It is supposed to be news not wishful thinking

Sunday's New York Times leads with an article entitled "Democrats Long-held Seats Face GOP Threat". the Times then goes on to report the big news that some Democrats are not doing so well in this election cycle. For anyone who follows the national political scene this is not big news. Indeed, for anyone who is not comatose this is not big news.

What I do find funny, however, is the Times map which shows the likely status of the various Senate races of 2010. It categorizes races as likely or leaning to a party or a tossup. The geniuses at the Times put Pennsylvania in the leaning Democrat column. Is this a payoff to Arlen Specter? Specter the Democrat turned Republican truned Democrat is up for re-election in 2010. In recent days, polls in the Keystone state have shown his primary challenger congressman Sestak closing the gap rapidly. Specter may win the primary, but it will be a close one. The general election, however, is not showing a close race. Pat Toomey, the Republican candidate is ahead by 9% in the three polls of likely voters taken in April. More important, Specter, the incumbent, does not break 40% support in any of these polls. With numbers like those six months before election day, it is almost a foregone conclusion that Specter will lose. In the last forty years only two incumbent senators have managed to come back from numbers that bad at this point in the election cycle: Jesse Helms and Al D'Amato. Particularly since there is likely to be a more energized Republican base this year, Specter is toast everywhere except in the pages of the New York Times where he is the likely winner.

A similar blooper by the Times is rating the Illinois race for Obama's old seat a tossup. The Democrat here just got pummeled when his family's bank (which he ran for quite a while) was seized by the FDIC as insolvent. News has come out that the bank had lent money to many less than savory characters. This will slam the Democrat at a point when Obama is busy in Washington criticizing bankers. Obama's seat is going the way of Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts.

There are many in this country who have looked at the New York Times as an authoritative paper which tries to state the truth in its articles. This map of likely outcomes is just another instance where the Times is revealed as a propagandist for the Democratic party.