Jack Kelly Sunday

Not much fact-checking in this week's column by Jack Kelly.

There IS this:

But if you're one of the 84 Democrats who represent districts carried either by George W. Bush in 2004 or John McCain last year, the time to ponder this is before casting a potential career-terminating vote on health-care "reform." [emphasis added.]

That's a bit of a cheat, isn't it? I mean why include the districts of House Democrats carried by Bush in 2004 if only to beef up the number of "Dems at risk"?

Especially since there were only 49 Democratic House Districts voting for McCain in 2008.

I guess Jack really doesn't think anyone will check his work.

In any event 84 is a bigger (and thus scarier) number than 49 but one wonders, given the tone of the jeremiad that is this column what Jack thinks of the (according to Charlie Cook) 34 Republicans who currently represent the seats won by President Obama.

No mention of them.

Small(ish) point. I do want to get to the meat of the column. It's about last week's election and the bad news it portends for the Democratic Party. And it's all about New Jersey and Virginia.

Here's a reminder of what Jack wrote just last week:

Political soothsayers will be studying the returns Tuesday from Virginia and New Jersey for omens that could predict the outcome of the midterm elections next year. But the race with the greatest national implications is for the House seat in upstate New York because of what it portends for the relationship between the Washington GOP establishment and an increasingly restive base. [emphasis added.]

NY-23 is now in Democratic hands. Let's assume Jack is 100% correct in its importance its national implications in general and for the GOP specifically.

The seat was firmly (with a capital F) in the GOP's hands. The party establishment presented its candidate. But that candidate wasn't wingnutty enough for the Palin wing of the GOP so they switched to the Conservative Party candidate. The Palin-ite wingnuts bet on conservative ideology rather than political expediency.

And they lost. They lost a district their party controlled for decades.

And not a peep from Jack about it in this week's column. Wonder why.

Jack's take on the NJ race is informative:

Mr. Corzine was arguably the most unpopular governor in the country, quite capable of losing in a heavily Democratic state all by himself. In the end, that's what I think happened. Mr. Obama shouldn't be blamed for his defeat.

That last sentence is an interesting thing to slip into a column about how the burden of last week's defeats should be resting on Obama's shoulders. But I digress.

So we're left with Virginia. Jack wrote:

Mr. Deeds had been sinking like a stone in the polls for a month and the White House publicly washed its hands of him two weeks before the election. Mr. Deeds was losing, two "senior White House officials" told The Washington Post, because he didn't tie himself closely enough to the president and his policies.

That last part is intriguing, considering this poll data found at pollster.com


Tell me how Deeds' support was "dropping like a stone" there. Looks like he was never in front, he leveled off months ago and McConnell's support took off in the 6 weeks or so before the election.

Jack, if you're gonna spin at least get close to the truth.

As I said, not much to fact check this week.

Because there's not much there.