According to the Cochran aide in the article, they’re not going to keep beating the nursing home stuff in the run-off. Still, I agree that you can’t trust the Cochran campaign and McDaniel needs to remain focused and hit back hard. And to be on the safe side, McDaniel needs to get the third guy who ran to endorse him in the run-off.
It’s also true that if Cochran had any dignity, he would decline the run-off election and throw his support to McDaniel, but we’re dealing with a guy who has been in Washington forever and can’t imagine not being in power.
I disagree with the Dems that they have an opening in the general election if McDaniel is the nominee. That might be true if this was a good year for the RATs like 2006, but all evidence shows that 2014 will be a big backlash against the Dems, and that makes it even worse for Democrats running in heavily GOP states like Mississippi. There are a lot of Dem voters in Miss but not enough to win a statewide race, and the independents aren’t going to vote RAT in 2014.
I honestly don’t think Cochran would pass an aptitude test. He’s not ‘all there’. As one of Mark Levin’s callers stated, this is not Thad’s race. It is Haley Barbour’s race. He wants his friend Bryant to appoint a successor to Cochran (who would no doubt fail to serve out another full term). They don’t want elections, they want stooges.