more poll madness

Polls, get your polls right here! (c/o Kos)

I'd like to highlight VA-Sen. 2 polls, Rasmussen (8/16. Likely voters. MoE 4.5% (7/18 results)):

Allen (R) 47 (50)
Webb (D) 42 (39)

and SUSA (8/18. Likely voters. MoE 4.2% (6/28 results)):

Allen (R) 48 (56)
Webb (D) 45 (37)

Looks like we have a race! This is truly huge, I think. All the news has been that the Webb campaign has been broke for weeks, yet he's still managed to bring the race to a statistical dead heat. People are saying the "macaca" thing hurt Allen somethin' awful, which may well be true. If it is true, Allen's in deep doodoo because he has a long, checkered, and well-documented past when it comes to racism. He may well be the most outwardly bigoted person in the entire Senate (funny thing for the son of a French-speaking African Jew).

I'm gonna put this out there: I don't think Webb's chances are very good, despite what the polls say. And here's why: the Republicans need George Felix Allen, Jr. By all accounts, he's their man in '08. In '06, he represents a formerly blood-red state that's suddenly trending blue in a whole damn hurry. A Southern state that's trending blue in a whole damn hurry.

I got a piece of trivia for ya: did you know that only 1 Democrat has received 50% +1 of the popular vote in a presidential election since Johnson kicked the dogshit out of Barry Goldwater in 1964? You wanna know why we stopped electing Democratic presidential candidates after the Johnson Administration? Look no further than the 12-state 3rd World country under the Mason-Dixon Line.

Allen's upset could well signal the beginning of the end, as far as the GOP's iron grip on the South goes. They're already losing the Mountain West, one of the fastest growing regions in the country, where Colorado and Montana have already booted the Republicans out of the state legislatures and are poised to send 2 Democrats into the Senate in 2 years, where Idaho may be electing a Democrat to one of their 2 congressional seats, and where Nevada might just make a Senator out of the son of the last donkey president to get 50%--Jack Carter. They cannot afford to lose the South. Not a single Southern state. To do so would be potentially to set off a Democratic infiltration that could cast the GOP out into the political desert for decades to come. The repetition of the post-Hoover conservative political cataclysm.

All this means, I suspect, that the GOP will spend whatever it takes to win Allen's reelection, making this race a huge money drain. If Webb can continue to force Allen to spend many times as much money just to stay afloat, the Republicans may have to start diverting funds from other contested races to prop Allen up, making the other R candidates that much more vulnerable.