{"id":13567,"date":"2010-09-17T11:15:27","date_gmt":"2010-09-17T16:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=13567"},"modified":"2010-09-17T11:17:10","modified_gmt":"2010-09-17T16:17:10","slug":"tarryl-toast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=13567","title":{"rendered":"Is Tarryl Toast?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m going to blow my own horn for a bit here.<\/p>\n

I rock at predictions.<\/p>\n

Oh, not always<\/em>. \u00a0I though the ’06 MN Senate race was going to be close; it was not. \u00a0I thought McCain was going to make it a closer fight in ’08; I knew Coleman\/Franken was going to be a nail-biter, and I was right – I didn’t figure it would turn out quite <\/em>that way; I blame the Coleman campaign and the MNGOP for that one.<\/p>\n

But I nailed the 2002 Senate race – Coleman\/Mondale, after Wellstone’s death – almost to the point. \u00a0I pegged the 2004 Presidential election almost dead-on; I only missed one of the states. \u00a0I got the 2006 Gubernatorial race (albeit not the SOS or Auditors races), the 2006 and 2008 CD6 races, the 2004-2008 CD2 and CD3 races, and a slew of others pretty close to dead-on. \u00a0And my finest hour at forecasting; I was 2-3 days off on the execution of Saddam Hussein.<\/p>\n

So I’m predicting Emmer wins by 3 points this year.<\/p>\n

But that’s not the point of this post.<\/p>\n

The DFL, and the left nationwide, want nothing <\/em>more than to get Michele Bachmann out of office. \u00a0Only seeing Sarah Palin murdered would make [some of<\/span>] them happier.<\/p>\n

In fact, you can year the occasional lefty murmering in tones that sound as close as Minnesota Democrats ever get to joy and hope, “I think this is the year teh crazzee woman loses”.<\/p>\n

I called this an eight-point race two months ago. \u00a0Last month, after DFL-endorsed candidate Tarryl Clark won the primary with a 2-1 margin – against a woman that had dropped out of the race two months earlier – I upped that to ten.<\/p>\n

Via Gary Gross at LFR, I see that events are well on track to prove me right<\/a>. \u00a0He quotes the SurveyUSA\/KSTP poll:<\/p>\n

Today, it\u2019s Bachman 49%, DFL State Senator Tarryl Clark 40%. Compared to an identical SurveyUSA poll released 2 months ago, little has changed: each candidate is up 1 point.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gross:<\/p>\n

Two months ago, the Sorosphere highlighted the fact that Michele wasn\u2019t above 50 percent. At that time, I said that it wasn\u2019t that much under 50 percent and that that poll wasn\u2019t that good of news for Tarryl.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nine points.<\/p>\n

That’s right between 8 and 10.<\/p>\n

Not bad.<\/p>\n

Just between us, Clark is running a terrible <\/em>campaign. \u00a0I’d say it even if she were the conservative Republican she isn’t; her entire campaign has involved reacting to Bachmann’s jabs. \u00a0She’s done a fairly slick, expensive-looking ad poking back at Bachmann’s “Jim The Taxpayer” spots; that’s a lot of money spent reacting to Bachmann, which lets Bachmann set the agenda<\/em>. \u00a0Which is a good thing for Bachmann, but dumb campaigning. \u00a0Her latest spot – where Clark, taking a whack at looking like a cover girl (and, truth be told, not doing badly at it; a guy’s gotta be honest), asks Bachmann when she’s going to vote to cut Congressional pay and staff costs. \u00a0Not a bad spot, in and of itself, but I’ve yet to see Clark put forward a positive vision for herself in Congress – merely react to and bag on Bachmann. \u00a0To be fair, there’s a place for that, and I don’t live in CD6, so I may be missing things. \u00a0But from what I’ve seen, even if <\/em>Michele Bachmann were wildly unpopular (she’s not) and even if this weren’t going to be a great year for fiscal conservatives (it will), it looks to me like Clark’s running a clumsy, inept campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m going to blow my own horn for a bit here. I rock at predictions. Oh, not always. \u00a0I though the ’06 MN Senate race was going to be close; it was not. \u00a0I thought McCain was going to make it a closer fight in ’08; I knew Coleman\/Franken was going to be a nail-biter, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minnesota-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13567"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13581,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13567\/revisions\/13581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}