…when you can use taxpayer dollars to send the same drivel to voters in your district?

This franked campaign style mail piece from Representative Vicky Hartzler (r) arrived in the 4th Congressional District during the past week:

And, yep, a franked mail piece from a member of Congress is paid for by the taxpayers:

The franking disclaimer on the addressed outside portion of the mailing.

The details:

Detail from the “sunset” side of the mailing.

“Our rights must never be compromised.”

“The Constitution directly expresses each and every American’s right to bear arms. It couldn’t be any clearer – it’s in black and white.

Yet, despite our Second Amendment’s clarity, there are many special interests in Washington that are working to chip away at our rights and liberties at every turn.

That’s why I am working every day to safeguard the rights of law-abiding Missouri gun owners and sportsmen. And I will never back down from this fight.”

Seriously? “Our rights must never be compromised.” Representative Hartzler (r) doesn’t appear to be well versed in the 4th Amendment, does she?

Which “special interests”? Just asking. It couldn’t be President Obama, right?:

Obama’s expansion of guns into national parks raises fears for bears (May 10, 2010)

….But one thing I have found as I have hung out at gun shows and gun shops this year is that nearly 100 percent of the people I talk to there agree on one thing:

“Obama wants to take away our guns!”

Based on this universal attitude, ammunition sales went through the roof from election day until last August said Max Bosworth, who runs Max’s Gun Shop in Idaho Falls. That’s when gun owners finally ran out of money because of the economy.

At the last gun show I attended in April gun sales were slow but ammunition and other accessories were still moving. You never can have too much ammo but it sure has gotten expensive.

What is interesting about all this is that Obama has only done one thing about guns since he has entered office. He signed a new federal law that required national parks to allow gun owners to carry guns into national parks under the same rules the states have for the surrounding areas.

That’s right, Obama expanded gun owner rights. He didn’t restrict them….

Okay. So, if it’s not President Obama, who is it? Or is this mailing just fear mongering to prop up the lunatic fringe base for a politician who won in a republican landslide election year with only 50.4% of the vote? Just asking.

Detail from the interior of the mailing.

Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler is leading the charge to protect and preserve our Second Amendment rights for all law abiding Missourians. Already this year, Vicky has co-sponsored three pro-gun bills in the United States House of Representatives.

And those bills are?:

Carry conceal reciprocity? You think that’ll go over well in a district with two large universities? Just asking?

Because creating jobs is a priority for everyone, right?

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): town hall in Warrensburg, part 1 (August 11, 2011)

….Voice: It’s not uncertainty about the economy, it’s a lack of con [crosstalk], consumer demand. [crosstalk] [voice: “Yeah.”][applause][voice: “Yeah, all right.”]

Voice: Consumer demand is lacking because people do not have jobs. They don’t have the money to [crosstalk]…

Voice: People don’t have money.

Representative Hartzler: Okay, let me [crosstalk]…

Voice: You all were supposed to [inaudible] [crosstalk]on jobs when you came in office. [voice: “Yeah.”]

Representative Hartzler: Wait, wait, wait [crosstalk] just a minute.

Voice: Jobs!

Voice: That’s what you said.

Voice: You said you were jobs, you didn’t [crosstalk] say anything about fighting the President.

Representative Hartzler: All right [crosstalk]. Listen, listen [crosstalk]…

Voice: When, when you ran your campaign [crosstalk] the only thing we heard was jobs, jobs, jobs [crosttalk], jobs, jobs. [crosstalk] You get into office and the only thing we hear out of you now is abortion [inaudible].

Voice: We were gonna fix it, that’s what you said….

“…You get into office and the only thing we hear out of you now is abortion…”

Well, to be fair, not just abortion. Guns, too.

Previously:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): frankly, it looks like a campaign mailing (July 7, 2011)

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): franking right wingnut propaganda on Medicare (August 27, 2011)

From MoveOn:

Wolf Blitzer: But congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?

[voice: “Yeah”]

Congressman Ron Paul (r): No…

[voice: “Yeah”]

Susan Grigsby: What really horrified me about that debate wasn’t the, the poorly phrased question. It wasn’t Dr. Paul’s answer. And it wasn’t even the scream after Wolf Blitzer asked would you let him die and somebody in the audience yelled, yeah. That wasn’t as horrifying as was the silence from the stage from these men and women who are running for office. Not a word. Nothing. I was horrified.

