Will he slip hard enough, fast enough?

From AP:

Arnold Schwarzenegger entered the last full day of campaigning for the governorship as a poll showed his support slipping and more women surfaced to accuse the actor of groping them.

Schwarzenegger, who continued to blame the scandal on political dirty tricks, said he wouldn't say anything more about sexual harassment claims, now made by a total of 15 women, until after the election.

"I can get into all of the specifics and find out what is really going on," he told "Dateline NBC" Sunday night. "But right now I'm just really occupied with the campaign."

I can't believe he's brushing them off. At first it appeared like he was apologizing, saying he had learned to do better (lame as that is). Now he's attacking the credibility of these people, and acting like he didn't do much. Appalling.

I can only hope voters are equally appalled.

He's still ahead, but tightening:

A Knight Ridder poll released late Saturday found support for recalling Davis might be slipping, although 54 percent favored removing him while 41 percent were opposed. . . .

The pollsters also found that the percentage of people saying they would definitely vote to oust Davis dropped from 52 percent Wednesday, a day before the allegations against Schwarzenegger began surfacing, to 44 percent Saturday. The poll surveyed 284 people on Wednesday and 200 on Saturday; the margin of error for each day's sample was not released.

The overall poll indicated Schwarzenegger ahead of Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, the leading Democrat among the replacement candidates, with 36 percent support to 29 percent.

A poll conducted Sept. 29 and Oct. 1 by the Field Research Corp. had found Schwarzenegger with a 10-point lead over Bustamante -- 36 percent compared with 26 percent. That poll surveyed 465 likely voters and had a margin of sampling error of 5 percentage points.

Masterpiece Theatre began its new season Sunday night.

I just got to my email from them, too late for tonight's show (but how did Tivo miss it?)

These look inviting for this fall:

Sunday, October 12, 2003

WARRIOR QUEEN

Queen Boudica, a real-life Braveheart, leads the Celtic Britons in a revolt against the Roman Empire, circa 60 A.D.

 

Sundays, November 2 + 9, 2003

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO

A magnificent new version of Boris Pasternak's famous novel, now presented in its full richness of detail in a script by celebrated screenwriter Andrew Davies.

 

Sunday, December 14, 2003

THE ROAD FROM COORAIN

Based on Jill Ker Conway's best-selling memoir, The Road from Coorain is an extraordinary life story that begins with her childhood on her parents' sheep ranch in New South Wales, Australia, and takes her to the brink of a brilliant career in academia. An inspiring and haunting work, the film stars Juliet Stevenson (Bend It Like Beckham; Mona Lisa Smile) as Jill's mother Eve who creates an island of civilization on the parched Australian plains and then crumples under the weight of family tragedy.

If you missed THE FORSYTE SAGA last fall, they are repeating it (Sundays) December 21 through February 1, 2004, as a setup for THE FORSYTE SAGA 2, coming in the spring. Great stuff. Don't miss either one.

Speaking of presidential blogs, someone purporting to be from the Kucinich camp, but more likely a Republican is hacking away at the

At 2:16 a.m., they began hitting the latest comment thread every minute or two with the same ridiculous post, mainly consisting of three words repeated for about two screens each time. (I won't broadcast it furhter here.) They have filled dozens of screens so far.

Unfortunate. I spent some time over at the Kerry blog about a month ago, where some people claiming to be Howard Dean backers were stirring up animosity. It's a simple strategy for dirty-tricks-minded Republicans to breed dissent among the Dems. Don't be taken in.

Salon's Scott Rosenberg has a thought-provoking commentary from a blogging conference, which featured a panel of bloggers from the presidential campaign's including Matthew Gross of the Dean blog:

Money raised is usually considered the ultimate yardstick of campaign success. But conference organizer Dave Winer pushed the speakers: Weren't they just using the Internet to raise money to buy TV ads? Why take money from the bright new distributed world of the Net only to feed it back into the Big Media machine? Why couldn't the candidates commit to responding to one question from blog visitors every day?

I think the panelists were all flummoxed by this line of questioning . . .

Read it. I think you'll find it interesting. I did. (And I added a comment in response.)