TPM Editor’s Blog

Burr-ing

Here’s a funny, somewhat humiliating, political story. It turns out that Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) may be in a bit of trouble for reelection next year. His approval rating is an awful 38% and though he appears to be beating all the potential fairly unknown opponents, he’s clocking in in the low forties against all of them. With those numbers you’d figure that he’d either been a terrible senator, taken a few hikes on the Appalachian Trail or gotten seriously out of sync with his constituents on some big issue. But as Eric Kleefeld explains, it’s not really that Burr’s unpopular. It’s just that in almost six years as a senator he’s barely made any impression at all on the state’s electorate. It’s not that he’s too right or left or mired in scandal or even incompetent. He’s just so boring and lame that folks don’t have any particular opinion of him one way or another.

Josh Marshall

Josh Marshall is editor and publisher of TalkingPointsMemo.com.

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