Mount Virtus

Democrats may be kicking themselves – or John Kerry, or a good economy, or the common sense of the American people – on Wednesday for squandering a big chance. All hopes for a massive electoral “wipeout” (a la Chris Matthews) to take over Congress, seem to be fading as Republicans have the momentum going into tomorrow’s national elections. I stand by my earlier predictions.

Thank you to Democrat Senate District 22 candidate Paula Noonan for taking the time to respond to my post on her heated election campaign with some clarifying comments. I responded to some of her remarks in the comment box.

Additionally, some of her claims could not be independently verified and may deserve further scrutiny (e.g., I can find no evidence that Sheriff Ted Mink has withdrawn support from Mike Kopp’s campaign). Of course, it is a little late for the purposes of this election to unearth these claims, unless one of my readers has a source.

Or what does anyone think about invoking the name of Ted Haggard to attack Mike?

Do I think Beauprez’s campaign is in bad shape? Yes, I’m not stupid. But the Republican running for governor is NOT trailing by 22 points – as reports the Rocky Mountain News this morning.

Take a closer look at the poll numbers, conveniently released on the day before the Republicans’ big Get-Out-The-Vote kicks off. Among other things, this same survey showed Amendment 43 losing 41-40, which is way off from what other polls have shown. The sample of “likely voters” is 37% Republican, 38% Democrat, and 25% Independent. That turnout model is a little skewed, I suspect. And doing phone polls during the day on Monday through Wednesday will likely distort results, too.

(One other note: The one-note anti-Beauprez vitriol of ToTheRight’s bloggers is most recently manifested in their inability or unwillingness to critically assess a SurveyUSA poll which appears to confirm their gleeful preconceptions. Do you really believe these numbers are accurate? I know you don’t like the GOP’s choice for governor, but think about the effect an uncritical assessment of this polling data may have on other candidates you do support.)

My message to GOP voters & volunteers is not to be affected by the polling reports. The race for governor will be considerably closer, and every vote you make will benefit our other Republican candidates in the battle for the state house, state senate, state treasurer, secretary of state, etc.

Look … even the libs over at ColoradoPols are skeptical of this poll. There will be plenty of time to be upset about the defeats we may experience after Nov. 7, but let’s not get demoralized now and multiply those defeats. There is a lot at stake during the final 96 hours.

Apparently, John Kerry has grown jealous of Howard Dean’s record-setting propensity to say stupid things that help Republicans. I was going to write a detailed post about the stuffed shirt Massachusetts Senator’s comments, but then I read Jonah Goldberg’s column on the topic:

Kerry insists he was making a joke about President Bush, not a joke about students who aren’t smart enough to do better than the military. While there’s virtually nothing in the text or video of his remarks to lend support for this, save for a wan smile he offered to the mute audience, it’s possible that was his intent. After all, Kerry is an awful politician, a human toothache with the charisma of a 19th-century Oxford Latin tutor. One can’t rule out the possibility that he simply botched a joke.

If it was a joke, it was a pretty bad one, even for him. First, Bush got better grades than Kerry at Yale. More relevant, if launching the Iraq war is a sign of stupidity and a failure to do one’s homework, Kerry should avoid calling attention to the fact that he voted to approve it and defended that vote throughout his 2004 presidential campaign.

But whether or not it was a joke, it certainly sounded like Kerry was talking about the troops, because that’s the way Kerry talks about everything. Kerry’s a bit like one of those cavemen from the Geico commercials, only he’s a throwback to a slightly more recent era: Vietnam. All of his ideas were formed from his experience as an anti-Vietnam crusader. He may have run as a born-again war hero in 2004, but his political career was founded on his activism against a war he repeatedly labeled a crime.

That’s why few gave Kerry the benefit of the doubt. The idea that the military is the last refuge for the lumpen-proletariat is a Vietnam-era chestnut that continues to pop up in liberal talking points. It wasn’t very accurate during Vietnam, and it’s even less so now. A timely study of the demographics of enlistees in our all-volunteer military found that the share of recruits from the poorest American neighborhoods has declined steadily since 1999 and throughout the war.

Spot on, Jonah.