But the New York Times magazine sure has a funny way of looking at the race. The premise of Matt Bai's exhaustive piece in Sunday's issue is that McMahon is succeeding in part because of the decline of powerful party institutions. There is, obviously, something to this, in the sense that party machines everywhere aren't what they used to be.

But Bai suggests that the unwillingness of state Democratic leaders to coax the scandalized Sen. Chris Dodd into seeking another term this year is a sign of that decline, and that in the day of John Bailey, the long-departed state party boss, there would have been a full-court press to get :

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Lieberman is perhaps the least popular senator currently in office, so his endorsement is completely meaningless. Getting worked up about it is not really worth anyone's time. But still -- just like in the healthcare debate, Lieberman is letting his petty desire for revenge take precedence over his supposed principles, again.

"I'm not ready to make a choice," Lieberman, who is still a registered Democrat, told the Connecticut press yesterday.

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Now, there's no way that Republicans aren't going to have a good November in absolute terms. But a sign here and a sign there are starting to suggest that it might not be the stellar midterm that the minority party has been dreaming of and getting ready for. The president can point to some successes, with healthcare, financial reform and signs of economic recovery, for one thing. For another, it looks like we can count on Republicans to figure out a way to screw it up for themselves.

The latest example of Republicans finding an opportunity to miss an opportunity comes in Illinois. The Senate seat once held by Barack Obama is a major prize, and Republicans badly want to win. Everything seemed to line up just right. Democrats nominated a damaged candidate in state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, and scandal was hanging over the incumbent party anyway thanks to the collapse of the Rod Blagojevich administration. Republicans, meanwhile, got their dream nominee: Rep. Mark Kirk, from the Chicago suburbs, is the rare true suburban centrist Republican to survive the collapse of his wing of the party. He's staved off a couple of tough Democratic challenges, managing to become one of only seven Republicans to represent a district carried by John Kerry in 2004. In a state where moderate Republicans have thrived, but conservatives have been trounced repeatedly by mediocre Democratic hacks like Blagojevich, Kirk seemed to be just the ticket.

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That the story has become a major controversy, a regular fixture on cable news chat shows and a momentum-killer for Sestak following his come-from behind victory against Specter in last week's Pennsylvania primary is evidence of how the White House mishandled the controversy, according to conversations with several high-level Democratic strategists.

Indeed, Sestak has been hurt so badly that he currently leads his opponent by three points. (Before this scandal destroyed his momemtum, Sestak trailed Toomey by five points.)

Elsewhere this morning, famous Republican opinion writer and Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan was fascinated by this important true fact about Barack Obama:

What continues to fascinate me is Mr. Obama's standing with Democrats. They don't love him. Half the party voted for Hillary Clinton, and her people have never fully reconciled themselves to him. But he is what they have.

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Blumenthal's up 56 percent to 31 percent. Before the revelation that, on two or three occasions, Blumenthal made it sound like he served in Vietnam (and the equally shocking revelation that some people thought he was the captain of the Harvard swim team), Blumenthal led 61-28. So he took a little bit of a hit.

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Fed up with X's antics, I gently suggested she do the arithmetic. He'd been in junior high when the war ended in 1975.

Long pause. "Oh my God," she said.

Oh my God, indeed. At first glance, it appeared that the New York Times had uncovered just such an impostor in Connecticut attorney general and Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Richard Blumenthal. In a potentially career-destroying front-page article, Times reporter Raymond Hernandez charged the candidate with repeatedly falsifying his military record to persuade audiences that he served in Vietnam, although he did not.

A Marine reservist, Blumenthal did most of his six years' service in Washington and New Haven. In one instance, the Times had the candidate dead to rights. "We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam," Blumenthal told a 2008 Memorial Day gathering. "And you [veterans] exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it -- Afghanistan or Iraq -- we owe our military men and women unconditional support."

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The New York Times-fueled Richard Blumenthal scandal (on two or three occasions, Blumenthal spoke as if he'd served in Vietnam, when in fact he was serving stateside) left the door wide open for a credible challenger to the all-but-anointed successor to Chris Dodd. GOPer and former Representative Rob Simmons seemed perfectly positioned to take advantage of the situation, because he actually did serve, honorably, in Vietnam, while Linda was graduating college to work for her father-in-law's traveling wrestling show.

Alas, it did not work out for him.

Simmons won 46% of the vote at the convention, but McMahon, who won, is the richest Senate candidate in the nation. Wealthy Connecticut elitist Ann Coulter is not happy with this turn of events.

Simmons is not officially ending his campaign, but he's effectively ceasing campaign activities.

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State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal was never captain of the Harvard University swim team. A 1978 Courant story incorrectly reported that he was -- an error repeated in subsequent Courant stories, including profiles in 1980 and 2004.

