Rasmussen shows another 2 pt improvement overnight to 45% which is far higher than he's spent most of the year. Since they run on 3 day averages, the question it raises is: Did the Saddam verdict have a measurable impact of say 4-5 points on the electorate two days before the election. Narrowing voter preference polls indicate that may be happening.

The Democrats have made this election about Iraq and President Bush rather than local issues and ideas.  Will that bite them in the final hours?

sharp 

Pew Research shows the Congressional preference at Democrat +4%

USA Today/Gallup shows it at Democrat +7%.

Both of those show the preference tightening considerably in the last week.

But today, CNN shows it at Democrat +20%.

Who are they polling?  Their own office?

That would suggest a 50+ seat pickup for Democrats.  But if they only pick up 20-25, then what does that tell us about CNN's reliability and truthfulness?  Unfortunately, not much that we don't already know.

sharp

The House may be less certain than it seemed a few days ago. And the Senate is getting way too close to call in 5 different races. 4 of those could be Democratic pickups and one a Republican pickup.

But the possibility exists in the Senate - much more now than a week ago that Democrats could wind up missing the opportunity of a lifetime (or at least, the same opportunity that seems to exist in the sixth year of most administrations for the out-party).

Republicans have had a very, very good week.  Despite every MSM headline gleefully cheering on the Republican demise, there were several gifts this week:

• John Kerry happened - the Democrats verbal answer to Mark Foley
• Unemployment dropped to 4.4%
• Gas dropped below $2 a gallon in many areas
• North Korea returned to the bargaining table
• Saddam was convicted of war crimes by his own people
• The NYT (unwittingly) proved that Saddam was 1 year away from nukes when we got him

More on the New Hypocritical Times coming up.  But for now, suffice it to say that they've been thrown into confusion and have bolstered Bush's case while condemning their own release of sensitive national security documents.  Not to mention the "freedom of speech"/"lock up the journalists" contradiction in the Valerie Plame case.  But, like I said, more later.

By the way, anybody seen Pelosi, Reid or Howard Dean?  Why would the Democrats lock them up?  What don't they want people to think about when they're voting?

sharp

Remember the guys who were telling us that Bush ruined the economy?  What happened to them?  Oh, yeah, they're about to take control of Congress.

Lol.  Politics is never dull.

sharp

..he comes across as a shameless jerk. Assume he's not just a liar and that he really was "botching a joke". Then, at best, he's quite a dim bulb. It's ironic that he thinks of himself so highly.

Would I stand before a group that I've never met and mock Hillary Clinton? Of course not.

Why not? Because there are bound to be quite a few people in that room who admire her greatly and will be deeply offended by my pompous presumptuousness and graceless behavior.

But so insulated from the real world is this leader of the Democratic Party that he mocks (which alone tells us all we need to know about his character) a President whose deep falls from grace still find 42% (that's about 2 in 5 for those of you in Kerry's military) who think he's doing a pretty good job.

Power corrupts. And in his case, the idea of power has already done the job.

I expect this garish pomposity and sneering mockery to become more common on the left (which it has been in the past) as they are tested with the high winds of leadership.

sharp