Prediction: Richard Blumenthal will survive misstatement-gate, and will be sworn in as Connecticut’s junior senator on January 3, 2011.
Prediction: Richard Blumenthal will survive misstatement-gate, and will be sworn in as Connecticut’s junior senator on January 3, 2011.
Caveat: my political predictions are usually wrong. See, e.g., Hillary Clinton “will not win a single primary.”
But I think Blumenthal’s brand is strong enough in Connecticut that a lot more actual voters will give him the benefit of the doubt on this — no matter how difficult it is to understand what possible excuse there could be — than the national commentariat suspects. His poll numbers will drop, but not enough to convince him to step aside. Remember, he’s up by like 30 points. He can afford a 15-point drop, and still be fine. And if he doesn’t bow out voluntarily, I can’t imagine the CT Dems shoving him — shoving Richard Blumenthal — aside involuntarily. So he stays, he wins the nomination, and he wins the election, albeit by a narrower margin than necessary: maybe 15 points instead of 25.
Unless of course there’s “another shoe” waiting to drop. If some other scandal-bomb explodes in the next few days, he’s finished. But otherwise, I think he survives this, and indeed does so fairly easily, certainly with far less trouble than the CW-of-the-moment would indicate.
P.S. If, however, either my mom or my dad — both Connecticut Democrats — are wavering in their support of Blumenthal, I will change my prediction completely. My core premise is that folks like my mom and dad will instinctively stand by him. But I haven’t spoken to either of them about it yet. If I’m wrong, all bets are off.
I’m with you–barring a mistress or something else, I can’t see this having enough heat and light to put him out of business. Not saying it _should_ not, just saying it _will_ not unless someone in his own party is ready to stab him in the back.
However, if I were him, I’d try to figure out who motivated the NYT to put a torpedo into my campaign. Unless this was a case of, “Dude, it’s called readership–we’ve got to pummel a couple of Dems so we can not seem hyperpartisan. You’re up 30 points–unless you completely and utterly crap the bed, you’ll be fine.”
No offense Brendan, but you Connecticuttians have some terrible choices in members of Congress 🙂
The new polls seem to indicate that Blumenthal is in big trouble. Double digit moving of the numbers, which isn’t good for anybody.
I just published a new post on this. The only poll I’ve seen is Rasmussen; are there others? I think Rasmussen is actually good news for Blumenthal. “Only” a 10-point drop, which would translate to an average poll margin well into the double digits. (Rasmussen has a pronounced GOP “lean” … yet Blumenthal is still ahead in it.)