Ray never killed anyone…)
Loughner’s liberalism didn’t make him crazy, his crazy made him crazy.
I mean, how crazy do you have to be to expelled from a pre-algebra class? “Solve for X.” “Admit it! X is a total lie!!!! There is no X, only Zuul!”
Every time anyone even remotely connected to conservative causes commits a violent act, the nutroots and their media enablers are quick to label them a “right wing extremist,” but anyone with demonstrable left wing sympathies is a “lone nut.” (Indeed, they’re pretty blatant about it.) Indeed, one of the most famous assassins in American history was a known communist sympathizer who defected to the Soviet Union, but you never hear Lee Harvey Oswald described by the media as a “left-wing extremist.”
There’s been much speculation as of late that Obama isn’t having much fun, that the midterms took all the wind out of his sails, and that he didn’t have the stomach to abandon his liberal supporters and embrace triangulation the way Bill Clinton did after Democrats got slaughtered in the 1994 midterm. Hence, all signs were pointing to the fact that Obama had resigned himself to being a one-term President and wasn’t going to run for re-election.
Today I think we have pretty firm evidence that theory was wrong.
The fact that Obama caved in on extending all the Bush tax cuts isn’t so surprising in and of itself. Just about every economist to the right of Paul Krugman agrees that raising taxes during a normal recession is a bad idea, much less the extended Great Recession/Job Loss Recovery we’re currently stuck in, and sentiment had been trending in favor of extending the Bush tax cuts even before the midterms sent scores of Democratic officeholders scurrying for moving boxes. The question wasn’t so much whether they would be extended, but how much Obama would get in return for them.
The answer seems to be surprisingly little. Most expected Republicans to agree to extending unemployment benefits, and most of the rest of the agreement (like payroll tax cuts) are more than acceptable to Republicans. Further underscoring how well Republicans did are the negative reactions on either side of the aisle. Republican critics were saying things like “I’m not initially thrilled about it” while liberals reactions were things like “outrage” and (for socialist Bernie Sanders) threatening to filibuster.
More interesting still is the Obama White House’s explanation for the switch: Instead of blaming Republicans, they blamed congressional Democrats for being hopeless wimps. “We wanted a fight, the House didn’t throw a punch.”
I wonder if today Nancy Pelosi is walking around in a state of shock, thinking “This is the thanks I get for dragging ObamaCare over the finish line? A knife in my back with Obama’s name on it?”
Obama seemed slow to perceive the growing mood against him (certainly much slower than Clinton, who declared “The era of big government is over” the day after the 1994 midterms(I was wrong; see below); say what you want about Clinton, but he had a an exceptionally keen nose for ferreting out parades to stand in front of), but he seems to have finally woken up. The way the Obama went about this, cutting a deal with Republicans and then blaming House Democrats, looks exactly like the triangulation strategy Dick Morris mapped out for Clinton.
To characterize this as a deal is like that famous deal that Emperor Hirohito struck with MacArthur on the Battleship Missouri. This is a surrender. This is absolutely Obama caving in. And the Republicans had to extend unemployment benefits anyway because you’re not going to give the tax cut and at the same time cut off unemployment benefits.
But this shows that Obama will blink. And it’s the first of the trifecta of confrontations. This one — the next will be state bankruptcies when we’re called on to bail out and then the enchilada which will be defunding Obamacare, a balanced budget plan and blocking the EPA from cap and trade.
I remain unconvinced that Obama will abandon his signature federal takeover of health care, but the rest seem entirely possible. Especially if he thinks its necessary to get reelected. He seems to fear a challenge from his party’s right flank (cough cough Hillary) more than his left. He probably believes (correctly) that no challenger to his left will be able to pry away enough black voters to prevent him from being renominated. Which means that he’s already positioning himself as a re-invented moderate for the 2012 general election.
Can Obama run convincingly as a moderate after two years (or, to be technical about it, just shy of 23 months) of governing as a liberal? Maybe. Remember, he did it successfully in 2008. Also, he can make a fairly credible case that he has governed as a moderate when it comes to foreign policy (Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay are classic examples of how Obama’s campaign promises became null and void when he actually had deal with real world problems in the White House rather than on the campaign trail), the occasional warm handshake with Commie dictators notwithstanding.
