As the story goes

It's all over. Back your bags and say your goodbyes. This is the wisdom that is coming out of the mouth, keyboard, and pen of virtually every political observer who has a pulse. If your an incumbent or a Democrat your number has been called, after this November you will be going to that big reelection campaign in the sky.

 A mountain of studies and surveys done over the years by numerous political scientists predicts that the incumbent parties chances for success depend on economic conditions. Nationwide the unemployment numbers as well as GDP have been lackluster to terrible. This is the reason that the end of days forecasting has been created by the pundits, bloggers, and the rest of the professional political class.


As we all know pundits, bloggers, and the professional political class  are never wrong about anything, ever. If only there was a Senate race in a state that was not getting a lot of attention that was heavily Democratic in 2008 that had a solid Republican challenger where we could observe to see if all is doom and gloom.

 In the land of grunge music and Starbucks coffee we have an interesting race brewing: a state that Obama carried by double digits in 2008 (57-40), has a Democratic incumbent who enjoyed a solid margin of victory in 2004 (55-42), and a   Republican challenger who is polling only within a few points of the incumbent. Everything is in place for us to observe the predictions of so many and put those predictions to the test. In the coming weeks we will be walking through the many factors both nationally and locally that are playing out in our drama.