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9:23 AM PT: WI-Sen: Well, Tommy Thompson's gone straight-up delusional:
Speaking today at an event where he received the endorsement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Tommy Thompson said he does not think his son needs to apologize publicly or to the president for joking about sending Barack Obama "back to Kenya" at a GOP fundraiser.
"He has already apologized, and that's enough," Thompson said at a Milwaukee news conference this afternoon. "It was an offhanded remark that somebody mentioned in the audience. If you look at the movie, he didn't say it. Somebody in the audience said it and he repeated it, and I've talked to him about it and he apologized and that's it."
Uh, except:
Jason Thompson spoke to a Kenosha County GOP fundraiser on Sunday when he said, "We have the opportunity to send President Obama back to Chicago... or Kenya."
The comment, referencing the claim that the president was not born in the United States, drew laughs and applause at the Kenosha County GOP Fall Brunch. A woman in the crowd added, "We're taking donations for that Kenya trip."
Yeah, I wouldn't be feeling to good about this whole Senate thing if I were Tommy.
9:36 AM PT: MI-06: Looks like Rep. Fred Upton is trying to nip this one in the bud—with a chainsaw. Following an internal from Democrat Mike O'Brien showing the race unexpectedly close, Upton's come out with his own poll (from Hill Research) that's got him up by a punishing 58-27 margin. O'Brien's survey was enough to get him added to the DCCC's bottom-rung "Emerging Races" list; Upton's will probably keep him there.
9:52 AM PT: CA-21: Republican Assemblyman David Valadao lucked out when Democrats nominated third-stringer John Hernandez in the race for this swingish open seat, but did he get a little too complacent over his good fortune? Though most analysts had written this seat off for Team Blue, in recent weeks, word came out that two different outside conservative groups were unexpectedly going to spend money to shore up their guy. Indeed, Crossroads has already shelled out $185K to run ads, while Valadao himself has finally gone up on the air as well.
And now, trying to push back against this burgeoning narrative that this seat's somehow become competitive, Valadao's also out with an internal poll from Moore Information which shows him leading Hernandez 53-33. However, no presidential toplines or demographic breakdowns are included in the memo, so there's no way to judge the nature of the sample Moore tested. But given Hernandez's shoestring campaign and general lack of interest in this race by national Dems, I'd be surprised if we saw a responsive poll here.
10:03 AM PT: And of course he's a recidivist. Thanks to a video leaked to the HuffPo, it now turns out out Jason Thompson engaged in a little light birther humor once before. And it might help explain Tommy's delusions:
According to video recorded at a "United In Freedom" rally in Fond Du Lac, Wis. on Oct. 6, Jason—an attorney who has been an active campaigner for his father—tells the audience, "We have an opportunity to send President Obama back to Chicago."
The audience then cheers, and a few people yell out, "Back to Kenya!"
"That would even be better," chuckles Jason Thompson.
Maybe this is "the movie" Tommy was referring to, as opposed to the Oct. 14 incident? If so, how did his campaign screw up and show him the wrong video? And not seem to realize there were two incidents? And also, HuffPo's version was provided by a Democratic tracker, so does that mean Tommy's own campaign had footage of the Oct. 6 event? If so, then they screwed up even harder—they're keeping video records of Jason Thompson but can't figure out which clips to show the boss-man. Absurd.
10:08 AM PT: CT-Sen (PDF): Siena's new poll of the Connecticut Senate race (their first of the cycle) still indicates the contest is a tossup: Democrat Chris Murphy leads Republican Linda McMahon by a slim 46-44 margin. Obama, though, is beating Romney 53-38, which is not only one of the healthiest leads he's ever had in public polling of the Nutmeg State, but also seems to indicate that he didn't get walloped here post-first debate. However, the field period on this survey is a bit strange: It was conducted over eleven days, stretching from Oct. 4 through 14. Given how much a race can change over that length of time (and on the presidential front, given how much it did change), fielding a poll over that many days can't be regarded as a best practice.
