Five Signs Your Campaign Is Toast
As the midterm-election season winds down and voter attitudes harden, some races are too close to call. Others are painfully easy to call—the ones where campaign headquarters seem to be emitting chaos, disarray, and sometimes outright surrender. Here is NEWSWEEK's five-step self-diagnostic manual for candidates to tell whether they're toast.
Usually, when Democratic candidates have their names in the news alongside Bill Clinton these days, it's a good sign. Not so for Florida Senate candidate Kendrick Meek, who is polling at around 15 percent, according to Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight forecast. Politico reported Thursday that the former president (who is now more popular than President Obama) recently tried to persuade Meek to drop out of Florida's three-horse race. The strategy makes good sense for Democrats. If Meek, a Democrat who represents a Miami-area district in the House, were to withdraw, it could hurt Republican nominee Marco Rubio by pushing more Democratic voters to support Gov. Charlie Crist's independent bid. Whether Clinton actually did urge Meek to withdraw and endorse Crist is something even the president's staffers are confused about--on Thursday Clinton's spokesman said he did urge Meek to withdraw, then on Friday Clinton denied it. Meek also denies it in the video above, but it's never good when speculation about whether you're going to quit becomes the biggest piece of news about your campaign.
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