The Psycho-in-Chief will visit Reno October 2 to raise much needed money for Dean Heller(R), Gibbons heir apparanent and cum neocon in northern Nevada. It's going to be both good news and bad news for both candidates, but probably more bad than good for Jill Derby (D).
Yes, Santa Claus aka the Psycho-in-Chief is coming to town this October 2 for Dean Heller (R) demonstrating the RNC is going to throw all its considerable weight into Nevada CD2. NOT good news to the Jill Derby camp who was hoping this was a forgotten race and she could win being Nevada's nicest centrist lady.
Heller is an unexpurgated neocon yuppy-puppy who will be the perfect shadow for Bush which makes him all the easier to House train. But he's dead broke after a rough primary. The Psycho-in-Chief intends to fix that, though.
Derby is, well.., a nice lady more intent on seducing centrist voters than becoming a red meat, anti-war candidate who could actually win those votes if she could shake her handlers. She's running on tv now, finally. But the snoozer ads make her more of a candidate for grandmother-of-the-year than someone to send to Congress to fight the bad guys.
What makes this an even tougher race for Derby to oversome is that a Democrat has never been elected to Congress from this District since it was gerrymandered in 1994. While the district may have been flaming red in the past, it can be pretty much assumed that it's a purple district now if voters are seeing the same news shows, seeing the same newspapers, and sharing the same anti-Bush anti-war sentiments as the rest of the country. However, it appears that Bush is coming to Reno to paint the town red again.
The net-net is that Heller comes out on top more than just the present eight points if Derby holds to her present platform of "We can't stay the course and we can't cut and run" (www.jillderby.com). Yes, she actually says that. And more; like "we need to put pressure on the Iraqis to draft a new Constitution."
Huh? Uhhh...where's Derby's midway solution between staying the course and cut and run? Don't bother to look; it's not there. Just some mumbo-jumbo about "benchmarks" nobody else knows about but Derby. And how does she suggest getting this new Constitution thingy on the Iraqi front burner considering yesterday UN Chief Kofi Anan states Iraq is 99.99% of the way to civil war? FLASH: The Iraqis really don't care what Americans think until they divide up the country's riches between the Shi'ites and the Kurds. I'm sure you see the problem here.
Heller's going to walk away from October 2 with big bucks and a Ph. D. in dirty politics just in time for the October 20 debate. He's also going to go into the last month with being Bush's anointed boy, not such a bad deal in a neon red district when fear is working so well right now in the ratings. He's not only going to get a big chunk of local money, he's going to get big money from across the country as being recognized as THE new cum neocon in Nevada.
Derby's going to have to shift tactics fast to frame "Heeler" (as in heel, dog!) into being the Bush/RNC lap dog and start raising hell on Iraq by taking a stand one way or the other. ALL the polls say take an anti-Bush anti-Iraq stand if you want to draw centrist voters over. But what do the best pollers acrss the country know compared to vast experience and collective political insight of a South Dakota kid that lost Tom Daschele's campaign?
I stated a long time ago that this was a race between Derby and Bush and that still stands but is even more pronounced after this gauntlet throw by Bush. How, or even more important "if", Derby redirects her campaign to this challenge is going to be either interesting, or alternately, pitiful to watch.
Remember the saying "Nice guys finish last?" It also applies to nice ladies. Derby's going to have come out of the bubble quick or she's toast.
I invite you to give her a call (775-826-7944; 775-783-1416) or an email at www.jennifer@jillderby.com. Good luck on getting an answer back!