A touchdown behind?

One poll is one poll, and the Iowa Senate race has been bounding around within a few points. But I'm not going to try to deny or spin the Register's numbers. 44 to 38, Braley a touchdown back as we enter what's more or less the fourth quarter.

The Democratic field operation covers some of that spread, but not all. Time to fight harder.

Braley refused to go for the jugular on Ernst's batshittery. His reticence never made any sense, and now look where he is.
— Daily Kos Elections (@DKElections) September 28, 2014

OK. So Joni Ernst is a very likable person with very good one on one people skills. I've met her and seen that. But campaign skills are different than governing skills.

And Bruce Braley is the smartest kid in the class and doesn't mind letting everyone know that. And according to the poll crosstabs that's pure poison in rural Iowa, though I suspect those margins have as much to do with the increasing rural-urban polarization of American politics than with his ham handed case that a very conservative-non-attorney should be running the committee that's the gateway to the Supreme Court.

I havent seen any @DMRegister mention that @JoniErnst VERY UNFAV is 7 pts higher than @BruceBraley. Glad they put it in a graphic! #iasen
— Jeff Link (@linkiowa) September 28, 2014

I'm a political person. And most of the people I spend most of my time with are political people on my side of the game. But I know a fair number of non-political people, too, most of whom know I am a political person. I try to avoid the subject around them, just to be polite.

But multiple times, I've had people come up to me, and initiate the political conversation, and invariably it's this race. And invariably it's some version of "that crazy pig lady can't actually WIN, can she?" I respond with something like, "she could, it's going to be very close." They usually shudder at the idea.

Granted, this is all in Johnson County, But this is coming from Regular Folks, not People's Republic types.

This is NOT an election about who's more likable or more colorful or more folksy. Of COURSE Ernst and her mentors want it to be, she wins that. This is not an election about who gets the most attendance gold stars. Though it was remarkable chutzpah that Ernst made it so, when she missed about half the session mostly for campaigning, with just enough Guard duty to blur the issue, while anyone with ANY DC experience knows that almost EVERY meeting of EVERY committee is sparsely attended because meetings are scheduled on top of each other.

This is an election about MAINstream vs. EXtreme, and it's not over for another 37 days.