The Sunshine Empire

This grand Sunday, the political landscape is clearly looking beneficial to the Democratic party. Yet things have changed in an instant and they could still. Reading a great piece by Charlie Cook he makes the point that things can change, but every day we get closer to the election the change needed to reverse course is more and more earth shattering. Looking at the past two debates it looks increasingly unlikely that a debate performance will change the dynamic for Senator McCain. The largest debate polling bump in the last 30 years is 2%. I still wonder about David Gergan’s words on CNN the night of the last debate. He felt that Barack Obama would lose 6% of his lead once people walked into the voting booths, as a result of the so called, Bradley Effect. If that is true that would mean many of the within-the-margin-of-error red state leads that Obama has are actually losses. That still does not factor in places like Iowa and New Mexico, which are trending heavily blue and were Bush states in 2004, but it could be what we are seeing is a much closer race than the polls indicate.

The preponderance of the Presidential election has obscured what looks to be strong gains in the House and Senate for Democrats. The Democrats are looking and gains of 6-7 seats in the senate, and that means the three to four Republicans that would occasionally vote for cloture bring to an end the obstruction of Senate Republicans. This will mean even in the event of a McCain presidency, none of his major programs will get passed.