Can he take liberal votes for granted in the 2012 general election? Hell yes. Where else are they going to go? In fact, if Sarah Palin is the Republican nominee, Obama could probably personally execute a Gitmo detainee on the White House lawn every day at high noon and liberals would still vote for him.
Finally, can he win reelection as a moderate? I wouldn’t count him out. Politics is a “what have you done for me lately” business, and it’s quite likely that the economy will doing well enough in two years for him to (justified or not) take credit for it. He may be crummy at governing, but Obama is an excellent campaigner. Even as a challenger he showed a taste for pomp and circumstance; can you imagine how much it will be cranked up when he runs as the sitting President?
Remember, lots of pundits wrote Clinton off after the 1994 election. It’s taken him a while, but Obama finally seems to be using the same playbook. Whether he can still make it work for him (absent a Ross Perot) remains to be seen.
Addendum: I misremembered when Clinton said that. It wasn’t the day after the midterms, it was his State of the Union Address the following January. He did move to the center some shortly after the election (see this transcript from his November 9, 1994 press conference for details), but I screwed up the date, which partially invalidates the point I was making in that paragraph. Mea Culpa.
Live-blogging the election, most recent comments on top.
12:12 AM: Prediction for tomorr- er, today: Democrats complaining non-stop about how voters are still too stupid to appreciate how awesome they are.
12:07 PM: A few got away, but this was a very successful night for Republicans. If you had predicted the magnitude of Republican victory any time in 2009, pundits would have laughed at you. Remember, in October of 2008, Daily Kos said ” At this pace, we’re headed toward a 65-70-seat Democratic majority in the Senate by the end of 2010.” The magnitude of the Tea Party turnaround in Republican fortunes is one of the most astonishing political feats of our lifetimes.
12:00 AM: Some happy thoughts to leave you with:
Republican Steve Pearce beats incumbent Democrat Harry Teague in NM 2, which RCP had as a leans Dem seat.
Republican Scott Tipton beat incumbent Democrat John Salazar in CO 3
Republican Cory Gardner beat incumbent Democrat Betsy Markey in CO 4
Just about every office in Wisconsin that could reasonably have a chance to flip Republican did. How do you like your shiny new red state, WisCon?
11:57 PM: At Midnight all the agents…have to stop blogging and go to bed. I’ll have some more analysis scattered over the next few days.
10:54 PM: Fox news calls CA for Boxer. No surprise.
11:48 PM: Murray has a small lead in Washington, but there are a lot of votes still outstanding.
11:44 PM: Pennsylvania Senate race called for Toomey. Don’t let Harry Reid’s narrow escape keep you from realizing what a huge improvement Toomey is over Arlen Specter. This is a big plus for Pennsylvanians, Republicans, and Americans, and even Democrats (who won’t have Specter as their problem any more come January).
11:40 PM: Legal pot defeated in California. I would have supported this were I living in California, as I do not think that regulating it is a legitimate concern of the federal government, and the War on Drugs has been an astoundingly expensive failure. But if legal pot can’t win in California, then where can it win?
11:39 PM: NV called for Reid. Dang.
11:38 PM: IL Senate race called for Kirk.
11:37 PM: Blog went down for a while, but Blue Host brought it back up more quickly than I expected.
11:03 PM: NBC: “The Tea Party has arrived in Washington, DC. The House did everything the Obama White House asked them to, and they paid the price.”
10:59 PM: Republicans are over-performing expectations of a week ago, but under-performing those of a day or two ago (including mine). It’s shaping up to be a bit worse for Democrats than 1994, which is bad enough (for them), but short of the (deep, scary voice) DEMOGEDDDON some were predicting.
10:55 PM: Senate Race quick updates:
Kirk slightly ahead in IL. (“KHAAAANNNNN!”)
Toomey still holding the lead in PA, with not many districts outstanding
Rossi/Murray tied in WA; it’s flipped back and forth
10:46 PM: I’m still amazed the Democrats couldn’t find anyone to run against John Thune in South Dakota. It makes South Carolina Democrat’s choice of Alvin Greene seem slightly less pathetic. At least he showed up.
10:40 PM: TX23 called for Doggett over Campbell, but 52% is a lot closer that most people expected.
9:58 PM: Toomey slips into the lead over Sleestak Sestak. Setak had held the lead virtually all night. Over in the opposition camp, the Daily Kossacks are despondent, saying there are only heavily Republican counties left.
9:52 PM: “Captain’s Log…I’m tired!” I’ve been staring at glowing rectangles for too long. I’m going to take a break to walk my dog in a few minutes.
9:49 PM: ABC refusing to call Florida or Ohio Governor’s races for the leading Republicans. I think they’re whistling pass the graveyard.
9:43 PM: This was announced earlier, but Barney Frank survives, alas. I’m sure he’s already dreaming of new ways to inject taxpayer money into the housing market.
9:41 PM: Republican Nikki Haley takes South Carolina Governor’s race.
9:40 PM: Wisconsin Senate seat called for Ron Johnson over Russ Feingold. GOP pickup.
9:38 PM: Sadly, Cao is going down in LA 2. Still, it’s an overwhelmingly Democrat seat that only went Republican in 2008 due to corruption on the part of William “cold 90 grand” Jefferson.
9:36 PM: Dana Loesch is on ABC. She looks pretty hot. (Note: This was the point in the evening when my internal censor decided to pack up and go on vacation.)
9:31: Ha! Barletta over Kanjorski. Also, “Red Barchetta” over “The Camera Eye.”
9:25 PM: Fox 7 interviewing Larry Gonzalez. He looks excited, articulate, and sweaty. “Oh my gosh.” :-)
9:23 PM: Man, that CBS theme music of repeating flute riffs is annoying. Like a pastiche of Philip Glass written by someone who hates Philip Glass.
9:22 PM: Katie Coric: “Some think Haley Barbour is a future GOP Presidential candidate.” Yeah, some people on a very poor grade of crack…
9:21 PM: PA Senate still too close to call. IL Senate still too close to call. WI too close to call. CO too close to call. NV too close to call. Still, I have the distinct feeling Republicans won’t take the Senate.
9:18 PM: ABC has finally decided to grace us with election news. Ed Rendell is spinning madly that Democrats aren’t losing bad as some people expected.
9:14 PM: Fox 7 has Texas congressmen Chet Edwards, Solomon Ortiz and Ciro Rodriguez all losing. As well as 20 Democrat state House incumbents going down.
9:11 PM: Hmmm. CBS has Republican Thomas Reed beating Matthew Zeller in NY29, despite Zeller’s total currently being higher than Reed.
9:07 PM: Flores winning big over Chet Edwards for TX-17.
9:02 PM: More local Texas updates from KEYE: Doggett back up over Campbell, but only by 5,000 votes. Larry Gonzalez maintaining 59-39% lead over Moldanado.
9:00: Democrat Bill White concedes in Texas.
8:55 PM: Republican Dennis Ross over Dem Lori Edwards in FL 12. (GOP hold.)
8:53 PM: Palin: “Delaware is a deep blue state. Exit polls show Castle would have lost on Delaware the same way O’Donnell did. The Tea Party didn’t cost the GOP that race.”
8:51: Fox predicts GOP picks up PA Governorship.
8:51: Palin now slamming the “lamestream” media.
8:50: Palin just admitted she might run for President.
8:49: Fox: “Is Marco Rubio a possible Vice Presidential candidate?” Palin: “He’s a possible Presidential candidate.”
8:47 PM: Palin says the Tea Party movement is libertarian in character. “They’re not going to Washington to raise taxes.”
8:45 PM: Sarah Palin being interviewed on Fox right now. Like Bush, I think it’s her accent that’s the source of the American left’s instant, irrational rage against her.
8:45 PM: Republican Rigell over Nye in VA02.
8:40 PM: RCP has Republicans picking up North Dakota Senate seat (as expected).
8:37: PA, NV senate races still too close to call.
8:33 PM: CBS: Republican Steve Southerland over incumbent Dem Allen Boyd in FL 02.
8:23 PM: KVUE: Larry Gonzales over Moldanado in early voting for the Texas House District 52 race!
