IA-Sen: Bruce Braley criticizes Grassley as ‘a farmer from Iowa’

[LeBron]

This......is bad. He just had his own Romney moment, only "farmers from Iowa" instead of the "47%."

Thankfully the GOP candidates are awful, but as they build name ID and the IA GOP tries to destroy Braley with this tape, this shifted right back to lean D which puts a drastic wound on yet another seat we'll need to put money into. To make it worse, Grassley has a 62% favorable rating among voters. A lot of pessimism and fear to he's offering that crowd by offering up the idea that Dems could lose the Senate and Grassley becomes Judiciary Chairman. This would help him if there were more lawyers than farmers, but yeah, I'm not happy about this.

[LeBron]

Just when we thought it got a tad risky for Democratic chances here, Joni Ernst, the Republican front runner for the nomination gives Mitch McConnell a run for his money because she released one of her first ads stressing how she wants to repeal Obamacare and castrates pigs for a living. She's also being endorsed by Mitt Romney himself who can be connected to Braley for their "secret" video tapes, so yeah....I'm keeping this at likely D then.

[LeBron]

Just when we thought it got a tad risky for Democratic chances here, Joni Ernst, the Republican front runner for the nomination gives Mitch McConnell a run for his money because she released one of her first ads stressing how she wants to repeal Obamacare and castrates pigs for a living. She's also being endorsed by Mitt Romney himself who can be connected to Braley for their "secret" video tapes, so yeah....I'm keeping this at likely D then.

Only an idiot talks about castration in an ad and compares it to going to Congress. If this is a powerhouse candidate, I would hate to see a bad one.

Oh I'm not done though! I just found out that Sarah Palin endorsed Ernst today saying, "If Nebraska’s Deb Fischer can see through the bull in Washington, then Iowa’s Joni Ernst can help her cut through the pork." And she's likely to be the nominee, to. Schaben's, Clovis' and Whitaker's chances are low and have failed to gain traction and her only real competition will be against well-funded and wealthy Mark Jacobs, so he's their only hope for the GOP not to screw up this race here. The problem for Jacobs is if this primary goes to convention, Ernst will get nominated for sure and we can keep this in the Democratic column despite the gaffe.

[LeBron]

She's also an IRS conspiratist and for her, the Branstad backing certainly won't help anymore in getting a few crossover votes given that he's scandal-plagued now. To give her some benefit of the doubt though, her website doesn't even mention the Palin or Romney endorsements and only those of state legislators. Reynolds or Latham could have made this seat competitive, but with Jacobs self-funding and Ernst's party support and help from individual donors, it could be close in the primary, but either way, one thinks women only care about emotions in a candidate while the other is proud of castrating hogs. This seat will be safe for Braley in due time.

[LeBron]

Apparently besides supporting a Personhood Amendment that prohibits abortion in all cases and supporting a Federal Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment, I found out Ernst also backs abolishing the Dept. of Education, still believes Iraq had WMDs in hand (and then took it back), and then her moment on the debate stage involving her offensive UCSB comments.

Yeah....so given the fact that she certainly qualifies as a gaffer, the fact that she's a woman and has establishment/Tea Party support won't be able to get her across the finish line. IA and MI could have been made competitive, but putting up female GOP nominees is only a small baby step for the party. Being awful, far-right conservatives automatically cancels out that woman advantage in these 2 races and really, Ernst and Land are treating these races as if they'll be cakewalks for them against Braley and Peters. Both IA and MI are somewhere in between lean D and likely D at this point.