During the World Series, the McCaskill campaign aired a commercial featuring a twitching Michael J. Fox (obviously off his meds to accentuate the nature of his illness...)

Setting aside that embryonic stem cell research is a massive scam perpetrated on the American public (and apparently Michael J. Fox), its a good slam on Jim Talent.

When I was in the midwest a couple of weeks ago, I noted several radio commercials for Democrat candidates talking about their support for stem cell research.

Will it make a difference?

I don't think so.

Its a good political issue, but it isn't the dominant political issue--no one who plans to vote Republican is going to change their vote on the basis of support for embryonic stem cell research (which is an admitted loser by comparison with completely legal and well-funded research into adult stem cell and cord cells). Democrats may in fact favor stem cell research, but is that the impetus they need to turn off reruns of "Sex in the City", put the bong away and drive over to the polling station? Not likely. In a mid-term election, particularly against an incumbent, you generally have to have some pretty fundamental issues working for you. Having said that though, I think there is too much focus on issues at the expense of some more salient elements--demographics, money and turnout.

Barron's prediction that the Republicans will win the Senate and House is based on a simple fact--the candidate with more money has historically won 93% of the time, and 98% of the time in the more recent elections--its why new House members spend all of their first term and a good part of the second term raising money to get reelected.

Fundamentally, and in so many ways, this is the main reason Democrats are perennial losers--they simply have no ability to prioritize. They spend their time on media gotchas instead of fund-raising, issues like stem-cell research instead of national security and the economy. Bill Clinton didnt make this mistake--his campaign featured the famously pointed reminder of what the overriding issue was going to be in the 1992 election--"Its the Economy Stupid..."

I'm going to predict that one of the outcomes of this election will be the end of Howard Dean's career in national politics. Hillary Clinton already took him to task back in August for screwing up the fund-raising.

Hillary took a shot at Dean's 50-State Strategy last Friday at a DNC fund-raising event. "The [Republican National Committee] is pouring tens of millions of dollars into races and we're not matching that. We're doing investments, you know, in ground [operations] and other efforts which will be very beneficial, but the RNC has about $60 million to $70 million waiting to drop on our candidates."

Hillary Clinton is one person in the Democrat party who understands the fundamentals of winning elections. Does anyone else in the Crat party?