8:23PM: KVUE: Texas news starts coming in: Perry kicking White 59% to 39%. Whoa! Campbell up over Doggett??? (only 5% in, though)
8:16 PM: NBC saying Ohio’s Governor’s race is closer than [insert cornpone Dan Rather saying here]
8:13 PM: Fox predicting: 239 Republicans in the House, 196 Democrats.
8:12 PM: Fox News predicts Republican takeover of the House. Booyah! Take that Nancy Pelosi! But pretty much everyone to the right of Daily Kos predicted that.
8:09 PM: Republican Charles Fleischmann holds on to Zach Wamp’s seat. I just like typing “Zach Wamp.” ZACH WAMP!
8:08 PM: Tom Brokaw just called the American electorate a “wild bull.”
8:05: Foxnews.com has Republican jeff Duncan picking up Gresham Barrett’s SC 03 seat.
8:01 PM: Nice of you to join us, Fox News.
8:00 PM: Republican Lou Barletta edging Democrat Paul Kanjorski in PA-11, but the lead is small and only a small number of districts have reported.
7:55 PM: Republican Young over Democrat Hill in IN9, according to RCP Donnelly/Walorski still too close to call.
7:41 PM: As a reporter, getting caught conspiring against a Republican candidate gets you: A.) A Pulitzer, B.) A job with MSNBC, or C.) A pink slip. (Of course, they might still get the MSNBC jobs…)
7:39 PM: “Election Alert: Fox News Projects Republican John Boozman Defeats Sen. Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas.” Almost as shocking as a Mike Tyson victory over Woody Allen.
7:31 PM: As part of their non-election, ever-so-important “Trapped in an Elevator” coverage, PBS is showing footage of the World Trade Center collapse. I’m sure Democrats are calling up PBS execs. “You’re not helping!”
7:27 PM: They’re also calling IN 08 for Republican Buschon.
7:25: CBS has Sandra Adams beating Suzanne Kosmas 60% to 40% in FL 24. Kosmas was an ObamaCare flipper, though not one of the Stupak group.
7:15 PM: Pause for pizza.
7:13: Drudge: REPUBLICANS WIN SENATE SEATS: AL, FL, GA, IN, OH, KY, MO, NH, SC…
DEMS WIN: CT, DE, MD…
TOO CLOSE TO CALL: PA, IL…
No real surprises there…
7:09: ABC: Bucshon over Van Haaften 55% to 39% for IN 06, but Donnelly up over Walorski 49% to 46% with 56% reporting.
7:06 PM: “Fox News Projects GOP Marco Rubio Wins Fla.”
Hey, Charlie Crist:
7:02 PM: Well, thank God for PBS and their focus on public-minded–CLICK. “Trapped in an Elevator.” Your tax dollars at work.
7:00 PM: Glee, Fox? Dancing with the Stars, ABC? On election night? Thanks for NOTHING!
6:58 PM: Jackie Walorski up over Stupak-bloc flipper Joe Donnelly 53% to 42% with 19% of the vote in.
6:51 PM: Foxnew.com has Frank Guinta up over incumbent Democrat Carol Shea-Porter in NH1 by 12,585 to 10,348. If anyone had Shea-Porter on their endangered list, I must have missed it.
6:47 PM: Drudge predicting a 50 seat GOP pickup in the House.
6:44: PBS has Robert Hurt up over Dem Golden Boy Tom Perriello by 55%, in Virginia, despite national Dems pouring millions into the race. But the returns may not be representative of the district as a whole.
6:23 PM: Moving the TV into the office. Old 36″ tube. Weighs approx. 3 metric tons.
6:13 PM: Drudge exit polls via Instapundit:
Tea for Three: Coates, Paul, DeMint Win Senate Seats…
EXIT POLLS:
IL 49-43 Kirk [R]… NV TIED…
Arkansas: Boozman (R) over Lincoln (D)
California: Boxer [D] over Fiorina [R]
Florida: Rubio [R] over Crist [I], Meek [D]
Ohio: Portman (R) over Fisher (D)
North Dakota: Hoeven (R) over Potter (D)
Wisconsin: Johnson (R) over Feingold (D)
6:11 PM: Whoa, that was quick. ABC, Fox, and NBC are already calling the Senate races for Rand Paul in Kentucky and Dan Coats in Indiana.
