The day after the Florida Senate primary on August 24th, our Eric Kleefeld suggested that Kendrick Meek’s victory over mogul-Democrat Jeff Greene might be very bad news for Charlie Crist, who to that point, running as an independent, had been in a consistent lead over Republican nominee Marco Rubio. Indeed, Crist had virtually supplanted Meek as the de facto Democrat in the race.

But Eric was prescient. Meek’s victory over Greene has turned out to be a devastating reverse for Crist.

Our trend graph tells the story in elegant detail. Around mid-July, Meek started reclaiming Democrats, seemingly at Crist’s direct expense, to the point where Rubio, who was behind, has now opened a commanding lead of almost 10 points. Polls up to election day had shown Greene making no similar progress against Crist.

The reality is that both Crist and Meek are running in effect as Democrats, albeit of rather different flavors. And if they split the vote, neither can win. So the current deadlock, albeit with Crist significantly ahead of Meek, will likely guarantee the Republicans that seat.

An interesting nugget from PPP. According to their latest poll, Republicans are extremely bullish on their chances for recapturing Congress — 74% think they’ll capture the House and 62% think they get the Senate. That’s pretty optimistic for the Senate, but maybe not too far off on the House. But Democrats look likely not to know what hit them on November 3rd. Only 22% of Dems see a House loss and only 17% one in the Senate. Read More

Rachel Slajda chronciles Christine O’Donnell’s evolution from college party girl to no-sex, no-masturbation crusader.

Just now on Fox News Karl Rove prostrated himself on the altar of tea party orthodoxy, having what amounts to a full conversion on Christine O’Donnell.

I guess his rapprochement with the tassels on Rush Limbaugh‘s loafers will be next.

Watch.

When Nancy Pelosi met with her caucus Tuesday night to make the case for pushing a middle class tax cut vote pre-election, they had Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg there to show members the numbers and how they show this debate is a winning issue for the Democrats — one of the few things that has the chance to shift the momentum of the race going into November. Christina Bellantoni takes a look at what the numbers show. Definitely give it a read.

The first post-primary poll of the Delaware Senate race is out. Rasmussen shows Democrat Chris Coons with an 11-point lead over Republican Christine O’Donnell. Here’s the graph showing the TPM Poll Average of the race: Read More

Fresh off his spanking, a repentant Karl Rove goes back on Fox News and sips the Christine O’Donnell Kool-Aid. Watch.

We go back and forth on what adjectives to use to describe people at the top end of the income scale. Our reporters have been going with “rich”. For whatever reason, I think “wealthy” is better. And sometimes I think it’s best just to refer to the actual tax brackets.

But Senator Minority Leader has a new term for these folks: “the people who’ve been hit hardest by this recession.”

Late Update: McConnell clarifies what he meant.

Boehner says anything less than an up or down vote on tax breaks for wealthiest is “unnacceptable,” but demurs when asked whether he’d vote against President Obama’s proposal. “I don’t want to get into a bunch of hypotheticals.”

Also says: “Our goal is not to shut down the government.”

We’ve put together a short reel splicing together Karl Rove’s election night trashing of Christine O’Donnell (“character problems”) to this morning’s eager hop on to the O’Donnell bandwagon (“everybody in their life sometimes has difficulties”). I was wondering how long Rove would hold out against the Rush smackdown (aka “hangtime”) and the answer was not long.