Today E.J. Dionne bashes Republicans for running negative, racist ads, highlighting the RNC ad against Harold Ford in Tennessee that has received so much attention from the media elite:

And there is what will, sadly, become the most famous advertisement of this election cycle, the "Harold, call me'' ad run by the Republican National Committee against Rep. Harold Ford Jr., the Democratic candidate for the Senate from Tennessee. To claim that an ad depicting a pretty blonde woman coming on to an African-American politician does not play on the fears of miscegenation on the part of some whites is to ignore history. My hunch is that the sliminess won't work this year.

A reader from Tennessee responds to Dionne:

I have lived in Tennessee for 50 years. Ever since 1970 when Al Gore's father turned against the Vietnam War and thought he did not have to justify himself to voters, Democratic candidates for statewide federal office have explained their losses by playing the race card. It has not changed. Only a blithering moron could look at the "Call me, Harold" ad and see subliminal miscegenation. The problem is that 95% of the Washington press corps, and, oh, 98% of the New York press corp are blithering morons. We hicks in Tennessee see a man who has conducted most of his campaign from a church pew and, for some reason, had trouble explaining why he went to a Playboy party. Gosh darn, we have running water down here, and even flush toilets. Oh, but thanks for reminding me: I have to wash my sheets for the big Klan rally Saturday night. Who is indulging in stereotypes here? Who is obsessed with the notion of a black man and white woman getting together? None of the Tennessee hicks that I know, but apparently most of the enlightened members of the fourth estate in Washington and New York, not to mention a couple of political science profs at Vanderbilt who would run over you to get in front of a camera or microphone to pronounce on something equally silly.

Harold Ford Jr. is going to lose this race, not because he is black, but because he is the scion (gosh we hicks know a few words) of the most corrupt political family in the state since the 1930s. He has moved from college, to law school, straight to Congress, like a champion blue tick hound bred for the hunt. His family has treated the Ninth District Congressional seat like a wholly owned subsidiary and if you don't believe me ask Steve Cohen, one of the most liberal members of the state legislature who thought he had won the Democratic primary for the seat, only to find himself challenged in the general election by Harold's questionable brother.

The last paragraph is a huge reason why Harold Ford is likely to lose this race and is something we pointed it out in our initial analysis. As for the racist nature of the "Harold, Call Me" ad, Ford himself told Chris Wallace on Sunday he didn't think "race had anything to do with that ad." I guess E.J. Dionne, Chris Matthews and other Washington liberals know better.

Ford was quite impressive in his interview with Chris Wallace this weekend on FOX News Sunday and he had run a great campaign up until two weeks ago when he crashed Bob Corker's press conference. Since then he has been stumbling, and he committed another gaffe this past weekend when he accused Republicans of not loving God.

The RCP Average in this race is now up to Corker +3.7% and unless something dramatic happens in the last week, Corker now appears to have established control. However, at only 36 years old, if Corker does go on to win I suspect this won't be the last Tennessee sees of Harold Ford.

Hard to believe, but true:

The 2008 John Kerry for President juggernaut just keeps on a hummin'.

In addition to the new chart of 2006 House races that went up last week, yesterday we put up a chart of the most competitive 2006 Senate races and all of the 2006 Governor's races. You can find all the 2006 races RCP is tracking here.

John posted an updated analysis on the House yesterday. Today, let's take a quick look at the Senate.

Dems are holding solid leads in PA and OH and smaller leads in RI and MT. With two polls in the last 24 hours showing Jim Webb edging ahead of George Allen, however, based on the RCP Avgs the Dems would pick up five seats if the election were held today.

Three new polls in NJ show Bob Menendez stabilizing a lead, and it looks like things are moving ever so slightly in his direction at the moment.

In Tennessee, Republican Bob Corker appears to be in control and has moved out to a 3.7% lead in the current RCP Average.

Missouri remains insanely close: The last two polls - including a CNN poll out this morning - show the race tied, and Republican Jim Talent is up just 1.6% points in the latest RCP Avg. Control of the Senate may literally come down to a few thousand votes in the Show Me state on election night.

