Ebola Democrats’ “October Surprise”?

"I want the American people to know that our experts, here at the CDC and across our government, agree that the chances of an Ebola outbreak here in the United States are extremely low."

--Barack Obama, September 16, 2014

I suggested earlier here that Barack Obama’s “September (or October) Surprise” was going to be a grand alliance against Islamic State that included current enemy Iran.

I was wrong. There is too much internal U.S. opposition to partnering with Iran if it comes at the price of accepting Israel’s enemy as a virtual if not actual nuclear power. The plan to link with Iran is apparently on hold at least until after the midterm elections.

Instead, we have a surprise sprung on the President himself, partly because of his unambiguous promise at the Centers for Disease Control this past September that “the chances of an Ebola outbreak here in the United States are extremely low" (see above).

Inside-the-Beltway journal The Hill’s Elise Viebeck in fact flatly stated that:

Ebola has become the October surprise of this year’s midterm elections. . . The U.S. public is increasingly fearful of the virus following three cases in Texas and news that the fatality rate for infected patients has hit 70% in West Africa.

A surprise indeed. Obama’s "RealClearPolitics" average disapproval-over-approval percentage is back above 10% after falling below that threshold, presumably due to the government’s unsteady handling of a crisis the President had called “extremely” unlikely.

There are only 20 days left in this election cycle. We'll soon enough know what the actual political fall-out from the Ebola crisis will turn out to be.