A Week Late...

I finally got a chance to watch last week's Meet the Press, which featured a debate between Missouri Senator Jim Talent (R) and his challenger, Claire McCaskill (D). I love the Meet the Press debate series, because it gives you a chance to see Tim Russert try to make both candidates uncomfortable with his often ludicrous questions (I'm a fan of Russert, but he tries way to hard to find "gotcha" moments when he's interviewing in these things).

As for the debate itself, the candidates took the positions that you would expect members of their party from Missouri to take, so there was nothing particularly remarkable there. Here were my thoughts on the less substantive aspects of the debate.

1.) Both are more interesting, engaging, charismatic people than either candidate in the race in Virginia, Senator George Allen (R) and Jim Webb (D). At least there are articulate people running in Missouri.

2.) McCaskill has a "John Kerry" problem in that she is waaaayyyy too obvious about discussing her background as a prosecutor. I call this a "John Kerry" problem in that, when running for President in 2004, he took every opportunity to remind people that he had won three purple hearts. Well, McCaskill never missed a beat when the opportunity to talk about her prosecutorial past came up.

3.) Talent is a Bush toadie - but why is that wrong? Talent is from a "values" state, Bush is a Republican . . . is Talent supposed to somehow be opposed to all of his positions just because Bush's approval numbers are in the tank? I agree with Russert, though, that it's fair to equate a vote for Talent as a vote for Bush because of Talent's high "votes with Bush" numbers (mentioned in MTP as 94%).

Bottom line: I think Talent will hang on in this race. Unless the "Democratic wave" gains steam over the next 24 days, I don't see McCaskill picking up enough votes to win. It will be very close, probably no more than 52% going to Talent, but that'll be enough.