That’s when I started thinking about Steve. As an adult he worked full time all the time. And when he was fifty-five he was replaced by a young man and he had to start looking for a job. At fifty-five years old, you know, you can kiss that good bye. He looked for a job, he looked for a job.

My brother Steve at sixty-three, and unemployed and uninsured was too young for Medicare and he was too male for Medicaid.

The spot was found on Steve’s lung on December third of twenty-ten. Within five months he had gone through radiation, he’d gone through some therapy, he had been warehoused, he slowly, painfully, he couldn’t stand up, the cancer went into his nerves and his spine. Five months later he died. That’s what it means to let someone die.

[What would you ask the GOP nominees if you could?]        

Do you, as a candidate for president, really believe that if an American cannot get or does not get insurance that they should be treated the way Steve was? Do you really believe that?  

[Dear GOP candidates: Answer the question.]

That was my brother’s death you were cheering, you a$$holes (September 13, 2011)

Repeat after me: There is nothing wrong with Social Security, it is perfectly sustainable for a century and beyond if we simply lift the earnings cap.

Right now, high income earners only pay Social Security taxes on the first $106,800 of their income. Anything over that is not taxed for Social Security purposes. That simple tweak, one line of legislation, would put the program on a solvent path for at least a century. Maybe the fact that people are gradually waking up to that fact has something to do with the White House dropping Social Security “reform” from the grand budget proposal that will be rolled out next week.

President Barack Obama will not include reforms to the Social Security retirement program in his deficits proposals to Congress next week, the White House said Thursday.

Obama upset many fellow Democrats during this summer’s bitter negotiations with Republicans on raising the U.S. debt ceiling when he expressed a willingness to change the way government benefits are linked to inflation.

He saw the move as a way to ensure the federal pension program remains viable in the long-term, but liberal supporters who champion entitlement programs for the elderly felt he was giving up too much ground to Republicans.

White House spokesman Amy Brundage said Obama’s long-awaited deficit reduction plan, to be unveiled Monday, “will not include any changes to Social Security.”

“As the president has consistently said, he does not believe that Social Security is a driver of our near and medium term deficits,” she said.

With Obama’s shift in stance, the six Democratic members of a congressional “super committee” charged with tackling the federal deficit would not have to make immediate concessions, giving them more negotiating room with their Republican counterparts. The super committee is trying to find more than $1.2 trillion in budget savings over 10 years by Nov. 23.

Since Social Security became the law of he land in 1935, it has been the most successful anti-poverty program ever conceived of by the American government. It truly is “We, the People” taking care of one another, putting the words that start our owner’s manual into action. It has been especially successful at lifting elderly WOMEN out of poverty.

Here are some facts about women and Social Security that you may not know, but should.

• 26% of women aged 65-69 are reliant upon Social Security for virtually all of their income (90% or more) and that number climbs as women age.

• Although women are more reliant on Social Security to provide their basic needs in retirement, men receive benefits that are about 25% more than those of women. The average benefit for a woman is around $12,000 per year, while for men it is about $16,000 per year.

• This is especially important for women, because far more American women than men — 11% versus 7% — lived in poverty in 2009 (the last year for which complete numbers are available.)

• It becomes even more important for people who live alone. When older people live alone, the likelihood that they live in poverty jumps dramatically, to 17% for women and to 12% for men.

• Minority women are hit especially hard, with more than 20% of African-American, Hispanic and Native American women 65 and over living in poverty. The poverty rate is 8% for non-Hispanic white females in this age group, and 15% for Asian women.

• Without Social Security, one half of all women over 65 and two-thirds of women over 65 who live alone would live in poverty.

• 3.1. million children received Social Security survivors benefits after losing the support of a parent to death or disability, and those benefits lifted 1.1 million of those children out of poverty.

Not only does Social Security do all that, it does it without adding a single dime to the deficit. The fact of the matter is, Social Security is not only not responsible for our deficit woes, it is independent of the deficit and it is solvent for decades. Period. Full stop.

That CBO report finds that the Social Security trustfund, without changing a thing, will be able to make full payouts through 2039 — it should also be noted that the full payout projections have been pushed downward by the economic downturn of the last couple of years, and those numbers should start moving the other way as the economy recovers. And if that isn’t the case, we have a lot bigger problems than Social Security coming down the pike.

