Salon on NC: Dole & GOP in big, BIG trouble

There is an excellent piece out in Salon by Mike Madden about the senate and presidential races in North Carolina. You must go read the entire thing. Here are a few snippets to entice you.

— but it’s Dole who may need the pity. Polls show she’s likely to lose her Senate seat to Democrat Kay Hagan, after doing little during a single six-year term to distinguish herself. (Even the two years she spent as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee ended badly — she presided over the Democratic takeover in 2006.)

Oooouuuuch! "She presided over the Democratic takeover in 2006." That's gotta hurt.

In any other election year, what’s happening in North Carolina would be just another case of a first-term senator paying a little less attention to winning a second term than she probably should have, and discovering voters had noticed. (Dole, who lives in Washington’s Watergate apartment complex with her husband, Bob, recently found herself on the defensive over newspaper reports that she spent only 13 days in the state in 2006...

Right. She was only here for 13 days in 2006. I guess she was too busy masterminding the Democratic takeover of Washington to pay too much attention to the citizens in the state she allegedly represents.

Oh...and there's more:

The Senate race might not wind up being as close as the presidential one. Even rock-ribbed Republican voters said they were giving up on Dole. “I don’t like the other one either, but I don’t have much choice,” said Joe Langley, 71, a retiree from Stoneville and a lifelong Republican who’s voting for McCain and — even though he doesn’t like her so much — Hagan. “I’m giving her a shot … [Dole]’s No. 93 on getting things accomplished.”

Nice. Very, very nice. You don't have to like her. Just vote for her. I like her enough for the both of us.

At this point even I'm thinking Mike is getting a little rough with Liddy, but he goes one step further.

As for the incumbent, Dole seems to be running a much more somnambulant campaign. She dodged five proposed debates, passive-aggressively failing to commit to them rather than outright refusing. Voters are seeing her on her terms, not theirs — her campaign Web site doesn’t have a public calendar of events, and her Senate calendar is three and a half years out of date.

Liddy's campaign is somnambulant? Ayup! It's a snoozer all right.

The title of the piece is Blood in the water in NC. It has gotten rough on the campaign trail and Kay's been firm about Dole's failing grade and she's landed a punch or two, but dayum Mike just beat up on a 72-yr-old woman. I guess it says something about my character that I'm finding this bloodbath so entertaining.