Tracks of the Tortoise

The goopers are having fun counting their election chickens eight months out, and we wish them all the rabitty over-confidence in the world. Meanwhile, a few reptilian signs point elsewhere.

Somebody forgot to tell Randy Kuhl that the GOP is going to take over the entire universe in November. Seriously, this has to be the single easiest GOP pickup in the House, and the guy who used to hold the seat and lost by an eyelash last year is ... turning it down?

Former Rep. Randy Kuhl (R-NY), who was narrowly defeated for re-election 2008 by Democrat Eric Massa, has announced that he will not run for the seat after Massa's resignation over sexual harassment allegations....

"Over the last week, I have heard from hundreds of my former constituents urging me to run for my old congressional seat. Their emotional plea to me was humbling and most appreciative," Kuhl said in a statement. "But, after careful consideration, I have decided to forego a run for Congress. I want to sincerely thank everyone who has supported me during my 28 years of public service. I look forward to helping the 29th District in any way that I can and I urge my neighbors and friends to support Tom Reed for this congressional seat."

And Josh Marshall sees hints of a turnaround in the polls.

I've been mulling for a while whether to post about this. But for all the conventional wisdom (very well-grounded conventional wisdom, I might add) that says Democrats are going to get crushed in November, the last month or so of polls have shown a number of hints of a turnaround. Again, I don't want to get ahead of myself. And I'd call them just hints at this point. But they're there.

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Yet, over the last month or so, a number of those races have shown signs of possibly trending back in the other direction. Ones I'm thinking of include the senate races in New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and possibly even Arkansas and Colorado, where a new poll is about to be released. In most of these cases it's just the one or two most recent polls. And sometimes they're polls from pollsters that had not polled the same race recently enough to provide a good apples to apples comparison. But you can see something similar in the very mild rebound of Dem numbers in the national congressional generic ballot and the fairly substantial rebound in support for Health Care Reform.

In a sense this shouldn't be surprising. Dems had the tough November elections followed by seven straight weeks of demoralizing and ugly wrangling over health care. Then that was followed by the stunning upset in Massachusetts which, accompanied by the resultant Dem face-plant on Health Care managed to send conservatives through the roof and profoundly demoralize Democrats. So it's not surprising that with a little time for things to cool down and some somewhat better news on Health Care Reform that Dem numbers would at least bounce back a touch.

Still, I think it's worth keeping an eye out to see if this becomes a trend. Because we're still in a highly volatile political period. And I don't think it's clear yet that how things look today is how they're going to look in the fall.

Steve M., Left Blogsylvania's resident pessimist, however, has been watching the goopers and the baggers and isn't laughing.

But the mere fact that there was this religiosity tells you that, once the dust settles and we have dozens of new teabag-friendly members of Congress, they could be a hell of a lot more Christian-rightist than the secular rhetoric of the movement would lead us to expect.

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Maybe the emergence of excessive religiosity is going to lead to schisms in the movement -- but my hunch is that that won't happen until after the 2010 elections, because there's too much shared rage and the Christian rightists are keeping their issues mostly on the back burner. After their likely big victories? At that point I think the religious rightists are going to step to the fore and push their agenda in Congress. Secular teabaggers will express disillusionment. But by then it'll be too late.

And in his next post:

I still think Republicans will seize control of Congress in 2010, propose both full and partial repeal of HCR, probably pass partial repeal (which Obama will veto), and then run on repeal in the presidential year 2012. In other words, I don't know if HCR, or much of it, will survive the Pawlenty administration. But things could get so crazy before then that anything could happen -- except what most people think will happen, which is that we'll all just the change the subject after a bill is finally signed into law.

I think Congressional dems may be in a uniquely easy position. Right now, doing the "right" (read "liberal") thing - health care reform, a massive jobs bill, punishing and re-regulating Wall Street, shifting the tax burden from the middle-class back to the rich where it was during Reagan's administration - is also the politically popular thing.

Do it to get re-elected or do it to save to the country; it's a win-win. The only way to lose is to do nothing.