And even if the trust fund were to run out, Social Security would still be in pretty good shape. First of all, the trust fund is a relatively recent creation. It was establisned in 1983, three years before the baby boomers started turning forty, to deal with the demographic bulge headed Social Security’s way in 2011. The last boomers will retire in 2029, ten years before the trust fund is currently projected to be depleted. Essentially, when the trust fund runs dry, it will coincide with the fact that it’s mission will be, for the most part, complete. It will have eased the strain caused by the retirement of the baby boom.

The depletion of the Social Security trust fund is not a pending disaster, it’s by design. The fact of the matter is, in case you are one of the people in this country to whom facts matter, Social Security is a self funding entity, independent of the general fund. It funds itself entirely through payroll taxes, and so long as payroll taxes are collected, retirees will get their checks. The only way that changes is if Congress acts to stop collecting payroll taxes or to outright abolish the program.

There has been a concerted effort to keep Social Security from being one of the lambs that is led to the slaughter. I know. I was one of the Blogging Fellows who received a stipend from the Strenghen Social Security project for the Social Security Works think-tank for writing a series of posts to that end.

I’m going to tentatively pencil in a hashmark in the “win” column because I trust that we made our point and Social Security is still the “Third Rail” of American politics that it’s always been.  But if anyone thinks I’m going to turn off the juice based on one measley win, I have a bridge to sell you.

Previously: Campaign Finance: Gov. Jay Nixon (D) continues, Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder (r) not so much… (September 14, 2011)

Today, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

CONTRIBUTION OF MORE THAN $5,000.00 RECEIVED BY ANY COMMITTEE FROM ANY SINGLE DONOR – TO BE FILED WITHIN 48 HOURS OF RECEIVING THE CONTRIBUTION

C001135 JAY NIXON FOR MISSOURI [pdf] 9/15/2011

Thompson Coburn LLP

One US Bank Plaza

Saint Louis, MO 63101

9/13/2011

$10,000.00

[emphasis added]

And still, for Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder (r) the large dollar drought continues…

1965 48 Hour Report of Contribution Received Over $5000 07/27/2011

1946 48 Hour Report of Contribution Received Over $5000 07/19/2011….

[emphasis added]

Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC last night made an interesting observation about Rick Perry’s record of executions in Texas.  Based on Perry’s record of allowing prisoners to be executed despite questionable court proceedings and evidence, O’Donnell concluded that, if Perry had been in Pontius Pilate’s place of authority, he would have allowed the execution of Jesus Christ.

By now you probably know how mean and contempuous of Jesus’ teachings the radical right wing Republicans are.  When Brian Williams was asking a question of Perry about the 234 executions Perry okay’d, the audience applauded in support of Perry.  These people have gone way beyond the general consensus of the majority of Americans that “Love thy Neighbor” should at least be in the back of our minds as we interact with each other.

I’ll carry O’Donnell’s observation one step further and say that, not only are these sociopathic Republicans eager to inflict harm on anyone they don’t like and, thereby ignore the teachings of Jesus, they are killing the essential message of the New Testament.

I am often perplexed when supposedly “God-fearing Christians” quote something from the Old Testament instead of the New Testament.  Isn’t it a fact that there were no “Christians” until the New Testament era?  If people claim to base their religion on the Old Testament, aren’t they more in line with Jewish history and teaching than Christian?  (And, no I’m not implying that Jews are mean-spirited people so don’t bother jumping to unwarranted conclusions.)

Perry talks about “wrestling with God.”  Which God?  The God of the Old Testament or the God of the New Testament?  Admittedly, my Catholic college studies of the Bible were over 40 years ago, but I think I remember a basic difference between the Old God and the New God.  In fact, isn’t that why it’s called the “New” Testament?  Didn’t Jesus preach a new morality, a new way of relating to our neighbors, a new way of approaching the highest moral plane achievable by humans?  If I recall correctly, there is something in the NT about “Love thy neighbor.”

I don’t remember Jesus saying “Shoot thy neighbor.”  Or  “Execute thy neighbor.”  But that’s what Perry is bragging about.  He said that people who don’t fit his definition of a red-blooded American better stay out of Texas or they’ll get “rough treatment.”  Imagine Jesus saying that about the Good Samaritan or the folks he accepted as “neighbors” despite their outsider status?

