Remembering All Politics is Local

And one patch of ice doth not a winter make:

The highly contentious fight over Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing has helped galvanize Republican voters to erase a longstanding Democratic edge in voting enthusiasm, according to a new poll from Marist College for NPR and PBS News.

In the poll, 82 percent of Democrats and 80 percent of Republicans say the upcoming elections are “very important.” That negligible two-point difference in voter enthusiasm is down from a 10-point edge Democrats held when Marist polled that question in July, and much lower than other polling from earlier this fall showed.

This is a national poll, in an election year where there is no national election.  Is this "enthusiasm" really going to bring more voters out for the Fletcher (D)/Culberson (R) race happening just a few hundred yards south of me (I'm on the border of that district)?  Will it now go from "toss up" to "Definitely R" because of this poll?  Will O'Rourke see his lead start to sink as Ted Cruz claims the banner of the One Senator On the Committee From Texas Who Can Save Brett Kavanaugh Because He's Facing Re-Election?  Will other close Congressional races in Texas suddenly turn to red saviors for succor?

Please.

So, generically and across the entire nation, a sampling of 1000 people proves the Democrats are going to lose and the Republicans are going to win everything?  Sure, why not?  I mean, it's not like Democrats are going to be voting to impeach Brett Kavanaugh and probably tax-cheat Donald Trump, is it?  By the way, how much enthusiasm is that tax-cheat story generating for the GOP?  Or Trump's version of Dr. Ford's testimony, at that rally in Mississippi?  Even GOP Senators are running away from that.  But it's got to be a winner in November, right?  It's got to gin up GOP enthusiasm so we don't have a blow out, doesn't it?  It's got to keep the horse-race running, don't it?

Nor a single swallow summer.....*

*(NPR, reporting on this poll, describes the results as "The GOP base has awakened."  Not exactly the same thing as the proles awakening in 1984 (read a book, will ya?), as the GOP base is notoriously smaller numerically than the Democratic base.  So this really is a horse-race story.  Besides, the impetus is Kavanaugh, who will be confirmed or cast aside by Friday.  "Brett who?" is likely to be the response of voters by the end of October, when early voting starts; or a motivator for Democrats who want to see him impeached.  Either way, the effectiveness for the GOP is dubious, except as a thumb-sucker for the pundit class.)