Million dollar babies

Kevin Drum notes that Meg Whitman is having an easy time protecting her flank from the Right because the state GOP has signed on to her money. But he also notes that she's having an especially easy time because she's running against a ghost Democrat.

This is the damnedest campaign I've seen in a long time. Granted, Labor Day isn't until next week, and Brown simply doesn't have the kind of money that Whitman does. But so far I've barely heard a peep out of him, and the peeps I have heard have been nothing more than the most soporific kinds of generalities. It's almost as if he's decided he's too tired to bother campaigning at all, and that's really not the image a 72-year-old career politician wants to send out. I sure hope there's some kind of deep strategy here that I'm not privy to. Whitman is a deeply cynical campaigner, but she has enough money to keep most of the public from seeing that. If Brown doesn't start beating her up soon, it's going to be too late.

That sounds right to me, and I'll tell you why I know -- because the same dynamic is happening here in the Connecticut Senate race. If Richard Blumenthal thinks he can coast his way based on his name and laurels as Attny General, then he's going to be very disappointed. The Horror Show that opposes him may be down in the polls but she is very likely to make good on her vow to spend $50 million of her own money on the campaign this Fall. And I gotta tell you, I'm already seeing a lot of Linda! bumper stickers on cars around the state.