[Previously]

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Take George W. Bush, whose controversial service as a Texas Air National Guard pilot was shrouded in mystery, evidently because he wanted to conceal the basic facts of his privileged admission to the TANG and his strange departure from its ranks. In his 2000 campaign autobiography, ghosted by Karen Hughes, Bush claimed that after completing his training in the F-102 fighter plane, "I continued flying with my unit for the next several years." That simple sentence was entirely untrue, according to records eventually released by the Bush campaign, which showed that he had never flown in uniform again after his suspension from active duty in August 1972 for failing to show up for a mandatory physical examination. 

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This was easily the weirdest part of the original Times story on Blumenthal:

In two largely favorable profiles, the Slate article and a magazine article in The Hartford Courant in 2004 with which he cooperated, Mr. Blumenthal is described prominently as having served as captain of the swim team at Harvard. Records at the college show that he was never on the team.

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According to his (current) official bio, "Graham logged six-and-a-half years of service on active duty as an Air Force lawyer." After he left the active duty force, he joined the South Carolina Air National Guard. During the first Gulf War, Graham was called up to act as staff judge advocate at McEntire Air National Guard Base in South Carolina. As staff judge advocate, Graham's duties "included briefing pilots on the law of armed conflict, preparing legal documents for deploying troops, and providing legal services for family members of the South Carolina Air National Guard. " His service never took him out of South Carolina.

And so, naturally, for years afterward, Lindsey Graham referred to himself in his official biography and elsewhere as "an Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm veteran."

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But this week's Richard Blumenthal drama in Connecticut is bringing some apprehension back to the surface.

It remains to be seen whether Blumenthal, who entered his state's Senate race as a white knight poised to save his party from Chris Dodd's collapse, will sustain much permanent damage from a New York Times story that suggested he's embellished his military record. Blumenthal has mounted a vigorous defense and video has now emerged that shows him properly characterizing his service. The story may fizzle out and Blumenthal could return to his dominant position in the polls relatively unscathed.

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The other night, the New York Times ran what looked like a bombshell story: Democratic Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal lied about serving in Vietnam. Except it really was more like Richard Blumenthal allowed people to believe he served in Vietnam, and once or twice he said things that could've been construed as claiming to have served there.

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This is a Rasmussen poll, so it might mean absolutely nothing. (Unless you believe the liberal line against Rasmussen -- that its terribly conservative house effect is intentional -- in which case it means that it's trying to push the "Blumenthal in trouble" narrative while the news is fresh.)

Today, the New York Times ran a follow-up to its story about how every now and then Blumenthal encourages the belief that he fought in Vietnam. (One odd thing is that the story's main source is former Republican congressman Chris Shays, who claims to be very friendly with and admiring of Blumenthal. Shays was also seriously considering a run for the Senate seat himself as of last year.)

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In a nod to the presence of World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon in the race, Quinnipiac says: "Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has 35 to 47-point leads over three Republican candidates for the 2010 U.S. Senate contest, thumping former wrestling executive Linda McMahon 64 – 23 percent, bruising businessman Peter Schiff 66 – 19 percent and smacking former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons 62 – 27 percent."

Many Democrats, though, will be even happier to hear some other results from the same poll. It shows Connecticut residents losing faith in the state's other senator, independent Joe Lieberman. His approval rating is at a dismal 39 percent, 10 percentage points off what it was as recently as November, with 54 percent of respondents saying they disapprove of the job he's doing.

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"Look, it is hard to look into the crystal ball 11 months from Election Day," Gibbs said. Hard -- and also, if you're a Democrat these days, a little scary. The surprising news Tuesday night that Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., wouldn't run again was followed not long afterward by the slightly less surprising news that his Connecticut counterpart Chris Dodd would join him in retirement. Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter announced his retirement, too, and just for good measure, Michigan Lt. Gov. John Cherry said he would sit out the 2010 election as well. Republicans and the media alike declared the sky was falling for the Obama administration and the Democratic Party.

"The real question is whether Harry Reid, now the Senate's most vulnerable Democrat, will follow Chris Dodd's lead and step aside," Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said in a statement. (Take this one to Vegas, in Reid's home state -- he won't.)

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State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the Hill reports, "has begun informing influential members of the state's political class that he will prepare for a run against Lieberman." The Hartford Courant notes that Blumenthal has always coveted a Senate seat, but his path to one had long been blocked by the presence of two Democrats -- Lieberman and Chris Dodd -- in the state's delegation. With Lieberman now an independent who only caucuses with the Democrats, it's no longer taboo to challenge him.

The news was especially interesting to me because I covered the end of the 2006 primary between Lieberman and Ned Lamont, and met Blumenthal at Lieberman headquarters that night. At the time, he supported the incumbent. He eventually endorsed Lamont, but that was essentially mandatory after Lamont's primary victory, and has apparently remained friends with the senator. So it's interesting to see him considering a campaign.

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