Jerome Armstrong of www.mydd.com, a Democratic blog, has an interesting post quoting an e-mail he says is from a Daschle campaign staffer. Despite its bravado, the Daschle campaign seems to be concerned about losing. The following text is from the Daschle campaign staffer e-mail to Jerome Armstrong:
The challenger/open seat races in place like CO, AK, and elsewhere are huge and exciting and deserving of all of our attention and support - but there's only one incumbent Dem Senator who's facing a challenge of this magnitude this cycle. And if we lose Daschle, we not only lose the Senate leader, but we lose any chance of winning back the Senate.
There can be little doubt the kinds of things we saw in '02 (against Cleland et al) will happen here this time. The 3rd party negative ads started back in April, and this race really began more than a year ago before we even had a opponent. Polls have shown a range, but it's South Dakota - with Johnson's 528 vote win in '02, and Stephanie Herseth's squeaker just last week, close elections are the norm here. Especially with a candidate like John Thune, who's making his second go at it, with all the resources of the national GOP, as well as a tradition of voter suppression on the Indian reservations.
You can observe John Thune engaging in a GOP tradition of voter suppression on the Indian reservations (with pictures!) HERE.
More intriguing is a certain "blogad" on the MyDD blog paid for by the Daschle campaign. The Daschle ad reads: "Help Stop George Bush! Bush & Thune Team Up To Defeat Tom Daschle! It's Up To You To Stop Them!" That's quite a contrast in tone to a letter by Tom Daschle's campaign manager, published in the Rapid City Journal, boasting about supporting President Bush 75% of the time.
The ad is animated, with one screen showing a picture of John Thune and George W. Bush together, and a second screen with the same picture, but with a big image of a stop sign over the image of John Thune.
I wonder if David Kranz, whose political column has begun running twice a week, rather than just on Sunday, (now you can get twice the bias!) will mention this ad in one of his columns. Recall that when John Thune ran an ad on Instapundit, Kranz mentioned it, without explaining what a blog is, and not referring to the specific blog. Rather, Kranz just mentioned the text of the ad, and left it at that:
Even though Thune is not in the middle of TV-ad wars, there is a campaign presence, including a message on a Web site blog with a his logo and the words, "Stop Tom Daschle's obstructionism."
A way to measure Kranz's bias is first to observe whether he mentions this blog ad at all in one of his columns, and second, if he does mention it, whether he gives the ad the same treatment he gave to the Thune ad (describing images on the ad, and reciting the text of the ad, but with no mention of what a blog is, and no mention of what blog the ad appeared on).
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