Thankfully, the kind and gentle Christians who take Jesus’ teachings seriously are finally starting to speak up politically. An Example Below.

In July, I attended a workshop on the Missouri state budget co-sponsored by Metropolitan Congregations United and Missouri Budget Project.

Participants were asked how the state budget reflects their spiritual values – or not.  The 20 or so participants all based their values on the New Testament teachings of Jesus and agreed that there is a big gap between the values taught by the New Testament and the way the state allocates funds.  Issues such as health care, especially mental health and services for children, were the prominent concerns of the group.  We learned a lot about how the limited funds the state has are spent and some of the ways we could achieve additional revenue.  SMP readers already know much of what we learned that day.  But what we left with was a sinking feeling that many lawmakers who claim to be “good Christians” aren’t walking the walk.  I hope constituents will press them on this whole values thing when they get a chance. BTW, Senator John Lamping had originally agreed to meet with this workshop group at a future date, but he canceled a few days before saying he had “other commitments.”  I wonder what’s more important than saving the lives of the poor, the lame, the sick and the downtrodden?  What would Jesus do?

I just read in the St. Louis Beacon that the Missouri Senate has just about “fixed” the sections of Jane Cunningham’s Amy Hestir Davis Student Protection Act that would have restricted or even banned student-teacher contact via the Internet. I am relatively comfortable that there is much in the bill that will assist school districts to deal with teachers who have been proven to be sexual predators, something that most of us can support. However, when it came to the supposed menace posed by evil social networking sites, the framers went totally off the wall. The legislation was so poorly written that lots of people were concerned that they couldn’t figure out what behaviors the bill actually prohibited.  

I was amused but not surprised that the sponsor of the bill, Senator Jane Cunningham, is one of our current Tea Party darlings. Tea Partiers, as you no doubt know, are folks who like to rant about freedom, the primacy of personal responsibility, and, over and over again, the encroachment of the “nanny state.” Yet, when it comes to anything to do with, among other things, sexual behavior, they never fail to come out with a great big stick of the sort usually hefted only by the meanest of nannies – the sort of stick that can do lots of collateral damage.

Of course, the Amy Hestir bill’s Internet prohibitions offered Tea Partiers a threefer.  The bill not only raised the specter of sexual misbehavior – and in a form involving predatory exploitation of children, something that few would defend -but it took on teachers, currently a favorite bête noire, since teachers are, for the most part, happily unionized. The bill certainly suggests that they are all always under suspicion of improper motives and must be monitored in all communications with minors.  Finally, the bill went after social networking with a bazooka.

In my experience the typical middle-aged or elderly Tea Party type is often a little disturbed by the chaotic world of the Internet, whether or not they admit it. The Internet isn’t – yet – easily controlled by centralized authority. Additionally, the concerns that many right-wingers express about the World Wide Web often seem to center on, once again, sex, specifically the somewhat sensationalized belief that the Internet is mainly used to promulgate pornography and lure women and children into unregulated sexual behaviors.

The fact that neither of these possibilities are exclusive to the Internet goes unremarked as conservative religious leaders rant and rave about its dangers. Oddly the same people are often the first to proclaim, when it comes to gun control, that guns don’t kill people, people do. Yet they have real problems with the parallel proposition that Facebook doesn’t lure young girls into illicit activity, … well, you get the idea.

I remember listening to a call-in radio program on NPR when a self-identified Tea partier was asked by the host what she meant by nanny state.  Her examples?  Michelle Obama’s suggestions that folks eat greens, and congressional efforts to set energy standards that could affect one’s choice of a light bulb. And she was ready to go to war about it all. Her comments do, however, suggest to me the difference between the type of social control – which is what conservatives mean when they talk about a nanny state – that liberals might advocate and that proposed by many on the right.

For the most part, the liberal nanny state is motivated by actual knowledge – greens are verifiably good for you after all. Liberals recognize that we have a collective social life and they want to make it better, or at least keep it from degenerating. Energy standards that affect light bulbs help to reduce energy consumption and contribute to a more stable environment, ergo, a better collective life. Encouraging people to eat in a healthier way not only improves the individual’s life, it makes our collective life better by helping cut overall health care costs.

