Hello and welcome to this late political gab fest for Friday, October 8th, 2010.

This is a very lonely, lonely David Plotz here in Washington, alone bereft.

Not because John and Emily can't stand me, but because Emily is a New Haven as usual. And John,

because he's an intrepid reporter, is in Nevada right now doing reporting on the fantastic

Senate race, which we're going to hear about very shortly. This Gab Fest is going to have three

topics, as always. The first is going to be the sense among some people that perhaps the Democrats are catching up to the Republicans and they build up to the midterm.

And we'll talk about that in Nevada Senate race.

The second topic will be the spat in Alaska between the Palins and the Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller. And the third

topic will be an op-ed that Bill Crystal and a couple of other conservative diehards wrote

for the Wall Street Journal this week about defense spending. And then we'll have cocktail chatter.

But before we do the first topic, just a reminder, we have a live show next week in New York

City. It's sold out. But those of you who have tickets, we really look forward to seeing you

on Wednesday, October 13th in some exciting place in the Tribeca downtown, Tribeca.

The Tribeca 92nd Street, Y. Good luck getting there.

And then we're also going to do this live show in Ann Arbor on November 10th.

And we're going to have more details about tickets and location coming soon.

But it's going to be on November 10th.

It's going to be at the law school, the University of Michigan.

Tickets are almost certainly going to be free. And we really want you to come if you're in the area. So, topic one,

John, take it away. What's happening with the Democrats? Have the dynamics of the midterm elections

changed? Well, this is something that we've been talking about and writing about for the last few weeks because after Labor Day, there were both tiny signs and also traditionally everybody was looking out for Democrats to come home in that period.

They pay a little more attention. They tend to be late starting in terms of their political interests, and also because this is the year where Republicans have all the enthusiasm, you would expect them to break late.

...