Will Barack Obama’s properties from 2008 (Twitter, Facebook friends, email list) impact the 2010 midterm race?

update: 4:18 FWIW …

FLOTUS apparently travels with a fashion
assistant, who was originally from Chicago. The assistant forgot the make
up case on the plane and had to run back and get it.

Update: 3:14

Media Watching: Sestak leads Toomey by +4 since 8am. Data is defined by combining and weighing blog, web, & other internet posts. #paelect We’ve been watching our alerts and research for 2 weeks steady. Up until today, the media listening stream has favored Pat Toomey (R).

Update: 2:51

I need to respond to Ben Smith’s story on Politico yesterday. He has a
picture of one campaign brochure that features Joe Sestak less
prominently than Dan Onorato. From this one campaign leaflet, he jumps
to the erroneous conclusion that Sestak is not loved by the Democratic
party.
As someone who has stopped by almost daily the Philadelphia office of
Organizing for America, Obama’s get the vote operation, I can tell you
that the Democratic Party is working v just as hard to elect Sestak to
the Senate as they are to elect Onorato as Governor. Every one of the
thousands phone calls made there every day mentions both candidates.
In addition, I have seen all types of configurations on the campaign
literature and some favor Sestak. Each is designed with a target
audience in mind.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1010/Also_Sestak.html?showall
–
Laura Goldman

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Update: 1:13 pm

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Publisher

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*****

There were two unmistakable messages that emerged from Biden’s speech:

1. He can reference Mark Twain, and
2. His Party is completely bereft of ideas, without the slightest clue as to how to right the ship.

Neither one is very helpful come Election Day.
Point Two is not a new revelation, however, as most Democratic incumbents have known this for quite some time.  Since they know it’s childish and ineffective to blame prior administrations for today’s recession, especially in light of mammoth spending and crushing new taxes instituted under total Democratic control, these seasoned pols inherently understand that they can’t run on their records.

Hence, dirty campaigns have hit an all-time high.
Just when you think the wool can be pulled over Americans’ eyes, and that they are easily manipulated, they surprise you.  Next Tuesday will be one of those times.
The Democrats aren’t going to lose control of congress, the state house and the Pennsylvania governorship just on the issues alone (although that will play a huge role), but because of something much more basic: lack of credibility and good judgment.  Kind of how the Republicans operated in 2006 and 2008.
More than ever, folks are looking for honest change and aggressive leadership on the issue that matters most — getting the economic engine started again.  Instead of discussing solutions, however, many Democrats have resorted to the low-blow tactics so despised by voters.
Consider these Democratic campaign doozies playing out all around us:

• Bryan Lentz is giving Pat Meehan a run for his money in the 7th district, but rather than compete on the merits of their man’s vision, Lentz’ supporters actively recruited a conservative tea-party activist to run as a third party candidate. Stacking a primary field where most candidates agree on the issues is one thing, but doing so in a general election is tantamount to admitting your campaign platform is bankrupt of ideas.  Sure, all’s fair in war and politics, but this disingenuous move will likely send Lentz to defeat.

• In northeast Pennsylvania’s 10th congressional district, incumbent Chris Carney’s “conservative BlueDog” Democrat veneer has been stripped off by former U.S. Attorney Tom Marino, with several polls showing Marino slightly ahead.  Carney loves to tell the voters of the Republican district that he’s not a liberal, yet refuses to run on his record of voting for the federal stimulus and Obamacare — and his 93% alignment with Ms. San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi.

Instead, he has chosen to run ads attacking Marino’s relationship with a local businessman who was convicted of a crime over three decades ago, and one in which no jail time was given. Marino was unequivocally up front about this friendship —years ago — yet Carney portrays Marino’s friendship as a “breaking news” damaging revelation, wildly taking the situation out of context.  Carney’s smear campaign has rightly backfired, and despite a huge money disadvantage, Marino continues to hold his own.

• In Pennsylvania’s 151st state legislative district in Montgomery County, GOP challenger Todd Stephens, a former Assistant District Attorney, is running neck-and-neck with incumbent Rick Taylor. (Stephens lost to Taylor by only 400 votes in 2008). In a disgraceful —and utterly baseless —attack, the Taylor campaign slammed Stephens for his role in a 2009 high-profile murder case where one of the defendants wasn’t convicted.

