Having just watched Dick Blumenthal do his best to rebut charges that he lied about his service record, one phrase stood out: "on a few occasions." Those four words will make this a very tough thing for him to overcome. Because while voters may be willing to forgive a simple slip of the tongue that went uncorrected, Blumenthal is admitting to misspeaking on a number of occasions (whether it's three times or thirty times is irrelevant).

And that, to pinch a phrase from Sean's earlier post, gives his defense a distinct odor of "truthiness" - which is doubly harmful since he looks like he was playing fast and loose with the truth in his press conference in the same way he appears to have done with his service record "on a few occasions."

Carla Marinucci reports:

Months after clearing the Democratic race for governor of any serious opponents, Attorney General Jerry Brown held his first official public campaign event Monday - slamming Republican gubernatorial rivals Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner as "the apostles of darkness and ignorance" and calling their expensive barrage of mudslinging "intellectually embarrassing" to California voters.

"They are so banal," Democrat Brown told about 200 students and others at a rally at UC Santa Barbara, referring to the millions of dollars that Whitman, the former eBay CEO, and Poizner, the state insurance commissioner, have spent on attack ads in a primary battle that some polls suggest is a dead heat with three weeks until the June 8 election.

"If you know how to write and think," Brown said, "look at those ads, and do the exact opposite." He added: "The apostles of darkness and ignorance are well-heeled, and they have great political consultants."

Frankly, it does not inspire a tremendous amount of confidence that on the issue of whether radical Islam is a contributing factor to acts of terrorism, the views of the Attorney General of the United States and the Executive Director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations are virtually indistinguishable from each other.

While we wait for the outcome of today's primaries, Public Policy Polling (D) gives us some new numbers to mull over on races in Colorado later this summer.

On the Democratic side, appointed Sen. Michael Bennet has expanded his lead over former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff.

Democratic Primary Election Matchup
(442 LVs, 5/14-16, MoE +/- 4.7%)
Bennet 46 (+6 vs. last poll, 3/5-8)
Romanoff 31 (-3)
Und 23 (-3)

Considering the situation in Pennsylvania today, it's notable that President Obama recently stopped in the state to campaign with Bennet.

On the Republican side, we have a tightening race. Former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton, the establishment favorite, now leads Weld County DA Ken Buck by 5 points.

Republican Primary Election Matchup
(448 LVs, 5/14-16, MoE +/- 4.6%)
Norton 31 (-3)
Buck 26 (+9)
Other 15 (-1)
Und 29 (-3)

In the gubernatorial race, former Rep. Scott McInnis (R) leads the GOP primary field with 50 percent of the vote, 35 ahead of his closest challenger.

The Colorado primary is August 10.

The pushback on behalf of Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has begun.  Blumenthal has come under fire after the New York Times revealed that he made misleading statements about his Vietnam service:

We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008. “And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it — Afghanistan or Iraq — we owe our military men and women unconditional support.”

There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.

Now the DSCC is pushing back, releasing video from this year where Blumenthal makes clear that he did not serve in Vietnam.

Marc Ambinder chimes in:

The facts are not unambiguous. The best the Times has is statements where Blumenthal talked about "returning" or "getting back" from Vietnam, but there are plenty of instances where he acknowledges that he never served overseas. That said, he never seemed to correct the impression that he did serve overseas.

I'm extraordinarily cynical about politicians lying, but if this is the best Blumenthal can do, he's in trouble.  First, a politician who lies about what he's going to do in office or having an affair is one thing; lying about military service in Vietnam strikes me as being on a whole different level of problematic when the public is evaluating a lie.  Second, contrary to Ambinder's impression, I don't think voters grade these things on an average.  If you plainly misstate facts in 1/4 of your speeches, you don't get an overall "C" for truthiness if you state things correctly 3/4 of the time.  Unless there's video of Blumenthal going back and correcting himself in the same speech, or issuing retractions shortly thereafter, there's not much of a defense to this.  The best thing Blumenthal has going for him is that this is May, not September.

Nate Silver has an interesting post over at 538.com looking at the PVIs in open seats and Democratic performance from 2004, 2006, 2008.  Key graf:

In a district like PA-12, which has Partisan Voting Index of R+1, we'd have expected the Democrat to win by a margin of about 54-46 if conditions were the same as in 2006 and 2008. . . Under 2004 conditions, we'd have expected the seat to go to Republicans by a margin of 52.5-47.5. . . . Now, this doesn't really tell us very much. As you can see from the graphs, there's quite a lot of variance around the regression lines, even if the overall trend is fairly linear. That is to say, the contingencies of individual candidates and districts matter a lot -- and this is especially so in special elections.

This is a point that really needs to be emphasized with respect to the use of Cook's PVI (PVIwdescribes how the last two Presidential candidates performed in the district relative to their national performances).  It is an outstanding metric for understanding how a district performs as a general matter.

But there is still a lot of variance in districts with similar PVI.  Let's look at districts that are roughly evenly split between the parties on Silver's chart.  In 2004, Democrats received between 40 and 50% of the vote in these districts.  In 2006 they received between about 47% and 62% of the vote.  That's a lotta variance!

