Last Friday I was drinking coffee with an old acquaintance in a faceless but trendy café in Washington, D.C., gabbing about our kids, his withdrawal from glossy magazine writing and the odds of a domestic terrorist attack in the next year, when he startled me by claiming zero interest in next month’s midterm elections. “I’m homeless when it comes to politics,” he said, “and I’m just sick and tired of voting for someone who’s marginally better than the other guy.” This fellow leans to the Democrats—or at least did in the past—but his apathy precluded any attempt on my part to make a wager with him on the upcoming results.
Not that it affects my biannual goal of placing 10 small bets on various political races; with every publication in America predicting a Democratic takeover, in the House certainly and probably the Senate, I’ve had to turn away sporting gold-diggers. The good news is that I’ve been able to finagle 3-1 odds on several contests—such is the giddiness that envelops my GOP-hating friends—even in Tennessee’s match-up of Harold Ford and Bob Corker, which could go either way. The bad news, at least from my point of view, is that Republicans better figure out a fail-safe turnout plan on Nov. 7 or, as Paul Krugman, rubbing his eat-the-rich fingers together, wrote on Oct. 16, President Bush will be the subject of more Congressional investigations in the next two years than the number of baseball teams vying for the services of Alfonso Soriano in the off-season.
When The Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes, a longtime reporter and editor who’s presided as the sunniest conservative pundit since President Bush was elected six years ago, wonders just how devastating the coming “GOP debacle” will be, that’s a danger sign to the White House. Similarly, Michael Barone—like Barnes, a Fox News roundtable guest—although not as downbeat as his colleague, writes in his latest syndicated column that the House is “likely” to turn over, and maybe the Senate as well. That’s even more notable since Barone was one of the few journalists early on election night in 2004 who wasn’t buying the exit poll results welcoming President Kerry to the Oval Office. While others moaned and groaned, Barone buried his nose in books of charts, crunching numbers, and correctly said there was no way Bush would lose Florida or Ohio.
Meanwhile, The New York Times is leaving nothing to chance, giving its reporters free reign to print Democratic propaganda that might, in a private moment, cause even Chuck Schumer to blush. Adam Nagourney, one of the paper’s chief political correspondents, wrote a whopper on Oct. 16, claiming that the GOP has given up on GOP incumbent Mike DeWine’s chances of retaining his Ohio seat. Jay Cost, on the same day at realclearpolitics.com, tore apart Nagourney’s story, and with good reason. Here’s the “objective” reporter’s first paragraph: “Senior Republican leaders have concluded that Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio, a pivotal state in this year’s fierce midterm election battles, is likely to be heading for defeat and are moving to reduce financial support for his race and divert party money to other embattled Republican senators, party officials said.”
Claiming that these unnamed officials have “effectively writ[ten] off” DeWine, based on “internal Republican polls”—no numbers are offered, and the published polls in that race, for those who aren’t privy, like Nagourney, to secret data, show that election as very close, but what the heck. Later in the story, Nagourney writes, “Mr. DeWine has proved to be a successful fund-raiser on his own, and, with $4.5 million on hand, already enjoys a large financial advantage over his Democratic opponent, Representative Sherwood Brown; he is not dependent on financial support to keep campaigning.”
A reader might find it strange that the thrust of Nagourney’s story is that the GOP is pulling financial support from DeWine because he’s toast, and then find out that the incumbent doesn’t need his party’s money, but maybe the reporter thinks that’s splitting hairs.
Ordinarily, Nagourney’s deceptive report would take daily top honors for a job well done at the Times, but he was bested by colleague Alison Leigh Cowan in the Metro section, who filed a puff story about Ned Lamont’s wife Ann, the Connecticut senate candidate’s “not-so-hidden asset.” You’d think, reading Cowan’s story, that the Lamonts have already dispatched Times boogeyman Joe Lieberman, and she doesn’t even mention any of the polls that show the multimillionaire losing to the incumbent. (Lamont’s best numbers in the five most recent polls are from the University of Connecticut, which puts him eight points behind Lieberman; the other four have him trailing by double digits.)
Cowan writes: “Over the past two decades, she has made an ample fortune as the impresario behind young companies with big ideas. They count on her for money, market intelligence and moxie. When these high-wire acts soar, she reaps financial rewards. But she is equally adept at staying out of the spotlight, shunning even small indulgences like vanity license plates celebrating the deals. ‘We’re not the heroes,’ explained Ann Huntress Lamont, modest and tactical in the same breath. ‘We’re here to support the entrepreneurs.’”
Move over, Hillary, there’s a presidential competitor lurking in your neighboring state.
Ms. Lamont, whose childhood nickname, we’re told, was “the bashful nobody,” is a successful businesswoman, a multimillionaire in her own right who grew up in a large family with limited resources. That’s a winning story: an economic conservative’s favorite kind of story in fact, demonstrating that perseverance, brains and fire in the belly can overcome financial disadvantages. There’s no need for embellishment. But that’s what Cowan does, even on trivial points. For example, she writes that Ms. Lamont’s father “struggled to send her to Stanford University, which cost about $6,000 a year at the time.” The future Senate spouse (at least according to the Times fairy tale) began at Stanford in 1975; a quick Google check would’ve told Cowan that tuition at the elite California university charged $4275/per annum during the ’76-’77 school year.
There’s no indication that Ned Lamont will defeat Joe Lieberman a few weeks from now. Don’t be surprised if the Times then lets Ned walk the plank and offers the next op-ed columnist slot to the “the bashful nobody.”
