Playing The Paranoia Angle, Part 6

The two competing main narratives of the 2010 election season are at play in Nevada, where if the Republicans are correct and voters now hate the Democrats and want to punish them severely for opposing the will of the people, then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid should be in dire trouble.  Likewise, if the Democrats are right and the extreme views of the GOP have only become even more extreme due to the frothing fringe taking over as the Tea Party, then Sharron Angle would be the one in trouble.

The newest Las Vegas Journal/Mason-Dixon poll?  Reid up by seven points.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal/Mason-Dixon poll shows that, if the election was held today, Reid would defeat Angle 44-37 percent. Ten percent were undecided and five percent did not choose a candidate.

Reid's lead comes after a week in which he slammed the Tea Party-backed Angle in a new television ad. The ad alleges that Angle would have opted to kill jobs in Las Vegas by killing a large construction project and says she is too extreme.

In previous Mason-Dixon polls, Reid and Angle have been statistically tied, making it the first time the Democrat took the lead over the Republican. Here is more from the LVRJ:

He's had five perfect weeks," said Brad Coker of Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, which conducted the survey. "The race has been all about her, and he's been doing a good job of pounding her."

Yet Coker said it's too soon to write off Angle. More than one-quarter of the nonpartisan swing voters who probably will decide the Nov. 2 election haven't jumped to the still-unpopular Reid but instead are undecided or in the "other" or "none of these candidates" columns, the poll showed.

"I wouldn't write her obituary just yet," Coker said, noting it's a long way to November. "Three and a half months is a lifetime, and at some point she's going to be able to start fighting back."

Reid and Angle were just about neck-and-neck in second quarter fundraising, but Reid spent $3 million in television ads during that span, part of a flurry of spening against his opponent. 

Still, if Democrats are doomed and the GOP is taking back the House and the Senate somehow, Sharron Angle has to beat Harry Reid.  If Reid can survive, then you have to figure that other Democrats will weather the storm too.  Right now there's no bigger electoral target to topple than Reid for the Republicans in 2010.  If the Tea Party can't beat Harry Reid, they're in trouble.