The conservative nanny state, though, seems to be motivated by over-weaning fear. It is true that we need to make sure that we keep teachers who abuse children out of classrooms, but we don’t have to strike out blindly to do so. Often it seems that the real fear behind so many conservative prohibitions borders on the irrational. Many have argued very effectively that behind the general social hysteria about child abusers, is the fear of loss of control. It is even more obvious that behind the hysteria about abortion is the fear of sexually empowered females; behind the frothing about Muslims lies the never-ending fear of the other. These folks are scared silly.

It is important to understand this fact: We all want some kind of control over our social lives and everybody has their ideal “nanny” to achieve that end. Don’t believe conservatives when they tell you they are against government interference in personal life. Most right-wingers are desperate to maintain an orderly and static social environment. But beware – the nanny that the conservatives want to hire to keep under control all the chaotic impulses that so frighten them is a bully who will have no compunction about slapping your hands with a ruler and sending you to bed with no dinner if you so much as make a peep.

Governor Jay Nixon (D) v. various members of a junior high school student council or the Missouri republican Party’s equivalent…

Public Policy Polling (PPP) released a poll today of 632 Missouri voters taken from September 9th through the 12th. The margin of error is 3.9%.

….Nixon continues to be one of the more popular Governors in the country with a 51% approval rating to 30% of voters who disapprove.  He still has unusually weak numbers with Democrats (58/21) but that’s not a major sign for concern because they generally plan to vote for him whether they actually like him or not….

[emphasis added]

Ouch. So much for the base. So much for coattails.

Let’s take a look at some of the numbers [pdf]:

Q1 Do you approve or disapprove of Governor Jay Nixon’s job performance?

Approve…………….. 51%

Disapprove………… 30%

Not sure ……………. 19%

Q4 Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Peter Kinder?

Favorable……………………………………………….. 20%

Unfavorable ……………………………………………. 33%

Not sure …………………………………………………. 47%

Yeah, Governor Jay Nixon (D) should thank the FSM every day and all night for Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder (r).

And, yeah, we previously addressed the sample for this poll:

[….]

Q8 Who did you vote for President in 2008?

John McCain…………………………………………… 48%

Barack Obama………………………………………… 45%

Someone else/Don’t remember …………………. 7%

This is what actually happened in 2008:

Official Election Returns

State of Missouri General Election  – 2008 General Election

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

As announced by the Board of State Canvassers

on Tuesday, December 02, 2008

U.S. President And Vice President   Precincts Reporting 3532 of 3532

  John McCain, Sarah Palin REP 1,445,814 49.4%

  Barack Obama, Joe Biden DEM 1,441,911 49.3%

  Bob Barr, Wayne A. Root LIB 11,386 .4%

  Chuck Baldwin, Darrell Castle CST 8,201 .3%

  Ralph Nader, Matt Gonzalez IND 17,813 .6%

  Cynthia McKinney, Rosa Clemente WI 80 .0%

Total Votes   2,925,205

[emphasis added]

This could mean that Democratic voters have left the state, that republican voter suppression efforts are taking a toll, that Democratic voters don’t answer the phone, that Democratic voters by a larger margin forgot who the voted for, or all of the above and maybe more. Or, maybe, there’s a slight republican bias to the poll….

Think about that for a moment. Lieutenant Peter Kinder (r) is serious political toast in a poll which could have a bit of a republican lean.

Hudson: That’s it man, game over man, game over! What the fuck are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?

Burke: Maybe we could build a fire, sing a couple of songs, huh? Why don’t we try that?

Q9 If the candidates for Governor next year were Democrat Jay Nixon and Republican Peter Kinder, who would you vote for?

Jay Nixon……………………………………………….. 50%

Peter Kinder……………………………………………. 31%

Undecided………………………………………………. 18%

Singing couldn’t hurt, could it?

Yesterday, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

CONTRIBUTION OF MORE THAN $5,000.00 RECEIVED BY ANY COMMITTEE FROM ANY SINGLE DONOR – TO BE FILED WITHIN 48 HOURS OF RECEIVING THE CONTRIBUTION

C001135 JAY NIXON FOR MISSOURI [pdf] 9/13/2011

Motorola Solutions

PO Box 68429

Schaumburg, IL 60168

9/12/2011

$10,000.00

[emphasis added]

Yep, for Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder (r) the big bucks drought continues…

1965 48 Hour Report of Contribution Received Over $5000 07/27/2011

1946 48 Hour Report of Contribution Received Over $5000 07/19/2011….

