Washington:  The campaign to legalize and tax marijuana for adults in Washington state is rolling as next month’s vote approaches, with more than $1 million in new contributions reported since last week and a surprising endorsement Wednesday from Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Michael Baumgartner. […]  Baumgartner said drug law reform isn’t typically supported by his party, but he believes I-502 is a good step toward changing what he described as a wasteful policy of marijuana prohibition.
“It’s taking a different approach to a very expensive drug war, and potentially a better approach,” Baumgartner said. “They’ve checked all the boxes as far as what you would want to see happen in terms of provisions to keep it away from children and limiting access in the public space. I’ve just been impressed with the initiative and the people running it.”

I wonder if this will earn him a vote slice from out of the ordinary divisions.  I wish there a way I could dissect such a thing, but he’s on his way to a landslider defeat against an entrenched Democratic incumbent, so there really isn’t.

Connecticut:  The Connecticut Democratic Party last month tried reviving attacks on McMahon using old video clips from WWE productions, which have been broadcast on cable television for years.
One segment, subsequently disabled online, began with the statement, “What Linda McMahon doesn’t want you to see.” It showed two female wrestlers stripping to their underwear in the ring and fondling each other before two male wrestlers appear and beat them unconscious during the televised show.
“The way that she demeaned women in the ring is abhorrent to thousands of women across this state,” Murphy said today in a candidates’ debate in Hartford. He also said McMahon is responsible for making society worse “by selling sex and violence to our kids.”
Another now-removed clip showed simulated sex acts between a male and female wrestler, first in the ring and then in what appears to be a funeral home with the woman in a casket.

It’s a bit of a shame that the strike against this “Lowest Common Denominator” form of entertainment centers on this and not, for instance, the rampant jingoism that accompanies this professional wrestling stuff during war time and times of international tension.

Missouri.  We have some party infighting and sniping.  Gingrich is barking at Rove for having abandoned Todd Akin.  Also enter “Rand Fucking Pac”.  Polls are over the place.  I won’t be surprised with “whatever”, though I can sense I’ll probably know by Election Eve where this race is going.  We have that bit of “Don’t let the Liberal National Media decide for Missouri” going.  Really, why would we all laugh at this guy?
Rep. Todd Akin on the 2011 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA): “The Senate version of that bill…  They also had the legilization of bestiality, which is pretty weird. And so I’m on the House side of the negotiations on that, so we got rid of the bestiality thing….”
The most interesting thing here may be the odd politicization of Bill Nye the Science Guy.  Just another reason for today’s Republican Party’s animus against PBS.

Indiana and Massachusetts.  We have a point where these two races connect.  The Primary defeated Richard Lugar has gone off to Massachusetts to stump for Scott Brown.  Richard Mourdock gets nothing out of him.  Meantime, Mourdock’s problem comes in debate answer form when he is asked to name a member across the aisle he would work with.  There are several Democrats he could choose without charring the “Liberal partnership” idea that’d horrify his base — the problem being they tend to have his opponent (Joe Donnely’s) profile.
Probably matters not much.  I think the polls have Mourdock moving apace in the polls.  We do have this hope.
 The third man on the stage, though, was not as inconsequential as he seemed, endlessly repeating that Hoosiers should break the stranglehold of the two-party system and send him, libertarian Andrew Horning, to Washington instead.
Not only because Horning got in the most exciting line of a dull, dull night — by mocking the war on terror as an effort to head off the vile threat posed by “exploding underpants.”

Nevada.  Interesting.
How much this issue – fraught with complicated regulatory details – will influence voters is uncertain. But if bitter political enemies can support at least the concept behind Glass-Steagall, maybe there’s hope for its resurrection?

West Virginia.  West Virginia Republican Senate candidate John Raese walked out of a newspaper editorial meeting on Friday after he reportedly learned that a third-party candidate, Bob Henry Baber of the Mountain Party, was also attending, according to the Charleston Gazette.
The three candidates were at the newspaper office on Friday to give their views to editors and reporters on issues facing West Virginia, ahead of the newspaper editorial board’s endorsement of a candidate in their Sunday paper.
The newspaper said Raese told a Gazette editor that he would not be in the same room as Baber because Baber had criticized him in a debate in early October.
In theory the “Mountain Party” candidate would be pulling votes away from Manchin, so this snubbing from Raese seems counter-productive.  The one idea might be that it puts a pebble in Raese’s distortion suggestion that Manchin — like any state Democrat or Republican — isn’t just catering to the Coal Industry en whole.

Mississippi.  Wyoming.
This year, Wicker is seeking a full six-year term and is working with a $2 million campaign fund, which is much greater than that of his democratic opponent, Albert Gore.
Gore is a retired minister from Starkville and not to be confused with the former vice president from Tennessee.
Mr. Albert N. Gore, Jr., spoke as a candidate for U. S. Senator. He is a retired Methodist minister from Starkville, a retired Colonel, and Chaplain, U.S. Army Special Forces. As a senator, he proposes to end corporate and big money influence in elections; impose a lifetime ban on lobbying and employment by government contractors for former Congressmen, retired military officers and former federal appointees; require a twenty-four hour limit on response time to constituent requests of the Senators office; meet regularly with Mississippians, not lobbyists; fight to preserve and protect Social Security, Medicare and Veterans Benefits for current and future generations and be a Senator for Mississippi, not just a senator from Mississippi a citizen legislator not a career politician.
Well, more coverage than Wyoming’s Democratic Challenger is getting.  Him we’re down to a graph showing that Tim Chestnut has no money and the Republican Incumbent has money from Natural Resources.  Tim Chestnut wins the “Most Irrelevant Democratic Senate Candidate Award”.  I’ll look into the Republicans later.

Nebraska.  We’re at that point where Bob Kerrey spouts out deluded descriptions of his chances.  And he has a selected Internal poll out showing him 5 points behind — a poll in the “Doesn’t fit the others” category.  More interesting news…

“And we were about three minutes into a seven-minute interview. And I don’t know what I said, but he turned to me and he said, ‘What the hell are you talking about?'” Colbert recalled in his interview with “Meet the Press” host David Gregory. “But in the middle of the interview, I couldn’t explain to him what it was. … And then he just [took the] mic off and then left as soon as the interview was over. So I hope at some point someone explained to him that I was just fooling, senator. And I’m very sorry.”

Minnesota  Political consultants urge Kurt Bills to get out and campaign as full time hobby.  I say do what he wants… part time.  Full Time.  “Only a few days left here. It’s down to hours,” Bills said of time remaining to election day.
Standing on an embankment beneath a stark autumn tree, Bills urged supporters to relentlessly campaign in the remaining days of the election.
“Don’t ever be afraid of getting egg yolk on your shirt,” Bills said of taking the Republican message into unfamiliar areas.
Egg Yolk on shirt?

 Tennessee.  Mark Clayton adds a bit of bi-partisanship in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s report.

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