A local newspaper editorial wrote that Taylor’s charge was “pure fabrication,” and in an unprecedented move, District Attorney Risa Ferman called the Taylor line-of-attack “a complete, flat-out lie.” Even the son of the murder victim was content with Stephen’s performance.

Taylor’s slanderous attack politicizing a man’s murder was so off-base that Taylor is reeling uncontrollably — as he should be.  Even for politics, this is beyond the pale, and Taylor needs to be sent to the unemployment line.

• Perhaps most bizarre is the attack against former State Representative Jay Moyer, who is attempting to reclaim his seat in this Montgomery County district.  Rather than discuss the state’s imploding financial situation which he helped create, however, incumbent Democrat Matt Bradford has continually slammed Moyer as “Jaguar Jay.”  Why?  Because Moyer owns a ten-year old Jag he reportedly bought used.

The point?  Anyone’s guess, but it looks like class warfare at its worst.  Above all, though, it shows how truly “classless” Matt Bradford is.

• And for the truly clueless, we have Chester County State Representative Paul Drucker and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato.  To their credit, they are talking about issues.  Well, just one each, actually.

Drucker wants to toll Route 422, which is already an immense parking lot every single weekday. The fact that Drucker thinks levying yet more tolls and taxes on Pennsylvanians is the viable path to prosperity just shows how insulated from reality he really is.  Enough said.

For Onorato, his passion is similar — pushing for additional taxes on companies extracting natural gas from the Marcellus Shale, the only industry that can restore Pennsylvania’s lifeblood.

First, Onorato stated that he would deny drilling permits to companies not hiring a certain number of Pennsylvania residents, which, in addition to being simply juvenile, is unconstitutional on every level.

Onorato (as he says in his commercials, it’s O-N-O-R-A-T-O, but could just as well be R-E-N-D-E-L-L) also loves to state that the oil companies need to “pay their fair share.”

Like they’re not already.

Every company unlucky enough to conduct business in Pennsylvania is subject to the second-highest corporate income tax in the nation — a whopping ten percent! So to propose a nine percent extraction tax on top of that just shows how far out of touch Onorato (Rendell) is in this race.

Maybe that’s why he has never led in the campaign, and Rendell’s statewide approval ratings are in the twenties.

*****

It cannot be stressed enough how important these elections are to the future of this state and nation. Candidates advocating the common sense policies of fiscal restraint, energy independence, school choice and public-sector union reform are leading across the board.
More important for voters, however, is choosing those with the political will and core convictions to follow through on their promises.
Only then will we be able to stop blaming past politicians of both Parties for current problems, and focus on the only thing that matters — the long road ahead.

Chris Freind is an independent columnist, television commentator, and investigative reporter who operates his own news bureau, www.FreindlyFireZone.com
Readers of his column, “Freindly Fire,” hail from six continents, thirty countries and all fifty states. His work has been referenced in numerous publications including The Wall Street Journal, National Review Online, foreign newspapers, and in Dick Morris’ recent bestseller “Catastrophe.”
Freind, whose column appears nationally in Newsmax, also serves as a guest commentator on Philadelphia-area talk radio shows, and makes numerous other television and radio appearances, most notably on FOX.  He can be reached at CF@FreindlyFireZone.com

In a Monmouth University poll released Thursday, Meehan garners 49 percent of likely voters, compared to 45 percent for Lentz. Just seven percent of voters are undecided or prefer another candidate. The survey was the first public poll taken of the open-seat race in suburban Philadelphia, where Meehan, a former U.S. Attorney, and Lentz, a two-term state lawmaker, have been battling fiercely. Both campaigns have long expected a close race.

Despite Meehan’s lead, the results have to be heartening for Lentz and his supporters. He is outperforming the generic congressional ballot in the district, and is nipping at Meehan’s heels despite facing an opponent who was better-known from the start thanks to years as Delaware County District Attorney. Meehan’s lead is just outside the margin of error, and the poll did not include independent candidate Jim Schneller, a conservative who can presumably pull votes from Meehan. If internal Democratic polling echoes the public survey, it’s likely that the party’s congressional campaign committee will invest heavily in the race.

But there’s downside for Lentz, too. Meehan is expected to carry a significant financial advantage into the closing weeks of the race. And while Lentz has already been on TV with relatively modest ad buys for weeks, Meehan has saved his campaign war chest for a media blitz that could eventually swamp Lentz off the airwaves.

