Today's Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal is running a piece today entitled "The ‘Keystone’ State: South Dakota? As Democrat Sen. Daschle Fights for His Seat, Republicans Lustily Eye Control of Congress." Here are some excerpts:

Three years in the making, this Senate race is second only to the battle for the White House in national significance, and it grows more important each day. South Dakota could decide not only the Democratic leader’s fate, but also which party controls the Senate next year.

Didn't I just say this was really important?! Now tell your friends to pay attention.

The 56-year-old senator is outwardly confident, with a narrow lead in most polls and a bigger war chest. Still, the onetime prairie populist is running scared and has adopted a strategy based more on camouflage than the combat of Washington.

His stump speech scarcely mentions Iraq and focuses on who can funnel the most federal dollars to South Dakota. TV ads recycle film of the senator hugging Mr. Bush after the 2001 attacks. A radio spot suggests Mr. Daschle masterminded the $146 billion package of tax cuts the president signed on the campaign trail last week. “It was Sen. Daschle who used his clout to bring Republicans and Democrats together to pass new tax cuts for the middle class,” the announcer says. “That’s real leadership.”

Democrats wince at such tactics. But Mr. Daschle is foremost a survivor caught in a remarkable power struggle with the White House.

I think I remember Sibby using the term "camouflage" long before the Journal with regard to Daschle's recent hunting ad (Daschle gets an "F" from the NRA). Speaking of camouflage:

Unlike George McGovern, another South Dakota Democrat who lost his seat after going national, Mr. Daschle has been careful to come home and protect his base. But his purchase of a multimillion-dollar home in Washington with his lobbyist wife, Linda, raised eyebrows. And while he repeatedly speaks of abortion as a “tragedy,” he signed an appeal for contributions to Naral, an abortion-rights organization, in an effort to help then-Sen. Jean Carnahan in her 2002 re-election campaign in Missouri.