Pierre, SD

As I said, the German lady made a mistake. Tancredo is closest to Mussolini in America. He is the American Il Duce. He is the successor to Jesse Helms...actually Helms is a bleeding heart liberal compared to the American Il duce.

Re lost seniority ... the accrued seniority per election cycle is 435 x 2 = 870 years. In a "seniority equilibrium" environment, seniority loss should equal seniority accrued. The projected loss is of 887 years is easily within the equilibrium hypothesis margin of error.

Actually, since the page lists House AND Senate, it would be 535X2=1070 years. We're losing LESS seniority than usual so far - and much of that is Strom. :)

Of course, that still isn't taking into account any incumbent losses in the General Election.

53 seats in the House is not that great of a number to lose, but that's before the elections. In the Senate, the number is 6 seats, which is also not that high a number.

Should Matsunaka beat Musgrave, how do you think Asian-hating Terrible Tom would react to having a Japanese man in the Colrado delegation?

And I can't imagine Terrible Tom is too happy about Switchhorse introducing legislation to grant permanent residency to the family of that Mexican kid he so badly wants to deport.

Interesting generic congressional numbers from the latest Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll (released Friday).

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,64285,00.html

Other than showing the DEMs leading the GOP (45% to 43%) for the first time in quite a while in the Fox poll, there is a much higher "definitely" vote number for DEMs than GOP (43% to 32%)...while the GOP appears to have more "leaners" than the DEMs (10% to 2)%. If this poll is accurate, DEM voters seem to have become much more galvanized than GOP voters over the past month or so.

One wonders, has all the Iraq hype over the past several weeks only served to motivate DEM voters?

Didn't know where else to put this-not good news:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13695-2002Sep27.html

Sorry, I'm plug-ignorant about making links, but...the just-posted Newsweek poll shows a 7-point generic lead for Dems in Congress; also that the economy leads Iraq (7-point margin) as the chief issue on voters' minds. So ignore what the talking pinheads are saying ("Iraq has drowned out the economy"); voters -- unlike their president -- are quite capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.

Federalist, what you say about the Fox poll squares with my impressions -- all the intensity in this year's elections seems to be with the Dems. Even on Iraq: though pundits keep claiming it's an issue that cuts the GOP's way, I'm not sure, given that all the passion (measured by letters to the editor, calls to even GOP Congressional offices) is with the anti- side.

And when you have such a difference in motivation, you can get a major turnout skew -- as Pubs had in '94, and as Zogby's hinted the Dems may have this year. This can wreak havoc on polling accuracy -- pushing all the close races to one party, even making seemingly safe races into nail-biters.

Only place to put it-Patsy Mink died:

http://starbulletin.com/2002/09/28/news/index1.html

What now?