If you’re like me, your head is about to explode from the conflicting polls in the governor’s race. Add the various reports re. Bell’s TV advertising going completely dark, and it’s Dia de los MoFos around here. It got cold overnight–Austin’s gloomy and so am I.

So imagine the thrill when my new best friend Pink Lady at In The Pink Texas put up the latest Zogby poll for a little Halloween treat:

Perry: 36.7%
Bell: 28.5%
Strayhorn: 15%
Friedman: 14.4%
Andy Brown: 14.2%
Lawrence Collins dressing up like Andy Brown for Halloween: Priceless

Now, Pink Lady does mention that she had to “pick [her] jaw up off the floor” after seeing how these results conflict with everything else that’s come out this week. Frankly, her strongest argument comes from the Strayhorn campaign:

This contradicts Carole Strayhorn’s internal poll from last week.

Strayhorn: 65%
Rylander: 20%
Grandma: 15%

Read the entire post here.

My other new best friend, Charles Kuffner over at Off The Kuff, is a little less reassuring this morning, which makes me want a new new best friend. However, in the doom and gloom of How The Fuck Can The Bell Campaign Be Going Dark? (my title, not Kuff’s), Kuff does point out the Paul Burka’s continuing jihad against Bell’s candidacy:

Meanwhile, Paul Burka looks at the latest Zogby Interactive poll for Governor, which as previously noted paints a picture of a much closer race than the Chron Zogby poll does, and he comes up with another reason why not.

The bad news for Bell is that his success seems to have come not at Perry’s expense but at Strayhorn’s.

Dude. All campaign long you’ve said that the reason why Rick Perry is unbeatable despite poll numbers in the 30s is because none of his opponents have been able to coalesce the anti-Perry vote. Now we see Chris Bell doing exactly that – this is what it means when some of Strayhorn’s support migrates to Bell, as was the case when Friedman started losing voters to Bell – and it’s still bad news? Is there anything that could happen in this race that would constitute good news for Bell by your reckoning?

Sorry for the ass-kissing quotes, but it seems more important that you all know what the smart people are saying instead of reading about one woman’s struggle to keep her eyes on the prize by reading Daily Kos sixty-seven times a day while Life During Wartime plays on endless loop.

Finally, if the news about Bell’s advertising is true, the time may have arrived to do a little something with my hair. Who I am to keep my superpowers under wraps if the great state of Texas could be saved by a single bottle of Clairol? Any color suggestions out there?

TX-Gov: Surprisingly, Bell can win this thing

When I started reading, there were 257 comments. I read all of them. (There are 311 comments as I blog this.)

After all this time, thinking that Burnt Orange Report and Pink Dome and In the Pink Texas and Off the Kuff were going to be the only place to read about our governor’s race and explain why I’m willing to put my life in the shitter in some crazed attempt to convince a few more people to get out and vote for Chris Bell. But here was Mr. Netroots hisself, blessing my Bell-mania.

The comments get down to brass tacks pretty quickly. “Fuck Texas” comes about three in. But then follows the greatest thing in the world–other people explaining why this race matters, why the Democrats in Texas deserve our support, why Chris Bell is a genuinely great candidate this year. Finally, we head off into Kinky land. Manna from heaven.

Got to go–time to read the 58 comments that came in since supper.

Some days, being a Texas Democrat isn’t all bad. Today is that day.

Dog. Dawg. However you spell it, however you pronounce it, according to an AP story embedded in chrisbell.com, Bill Clinton is coming to campaign for Chris Bell. So there you have it–the national Dems must sense that we in Texas are tired of standing alone, fighting alone, losing alone, and standing up again alone.

According to AP:

His campaign also spread other positive news Friday for his candidacy. Wealthy trial lawyer John O’Quinn helped in his debate preparation, signaling some of his money could be coming into Bell’s camp in the final weeks of the race. Also, former President Bill Clinton plans to campaign with Bell, his aides said.

I’ve emailed a couple people at the Bell campaign (who must be insanely busy right now, given the seriously positive news reports on Bell’s performance in the debate) to find out if it’s true. If it is, well, my flashback to 1992 might continue. No, Chris Bell is not going to turn into the most gifted politician of his generation. But he might just figure out how to get elected governor. And that, my friends, could be Texas’ first step towards redemption.

Here’s the link to the story–I’m still trying to find it somewhere other than the Bell website. [Note: The Statesman website has posted he AP story, 5:17 Saturday afternoon.] Further thoughts on the debate later.