Word: doleful
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Jesse Helms must be spinning in his grave. Elizabeth Dole, the wife of former GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole, won Helms' North Carolina Senate seat by a comfortable nine-point margin after he vacated it in 2002. Then in 2006, as head of the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, Dole managed to hand control of the Senate to Democrats by presiding over a surprise loss of six seats. Now Dole is in danger of losing Helms' seat itself to Democratic State Senator Kay Hagan - and perhaps handing the Democrats a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority in the process...
...friends Dole brought on board to celebrate the last 96 hours was Sen. John McCain, who still remembers those days as a highlight of his political life. "He was unleashed," McCain fondly recalled of Dole, during an interview in the spring of 2007. "He knew he was going to lose...
...More than a decade later, McCain now finds himself in a position that appears not too dissimilar to Dole's in 1996. Swing state polls suggest that he is sharply behind in several key swing states, his campaign crowds remain less than overwhelming, and Obama has been outspending him on the airwaves by a margin of 3 to 1. Despite a tightening in some local polls, national tracking polls - which the McCain campaign cited as evidence that the race was getting closer - have begun to widen again...
...McCain is refusing to take the path of Dole. In fact, McCain's underdog role seems to have hardened the resolve of both McCain and the staff around him. Where Dole chose to make the final days of the campaign a celebration with friends, McCain remains focused on the prize, with a fierce intensity that continues to rouse his audiences. "I'm an American and I choose to fight," he calls out at every campaign stop, drawing cheers from the crowds, which tend to number no more than several thousand...
...Dole, by contrast, faced numbers much more dire than McCain in the final weeks of his race. A 1996 Gallup tracking poll found Dole with just 35% of the national popular vote on the eve of election, compared to 51% for Clinton and 8% for Ross Perot. On election day, Dole carried 19 states and 41% of the vote, compared to Clinton's 31 states and 49% share...