Three scenarios of what will happen June 8

By Jon Ralston

Wednesday, May 26, 2010 | 2:01 a.m.

Harry Reid is dead, one in an occasional series:

Two weeks until the long and winding road finally leads us to the door of a new campaign, one that will feature a GOP nominee sure to be feted as the Second Coming by national Republicans and scorched as a Mephistophelean minion by the Reid Machine. And where are we — closer to the bell tolling for the Senate majority leader or to the miraculous reanimation of a political corpse?

Only three outcomes seem possible:

1. Race-long front-runner Sue Lowden, who turned arsonist on herself and lit fires over chickens (three alarm) and a bus (one alarm), is a singed survivor.

2. Presumed also-ran Sharron Angle, her campaign turbocharged by the Tea Party Express and the Club for Growth, with a little help from Team Reid, is the surprise nominee.

3. The forgotten man, Danny Tarkanian, standing to the side as the two women try to destroy each other and focusing on the primary-popular illegal immigration issue, sneaks through.

Most insiders and astute observers see 1 or 2 as more likely than 3, but it’s hard to say anything is likely in what has become a nationally watched and ridiculed race to face the most Machiavellian politician Nevada has known. Hello, prince, I’d like you to meet the lady with the chickens or the lady with the far-right positions or the man with the coach’s name.

There must be few hirsute folks left at the National Republican Senatorial Committee these days as they have been pulling out their hair for weeks over the unfathomable Lowden campaign. The NRSC folks had played the Switzerland game but it was well-known they preferred Lowden — and Reid has worried about her the most, as evidenced by his still-ongoing daily broadsides. Lowden surely will be damaged by the primary, but the Reid folks still seem to think that despite her self-inflicted carnage, she will be the one the national GOP sees as having credibility in the post-June 8 world.

For some time, the D.C. conventional wisdom, as evidenced by New York Sen. Chuck Schumer’s lurking like a grim reaper behind the majority leader, smiling sincerely at the leader with his scythe out of sight, has been that Reid cannot be re-elected. In the hallways of the Capitol and the bistros of K Street, the whispers have been heard for months: The majority leader is not coming back.

Then, with Lowden manufacturing unnecessary trouble for herself and Angle enlivened by the national Tea Party folks, the speculation has begun that Reid may have a path to survival. Politico published a piece this week questioning whether Angle could win the general election. Time linked and headlined the story: “The Woman Who Can Save Harry Reid.” And The Daily Caller had a story this week that focused on the “Is Angle mainstream?” angle.

Lowden is using all of this to try to stem the tide, hoping the pitch that Reid fears her and wants Angle will sway GOP primary voters. The Club for Growth has a TV buy and the Tea Party Express soon will, trying to push Angle over the finish line. And Tarkanian claims his internal polls show him tied with Lowden — but candidates always say that about their internal polls.

Meanwhile, people are voting and may not be paying much attention to any of this. Lowden and, perhaps, Tarkanian need a large Clark County turnout to offset Renoite Angle’s strength up north. (Let’s not forget, though, that voters in rural and Northern Nevada also have had practice voting against Angle, too, as she has lost congressional and state Senate primaries up there. Familiarity in politics can — and sooner or later does — breed contempt.)

A high Clark County turnout, which could save Lowden or Tarkanian, does not appear to be happening, while there is record early-voting turnout in Washoe County and rural Nevada — the raw numbers are much smaller than in Clark, but may be a sign of enthusiasm. And when the final numbers are in June 8, more than half of the GOP votes are expected to be cast outside of Southern Nevada.

The possibility cannot be discounted that it doesn’t matter who the Republicans nominate, that we have had to suffer through endless Lowden chicken jokes, Angle protestations of mainstreamness and Tarkanian’s border-state patter for nothing. That is, it is possible that the majority leader, through being an incumbent of four decades in Nevada’s politics, bereft of much voter appeal or charisma and running in an ominous year for Democrats, really cannot be revived. Reid may be dead no matter who wins June 8.

But the Republicans sure are trying to prove otherwise.