Very interesting piece  (Roll Call–sub. required) on how Barack Obama could help Democratic Senate nominee Kay Hagan overcome incumbent Liddy Dole:

Packed with tens of thousands of newly registered Democratic voters, Sen. Elizabeth Dole’s (R-N.C.) train to a second term may have already left the station.

Along with a handful of other typical Southern GOP strongholds, black voters in Dole’s home state are expected to turn out en masse for the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), perhaps undoing the wide margins of victory President Bush twice enjoyed in North Carolina and possibly putting Dole out of work in the process.

“In terms of the Obama factor, it’s anyone’s guess whether [North Carolina] will be one of his targets at the end of the day — there’s a lot of head fakes going on,” a North Carolina Republican operative said. “We’re going to count on the African-American vote to be huge.”

Just how big the black voter turnout in North Carolina will be is anyone’s guess, but the early indicators are staggering. Making up more than one-fifth of the state — nearly twice the national average — North Carolina’s black population likely is disproportionally represented in the 2.6 million Democratic voters who are registered in the state so far this cycle. In contrast, Republicans have 1.9 million registered voters and 1.24 million North Carolinians are registered as “unaffiliated,” according to the North Carolina State Board of Elections.

Democrats have registered 121,000 new voters since the beginning of the year, and Republicans have registered about 13,000.

That disparity tells you all you need to know about what’s going on. Polls show Hagan and Dole neck and neck, within the margin of error. And Obama’s staff has enough money to do a huge registration drive, put together a top-flight field operation and stay on the air. So Dole’s people are right to be worried about the down-ballot effect.

Finally, I really enjoyed this quote from the an overconfident Republican:

“The only way Sen. Dole loses this race is from a massive tsunami-type political environment,” the source said.

After Democratic wins in former Speaker of the House Denny Hastert’s district, and blood-red districts in Louisiana and Mississippi, I’m not sure what this guy/gal thinks is going on this year, but "massive tsunami-type political environment" might just be an understatement.