Culver in Iowa City Tuesday

Governor in Iowa City today

As Chet Culver visits Iowa City today to talk kids health care, critiques come from both left and right:

Ed Fallon says Culver runs the risk of being the 21st century's Norman Erbe (1962) and losing re-election:

While Culver may be out of favor with the vast majority of independent voters, even among Democrats, his approval rating is only 62%. That’s indicative of a profound dissatisfaction within Culver’s base.

Candidates – even incumbents – rarely prevail if their base is not with them.

Culver seems to have forgotten the all-important maxim “dance with the one that brought you.” A disturbing number of Party activists have told me they’ve been snubbed by the Governor, as have many elected officials. While failing to maintain good relations with one’s political base is always a bad idea, snubbing one’s base in advance of re-election is a recipe for political suicide.

Fallon then revisits his own difficulty in getting a response from Culver.

On the right, Iowa Republican argues buyer's remorse with this poll question:

If you could go back to 2006 and vote in the election again, knowing what you know today, would you vote for Jim Nussle, the Republican candidate or Chet Culver, the Democratic candidate this time?

General Election Voters
Nussle: 45%
Culver: 46%
Neither: 2%
Don’t Know: 6%

I wish I had the money to fund my own poll, but this is an amateur operation.

Without even digging into the poll's demographic weighting, consider this: Because Culver won, he's actually had to deal with stuff like the flood and the tanking economy. It's easy to imply "Nussle would have done better" when he was flying below the rader as Bush's low-profle last budget director. The rage gets pointed at the top, not the middle.

Governors across the country, in both parties, are looking at tough polls right now. "Toughest Road in Election 2010 Is Through the Governor's Mansion," headlines Steve Singiser at Kos, citing some polls of 15 real races as opposed to hypothetical rematches. Chet Culver? Not on the long list, even.