The Dish

Scozzafava has now endorsed Democrat Bill Owens in NY-23. Her Republican supporters would normally go to the Conservative Party candidate, Hoffman. But Hoffman's unfavorables among Scozzafava voters are higher than Owen's. Polls suggest that Hoffman is soaring; but the local paper's endorsement of Owens (after backing Scozzafava) and now Scozzafava's following suit may create a new dynamic.

I don't know. I'm not from there. But neither is Hoffman.

It could be your genes.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon uses the US decision to end the HIV travel ban as a pivot to push for those few left with stigmatizing policies to step up:

Ban has made the lifting of stigma and discrimination connected with AIDS a personal mission, first calling on countries to lift their travel restrictions in 2008 at a UN meeting on the disease. The travel restrictions "should fill us all with shame," Ban told a global AIDS conference in August 2008.

According to UNAIDS, Ban's home country of South Korea is "in the last stages of removing travel restrictions," while China and Ukraine are among countries considering following suit. "Placing travel restrictions on people living with HIV has no public health justification. It is also a violation of human rights," said UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibe.

One other great thing for the US: international HIV and AIDS conferences will now be able to take place stateside for the first time in almost two decades.

It seems to me that any pretense that he remains a journalist must now be retired. He's a Republican party operative, trading on a once-respected name in news.

The senator moves drastically to the right to prevent Obama's agenda from getting through.

“I think we should thank John McCain for picking her, in terms of how it helped us win in 2008,” — Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, on Meet the Press, discussing Sarah Palin.

[Re-posted] Charles Franklin looks through the cross-tabs to see where Scozzafava's voters might end up. Her voters have quite highly unfavorable views of Hoffman:

But the deeper you look, the closer it gets:

Here is some bad news for Owens. He's losing 25% of the Democratic voters, versus only a 13% defection rate among Republicans. Fully 14% of Dems say they will vote for the Conservative Hoffman. Another 11% were going for Scozzafava. Even if you think all those Scozzafava Dems come back to Owens, the party is not as unified as it needs to be. Independents are also leaning Hoffman by 40-35, with only 15% supporting Scozzafava up for grabs.

Perhaps the best move Owens can make in the last three days is to drape himself in the cloak of Obama, hoping to bring home those wavering 25% of Dems, and use this favorable view of Obama among Scozzafava and undecided to bring in the margin of victory.  

Conversely, if Hoffman wants to win the Scozzafava and undecided, he should probably push Republican  loyalty more, and opposition (especially angry opposition) to the president less. He's already won over the voters with pitchforks and tea bags. He needs a strategy to close the deal with Reps and others who don't actually despise the president. (Recall the district went 52-47 for Obama.)

So after all that, it still looks like a tossup on the two simplest most direct measures: current vote choice and favorability. When we try to parse the Scozzafava voters, they mostly look like a tossup, with at most a sliver of extra support for Owens. But at most a sliver.

David Wolpe:

To the extent that the Internet and the proliferation of long distance learning deprive us of being in the presence of charismatic, kind, scholarly people, it will be a tremendous loss. When a Hasid said that he traveled miles just to see how his master tied his shoes, he was expressing this beautiful idea. What we learn from a great teacher cannot be put into a book, because it is in a look, an inflection, a quirk of personality or a tossed off comment. The greatest human lessons are found in the power of presence.

The local paper, The Watertown Daily Times, switches its allegiance. The trouble with the Hoffman candidacy, a man who doesn’t even live in the district and had no responses to local questions when grilled by the WDT, is that it cannot be described as grass-roots. Hoffman did not come up from the ground of this district; he was flown in as a candidate to represent the party of Palin in a national, ideological struggle. The WDT editorial:

Mr. Hoffman is running as an ideologue. If he carries out his pledges on earmarks, taxation, labor law reform and other inflexible positions, Northern New York will suffer.

This rural district depends on the federal government for an investment in Fort Drum and its soldiers, environmental protection of our international waterway and the Adirondack Park, and the livelihood of all our dairy farmers across the district, among other support. Our representative cannot be locked into rigid promises and policies that would jeopardize these critical sectors of our economy.

For a member of Congress, there may be a time to promote reform in Washington, but there is also a time to work within a system that best serves the people you represent.

It is frightening that Mr. Hoffman is so beholden to right-wing ideologues who dismiss Northern New Yorkers as parochial when people here simply want to know how Mr. Hoffman will protect their interests in Washington.

Yes: they want their pork and their federal money. I wonder how the voters will actually feel next Tuesday. They do have the last word, you know.

An actual animal – from Earth:

(Hat tip: Nerdcore)