The Democratic majority is in increasing jeopardy in the Senate, according to the latest FiveThirtyEight forecasting model. The Democrats now have an approximately 20 percent chance of losing 10 or more seats in the Senate, according to the model, which would cost them control of the chamber unless Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, who is running for the Senate as an independent, both wins his race and decides to caucus with them.

In addition, there is an 11 percent chance that Democrats will lose a total of nine seats, which would leave them with 50 votes, making them vulnerable to a defection to the Republican Party by a centrist like Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut or Ben Nelson of Nebraska. On average, over the model’s 100,000 simulation runs, the Democrats are projected to lose a net of six and a half Senate seats, which would leave them with 52 or 53 senators.
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And, if Carly Fiorina wins in California the margin will be bigger.

If Joe Miller (R) ends up beating Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) in Alaska — a result that won't be known until absentee ballots are counted over the next week — he would become the fifth Tea Party candidate to win a Republican U.S. Senate primary this year, joining Mike Lee in Utah, Rand Paul in Kentucky, Sharron Angle in Nevada, and Ken Buck in Colorado.

First Read: "Perhaps one of the most underreported stories heading into November is what the U.S. Senate — the world's greatest deliberative body — would look like next year with these Tea Partiers as members. Bennett and Murkowski were known as Republicans who would cut deals. But what happens when you replace these folks with Lee or Miller? Then again, partisans on both the left and right want to blow up the Senate, so they very might get their wish."
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And, Sarah Palin has a group of Senators beholden to her as she contemplates the Presidency.

In what could become one of the biggest political upsets of the year, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski trailed her tea party-backed opponent by a small margin Wednesday in Alaska's GOP primary with thousands of votes yet to be counted.

Attorney Joe Miller, who also had the backing of former Gov. Sarah Palin, led Murkowski by less than three points with 98 percent of precincts reporting. Thousands of absentee ballots have not yet been added to the tally from Tuesday's vote – a process that could take up to two weeks to tabulate.
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Who says Sarah Palin has NO sway with Alaska voters anymore?

After months of withering job losses and weak economic growth, summer was going to be the season of recovery, the Obama administration heralded in June.

Thousands of infrastructure and construction projects funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act were to come on-line during June, July and August, helping to "create jobs for American workers and economic growth for businesses, large and small."

The White House dubbed it "Recovery Summer" and President Obama declared the economy had begun "growing at a good clip." Vice President Joe Biden predicted weeks earlier that creation of 250,000 to 500,000 new jobs a month could soon be on the horizon.

But with summer quickly coming to an end, those jobs gains and a robust economic recovery have not yet materialized, leaving Democrats on the verge of a fall election campaign in which Republicans are poised to make them eat their words.
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Obama and the Dems made wrong policy choices and now will pay at the polls.

The good news for President Obama is that this week is likely to be better for him than last week was. The bad news? Last week! A week so bad, as we observed Friday, that the president ended it by clinging to his religion as the media revived the stupid-people-think-he's-Muslim trope. This, of course, was the result of his decision at the end of the previous week to weigh in on, then run away from, the debate over the Ground Zero mosque.

All week, the professional left hurled accusations of bigotry at the two-thirds or so of Americans who take offense at the idea of a fancy new mosque near the site of the 9/11 attack. But one familiar claim was notable for its absence. Hardly anybody asserted that the growing anti-Obama sentiment was the result of racism against a black president.
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Sentiment towards Obama certainly has changed quickly.

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