Mondale energized DFL voters with his nasty class warfare nonsense.
Not that I've seen. They've been sounding awfully desperate. They know they are going to lose a lot to the Greens. (Greens won the Mayor's office and two City Council seats in Minneapolis, last year - and they aren't going to like Mondale).
That Mondale felt that he had to try to solidify his support with his base, while Coleman was reaching for the swing vote, is a clear indication that the DFL thinks they are going to lose.
We begin with the Governors’ races. There are three that interest me greatly. They are: Bush/McBride in Florida; Simon/Davis in California; and, of course, the great Kennedy-Kennedy-Kennedy versus Ehrlich in mine own home state of Merryland.
The Florida race is considered the so-called “revenge” race by the Democrats, a payback for the nasty 2000 presidential election. Only the Dems have totally blown this thing, beginning with running the very lame Janet Reno who garnered no enthusiasm to the point that her own party stole the primary from her. Up steps McBride, the Dem nominee, maybe not lamer than Reno, but almost.
An idiot enthusiastically endorsed by the Florida teachers’ unions, whose members regularly turn out same from this country’s public schools so why not endorse a dolt? This guy is so stupid he came up with some silly health care program and had no idea how much it would cost. Tim Russert mentioned an amount and McBride said “that sounds right”.
Pat predicts….Jeb Bush wins in Florida…and handily.
Gray Davis is the Clinton of the left coast. He’s run California’s energy management system into the ground through the use of socialistic monetary policies that caused the fall of the Soviet Union but hey, some people never learn. That state is running billions in a deficit while ole Gray hits up all special interests for donations to his campaign. The citizens hate him but given that state’s liberal bent and the lackluster campaign of the GOP’s Bill Simon, they will most likely hold their nose and vote Davis in again that there be more socialistic government programs heaped onto the backs of California taxpayers.
Pat Predicts…Gray Davis wins in California….also handily.
Merryland SHOULD have a new GOP governor come Wednesday but let me say right now that though Ehrlich leads in the polls, there’s always the problem of the dead vote in Baltimore city. The dead in this state always vote Democrat. Democratic bureaucrats have already disallowed over ten thousand Republican absentee ballots due to a minor misprint and hey, that’s just how it is in this liberal hell.
Kennedy-Kennedy-Kennedy, as she’d rather be known, is another idiot endorsed by the mighty teachers’ unions let us no more be fooled where THESE people’s loyalties lie, okay? Any idiot that will enrich the salaries of the union brass will be endorsed, to hell with the needs of the schools and the REAL teachers.
Unless the pubbies have poll watchers all over the place, cameras to monitor how many times inner-city Baltimore voters vote, EACH, and election judges at each precinct, this is a state that stands ripe for election stealing.
Pat Predicts…Ehrlich wins in Merryland but there will endless lawsuits and hassle as the Dems rise up to steal the thing.
On to the critical senatorial races.
Down in North Carolina, Liddy Dole runs against another Clinton administration boob (these guys are LOSING everywhere) Erskine Bowles, the Clinton White House Chief of Staff.
Pat Predicts Bowles go down handily as the stench from his Clinton association prevents even Dems from holding their nose and voting for him.
Up in New Hampshire the pubbies are struggling to hang onto that seat. John Sununu is the Republican candidate running against NH’s Governor Jean Sheehan. This race has been hurt by that awful Bob Smith person, a man who cannot decide which party he wants to belong to. Smith gave Sununu a lukewarm endorsement and did nothing to discourage a write-in campaign on his behalf, which is going to hurt Sununu against an incumbent Governor.
Pat Predicts…Sheehan wins, but it will be close.
Down in Arkansas, the pubbies are running Tim Hutchinson against the very well-known Pryor. Hutchinson’s hurting due to his recent divorce from his wife of many years to marry a staffer. Of course, Clinton can be married, using the term loosely, while receiving oral ministrations in the oval office, and mine own Governor, the very honest Dem Parris Spendenning, recently married a very pregnant staffer 25 years his junior. Let a Republican do this sort of thing though, and it’s curtains.
Pat Predicts….Pryor wins with a small, but honorable, margin.
The pubbies desperately want to win South Dakota and this mostly because they hate the senior senator from this state, the very honest Tom Daschle. Thune is running against Tim Johnson, protégé of Daschle. If the pubbies win this state it will be a net gain for them in the senate.
Pat Predicts…..Tim Johnson will win this state but it will be days, maybe weeks, before the final results are known.
Over in the “show-me” state, the widder Carnahan, whose senate seat is illegally held right now at any rate, having replaced her husband Mel, who died in an airplane crash right before the 2000 election, is not doing so well. What is it about Dems in close races and airplane crashes?
At any rate, the widder Carnahan had her day in the sun. There’ll be no sympathy vote this year.
Pat Predicts…Republican Jim Talent takes back the senatorial seat the pubbies should have had but for the Dems running a dead man in 2000.
The Dems cheated in New Jersey, replacing the crook Bob Torricelli after the deadline for such shenanigans. They replaced him because he was LOSING, not because he was dead or anything that couldn’t be helped. The Dems then drug out that old relic Lautenberg. The polls in NJ indicate Lautenberg is leading the pubbie guy , poor abused Forrester, who was beating the Torch handily until the Dems pulled their stunt with the help of the very honest NJ supreme court. This is the only upset I’m going to predict.
Pat Predicts Forrester wins the race by a very narrow margin. The results of this election might not be known for days either.
And finally, the most interesting senatorial race of them all. That is the Minnesota race. Paul Wellstone recently died in a tragic airplane accident. Wellstone and the pubbie opponent, Coleman, were running neck in neck until the plane crash. The Dems pulled another relic out of the crypt, none other than Mondale, Jimmy Carter’s VP. Mondale lost every state in the union during his one and only presidential bid save his own and he only one this by a very thin margin. Mondale was part and parcel of the totally failed presidency of Carter, which included endless gas lines, interest rates at 17% plus, and a 400+_ day taking of American hostages by the Ayatollah Kohmeni. Very successful team, these two. Damned near brought the whole country down.
The polls say this contest is neck in neck but I don’t believe it for a minute. The Dems shot themselves in the foot with that terrible “memorial” to Wellstone during which honest Republicans, attending an event in memory of a departed colleague, was BOOED. At a funeral, folks….the Dems booed the Republicans at a freaking FUNERAL! This stupid stunt has Clinton/McAuliffe fingerprints all over it.
Pat Predicts…Coleman will win handily in Minnesota.
Pat Predicts…the pubbies will take the senate by one, will hold the house, and heck, maybe we can get a decent budget passed, something the Dem led majority couldn’t seem to manage.