There's a great disturbance in the Force over this new Quinnipiac Poll that shows Tailgunner Ted Cruz nine points ahead of Congressman Beto O'Rourke in the race for the U.S. Senate in Texas. The level of shock probably has something to do with the fact that, by all available evidence, O'Rourke has had a terrific month while the Cruz campaign has been banging around between humiliation and embarrassment over that same space of time.

It's important to remember at this time that O'Rourke started out as a considerable underdog, and that he has known from the start that this was a long push up a dirt road. My feeling is that this Q-poll is just a touch hinky—as the Texas Tribune points out, this poll sampled likely voters as opposed to the previous two, which sampled registered voters—and that it is far more likely that this is a four-to-six point race at the moment. Further, the Cruz campaign, and the senator himself, are not acting as though they know they have a nine-point lead. O'Rourke is still an underdog, but that has been the case since he announced, and this is still Texas.

Bill Clark Getty Images

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, alma mammy's law school announced its most recent findings, and they are not good news for Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage its midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, nor are they a happy place for the state's GOP in general. To start with, incumbent Democratic U.S. senator Tammy Baldwin has opened an 11-point gap over Republican Leah Vukmir, which is a nine-point bump since the same poll was taken in August. Most of this comes from a huge 54-38 lead Baldwin has opened up among the state's independent voters. And all of it comes after a month's worth of heavy negative advertising both ways, which seems to have been decidedly to Vukmir's disadvantage. Her favorability in this latest poll is down to 26 percent, which is down in water moccasin territory.



And, as for Governor Walker, he's plainly got some work to do if he wants to continue demolishing Wisconsin's legacy of progressive government. He's fallen behind, 49-44, to Democratic candidate Tony Evers. (There's also a Libertarian candidate named Phil Anderson who is polling at six percent, which is worth keeping an eye on as we come into the far turn.) Walker's favorability is underwater at 45-52, a steep drop from his 46-42 numbers in August. And, at the moment, he's floundering around trying to come up with some sort of Potemkin coverage for pre-existing conditions that he can square with the fact that he's signed onto the lawsuit that would demolish the Affordable Care Act. This is not helping.

Rebecca Kleefisch Darren Hauck Getty Images

Neither is the fact that Walker's lieutenant-governor, Rebecca Kleefisch, is something of a helium balloon. (During the now-defunct John Doe investigation into Walker, as the essential Cognitive Dissonance blog reminds us, it was revealed through documents that even Walker thought Kleefisch had to be tied down to keep her from floating away.) Recently, she accused her opponent, Mandela Barnes, of kneeling when the National Anthem was played at the Wisconsin State Fair. If this happened, of course, there only would be approximately 5,000 witnesses, most of whom would have cellphones equipped with cameras. None of these have appeared as yet to back up Kleefisch's laughable canard. From The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Kleefisch claimed the kneeling incident happened at the opening of the Wisconsin State Fair at a ceremony Kleefisch and Barnes attended. In an interview, Barnes denied it happened and said "the whole damn program would have stopped" if he had taken a knee at the event. "I was around so many people. I was right next to the cameras," Barnes said. "This is too stupid to respond to."

Barnes also said that this would have been like him saying, without a scintilla of evidence, that he saw Kleefisch "buying a tiki torch at Menard's." (Ed Note: Nice local product placement, Mr. Barnes.) Not content with throwing around baseless and easily disproved accusations, Kleefisch dug in on the electric Twitter machine and said...well...something.

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But here’s the thing: the National Anthem is not like tiki torches. It’s a big deal that matters. (Just like abortions are not like tonsillectomies.) — Rebecca Kleefisch (@RebeccaforReal) September 17, 2018

The next month is going to be for political meth heads only.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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