The Wall Street Journal has a straight news article on the Senate race in South Dakota headlined "The ‘Keystone’ State: South Dakota?" Excerpt:
The 56-year-old senator is outwardly confident, with a narrow lead in most polls and a bigger war chest. Still, the onetime prairie populist is running scared and has adopted a strategy based more on camouflage than the combat of Washington....The challenger, a 43-year old former congressman, is a gentler sort. But along a parade route in Spearfish, he shows a greater aggressiveness than in 2002. He lost then by just 524 votes and is gambling that he can substantially increase turnout west of the Missouri River to help counter Mr. Daschle’s strength in the east.
“There’s more definition with Daschle; people are more excited and motivated,” he says of the contest. “In particular, the years he’s been in the leadership position, he’s gotten increasingly out of step with a lot of people in South Dakota.”
Unlike George McGovern, another South Dakota Democrat who lost his seat after going national, Mr. Daschle has been careful to come home and protect his base. But his purchase of a multimillion-dollar home in Washington with his lobbyist wife, Linda, raised eyebrows. And while he repeatedly speaks of abortion as a “tragedy,” he signed an appeal for contributions to Naral, an abortion-rights organization, in an effort to help then-Sen. Jean Carnahan in her 2002 re-election campaign in Missouri.
Hopefully, the Argus Leader's profile of Tom Daschle this coming Sunday will include a comparison of Daschle to McGovern. I think such a comparison would be illuminating. McGovern was unapologetically liberal, while Daschle tries to live a double life as a conservative pro-life Democrat at home, and as a liberal pro-choice Democrat in Washington.
DVT has more.
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