To: PROLIFE who wrote (312732 ) 10/31/2002 1:58:30 PM From: gao seng Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 769670 >>I wonder why the Democratic party let those three steal the party?? Thank heaven for small favors! They are crashing and burning. That was a gimme seat, and Alan Page would have won in a landslide. Mondale is going to lose bigtime. Novak article puts Coleman down by 2, but Bush is coming and the media owes the Republicans 3 horus of coverage, and they plan to pay up. Kennedy is taking over the party. The '04 DNC convention will be in Boston, not New York. At least Gore showed some political savvy by distancing himself from the rally. --realclearpolitics.com MINNESOTA: My initial feeling that Coleman was going to be swamped by the sympathy vote for Wellstone is beginning to fade, and quickly. While it hasn't gotten huge play in the national media, the "memorial service" for the late Senator Wellstone and the other victims was so over the top, and distasteful, it has the real potential to backlash hard on the Democrats. Our friends at Powerline have been all over this story and they report that the "rally" is getting a lot of coverage in Minnesota. "There is a lot of buzz this morning about the fact that television cameras showed Jesse Ventura and his wife, Terry, getting up and walking out on the Democrats' pep-fest at Williams Arena last night. I heard Ventura being interviewed on the radio this morning. He said that he found the Democrats' misuse for partisan ends not only of Wellstone's death, but of the families of the other victims of the crash, to be deeply offensive. He said that his wife was so shocked and offended by the Democrats' conduct that she was brought to tears, prompting their walkout." When NPR and William Saletan at Slate also characterize the event as more a political pep rally rather than a memorial service it is clear it isn't just Republicans who think the Democrats went too far. Not to mention I don't take the recent poll from the Star Tribune showing Mondale up 8 as terrible news for Coleman. That poll of 47%-39% may very well be the high water mark for Mondale from here on out. It's reasonable to assume that the sympathy factor is going to be at its peak immediately following the tragedy. Furthermore a poll done by the NRSC, the same time as the Star's poll, had Mondale up only two points, with the Star Tribune's polls long time poll bias for Dems that puts Mondale up 5 points averaging the two polls. The clear politicization of Wellstone's death by the Democrats last night is not going to play well among the average Minnesotan and it will definitely serve to energize Coleman's base. Expect that five point gap to close. The bottom line is I am close to doing a complete 180 on this race. I think the offensive nature of the "memorial service" last night has put this seat right back into play. And the trump card in Coleman's hand are all those absentee ballots that can not legally be counted for Mondale. This can very easily be a potential 2%-5% boost for Coleman and if he can get this race close in the polls, which I suspect now he will, that absentee difference will be enough to give him the win. The Dems lawsuit to get those Wellstone votes counted for Mondale shows just how seriously the Democrats think those absentee ballots might be. If Coleman can run a positive, mistake-free, proactive campaign these next few days (and there's no reason to think he can't) these polls will close and this will be a nail-biter. With the absentee ballot edge I think Coleman now will win. But, hey, this is a very fluid situation and Coleman's got to close the poll numbers. I have to give credit to Hugh Hewitt and Ramesh Ponnuru who dismissed the conventional wisdom, including my own, that Coleman couldn't win. JM 1:02 pm Comments