Midday open thread

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday October 12, 2006 · 10:47 AM PDT

2006/10/12 · 10:47

NC-8: NC Democratic Party head Jerry Meek, a gate-crasher featured in Crashing the Gate, will be camping out at Larry Kissell HQ working hard to bring the race into our column.

Today is the last day of Adam B's fundraising drive for the PA 6-7-8 candidates. The more money he raises, the more local activists can attend a fundraiser with Hillary.

KY-02: Mike Weaver, who I yesterday called the "dumbest Democrat running for Congress", responds.

When I described the behavior of the Republican leadership in response to the Foley scandal as "liberal," I was making a poor attempt at sarcasm. I was trying to use the word "liberal" the way that Ron Lewis uses in his ads against me. Clearly, my futile attempts failed.
Both conservatives and liberals alike can lack morality. It is not fair to use the word "liberal" in a way that leads voters to believe that a person who is liberal lacks morality just like it's not fair to use the word "conservative" to connote cold-hearted and stingy.
I hope that Daily Kos readers understand that I made a mistake and there's a pretty damned good chance I'll make a few more in my lifetime.

PA-12: Murtha has big lead in independent poll, 57-30. And the wingers thought they could make a race out of this given Murtha's strong stance against the Iraq War.

So it looks like Rove gave Reynolds an assist in making sure Foley didn't retire this year, despite all the evidence that he was a sexual predator.

CATO has a report showing libertarians moving to the Democrats.

Our own data analysis is stricter. We find 9 to 13 percent libertarians in the Gallup surveys, 14 percent in the Pew Research Center Typology Survey, and 13 percent in the American National Election Studies, generally regarded as the best source of public opinion data.
For those on the trail of the elusive swing voter, it may be most notable that the libertarian vote shifted sharply in 2004. Libertarians preferred George W. Bush over Al Gore by 72 to 20 percent, but Bush's margin dropped in 2004 to 59-38 over John Kerry. Congressional voting showed a similar swing from 2002 to 2004. Libertarians apparently became disillusioned with Republican overspending, social intolerance, civil liberties infringements, and the floundering war in Iraq. If that trend continues into 2006 and 2008, Republicans will lose elections they would otherwise win.

MN-06: Holy crap is Michele Bachmann (R) a nut! Here, she's getting laughed at by the audience by saying Terri Schiavo was a "healthy woman". There's YouTube going around of her getting laughed at by claiming there is no such thing as global warming. Her Democratic opponent is Patty Wetterling.

The War of the Words -- a web documentary starring the heroes of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists.