Editor's note: To begin our week of blogging, we asked each of our ten finalists to file a post on what they're reading.

In following the news and lead stories over the end of the weekend, one could be forgiven for having the impression that no impending disaster world-wide rivals the one awaiting Democrats on November 2.

Sure, our Sunni allies are defecting back to al-Qaeda in Iraq -- but Sharron Angle told Harry Reid to "man up"in Nevada!

No amount of Sunday football, it seemed, could dislodge the endlessly recurring, "Dems Await Disaster" headline.  (Although a few good football stories did compete--like the Patriots' Tom Brady being blitzed by both Baltimore and Bieber.)

How many different ways can this be said, really? And at what point are the media complicit once more in relentlessly driving a "narrative" (Democrats doomed!) to inevitability?

Like the "narrative" surrounding the Democrats' supposedly "failed" stimulus bill and the supposedly phantom jobs it hasn't created. (Up to 3.3 million according the the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.) So railed conservative Jonah Goldberg in a syndicated column Sunday. Perhaps the stretch of Rhode Island roadway I drove over with my kids the same day -- a bustling stimulus project -- was being re-built by phantoms, too.  

Polls aside, at this point even a casual political observer has the sense that the Democrats have less chance of being rescued from disaster than the (now) actually-rescued Chilean miners had.

For Republicans, the challenge seems to be fighting off, well, sheer giddiness.  Speaking to a weekend GOP gathering in California, Sarah Palin promised that "soon we'll all be dancing." Dancing is very big with the Palins right now; daughter Bristol is still surviving -- barely -- on "Dancing With The Stars."

And never mind Democrats not simply being in a mood to dance come November.  Politico reported that Democrats will be feeling sick -- literally. According to New Hampshire Republican State Rep. Fran Wendelboe, "Democrats will want plenty of antacid on hand."

Rich Whitney, the Illinois Green Party gubernatorial candidate, needs plenty of antacid right now. Or will, when he awakes from the strong sedative his staff no doubt procured for him. 

As first reported by the Chicago Sun Times (and re-read three times by me yesterday), Whitney's name has been misspelled as "Whitey" on electronic voting machines in more than two-dozen Chicago wards -- half of which are in predominantly African American areas of the city. (Officials say the mistake cannot be corrected before Election Day.)

For some Democrats, the stories of woe are more wistful. And oddly riveting.

A well-reported piece in Sunday's New York Times described the lonely and faltering race of embattled Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas. Lincoln trails her Republican opponent by double-digits. In a cold-eyed act of political triage, the national Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has pulled the plug, essentially abandoning her. Lincoln, who's described as maintaining a "determinedly sunny disposition," gamely soldiers on, engaging a voter here, a voter there, her fate all but sealed. Sure, it's just politics. With a hint of Shakespeare...

Read more entries from this round. And come back Friday to vote.

By Ted Reinstein  |  October 18, 2010; 8:08 AM ET  | Category:  Blogging Challenge
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