It looks like even the Administration is sticking a fork in Creigh Deeds.  And it goes deeper than just a candidate with a funny name.  If current trends hold, it might just mean that not only is the Hope ‘n Change honeymoon over, but dead, buried, and pushed out to sea.

Democrats seem to be learning that life without a boogeyman is hard:

They’re learning, painfully, that campaigning without George W. Bush is baffling, frustrating and scary. Worse, it offers a preview of what the congressional campaigning will be like next year. One Obama doorbell ringer, working neighborhoods in Northern Virginia for Creigh Deeds, says even the promise of free pizza can’t lure faithful Democrats to a rally.

And when you can’t get Democrats to let other people pay for their stuff, you know you got a problem.

(badda-BUM)

Suddenly, the White House is treating the bereft Mr. Deeds as if he’s on the fourth day of a three-day underarm deodorant pad. Bill Clinton, accustomed to speaking to cheering thousands at a hundred grand a pop, was dispatched the other night to a Deeds rally to set the throng on fire with one of his late-October stumpwallopers. The rally, such as it was, was held not at an arena or a hotel – not even a Motel 6 – but in a campaign office in the Washington suburbs. The “throng” was counted in the dozens, about the size of a PTA meeting. Not even Bubba could dispel the gloom of a wake.

It’s not all good, of course – polling shows John Corzine is coming back in New Jersey, which on the one hand isn’t much of a shock, since New Jersey is just New York without the nightlife, but there had been hope.

Still, this could be a good sign.