Fifty percent of likely voters disapprove of President Obama’s job performance, and both parties are viewed unfavorably by a majority of respondents.

“This district mirrors the national mood,” Monmouth University polling director Patrick Murray said. “Voters are disappointed with the way the country has gone over the past two years and blame both political parties, but they have to choose someone.”

In another finding that could foreshadow some trouble for Democratic Senate candidate Joe Sestak, he is leading Republican rival Pat Toomey by only three points in the 7th, within the margin of error—despite the fact that the survey was taken in the district he represents.

Meehan remains better known, but that gap is not what internal polling demonstrated months ago. Thirty percent of likely voters don’t have an opinion, compared to 37 percent who say the same of Lentz. Meehan enjoys higher favorability ratings, and echoing findings in battleground districts across the country, he has significantly more strength among independent voters. Meehan leads among male voters, while Lentz holds a smaller edge with women.

The survey of 670 likely voters, conducted Oct. 4-6, had a margin of error of 3.8 percent.

Click here to see the poll.

Correction: This article originally misstated President Obama’s approval ratings as reported by the poll. Fifty percent of respondents disapproved of his job performance, and 44 percent approved, not the other way around.

Meehan’s campaign decided to skip the Oct. 14 debate hosted by the League of Women Voters after the group said it would allow independent Jim Schneller to participate. Schneller has not been involved in previous debates between Meehan and Democrat Bryan Lentz. He got on the ballot thanks to help from Lentz’s supporters—a fact Meehan’s campaign has used to try and paint him as an illegitimate candidate.

“It is well documented that Jim Schneller got on the ballot thanks to a coordinated effort between Bryan Lentz and his supporters,” Meehan spokeswoman Virginia Davis said. “We’re not going to debate two people who got on the ballot thanks to Democrats.”

The decision by Meehan’s campaign marks the latest Schneller-related flare up in the bitter, suburban Philadelphia race. It is also the second time this cycle that a Republican House candidate in Pennsylvania has voiced trepidation about joining debates with a third-party conservative candidate.

Lentz’s campaign quickly pounced, saying Meehan was avoiding the spotlight after a recent Havertown debate in which Meehan struggled with his public performance.

“Pat Meehan has demonstrated once again that he believes he is entitled to be a Congressman and doesn’t actually have to explain why,” Lentz campaign manager Kevin McTigue said. “Pat Meehan will meet behind closed doors with the extreme Tea Party but he won’t take public questions from groups like the League of Women Voters. It was clear from the Havertown debate that Pat Meehan lacked a basic grasp of his talking points, let alone the issues.”

Meehan’s campaign said it’s “ridiculous” to attribute its decision to his recent debate performances.

“That’s Bryan Lentz trying to make this a charade,” Davis said, “a debate over debates.”

Regardless of the reason, what had initially promised to be a packed debate schedule now will end with a whimper. Meehan’s campaign unilaterally scheduled its own series of debates earlier this year, touting that it had put together an “unprecedented” slate of 10 such events. But several have not materialized, and notwithstanding a possible Chamber of Commerce forum still in the works, it appears that only four debates will have taken place before Election Day in the state’s most competitive House race.

Meehan, who has been the GOP’s fundraising star in Pennsylvania this cycle, said he finished September with more than $1.5 million in the bank. Assuming he begins airing TV ads soon, that number will likely be considerably lower by the time he formally reports the figure later this month. Meehan’s campaign says it has raised more than $2.3 million since he entered the race last fall.

Democrat Bryan Lentz, Meehan’s opponent in the competitive 7th District House race, had not yet released any fundraising tallies early Monday afternoon, and campaign finance reports are not due until Oct. 15. Meehan has enjoyed a steady but not overwhelming financial advantage throughout the campaign. Lentz has already been airing TV ads for a few weeks.

“I am deeply grateful for the tremendous support our campaign has received,” Meehan said in a statement. “This support will help us deliver a strong message of lower taxes, smaller government and our commitment to creating jobs going into Election Day.”

The United Aerospace Workers Local 1069, which represents local Boeing workers, endorsed GOP nominee Pat Meehan during an event in Eddystone Thursday. The union often endorses both Democrats and Republicans, but it was nonetheless a significant get for Meehan during a cycle in which organized labor has more often backed Democratic nominee Bryan Lentz. The group backed Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential election.

