Here’s my telescope. It shows me visions of the future by staring at old images of stars.
- Susquehanna Polling and Research (SPR) suggests incumbent Marco Rubio (R) is leading challenger Rep Val Demings (D) by three points, 47% – 44%, for the Florida Senate seat. SPR is a B+ rated pollster, according to FiveThirtyEight, so this may be accurate. Margin of error is 4.3%, so this is exceedingly close. And the poll was taken prior to the most recent Trump news. Will the negative Trump news affect the race as we run towards November?
- Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) appears to be a flip-flopper – or has received orders from on high, as he’s no longer supporting the same-sex marriage bill intended to safeguard gay marriage that he earlier said he would support.
Approval of President Biden will be a drag, or an uplift, in the Senate races. How’s he doing? The chart from Civiqs via Joan McCarter, there on the right, indicates Biden is becoming less and less of a drag. And with almost two months left, he still has time to improve further.- Senate Candidate and State Rep. Krystie Matthews (D) in South Carolina has apparently been caught on a recording device disparaging her constituents. The South Carolina Democratic Party is calling for her to leave the race. While, granted, her odds were poor against incumbent Senator Tim Scott (R), who appears to be quite circumspect and is reportedly very popular in South Carolina, pissing on your constituents is the mark of an amateur lacking a vision of good politics. Matthews disputes the reports, claiming context has been stripped – one of my pet peeves, for new readers – so it’s hard to say if, in the end, what she said is all she said, or if there are mitigating circumstances. If the latter, circumspection is a skill she needs to learn.
- Pennsylvania continues to host the most broken Senate race this year as CNBC uncovers the fact that candidate Oz Mehmet (R) … owns stock in Thermo Fisher Scientific, a supplier of the drug hydroxychloroquine, and McKesson, a distributor of the anti-malaria medicine. As Mehmet touted hydroxychloroquine’s use for treatment of Covid-19 without evidence of efficacy, this casts grave doubts on his qualifications for public service. No doubt free market advocates would dispute the assertion that it’s inappropriate to tout treatments for which there is no evidence of efficacy under the outdated slogan, Let the markets decide!, but the fact of the matter is that even when employed outside of the public sector, aspirants to positions of public service are expected to exhibit moral behavior consonant with the positions they seek.
- Emerson College is confirming Trafalgar’s polling in Arizona, reporting Senator Kelly’s (D) lead over challenger Blake Masters (R) is 47% – 45%. Arizona’s long been conservative, but Masters is no John McCain (R), the esteemed late and long-time Senator from Arizona.
- Sometimes relying on Internet search engines isn’t good enough: back on July 19th, Chris Chaffee won the Republican nomination for the Senate seat of Senator Chris Van Hollen (D) of Maryland. Color me third-rate, eh? Chaffee won with a mere 21.3% of the Republican votes, suggesting a weak candidate. Senator Van Hollen won his primary with 78.7%, which is not overwhelming, but still miles better than Chaffee. Incidentally, Van Hollen reported suffering a stroke back in May. No polls are in evidence, so I consider Van Hollen the presumptive favorite until notified otherwise.
- This Tuesday features the last of the primaries for this cycle, including the New Hampshire primaries for selecting the Senate candidates.
Older observations in expected appalling taste are here.