11:02 AM PT: TN-04: In an effort to capitalize on the explosive revelations that supposedly "pro-life" GOP Rep. Scott DesJarlais carried on an affair with a patient and then later tried to pressure her to have an abortion, Democrat Eric Stewart is out with a new internal poll showing the race a lot closer than I'm sure it ever was before. The survey, from Myers Research, has DesJarlais up just 49-44 (though the memo insists on calling the spread a "statistical dead heat," which it ain't). This is a brutally tough district: Romney leads Obama 56-38, which is actually somewhat better than the 63-36 drubbing Obama received here in 2008. The generic congressional ballot's a challenge, too, with Republicans leading 52-39, though it's interesting that Romney's running ahead of Generic R (while DesJarlais, of course, is running behind).
While prior toplines aren't provided, the memo also says that DesJarlais's favorables have fallen since a June "baseline survey." Personally, I'd release those head-to-heads, too: I'm sure they look "bad" for Stewart, but that just makes the newer numbers look even better by comparison. Make no mistake, though: Even with the amazing and unexpected turn this race took, Tennessee's 4th is a very red district and Stewart, who doesn't have much money left, would need quite a bit of help to pull off the epic upset. Will the DCCC take notice? Even 49-44 might not be enough, so we'll have to see.
11:09 AM PT (David Jarman): WA-Gov: We haven't seen a poll since July that put Republican Rob McKenna in the lead in the Washington gubernatorial race, but the RGA still seems to think they can flip this one. (Also, they have tens of millions in cash on hand and not a lot of competitive races this year, so they've gotta spend somewhere.) The RGA just announced another $4.25 million in spending on the race, in two installments. That brings their total in the race up to $11.4 mil, now far ahead of the $7.9 mil for the DGA-funded Our Washington PAC, breaking the parity that the two groups have maintained all cycle.
11:16 AM PT (David Jarman): Polltopia: If you're a regular Daily Kos Elections reader, you're probably also a regular 538 reader, but today's Nate Silver update seems a particularly important one... not because of the numbers, but because he floats a new idea that potentially has a lot of explanatory value for the recent turn in the polls. It's the concept of "nonresponse bias," where external events (i.e. a depressing debate) affect enthusiasm rates which in turn affect respondents' willingness to participate when a pollster calls. That magnifies the effect of bounces driven by external events. As a counterexample, he contrasts the results of what I'll call "one-off" pollsters vs. these ones compiled by YouGov's sprawling panel-back survey, where the same respondents are prompted to respond again at different points in the campaign; their numbers, released Tuesday, show very little changing of minds during the pre- and post-debate periods, suggesting a stabler race than the national trackers would indicate.
11:32 AM PT: NM-01: The Albuquerque Journal's new statewide poll also had House components (though disregard the numbers for the uncompetitive 2nd and 3rd Districts as the sample sizes are absurdly small). In the open 1st, though, they have Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham beating Republican Janice-Arnold Jones by a 51-37 spread, up from 46-34 in September. That's not too far off a recent MLG internal that had her up 55-40.
11:37 AM PT: WI-Sen: Marquette Law's newest poll doesn't have very happy news for Democrats: Somehow, Republican Tommy Thompson has moved into a 46-45 lead over Tammy Baldwin, in contrast with a 48-44 Baldwin lead at the end of September. Perhaps the president is dragging her down, though: Obama's suffered a huge collapse from 53-42 down to just 49-48. Marquette's prior poll seemed perhaps too optimistic, but the POTUS's numbers are actually in line with other recent surveys from PPP and Quinnipiac. But in many other states, we haven't seen Obama's sagging fortunes harm Democratic Senate candidates, or at least, not this much. I guess the silver lining is that Baldwin's drop is only half the size of Obama's.
12:27 PM PT: The Live Digest continues here.