Joining the pessimist club

I wish I could disagree with this post from The Opinion Mill, but I can’t. The reality — as witnessed here in New Jersey, a certified blue state, where we may lose a Senate seat we have held since 1982.

The sitting senator, former U.S. Rep. Bob Mendendez has been dogged in recent weeks by the specter of an alleged federal probe — an allegation that the challenger, Tom Kean Jr., son of the popular former governor and a state senator from Westfield, has made the raison d’etre of his campaign. While the alleged probe is probably just a load of hoakam, it has had legs — because of the desultory reputation of Hudson County politicians, because of the incumbent’s low name-recognition and because Sen. Menendez has a reputation for hardball politics.

I’m not saying that he will lose — the Kean camp has run a remarkably inept campaign and the challenger has sullied the reputation he owned (perhaps undeservedly) as a nice guy by crawling into the mud and playing by Rove’s Rules.

My sense is that Sen. Menendez will win, possibly by 6 or 8 percentage points, but I have the same feeling I had when the Mets failed to score after that Endy Chavez catch in game seven of the National League Championship Series — and we all know how that ended.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet