Looks like she may be, at that:
[Former Governor Linda Lingle’s] favorability is up 5 points to 46% while her negatives have dropped 8 points to 43%. And with that improvement in her image has come an improvement in her standing against her potential opponents. She now trails [Rep. Mazie] Hirono by just 6 points at 48-42, and she actually leads [former Rep. Ed] Case by 2 points at 45-43.
Hirono and Case are probably going to slug it out for the nomination; they’ve already begun to confront each other in entertainingly nasty ways. As that link shows, Hirono’s the establishment choice, while Case… is not; which is kind of funny, because last year Case was the establishment choice in the HI-01 special election. Right up to the point where he and Colleen Hanabusa more or less handed the seat to Charles Djou, and in the process destroyed the last tattered Democratic apotropaic talking point that had been arrayed against DOOM.
OK, purple prose, but you get the point. PPP’s a Democratic mouthpiece these days, so if they’re noting that the race is this bad for the Democrats this far out there’s probably something to it. The real question is, were the Democrats really expecting to have to fight in Hawaii? – Actually, there are two real questions: the other one is, does Barack Obama even care? If Hawaii is in play for the 2012 Presidential election, then the President is doomed anyway.
Moe Lane
PS: I’m not endorsing Linda Lingle; merely noting her website.
Why no endorsement? Is there a primary?
Demosthenes: yup, and I don’t know enough about this one to opine on it. I do expect Lingle to win the primary, though.