You're A Democrat, Alison

The Daily Beast's Sam Youngman has the same question I do for Alison Lundergan Grimes as she tries to defeat Mitch McConnell in 2014:  When are you going to admit you're a Democrat?

There is grumbling in Frankfort and Washington, at least outside of the DSCC’s press office, about the state of the Grimes campaign and concerns about the lack of growth. 

Four factors have stopped Democrats from pushing the panic button: 1. It is just still way too darn early for Kentuckians to care about an election just less than a year away. 2. Grimes is avoiding any lasting damage from her missteps. 3. In national media reports, Grimes is being hailed as a strong and sturdy challenger who excels on the stump. And 4. She outraised McConnell in her first quarterly report at the end of October. 

The first two are undeniable and speak to just how much time and space Grimes has in front of her to find her footing as a candidate. 

The third is risky for Grimes, clearly enjoying the national media spotlight and potentially risking complacency as she and her team have looked at poll numbers in the mid to low-40s as signs of support instead of the more likely result of dislike for McConnell. 

But the fourth factor was key. Grimes raised more than $2.5 million in her first quarter as a candidate, out-raising the Senate minority leader, who came up with a personal best of $2.27 million. 

While the triumph was near universally pronounced as an eye-popping sign of Grimes’s strength, it too could be misleading. 

First and foremost, it ignores the $10 million McConnell still has in cash despite a shocking burn rate aimed at bruising Grimes and Bevin right out of the gate. Not to mention the cozy six degrees of separation two post-Citizens United groups—McConnell’s SuperPAC Kentuckians for Strong Leadership and Karl Rove’s American Crossroads—share with McConnell, beginning with former campaign manager and longtime ally Steven Law, who holds leadership positions with both groups. 

If you’re a conservative giving to Crossroads next year, your money is going to Kentucky.

Mitch McConnell is mortally wounded and should have lost to Bruce Lunsford in 2008.  But at some point, Grimes is going to have to at least pretend she's to the left of Mitch.  So far that's not happening.

It really needs to.

Another Failure To Communicate

NY Times columnist Timothy Egan has noticed that the entire GOP strategy these days is making sure President Obama (and everyone who voted for him) fails.

It’s hard to remember a time when a major political party and its media arm were so actively rooting for fellow Americans to lose. When the first attempt by the United States to launch a satellite into orbit, in 1957, ended in disaster, did Democrats start to cheer, and unify to stop a space program in its infancy? Or, when Medicare got off to a confusing start, did Republicans of the mid-1960s wrap their entire political future around a campaign to deny government-run health care to the elderly? 

Of course not. But for the entirety of the Obama era, Republicans have consistently been cheerleaders for failure. They rooted for the economic recovery to sputter, for gas prices to spike, the job market to crater, the rescue of the American automobile industry to fall apart. 

I get it. This organized schadenfreude goes back to the dawn of Obama’s presidency, when Rush Limbaugh, later joined by Senator Mitch McConnell, said their No. 1 goal was for the president to fail. A CNN poll in 2010 found 61 percent of Republicans hoping Obama would fail (versus only 27 percent among all Americans). 

Wish granted, mission accomplished. Obama has failed — that is, if you judge by his tanking poll numbers. But does this collapse in approval have to mean that the last best chance for expanding health care for millions of Americans must fail as well?

Egan has some good points here, but let's go over two things here.  One, what's different about Barack Obama compared to the previous 43 POTUS, and two how terrified are the Republican tea party rump of an America that allows someone like Barack Obama to become President?

It's gotten to the point where not only Obama must fail and suffer, but everyone who supported him.  We all have to pay for messing up "their" America.  So yes, that includes anyone Obamacare is trying to help.  That includes making it harder for the people who supported the President to vote.  That includes making it harder for the people who supported the President to feed their families, and earn a decent wage, and get decent health care and schools and opportunities.

Which is fine with the GOP.  They don't see it as rooting against Americans, because they don't see us as "real Americans".  We're just "those people".

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• A US Korean War veteran remains held into a second month by North Korea and the communist country has issued an "apology" statement they say is from 85-year-old Merrill Newman.
• NASA's latest Space X collaboration mission may be to put a "lunar greenhouse" on the surface on the moon in 2015.
• The White House is "confident" that most of the problems with the helathcare.gov website have been ironed out as the President's self-imposed December 1 approaches.
• Business leaders are increasingly angry that zero progress has been made on the December 13th budget deal proposal made as part of the resolution of the government shutdown in October.
• An MIT scientist has come up with a process to make "superhydrophobic" materials that repel water in half the time of current water-repellent surfaces.