Gordon Smith

The Oregonian has projected that Jeff Merkley beat incumbent Republican Senator, Gordon Smith. This puts the Democrats at 57 seats now. While we most likely won't see the magical number of 60, every seat helps and means less help we need from the other side to overcome filibusters.

After watching John McCain try to calm down his crowds yesterday, I ended up having some reservations. I'm not saying McCain isn't serious about what he is saying, but I am now wondering if he is in control of his campaign. His campaign aides were out just a couple hours before supporting the violent calls from McCain/Palin crowds and Palin herself continued the attacks yesterday. The top of the ticket is in charge of the campaign, which is John McCain. So is he saying he doesn't have control of his campaign? If so that sounds an awful lot like Bush and his administration.

There is a chance though that McCain was just trying to save face yesterday and has no intention of calming the fires. Perhaps McCain did this because he is so much like George Bush now in the sense that Republican incumbents up for re-election are refusing to be seen on the trail with him now.

The next few days should be interesting to watch and see how all this takes hold. I'm sure a lot of hard core Republicans are pissed with McCain, so he will have to stop that bleeding. I also don't see what McCain did helping him with Independents, so the polls could quickly open up more in Obama's favor, in which case we would probably see McCain trying to reignite the fires.

Well when you are trying to save your career then that's the case. Oregon Senator Gordon Smith is trying to align himself with Obama in his latest ad:

To be fair, Smith has been an outspoken critic of Iraq, but the Obama campaign isn't buying into this attempt of Smith's to save his butt:

Barack Obama has a long record of bipartisan accomplishment and we appreciate that it is respected by his Democratic and Republican colleagues in the Senate. But in this race, Oregonians should know that Barack Obama supports Jeff Merkley for Senate. Merkley will help Obama bring about the fundamental change we need in Washington.

I got a feeling as more polls roll out showing Obama stomping McCain, we will see more Republican incumbents trying the same thing.