“Pat Meehan is going to go to Washington and fight for us, the working people of his district,” union president Mike Patterson said in a statement. “Pat is a man of integrity who will not waiver in his support of our local union members, who will fight for our families, and who will be steadfast in his support of the V-22 and Chinook aircraft that our military men and women rely upon. Our members are proud to support Pat Meehan because we know he will be there to support us.”

The race is currently No. 1 on the pa2010.com Congressional Power Rankings.

Republican Pat Meehan’s campaign criticized Lentz on the matter this week, noting that Lentz made Republican Tom Gannon’s use of a taxpayer funded car an issue before narrowly unseating him in a 2006 run for state House. At the time, Lentz said he wouldn’t use a state car if elected, telling one reporters that “I’ll pay for my own car like everybody else in this district.”

In 2009, Lentz started making use of a taxpayer-funded Ford Escape hybrid—and Meehan’s campaign says that makes Lentz a “hypocrite.”

“Actions speak louder than words, and Bryan Lentz’s tough rhetoric on the campaign trail in 2006 doesn’t match his actions in Harrisburg in 2009,” Meehan campaign manager Bryan Kendro said in a statement Wednesday. “This is just another instance of Lentz saying one thing when he’s searching for votes, but doing something completely different once he’s safely in office.”

In a statement, Lentz campaign manager Kevin McTigue did not deny Lentz’s use of a state car, but tried to turn the focus back on Meehan.

“If Pat Meehan, who has spent the bulk of his professional life on the public payroll and drastically increased the budget of his office while District Attorney, wants to get into a debate on reform, Bryan Lentz is happy to do that and will help find a venue for the discussion,” McTigue said. “The truth is, in his short time in Harrisburg, Bryan Lentz has voted on numerous measures for reform. Surely Pat Meehan isn’t criticizing Bryan for using his existing budget to pay for necessary travel rather than taking reimbursements that would go in his pocket.”

The state’s AFL-CIO rolled out its latest mail pieces Monday, the third week in a row it’s hitting up homes across Pennsylvania. The new mail pieces, targeting Senate candidate Pat Toomey and six GOP House candidates, paint Republican hopefuls as friends of Wall Street who want to outsource American jobs.

They err on at least one count, the same count that has tripped up Democrats for months: As we’ve noted before, signing the Americans for Tax Reform pledge does not automatically make you a supporter of tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas.

Anyway, you can check out all the latest mail pieces for yourself. Click here for the one targeting Toomey. And here are the ones targeting Mike Kelly, Pat Meehan, Mike Fitzpatrick, Tom Marino, Lou Barletta and Tim Burns.

Meanwhile, here comes another surrogate for Democrat Manan Trivedi. Michael Dukakis, that former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate who looked bad in an Army tanker, is headlining a fundraiser for Trivedi’s 6th District campaign Thursday in Philadelphia. The invitation we got a hold of says it’s going down early in the evening at the fancy Water Works restaurant, with a minimum $100 contribution. Folks on the host committee include prominent Democratic fundraisers Mark Aronchick and Ken Weinstein.

And lastly, the folks over at Democrat Bryan Lentz’s campaign have been having fun with some video from Lentz’s debate last week against Republican Pat Meehan. Maybe we went a little easy on Meehan in our coverage, because friend-of-the-site Bill Bender wrote (accurately) in The Daily News that “Lentz was clearly the superior debater Tuesday, delivering concise answers, while Meehan, sweating heavily, often fell back on generalities and stumbled through his closing statement.”

Anyway, the Lentz folks put together something of a brief highlight reel, modeled off those very memorable “Priceless” MasterCard ads. We’re not sure where Lentz’s people got their cash figures, and they probably won’t match up with campaign finance data—but hey, it’s a fun watch.

Team Meehan wasn’t laughing.

“For weeks now, Bryan Lentz has shown signs of a desperate and panicked candidate,” Meehan campaign spokeswoman Virginia Davis said. “All he is trying to do is distract voters from his support of Nancy Pelosi and the failed policies coming out of Washington.”

Check out the video below.

Already having targeted the two-term incumbent and the open-seat candidate in a pair of TV ads before, the group is at it again.

The latest two ads depict the policies of Democratic leaders in Washington as someone who “broke into your home, or stole your credit card, or ripped off your car.”

Check out the ads below.

