Victory Has A Thousand Fathers, But Defeat Is An Orphan

Or maybe that she be updated to read, "Messiahs are the fathers of many victories, but their defeats are barrenly disowned." Thereof. Or something.

Maybe David Poof can explain it better:

"The central actors in the election are the candidates themselves," Plouffe said. "It's how they handle the last two weeks that's most important."

Ace poses and answers the $64 rhetorical question:

if the Democrats were so high on ObamaSuccess that they were poised to gain fifteen or twenty seats, who do you think would be credited for that?

Uh-huh.

Oh, don't worry, folks. In the spirit of neobipartisanship that has Jeffy Lord having Freddy Kreuger dreams, the "d-oh!s" aren't limited to the dark side of the aisle, even in Tsunami City:

The race for the US Senate in California is an actual dead heat, with both Fiorina and Boxer standing right at forty-four percent (44%) of the vote. Six percent (6%) of voters are voting for one of the other candidates, and 5% are undecided . . .

It is also important to note that Boxer’s negatives are fully institutionalized to the point where she has never once broken the 45% level in terms of her ballot strength, and there are a “hard” fifty-three percent (53%) of voters who believe it is time for a new person.

Conclusions

The final eleven days of the campaign are entirely about weight of message. The trajectory of the last two weeks of tracking clearly shows that the Fiorina campaign has been pitch perfect in terms of message, and have a message arc that can and will close the deal. The Boxer campaign has also shown that they are now past the end of their message arc and do not have a playbook for what to do thematically in the last eleven days. They have already tried to prosecute the messages they believe would render Fiorina unelectable — worst CEO, right-wing extremist, outsourcing, etc — and none of them have performed as they needed them to. Boxer’s only option at this point is pure weight of message, particularly in the Los Angeles and San Francisco DMA’s, to try and dominate the focus of the ballot question among the remaining undecided voters on Fiorina enough that they will hesitate and “scatter” to one of the minor party candidates.

At the point in time when the Fiorina campaign is able to generate the weight of message, in the form of gross ratings points, in the San Francisco and Los Angeles markets, to be able to bring focus back onto Boxer, the campaign will be able to convert the remaining Independents and undecided voters that it needs to capture a plurality on election day.