The always-excellent Buffalo Pundit makes an interesting observation: the republican opponent of Alice Kryzan in the 26th Congressional district is refusing to debate her. Now, in case you think you've heard that story before, you have: (R) challenger Dennis Delano is refusing to debate Senator Bill Stachowski, with the refreshingly stupid argument that “Debates are what career politicians do, and I’m not a career politician."

These reactions to, gasp, debates, are like something out of a seventies horror flick, with republicans playing the role of the unclean thing threatened with a bottle of holy water. You'd think, as someone of average intelligence, that debating is a useful skill for a legislator. Apparently, for our most worthy opponents, it's not a skill they'd like you to either observe or test.

On the web: Alice Kryzan for Congress

Someone was just kind enough to email me the results of a new poll conducted in NY-26 by Survey USA, generally considered one of the more reliable pollsters; the results look bad for Democrats, with our nominee, Alice Kryzan, getting crushed by eleven points, 48% to 37%. Long story short, she loses every polled demographic except Democrats, but even among her own party's supporters, she only garners 71% support. And in a year where youth turnout is expected to shatter all records, Kryzan loses the 18-34 demo by 58% to 29%. These are Mondale-Ferraro numbers.

So I suppose now's as good a time as any to say thank you to repeat loser Jack Davis for spending literally millions of dollars to trash netroots candidate, teacher and Iraq veteran Jon Powers. Awesome job.

Once again: sometimes, the biggest obstacle to Democratic victories are other Democrats.

The poll PDF is attached to this post.