[emphasis added]

Public Policy Polling (PPP) released a poll [pdf] today of 632 Missouri voters taken from September 9th through the 12th. The margin of error is 3.9%. This being crazy times, the race is close. Then again, it is a long time to November 2012.

…PPP is a Democratic polling company, but polling expert Nate Silver of the New York Times found that its surveys in 2010 actually exhibited a slight bias toward Republican candidates…

More on that later.

Some of the top line results:

43% approve of McCaskill’s work in Washington, down from 46% four months ago. The same 47% disapprove. Among the 87 senators on which PPP has polled, only one of the 23 Democrats on the ballot next year has a worse standing-Nebraska’s Ben Nelson.

But for now at least, McCaskill leads three Republicans running to replace her. She tops former State Treasurer Sarah Steelman, 43-42, down from 45-42 in the previous poll. McCaskill also edges Rep. Todd Akin, 45-43, versus 46-45 in May. And she leads businessman John Brunner, 46-37, up from 47-41.

This is an interesting aspect of the sample:

Q8 Who did you vote for President in 2008?

John McCain…………………………………………… 48%

Barack Obama………………………………………… 45%

Someone else/Don’t remember …………………. 7%

This is what actually happened in 2008:

Official Election Returns

State of Missouri General Election  – 2008 General Election

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

As announced by the Board of State Canvassers

on Tuesday, December 02, 2008

U.S. President And Vice President   Precincts Reporting 3532 of 3532

  John McCain, Sarah Palin REP 1,445,814 49.4%

  Barack Obama, Joe Biden DEM 1,441,911 49.3%

  Bob Barr, Wayne A. Root LIB 11,386 .4%

  Chuck Baldwin, Darrell Castle CST 8,201 .3%

  Ralph Nader, Matt Gonzalez IND 17,813 .6%

  Cynthia McKinney, Rosa Clemente WI 80 .0%

Total Votes   2,925,205

[emphasis added]

This could mean that Democratic voters have left the state, that republican voter suppression efforts are taking a toll, that Democratic voters don’t answer the phone, that Democratic voters by a larger margin forgot who the voted for, or all of the above and maybe more. Or, maybe, there’s a slight republican bias to the poll.

There are some interesting crosstabulations:

McCaskill Approval

Very liberal

Approve 84%

Disapprove 10%

Not sure 6%

Somewhat liberal

Approve 74%

Disapprove 16%

Not sure 10%

Moderate

Approve 61%

Disapprove 28%

Not sure 11%

Somewhat conservative

Approve 22%

Disapprove 66%

Not sure 13%

Very conservative

Approve 9%

Disapprove 84%

Not sure 7%

Those very conservative voters don’t like Claire McCaskill at all. Anyone think they’ll vote for her?:

McCaskill/Akin

Very liberal

Claire McCaskill 89%

Todd Akin 2%

Undecided 9%

Somewhat liberal

Claire McCaskill 79%

Todd Akin 16%

Undecided 5%

Moderate

Claire McCaskill 67%

Todd Akin 19%

Undecided 14%

Somewhat conservative

Claire McCaskill 21%

Todd Akin 64%

Undecided 15%

Very conservative

Claire McCaskill 8%

Todd Akin 82%

Undecided 10%

Nope, those very conservative voters ain’t gonna vote for Claire. But, what’s this? 16% of “somewhat liberal” voters say they’re going to vote for Rep. Todd Aiken (r), arguably the most rabid right wingnut in the Missouri congressional delegation? That’s crazy talk. This is either a bad sample, or Claire has pissed of a significant portion of the base. Any guesses?

By the way, neither Sarah Steelman (r) nor John Brunner (r) do as well with “somewhat liberal” voters as Todd Aiken (r).

There is a gender gap in Claire McCaskill’s (D) approval:

McCaskill Approval

Woman

Approve 46%

Disapprove 39%

Not sure 15%

Man

Approve 40%

Disapprove 55%

Not sure 5%

Uh, the men have made up their minds it would seem. Women could make a significant difference in this election.

“….Claire McCaskill continues to look extremely vulnerable for reelection,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “But it bodes well for her that even at a low time for her party she’s running slightly ahead of her opposition. She might be able to hang on if Democrats see any improvement in their position over the next year….”

Word.

It’s about jobs. I wonder why no one thought of that before. Oh, right. They did.