Blurring Party Lines

Oregon's Gordon Smith, a Republican Senator facing a tough re-election batle, is up with another ad touting his legislative collaboration with...Barack Obama (you can watch the earlier one here).

The new ad also cites Sen. Smith's work with -- wait for it -- John Kerry on a housing bill. And it notes that Smith opposed President Bush on cuts to health care funding.

NPR's Ken Rudin gives Smith an edge in November, but this election won't be a gimme for a GOP incumbent in an enthusiastically blue state. Oregon has voted Democratic in every Presidential election since 1988, and Obama drummed up an estimated 72,000-person audience at a rally in Portland in May -- his biggest turnout yet other than Berlin. So we can see why pragmatism would drive Smith to align himself with a rockstar Democrat and disassociate from the unpopular President.

But still. John Kerry? He still needs Republicans to vote for him, right??