6:07 PM: The Fark election thread, for one of the few venues on the Internet where both left and right gather to drink heavily and troll each other.
6:00 PM: Greetings Instapundit readers! Damn he’s fast. Within minutes of me dropping him an email the link was up. It’s like that Warner Brothers cartoon when the wolf writes off for an anti-smoking kit, and when he goes out to mail the letter the postman drive out, snatches the letter from his hand, hands him the kit and drives off…
James Cameron calls for a vote against California’s Proposition 23, which would reign in the most radical of the state’s job-destroying “green” excesses. That’s Canadian citizen James Cameron.
Is Nurse Bloomberg planning a run for the Presidency in 2012? “If he runs, Bloomberg is prepared to spend between $1 to $3 billion on his campaign.” That’s Billion, with a “B”.
“Poll Finds Obama Voters Leaning Republican”: That was the original title for that New York Times piece. It looks like someone at the Obama White House got through on the emergency NYT Red Phone, as it now bears the less-depressing-for-liberals title “Obama Coalition Is Fraying, Poll Finds.” But the article itself should be just as distressing to them: “Republicans have wiped out the advantage held by Democrats in recent election cycles among women, Roman Catholics, less affluent Americans and independents.” And take a look at the accompanying graphic, which shows lots of groups breaking heavily for Republicans, including college-educated voters. Man, that’s got to really stiing for those enveloped in the soft comfort of the Obama Reality Bubble.
(Hat tips: Real Clear Politics, Fark, NRO’s The Corner, and probably some I’ve forgotten. I’m dancing as fast as I can.)
So here are some long-shot campaigns for the seats of particularly egregious incumbent House Democrats that just might fall the GOP’s way in this election:
Jerry Costello of Illinois vs. Teri Newman for Illinois 12th Congressional District. (Teri, here’s a free hint: Auto-running movies with sound on your website isn’t going to win you any votes.) Costello is a Stupak bloc flip-flopper who voted for the Stimulus, but against TARP and Cap-and-Trade.
Joseph Donnelly vs. Jackie Walorski for Indiana’s second congressional district. Donnelly is another Stupak bloc flip-flopper, and also voted for TARP and the Stimulus, but against ObamaCare. Walorski has been endorsed by Sarah Palin, so she might well have more money and attention than others on this list.
Lloyd Doggett vs. Dr. Donna Campbell for the Texas 25th congressional district. Having endured having old liberal warhorse Lloyd Doggett as my Representative back when I still lived within the confines of The People’s Republic of Austin, I would be delighted to see a Republican take Doggett out. Doggett voted against TARP, but for the Stimulus, Cap-and-Trade, and ObamaCare. One issue in the campaign is Doggett’s writing language into federal law to deprive Texas of almost a billion dollars in federal education funds. In this Human Events piece on the race, Campbell notes that Doggett “voted 98% of the time with Nancy Pelosi. And him getting in again, is one more vote that keeps Pelosi in.”
Charlie Rangel vs. Michael Faulkner for New York’s 15th congressional district. Rangel is, of course, a corrupt scumbag. (The question of whether he’s the most corrupt scumbag in the House I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader.) Like Al Sharpton, he has a certain amount of venomous charm. Unlike Sharpton, he’s actually been elected. Like Frank, Rangel has a perfect liberal record in voting for TARP, the Stimulus, Cap-and-Trade, and ObamaCare. Faulkner has a good bit of name recognition from being a former New York Jets football player. The differences between Faulkner and Rangel are legion (not least of which is my working assumption that Faulkner isn’t a corrupt scumbag), but one of particular local interest may play a role if this race becomes the upset of all upsets: Rangel supports the Ground Zero Mosque while Faulkner opposes it. Polling for the race is non-existent (Democrats outnumber Republicans 15-1), but at least some observers think it might be more competitive than expected.
Remember, in 1994 no one expected Speaker of the House Tom Foley’s race to be even remotely competitive, but George Nethercutt still beat him, and there are some observers who say it could very well be much worse for Democrats this year than 1994. If that’s the case, then it’s a good bet one or more of the Republican candidates listed above will pull off an upset.
