See this piece appearing under the banner "Tom in New Trouble" and entitled "Daschle Desperation." Note the statements about Daschle's questionable prospects of remaining minority leader:
For months, the Senate halls have been awash in rumors that Democrats were looking to dump Daschle as their leader, replaced, most likely by either Sen. Chris Dodd or Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Those rumors were strong enough to resonate all the way back to South Dakota, where voters -- and, more importantly, campaign donors -- were expressing doubts about supporting a sitting senator who would be losing influence instead of gaining it.Such talk is probably one of the reasons Daschle can't seem to gain a simple majority of support among likely voters in just every poll being taken in the state. In fact, after spending more than $5 million in media buys and campaigning, Daschle saw his five percent lead (48-43 percent) over Republican John Thune remain unchanged.
"It was discouraging," says a Democratic leadership staffer in the Senate. "Those numbers didn't move an inch, and for the first time in a while, even his most loyal supporters up here were thinking Daschle wasn't going to make it."
According to a Washington-based Daschle staffer, fundraising at home was becoming an issue: "We're not pulling in what we should be at this stage of the race. It's troubling."
The article then goes on to discuss this problem. Read the whole thing, as Professor Reynolds would say.
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