Halperin tries to look nice

Mark Halperin was on Charlie Rose tonight and made an effort to come off as fair-minded. Those of us who read The Note today know better.

Halperin practically predicted a win for the president on Nov 2, coming up with doomsday scenarios for John Kerry, including a backing off from the two-for-three idea (see Eric's post below).

What this appears to be about is Halperin's attempt to recover from the leak of his memo of last week, where he stated that The Note folks need to be tougher on Bush than on Kerry. So now he is being tough on Kerry.

Depressing when the politics of political coverage overcomes the news of the politics itself.

At any rate, Halperin essentially reiterated what he and the gang covered on The Note today, that Kerry just might (and only might) have superior ground game, but that it wouldn't surprise him if the GOP GOTV efforts on Nov 2 end up carrying the day, so intense has been Rove & Co.'s efforts in this arena the last four years.

Rose did his part by saying that Bush basically tied Kerry in debates 2 and 3, which all of us know is completely false.

He says that it's a 3 - 4 - 3 set up, meaning three states in the west (CO-NM-NV), four in the midwest (WI-OH-IA-MN) and three in the east (FL-NH-PA). Nice way to remember the battlegrounds, as if any of you reading this don't know what they are.

I'd like to think Minnesota is safe for Kerry, but new polls show a tie, sadly.

On a small but important note, I read today that the Milwaukee County Executive, a Republican, has finally assented to print more voter registration forms. Mayor Tom Barrett had requested them because the city had totally run out, due to the enormous uptick of interested voters in the city, but the County Exec had orignally said no. So this is very good news for the Dems, especially Sen. Russ Feingold, a true maverick in the great Progressive Wisconsin tradition. Feingold is up by 10 points in a new poll.

My mom, who lives in a Milwaukee suburb, says that she called today and the City of Milwaukee has run out of voter registration forms entirely. So hope is on the way, literally.