PURE GOLD: Full Moon Election Year

It looks more and more like a full moon election year, influenced by the high unemployment rate, the impact of the Tea Party, some bizarre primary results, and the vagaries of leading candidates for high office.

 

While the Democrats are still threatened in their control of the Senate, several events during the past few months appear to have strengthened their position.

 

For example, in Connecticut, State Attorney-General Dick Blumenthal appeared to have crippled his campaign after the revelation that his claim to have served in Vietnam was fantasy. But his apology seems to have found a sympathetic response and polls now show him winning handily over his Republican opponent, Linda McMahon, possibly because her only claim to fame is owner of World Wrestling Entertainment.

  

But in Illinois, it had looked as if the Republicans were going to have a fairly easy time picking up Obama's former Senate seat with clean-cut Rep. Mark Kirk as their candidate, opposing the Democrats' State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, considered tainted by the scandal-ridden state organization. Then it turned out Kirk wasn't that pure after all, having claimed he received an award he hadn't earned, making the race much closer.

 

The surprising gift to the Democrats occurred in Nevada where Senate Leader Harry Reid is fighting for political survival. The Republicans heartened Reid by nominating a Tea Partier, Sharron (two r's please) Angle, who seemed more like a Dark Ages candidate. She won the Republican primary by beating the favorite, Sue Lowden, a traditional GOP candidate. Lowden stumbled in opposing the new health care law, suggesting barter between patient and doctor— maybe as in "Thanks Doc, for the examination. Here are a dozen eggs in payment."

  

Regular Republicans must have stayed home, leaving the contest to the Tea Party whose candidate suggested privatizing Social Security and Medicare, closing down federal departments of education and energy, scrapping unemployment payments, eliminating the Environment Protection Agency, going easy on BP and, oh yes, quitting the UN. Already, the Republican mayor of Reno has joined the Reid campaign.

  

In California, the GOP primary put the focus on two female business tycoons, Carly Fiorina who goes against Barbara Boxer in the Senate race, and Meg Whitman, who will face Jerry Brown in the gubernatorial race.

  

Fiorina, former CEO at Hewlett-Packard, was sent packing with a $21 million parachute to sweeten her departure. With a history of mean spiritedness, Fiorina has shown her catty side, chiding Boxer on her hairstyle, which is not exactly a high-class political move.

  

She and Whitman, who was CEO at eBay, both oppose abortion rights and take a hard position on immigration. Both insist it's time for corporate types to help run the government like a business. Both spent a fortune on their primaries, Whitman around $80 million. She has close ties with Goldman Sachs, which Brown will surely exploit.

  

The Tea Party may also have gone too far in Kentucky, winning with Rand Paul, a libertarian. Paul got in particular trouble on civil rights when he defended the right of merchants to bar blacks from sitting at lunch counters during the struggle in the sixties. When the media asked tough questions on his far right agenda, Paul got nervous and pulled out of an appearance on "Meet the Press" in an effort to regroup.

  

In Arkansas, Sen. Blanche Lincoln won a surprise victory against strong labor opposition, and in Pennsylvania, Rep. Joe Sestak sent Arlen Specter into retirement . Both Lincoln and Sestak face tough opposition in November, with Republicans having the edge, particularly in Arkansas.

  

Then there was the full moon in South Carolina where political high jinks are part of the state's tradition . In an early run for president, John McCain was accused of having a black child out of wedlock, when actually the child had been adopted.

  

This year the slander was against Republican Nikki Haley, a far right candidate for governor who invokes god a lot and who was accused of having several sexual liaisons . But she won the primary with a strong showing, and with the help of the shooter who can see the White House from Alaska.

  

But the wacko event in South Carolina was the Democrats' winning candidate for the Senate . Turns out someone named Alvin Greene, a virtual illiterate who ran no campaign, was barely known, and couldn't explain his candidacy is the party's nominee.

 

The bottom line: a full moon election year, indeed.