By the time the hour was up Tuesday night, the two 7th District rivals had laid out starkly contrasting visions. And with Lentz aggressively looking to keep Meehan on the defensive for much of the duration, the different political styles of the two bitter opponents were displayed more clearly than ever before for a group of about 50 voters in the Delaware County district.

“You can’t run as a Tea Party fiscal conservative and not be able to answer that question better than the Republican candidate in this race just did,” Lentz said after Meehan, asked to propose specific program cuts to shrink the deficit, offered mostly vague prescriptions. Lentz, for his part, said he would cut from defense. “An expensive defense is not necessarily a strong defense,” said the former Army Ranger.

Meehan, a former U.S. Attorney, sought to paint Lentz as a typical tax-and-spend liberal, criticizing the two-term state lawmaker for budget votes he’s taken in the Capitol.

“He hasn’t changed things in Harrisburg,” Meehan said, “why would you think he’s going to change things in Washington?”

Tuesday’s debate at the B’nai Aaron Jewish Community Center here was the third between the two candidates in Pennsylvania’s most competitive and most contentious House race, but just the first debate in front of an audience. During two debates last month on TV and radio shows, the same disagreements emerged on economic policy that mirror much of the political debate leading up to the midterm elections. But in studio, things stayed mostly placid, a dynamic that changed when the two shared a stage.

Lentz, naturally more fluid off the cuff than his opponent, challenged Meehan on his allegiance to Tea Party ideals, at times claiming—incorrectly—that Meehan favors privatizing Social Security and Medicare. At one point, Lentz noted that a local Tea Party group has endorsed only two candidates “within 15 miles of this podium”—Meehan and newly-nominated Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell.

Jim Schneller, the independent candidate running in the district, was not included in the debate, but courted voters outside.

“It’s disappointing, but not surprising,” Schneller said of his exclusion.

Inside, Lentz and Meehan jousted over tax cuts, deficits, stimulus spending and how best to create jobs. Lentz challenged Meehan to support small business lending legislation that recently passed the Senate, and Meehan pressed Lentz to defend votes to increase state education funding. The volleys came as Lentz’s campaign has stepped up efforts to undermine Meehan’s reputation as a moderate by tying him to the Tea Party movement, just as Democrats across the country are doing. Meanwhile, Meehan, enjoying more name recognition than his opponent from years as a local District Attorney, is looking to define Lentz before the Democrat can use a TV advertising campaign to define himself.

Lentz has already begun airing TV ads, as has the national Republican Party. Meehan, sporting a financial advantage, has yet to hit the airwaves in the suburban, Philadelphia district.

“What we need to do is create the kind of economic certainty that will allow private dollars to invest in job growth,” said Meehan, who voiced support for rolling back unspent money from the economic stimulus package and TARP bailout, as well as repealing the newly enacted health care law.

Lentz said he would have sought a greater focus on infrastructure spending if he had been in Congress when the stimulus was crafted. But saying he would have supported it nonetheless, he said Meehan’s opposition to the measure would have meant less state aid for school districts in the area.

“He’d have voted against aid to school districts he was charged with representing,” Lentz said. “When I look at something like the stimulus, I look over my shoulder. How’s it going to affect the people I represent?”

Meehan countered that some local school districts are sitting on cash surpluses.

One of the most animated exchanges came when Meehan accused of Lentz of irresponsibly supporting a state education funding increase of almost $500 million in the recently passed budget. Lentz noted that the money helped avert school property tax increases locally, and twice challenged Meehan to say whether or not he would have supported the same education funding increase if he were a state lawmaker. Meehan didn’t answer explicitly, saying only that he would have “supported a budget that held the line on spending.”

The early exchanges on the subject of Israel were more tame, with both candidates agreeing that the country should not be forced to accept preconditions before coming to the negotiating table to work toward a peace agreement. Meehan said he worries that the relative political impotence of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas “sets us up to fail,” and that preconditions create “an environment in which we may be destined to fail.” Both candidates agreed that a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable, and that harsher, more targeted sanctions must be explored.

“The greatest concern I have is [Iran's] capacity to be able to act as an agent of terror,” Meehan said. “If the sanctions won’t work, we’ve got to be able to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel.”

Lentz said aid from the United States is critical for Israel.

“Foreign aid is a good thing,” he said, “and for Israel it’s an essential thing.”

See video clips from the debate below.