Finally, Maryland continues to lurk as the spoiler of the year. Michael Steele is running a near flawless campaign and has the momentum. Yesterday he picked up more endorsements from the African-American community which cannot hurt his bid against Ben Cardin. In what is turning out to be a most unpredictable year, how ironic would it be if Democrats rode a favorable anti-GOP wind and knocked off six incumbent Republicans - including two from Missouri and Virginia - only to be stymied at the end by losing overwhelmingly Democratic Maryland to a black Republican? It's not out of the question.

In addition to the Senate, there are a host of new polls out this morning, all available on RCP's latest polls page which is updated continually throughout the day.

How stupid does Rod Blagojevich think the voters of Illinois are? There's a concept called "conflict of interest" which the public understands pretty well and most politicians treat with a certain amount of seriousness. Entering public life doesn't mean that a person and every member of their family has to quit everything else or stop doing business altogether, but it does mean that they should reevaluate any business relationships that might be called into question or give off the appearance of impropriety.

So it's especially insulting that Rod Blagojevich, who is careening his way to reelection amid a flurry of prosecutions and guilty pleas for corruption among some of his biggest political boosters, responds to inquiries about his wife's business dealings by assailing the questions as "Neanderthal and sexist." The Chicago Tribune has the story:

The governor's comments were his first on the matter since the Tribune reported First Lady Patricia Blagojevich received more than $113,000 in real estate commissions through a woman who holds a long-standing no-bid state contract and whose banker husband has business pending before state regulators. [snip]

"You know, there's a sexist quality to that story--somehow moms who have their own businesses, who are women, can't do things that way--that's implicit in that story," said Blagojevich, who is seeking re-election and is being challenged by Republican Judy Baar Topinka. "My wife is a professional. She's a licensed real estate appraiser, a licensed real estate broker who works real hard and does a real good job for her clients. ... There's absolutely no connection of one, at all, of one or the other."

The governor then jumped into a black SUV and shut the door, but seconds later climbed back out to continue making his point.

"Working women are very much a part of the real life experience today for families across our state. And to suggest she doesn't have the right to have her own business and pursue her own business is Neanderthal and sexist," Blagojevich said before getting back in the SUV.

The four real estate deals involving the Chicago couple, Anita and Amrish Mahajan, account for the only commissions Patricia Blagojevich received this year.

That's some "professional business" Rod's wife is running: 4 real estate deals worth $113K in commissions, all from the same couple who both have ties to state business. Nope, nothing worth looking at there you knuckle dragging, sexist reporters. The guy really is shameless.

Republicans thought they had fielded a halfway decent candidate in Judy Baar Topinka. Elected Treasure three times, Topinka was the only Republican with enough appeal to hang on when the GOP was swept out of statewide office in 2004. But she's been a surprisingly weak and truly uninspiring candidate. Granted, she's faced an unprecedented crush of negative TV ads as Blagojevich has emptied his huge war chest over the last few months.

But even with all the negative headlines and scandal issues surrounding Blagojevich she's been unable to gain any traction at all. Blagojevich's unfavorable rating in the latest poll is a ridiculous 57%, but Topinka is still pulling only 38% of the vote, while Green Party candidate Rich Whitney is rising into double-digits.

In a normal year and/or against a better candidate, Blagojevich would go down in a big way. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like that's going to happen this year.

Headline from USA Today: If Dems take over the House ...

Headline in the Washington Times: Democrats wait in the wings with subpoenas

Anyone still interested in tracking what's left of the Katherine Harris for Senate campaign can peruse this profile in today's Washington Post and/or this one by Jim Stratton in the Orlando Sentinel.

In the WaPo story, Darryl Paulson, a political scientist at the University of South Florida, sums up the race this way:

"The only way Bill Nelson could lose this is if he got himself in a drug-induced stupor and ran naked down the main street of his home town."

Even that probably wouldn't do it.

"I'd like to welcome President Clinton. ... And I see she's brought her husband." - Mick Jagger, at Bill Clinton's 60th birthday bash on Sunday.

For a smart guy, Andrew Sullivan sure says some dumb things. Like this, where he sarcastically refers to Rick Santorum's latest attack on Bob Casey as "Christianism in its finest hour." Please.

We can all agree Santorum is getting desperate. And if you look at the chart of the RCP Average for the PA Senate race it's easy to see why: on September 1, Santorum was at 40%. Today, just eight days from the election, he's still at 40%. Nothing Santorum has tried over the last eight weeks has moved the needle at all.

Sullivan might have had a point if Santorum had said something akin to Katherine Harris's "if you don't elect Christians you're legislating sin" remark - and I suppose it's within the realm of possibility that Santorum goes there in the next week. But so far, he hasn't. Santorum's over-the-top attacks on Casey are about national security - the most salient issue Republicans have left on the table this year - and Sullivan makes a fool of himself by trying to fit such a square peg into the round, "Christianist" hole he's created.

So, too, does Sullivan like to smear the GOP as the party of bigots and homophobes. There is significantly more resistance to gay marriage on the right than the left, for sure, so Sullivan's characterization is correct in the broadest, most general sense. But take a look at the results from the latest Newsweek poll which breaks down the question of gay marriage and you'll see that one out of every three self-described Democrats and Independents is against any legal recognition for homosexuals whatsoever:

15. There has been much talk recently about whether gays and lesbians should have the legal right to marry someone of the same sex. Which of the following comes closest to your position on this issue? Do you... Support FULL marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples, or support gay civil unions or partnerships, BUT NOT gay marriage, or do you oppose ANY legal recognition for gay and lesbian couples?

	Marriage Rights	Civil Unions	No Legal Recognition
TOTAL	24	26	40
Republicans	9	27	58
Democrats	34	23	33
Independents	24	32	33

Note, too, that by combining the Republican responses you find that just over one out of every three self-described Republicans favors either full marriage rights for gays or civil unions. Given that I generally consider myself part of this libertarian-minded group, I find the constant use of broad, smearing strokes by a polemicist of Sullivan's caliber to be about as effective as a brain surgeon wielding a butterknife.

Rasmussen Reports just released a Virginia Senate poll showing George Allen trailing by 5 points (with leaners). This comes on the heels of a poll they did just last Tuesday which showed Allen up 2 points (with leaners). That's a seven-point move in less than a week. Without leaners it is only three point move, but with election day a week away, leaners very much count.

From our updated Virginia analysis:

If the direction of this poll, not necessarily the magnitude of the move, but the direction is confirmed by other major polling -- George Allen is in big, big trouble. This race had already crept up to #7 on RCP's most vulnerable Senate seats and Allen had real risks heading into election day just by his inability to shake off Webb when he was leading in the RCP Average. Now with Webb moving out to a lead in the latest RCP Average, the Allen campaign better hope this poll is a weekend outlier.

The only big news event in this race was the Allen campaign's dump of sexually provocative passages from Jim Webb's many novels. The conventional wisdom had been that this would hurt Webb in Virginia. Was the conventional wisdom very wrong? Did Allen see his numbers deteriorating and decide he needed to dump the Webb stuff? Or is this is just one poll taken on the weekend that will turn out to be an outlier? We'll find out soon enough.

Allen has now moved up to #5 on RCP's list of most vulnerable incumbents.

Interesting email on Connecticut 5 referring to my earlier post on the Courant poll showing Nancy Johnson now trailing by 4 points.

The story on that poll cited by John says that much of Murphy's success is due to him overperforming in the affluent Farmington Valley suburbs: "But the UConn poll apparently shows that Johnson's support there has been cut roughly in half, with Murphy leading among likely Farmington Valley voters by 52 percent to 36 percent."

I live in the Farmington Valley, and all I can say to this statement is: no way. No way is Johnson down by 16 here. I see the yard signs, most of which are for Johnson. I talk to neighbors and I know the people who live in the Farmington Valley. Yes, Murphy will do better here than Johnson's past challengers have, in part because the Valley has gone from Red to Purple in recent years, as many of the new arrivals are the sort of Volvo-driving, Starbuck's-patronizing bobos David Brooks writes about. But there is no way Johnson is down by 16 here.

A Research 2000 poll has just come out in CT-4 which shows Shays trailing by the same spread, 47% - 43%. Shays is generally considered to be the most vulnerable of the three GOP incumbents in Connecticut.