Liberals Suddenly Love Lisa M

You can't blame liberals for glombing on to defeated Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) as a beacon of hope in an otherwise disastrous election season.I remember what it was like when Joe Lieberman, the Democratic VP candidate in 2000, left the party in 2006 and ran successfully as an independent in Connecticut. That was a rare giddy moment for Republicans in an utterly dismal year. (He still voted for Obamacare, by the way.)And so it is now with Sore Loser Lisa in Alaska. Until she lost to Joe Miller last month, Lisa was simply the vice chair of the Senate Republican Conference, a leader in the "party of no" and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's BFF. She voted against Obamacare and the Stimulus and led her Democratic challenger by almost 40 points. That was BJM - Before Joe Miller.Now, moderate Lisa's a martyr, a victim of Tea Party extremism. Liberals like Alaska Democratic Senate candidate Scott McAdams and statistician Nate Silver are embracing Lisa like a long-lost friend, as if she had no connection to the corrupt Murkowski regime that was in the pocket of Big Oil for decades.In a Senate candidate debate before Murkowski's official write-in announcement, McAdams, the Sitka mayor, gushed about the "classy" Murkowski when asked whether he would prefer to run against Murkowski or Miller. (What kind of question is that anyway? Do candidates get to decide whom they prefer to face or is that up to voters?)"This is an interesting question," McAdams said. "I welcome Sen. Murkowski [if she runs independently]. I think she's a classy person with a good voice. I don't think she's a liberal as she's being framed as being. I think she is an Alaskan first and a party person second. I think that my electoral fortunes are better if I'm running against the narrow focus of The Sarah Palin Tea Party Express. But it's better for Alaska if Sen. Murkowski has a dialogue in the room. That's a hard thing to say as a candidate. If Sen. Murkowski joins this thing, I welcome her. Her and I made an oath to one another that we would have a civil, principled dialogue on the issues, that we wouldn't lie about each other, that we wouldn't tear each other down. I think that's what Alaskans expect and what they deserve. My answer, I believe I'm gonna win this race if Sen. Murkowski doesn't enter it. But if she does enter it, I hope that either Sen. Murkowski or myself are the next senator from the state of Alaska." Aw, full-calorie Dem hearts Dem-lite. It's touching.A couple of notes to Scott McAdams. First off, your "electoral fortunes" are toast either way. You were in the process of being pancaked by the Joe Miller Express before Lovely Lisa returned from the electoral dead to haunt the general election. Your electoral fortunes are decidedly worse now that Democrat-lite has decided to have yet another "dialogue in the room."Secondly, how is it better for Alaskans to have a three-way race for the U.S. Senate? It seems that just muddies the water. Republicans already selected whom they wanted to nominate. And for whatever reason, Democrats nominated you. But Lisa feels it's her privilege to represent Alaska even when a majority in her own party disagree.You may say, well, what about Joe Lieberman? How is Sore Loser Lisa any different from him? Well, the biggest difference, far as I can tell, is Papa Lieberman didn't bequeath the seat on Joe Jr. leading the citizenry to overwhelmingly pass an initiative stripping the governor of the ability to make such appointments in the future. Murkowski has to face the fact that she didn't earn this seat to begin with: after her nepotistic appointment, she narrowly won "re"-election in 2004 when Bush won Alaska in a romp, and voters eventually showed her the door in 2010. Case closed.But is it really case closed? Political analyst Nate Silver at his New York Times FiveThirtyEight blog is giving hope to Murkowski with an incredibly suspect analysis that "Murkowski can win" as a write-in candidate. Let's toss aside that only one person, Strom Thurmond, has ever been elected to the Senate as a write-in candidate and that Alaska has a 16-point voter ID edge for Republicans, whom Joe Miller is winning at a 73% clip. And all I can say is "What are you smoking, Nate?" (Yeah, I know Nate is super smart, and he predicted 49 out of the 50 states in the last presidential election, but this Alaska race is common sense.)Murkowski couldn't even win the GOP primary, Alaska is a conservative-leaning independent state where the Tea Party and Sarah Palin are actually popular. Palin's Republican successor Sean Parnell is running away with the govenor's race and add this to the fact that voters are gonna have to WRITE IN "Lisa Murkowski" on the ballot four years after they bounced her father from the governor's mansion, in favor of Sarah Palin.Silver relies on a late August PPP poll showing showing Miller up four points in a three-way race and claims it's not hard to imagine a scenario where Murkowski wins 50% of the independents in Alaska and Joe Miller wins only 25% of the indys due to his high unfavorables, leaving the door open for Lisa.There is no way this happens. Independents are fleeing moderate Republicans and Democrats this year. Murkowski would have a better shot at an Obama Supreme Court nomination than winning 50% of the independent voters in Alaska. (Remember nobody even predicted the Joe Miller win, so how can we believe anything from them?)Bottomline: I'm not a political analyst, I'm not a pollster, but I can read "moods." And the mood right now is "Throw the bums out," not "Write the Bums In."The truth is, liberals see Lisa's war with Palin/Miller as a proxy battle for their own Palin Derangement. But when you have to pin your hopes on Lisa Murkowski, it is, indeed, a tough spot. They'll love her while she's useful.What do you think about the race?

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