Desperation is a Stinky Cologne

It seems that the Franks people leaked a favorable internal poll this week on the Cotton Mouth blog. It shows the race 'tightening' as we approach election day. Rule of thumb when a campaign leaks a poll: They're desperate. It goes hand in hand with the Barbour trust leak. Charlie Ross tried the same thing, and it didn't work. There are a number of polls commissioned by campaigns, and a number of them are designed to be favorable.

The polling that they actually believe probably shows them what I have stated before: Their base is strong amongst the fanatically Democratic, but that's shrinking daily. There's a very low ceiling for Mr. Franks because he's so combative and partisan, his statements to an adoring media nonwithstanding. Mr. Franks has been careful to keep himself clear of Ike Brown and his ilk, but he's still one of the ones who voted to back the suit on the state committee. He's probably also finding his support amongst the black community, but how much support can he have when it's discovered that he campaigned in 2003 as a 'champion of our heritage' who supported the current state flag?

What am I saying? That's not likely to get reported. But it was part of his radio ads in the 2003 cycle.

He's been working the union vote very hard lately, and proposed adding a Department of Labor. I'm sure he's probably also going to promise behind closed doors to end the right-to-work laws we have here as a tradeoff to the unions, much like the debate they're having in other southern states. I wonder though: How effective will a state dept. of labor be? It would, after all, be staffed by the same pool of applicants as the land, water and timber board that was so instrumental in the beef plant fiasco.

A candidate that's got everything together doesn't have to work to court the base of his party. This screams of not having it together. A candidate who's got it together is trying to broaden his appeal, not limit it. Finally, let's discount this supposed strength in Northeast Mississippi. There's a good chance he won't even carry District 19, which just rebuffed his hand picked successor.

This is a campaign in trouble. It's desperate, and it smells of it.