Just thought of this --

Nancy Pelosi has nothing to lose by throwing Charles Rangel under the bus.

In an ordinary election year, I suppose she would be afraid of losing support from the Black community. This might be mitigated/stopped by naming another qualified Black to chair the committee. However, with Barack Obama on top of the ticket, the likelihood of flagging Black interest is nearly nil.

Having done away with the corruption in her ranks, she can then point to the Republicans, whose senior Senator (Ted Stevens) is currently awaiting trial.

Actually, Stevens/Rangel is more of a litmus test -- most Republicans are likely to moan about Rangel while ignoring Stevens, while most Democrats will do the opposite. I still think the Democrats deserve a couple of years at the wheel, but too many Rangels will eventually cause me to peel away.

Keith Fimian, the GOP Congressional candidate in my district, seems to be a standard-issue conservative. He's probably too conservative for VA-11, which contains areas of Mid-Fairfax that have trended Democratic over the past 10 years and areas of Prince William that are pretty Republican. But, he's done nothing to make him irrevocably lose my vote the way George Allen did with 'macaca' and 'noose in my office.' I'd vote for Fimian if I thought the Democrats needed to be taken down a peg.

Frankly, since Stevens is actually on trial, Stevens is going to embarrass his party more, unless Rangel does a perp walk or something entirely new (and embarrassing) is discovered. The branch of the DOJ that is trying Stevens has a 90% conviction rate, and the trial is in Washington, as opposed to Alaska (where Stevens might get acquitted or have a hung jury because he's Ted Stevens.) I suspect the best Stevens can hope for in the absence of prosecution malfeasance is to get a lone holdout to hang the jury until after the election.

On the other hand, the media will be talking for the next two weeks about Ted Stevens and the various things he's done. That is, if it's not talking about the economy or about Troopergate. I suspect Stevensgate is going to be story #2-#5 for most of the next few weeks, and a conviction will be story #1 for a couple of days.

Troopergate, I think, is becoming a classic study in 'it's the coverup, stupid.' The more they stonewall, the more non-Republicans are going to think, 'Gee, what's going on here?' Given what we know, the story is moderately damaging to McCain/Palin at worst, and the stonewalling merely delays a one-shot moderate amount of pain while administering minor amounts of pain nearly constantly. Unless, of course, there's something we don't know about.

She could've apologized for misuse of her power while she was just a finalist in Vice-Presidential Idol, while stressing the sins (real and imagined) of her brother-in-law, who is a piece of work. If she had done this in July, no non-Democrat would be caring at this point. But now that she's the nominee, every move she makes automatically becomes one of the top 4-5 stories of the day.

She also lost the chance to put neutral or positive stories about her in the top 4-5 stories because she is shielded from the media -- sure she'd have made some gaffes, but better early on than on October 2 while Joe Biden's on stage with her.

I think Biden will win a unanimous decision in the debate, but Palin's performance will not be so embarrassing as to cause McCain to hemorrhage support. At least I think this is how it'll be. Biden's not gaffe-proof himself but Palin's answers to questions about Troopergate will be very revealing.

I still think Rapekitgate is far more potentially damaging, due to its built-in soundbite friendliness and its more visceral nature. I suspect the discovery of a Wasilla PD rape kit receipt will sink McCain/Palin for good. If what the Huffington Post is reporting is true (that the Wasilla PD under Palin started a policy of charging for rape kits, as opposed to merely continuing a Stone Age-vintage policy) and it can be proven, we're looking at historic levels of fail for McCain.

Ugh. Amazing how quickly I can forget to update this thing.

Life's going pretty good. I'm getting over my cold as are Rebecca and Melanie. Our tenants are moving in this week.

I had a Scholastic Bowl rules clinic yesterday and another one tomorrow. Questions are coming along nicely and I'll have half the regular season matches ready by tonight or tomorrow. The other half is a vendor I work with and that'll be ready later this week.

I got my SmartTag for riding the Dulles Toll Road, although it seems to take me an hour and 10 minutes either way to get from my wife's work to my worjk.

Only bad thing is our generator -- on Monday, we had a 30-second power blip -- the generator didn't come on. Apparently, the gas hose had a kink in it, and it was only repaired today. Hopefully it'll fire up next time there's a real power outage. The inspector's coming out for the final approval on Monday.

As for the election, I think McCain made a huge mistake in not letting Palin talk to the press or do anything other than give the standard stump speech. Davis' comment about 'respect and deference' didn't help either. That just got the Democratic base fired up. So she would've had a few gaffes. Compared to what's happening now, I'm going to say that would've been the lesser of two evils. (BTW, Obama naming H. Clinton the VP would've done the same thing to the GOP base that naming Palin's done.)

The media then decided to make the story about Palin as opposed to letting Palin make her own story. So we went from 'ZOMG hot hockey momma' to 'Bristol's knocked up LOL' to 'she lied about the Bridge to Nowhere' to 'Hey what about this Troopergate thing.' What'll be next?

Odds are, nothing terribly kind to Palin. Running against the media is one sure way to get the media unsympathetic to your cause. I suspect with McCain, reporters feel it personally, as Straight Talking McCain of 2000 was a chatty sort. Now it's been a month since McCain's had an off the cuff talk with reporters, and Palin may as well be in New Zealand as far as the media is concerned. The negative ads McCain ran were pretty bad, and that probably contributed to the narrative of betrayal many reporters must be feeling.

One thing that has me worried somewhat is MN and WI becoming tighter. Part of me is wondering if there's some movement among Scandinavian-Americans (of which there are many in MN and WI) moving to Palin -- that since Palin is a Swedish name (http://www.ancestry.com/facts/Palin-places-origin.ashx), there might be a few points of movement. I can't think of anything else to explain why McCain bounced so well in MN and WI.

Another thing to consider -- in the debates, Obama held his own against Clinton, but let's not forget that Clinton and Obama were essentially wanting the same things. In the general election debates, McCain will start down a couple rounds since he has to defend how things are well enough to convince voters that staying Republican is the way to go, but not so well that he is portrayed out of touch. Essentially, Obama's got reality on his side. Don't get me wrong, McCain may well win one or more of the debates. But projecting Obama's performance against Clinton to the upcoming general election debates is at best a shaky exercise.