Check out this YouTube video of Ohio Senator Mike DeWine (R) greeting the voters at a campaign stop in Lorain County.

Sen. DeWine’s rubber stamp has just about dried out. It looks like Rep. Sherrod Brown (D) will defeat him on November 7th. The polls for Rep. Brown look good!

This is what a campaign with momentum looks like in the final days!

As the nation waits with baited breath on November 7 to see if Ohio, America’s quintessential swing state, turns from red to blue, it increasingly looks like frustrated voters may have to wait days before knowing who are the winners of the contests for Governor and U.S. Senate.

Since at least the 2004 presidential election, Ohio has been known for voting practices that would make a backwater banana republic blush. And it looks like despite millions spent on new technology, things just haven’t gotten any better. The primary elections were a disaster, and now that Ohio has a no-excuse law for absentee ballots on the books, county election boards simply do not have the capacity to count the votes in a quick, accurate manner.

The situation is not helped by the fact that J. Kenneth Blackwell, all but certain to suffer a landslide defeat in the governor’s election, refuses to allow counties to scan in the absentee ballots prior to Election Day. The reason for this is simple: Blackwell and his struggling Republican pal Mike DeWine will lose heavily in Ohio’s urban counties, and the longer the results are delayed, the more doubt the GOP can cast on the outcome of the elections.

Blackwell’s self-serving interpretation of the law is an outrage, but with November 7 just around the corner, county election officials have neither the time nor the inclination to make Blackwell do what’s right.

It looks like November 7 could be a banner night for Congressmen Sherrod Brown and Ted Strickland. If they win, let’s hope we all know it before Santa gives Karl Rove a lump of coal.

Knowing they are on the verge of suffering massive election losses at every level of government, the Republicans have reached the point where, monkey-like, in many campaigns they are simply flinging their own waste at the wall and hoping something sticks.

It would obviously be impossible to chronicle every ad of this caliber in one brief blog post. Nor would every negative ad qualify; political realism dictates that many ads from both sides will be riddled with remarkable truth-stretching. We speak now only of ads that contain outright lies or logic so laughably flawed that it would get one expelled from a first-year philosophy course at any decent university.

One prime example is a recent ad run by the NRSC claiming Ohio Senate candidate, Rep. Sherrod Brown, hadn’t paid his unemployment taxes in 13 years. And although Mike DeWine improbably told Ohioans to “read his lips,” (always a good idea for Republican politicians), the ads were false and TV stations pulled them shortly before the NRSC did. This ad was so egregious it earned DeWine the appellation of “Mud-Loving Mike DeWine” from the Dayton Daily News.

But our favorite comes from Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional district, where the NRCC has engaged in bizarre flights of fantasy to discredit the honorable life of businessman and physician, Dr. Steve Kagen. The first claim was that Kagen was a big bully for forcing patients who stiffed him to pay up; as The Capital Times’ Joel McNally noted, this is surely a novel argument coming from Republicans, who have otherwise rarely been known to side with the Jean Valjeans of this world.

When that didn’t work, Republicans have settled for trying to impugn Steve Kagen’s character using the tried-and-true trickery of guilt by association. Since Steve Kagen’s lawyer has done criminal law work, says the NRCC, Kagen’s evil-doing mind surely holds a vast reservoir of sympathy for serial killers and rapists. This claim is of course preposterous, but is an excellent sign of how desperate the GOP is and why it must lose this November.

There’s blood in the water for Republicans. Adam Nagourney of the New York Times has a piece this morning outlining the Republicans’ new strategy for 2006: stop the bleeding! Republicans have historically had the financial advantage leading up to elections and this has allowed them to stay competitive and fight for all seats throughout the country.

While they still have the financial edge, it seems that the GOP is looking to cut its losses and and stop the Democratic onslaught. This strategy will most likely have a significant impact on Sherrod Brown in Ohio where he is beginning to pull away from Senator Mike DeWine.

From the NYTimes:

Senior Republican leaders have concluded that Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio, a pivotal state in this year’s fierce midterm election battles, is likely to be heading for defeat and are moving to reduce financial support for his race and divert party money to other embattled Republican senators, party officials said.

The decision to effectively write off Mr. DeWine’s seat, after a series of internal Republican polls showed him falling behind his Democratic challenger, is part of a fluid series of choices by top leaders in both parties as they set the strategic framework of the campaign’s final three weeks, signaling, by where they are spending television money and other resources, the Senate and House races where they believe they have the best chances of success.

Republicans are now pinning their hopes of holding the Senate on three states — Missouri, Tennessee and, with Ohio off the table, probably Virginia — while trying to hold on to the House by pouring money into districts where Republicans have a strong historical or registration advantage, party officials said Sunday. Republicans also said they would run advertisements in New Jersey this week to test the vulnerability of Senator Robert Menendez, one of the few Democrats who appear endangered.

To read the rest of the NYTimes article click here.

This thing is FAR from over and now is the time to get to work to ensure that Democrats capitalize on this momentum.

Sen. Mike DeWine (R-OH) is going to be defeated by Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) in under 30 days.

Rep. Brown has been hit hard by the GOP with ads that are misleading. DeWine even had his ad people doctor photos of the World Trade Center to add more drama to the 30-second spot.

Today, Brown hit back with another really good ad. Check it out.

Stay tuned for DoubleSpeak’s interview with Rep. Brown - It will be up shortly.

Below is a clever ad that’s currently running in Ohio. It’s called “Together.”

As the Republican House of Cards threatens to blow over from a strong wind of corruption and incompetence at the federal level, it’s easy to forget how important the many hotly contested gubernatorial contests are this year.

The prospect of more Democratic governors isn’t nearly as sexy as the idea of Democrats running one or both houses of Congress. Yet much of the progressive change that happens in America takes place at the state level.

Wisconsin and Ohio exemplify just how important gubernatorial elections can be to the culture and economic future of the States. Last night’s gubernatorial debate in Milwaukee was an impressive battle between two polished politicos: Governor Jim Doyle and Congressman Mark Green. One of Doyle’s most devastating arguments was his blunt warning that many researchers will simply look elsewhere for jobs if Mark green wins the election. Although Wisconsin is the original home of stem cell research, the Christianist wing of the GOP controls the state legislature. Mark Green tries to pretend he’s in favor of stem-cell research, but he’s a rabidly anti-choice candidate who opposes abortions even in the case of rape or incest, as well as any medical advances that Jerry Falwell wouldn’t approve of. Jim Doyle represents a high-tech future of medical progress; Mark Green promises only a Bible and more tax cuts for special interests to grow Wisconsin.

In Ohio, Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell is easily the most extreme candidate nominated for governor in the history of the state. Blackwell is militantly anti-gay and anti-choice; much of Ohio’s GLBT community will feel unable to stay if he wins. College professors who happen to be gay have already fled Ohio since voters passed a gay marriage ban in 2004. The constitutional amendment bans not only gay marriage but equal benefits to gay state employees. Luckily, since Democrat Ted Strickland has a double-digit lead in every poll taken, this shouldn’t come to pass.

Americans vote with their feet, and unless Ohio and Wisconsin go blue this fall, both states will be drained of some of their most economically productive citizens. Neither state’s economy can afford such a body blow.