dkSez : : : : : : Don Kahle’s blog

If Barack Obama can somehow deal a death blow to Hillary in the next two weeks, it could help Jim Torrey’s campaign to challenge Kitty Piercy for mayor of Eugene. Here’s how. If Obama stays close in Pennsylvania, scoops up the endorsement of John Edwards on the way to a large-margin victory in North Carolina, and then follows it with a drubbing of Hillary in Indiana, then the sound you hear will be the “fat lady” singing. Hillary might even at that point concede. That leads to two changes, and both help Torrey. First, the national campaigns won’t be buying TV spots in Oregon, freeing up lots of ad space for Torrey to demonstrate his deeper pockets. He won’t have this same advantage if the national campaign is still pouring money into the television stations, because they’ll run out of inventory before Torrey runs out of money. But the second dynamic could be larger. All those Eugene liberals who were looking forward to having their vote count for Obama/Hillary — they will now feel dispirited, depressed. Their vote won’t matter after all. So they’ll stay home. They may forget that their vote would have still counted locally, until they wake in late May and learn that the Eugene political pendulum has swung away from them.