The reason for this gap is that PVI is an extremely useful tool for a "quick glance" at a district -- I refer to and rely upon it regularly -- but it is only one tool.  Even within similar PVI districts, there is significant variance in how Democratic or Republican a district or state *really* is.

Take Arkansas.  This state never had the split in its state Democratic party between progressives and conservatives that typified other Southern states, so a Republican apparatus has had to be built from the ground up.  Hence, it is still very heavily Democratic at the state and local level.  At the Presidential level, though, it is a different story, and it regularly votes for Republicans, though at a much lower rate than other Southern states.

But not in 2008.  In 2008, Barack Obama showed unique weakness in the "Appalachian diaspora," stretching across middle America from Western Virginia to Oklahoma.  I don't think all of this was a swing against Democrats generally, so much as a swing against Obama personally; it showed up in the primaries as well when the choice was between two Democrats who were roughly similarly situated ideologically.   Hence, McCain won the state but a much larger margin than Bush did in 2004 or 2000, even as the country swung toward the Democrats.

This is why, for example, I think Republicans will still have a tough time in AR-01 -- an R+8 district that McCain carried with 59% of the vote.  In truth, this district is probably more evenly split than its PVI would indicate (and indeed, in 2004 it pretty much performed at the national average).  Looking at the local level, the district is almost entirely represented by Democrats in the state House, except for a few Republican enclaves in the district's western portion.  The same is true of the state Senate.  Put differently, AR-01 is a very different R+8 district than CO-06, which is Republican top-to-bottom and went Republican by a 60/40 split in a terrible Republican year like 2008.

Which brings us to PA-12.  Although it's a nominally Republican district, it still has almost universal Democratic representation at the state level.  In a good Republican year, it still went for an urban liberal named John Kerry.  Again, I think the Republican PVI is inflated here due to Barack Obama's generally poor showing in Appalachia.  It's a very different district than Illinois 6, an historically Republican suburban district that is technically a notch to the left of PA-12, but which still went Republican when it was open in a terrible Republican year like 2006 (and whose Democratic performance is probably overstated by hometown candidate Barack Obama's candidacy, much as Republican performance in Hispanic districts in the Rio Grande valley is probably overstated by Bush's 2000 and 2004 performances).

Again, I'm not saying don't look at PVI.  It's a great instrument.  But to really understand a district, you have to look below the toplines.

Wealthy businessman Jeff Greene, running for the Democratic Senate nomination in Florida, is dropping two statewide TV ads. The Greene campaign announced the move today as it seeks to halt the conventional wisdom that Rep. Kendrick Meek will be the Democratic nominee.

The new ads play up Greene's unique outsider status in a Senate race that includes former state House speaker Marco Rubio (R), Gov. Charlie Crist (I) and Meek, a congressman.

"Jobs":

(more...)

It's primary day in Arkansas, Kentucky, Oregon and Pennsylvania. Sean Trende, writing on RCP, assesses whether 2010 is an anti-incumbent, anti-liberal or anti-Democratic year. On Politics Nation, Kyle Trygstad reports on the PA-12 special election that national Democrats and Republicans are watching closely.

Also on RCP, Jed Babbin writes about how Attorney General Eric Holder has increased the Justice Department's power over the country's intelligence agencies and how both Democrats and Republicans in Congress are pushing back. Thomas Sowell writes about the dangers of politicians designating how much money is "too much" to earn.

On RCM, John Tamny criticizes the bailouts and the stimulus, pointing out that the total price tag continues to increase while the economy continues to lag. Josh Barro praises Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's refusal to institute a "Millionaire's Tax."

On RCW's Compass Blog, Greg Scoblete takes issue with John Bolton's argument that the United States needs to destroy the Taliban and not be overly concerned with whether or not the Afghan government "shapes up."

Finally, RCS ranks the top 10 "what if" athletes, and Tim Joyce celebrates the renewal of the Federer-Nadal rivalry.

With no major challenger, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D) has a sizable advantage in her bid to hold the seat she was appointed to last January, per a new Rasmussen poll (500 LVs, 5/12, MoE +/- 4.5%).

General Election Matchups
Gillibrand 51
DioGuardi 28
Und 13

Gillibrand 51
Blakeman 31
Und 10

Gillibrand 46
Malpass 27
Und 16

The only cautionary note is that the Republicans remain unknown to a significant percentage of Empire State voters.

This won't put to rest doubts about the viability of Alex Sink's (D) campaign for governor in Florida. A new Rasmussen poll out today (500 LVs, 5/16, MoE +/- 4.5%) not only shows her losing ground against Attorney General Bill McCollum (R), but also a newcomer in the race -- health care executive and conservative activist Rick Scott (R).

General Election Matchups
McCollum 43 (-2 vs. last poll, 4/15)
Sink 35 (-3)
Und 11 (+1)

Scott 41
Sink 40
Und 12

The field for both parties was thought to have been clear for both McCollum and Sink. But now not only does McCollum have a challenger in Scott, but Lawton Chiles III, son of the former Democratic senator and governor, says he's now weighing a run against Sink in the primary as well.