Meet Sharron Angle

When I ask whether it is really possible to knock off a Senate majority leader, she laughs and replies, “only Reid thinks he’s too big to fail.” Her strategy against the Reid attack machine is to link him to the lousy economy in Nevada. When I ask her if Nevadans want to give up Mr. Reid’s clout in Washington, she replies: “When Harry Reid got to be majority leader, the unemployment rate was 4.4%. Now it is 14%, higher than even in Michigan. . . . What has Harry Reid’s power done for our state?” Her new TV ad, unrolled this week, hammers this message. “We know he is going to attack me constantly,” she says, because “he can’t possibly run on his record.”…

Democrats think Ms. Angle is a piñata they easily defeat. The attacks run the gamut from her antifluoridation views (“my constituents all opposed” fluoridation), to her desire to abolish the Education Department, to favoring private Social Security accounts.

Mrs. Angle stands her ground: “I support voluntary personal retirement accounts for Social Security,” she says. “It should be people’s free choice.” But she also notes that her 83-year-old mother and 84-year-old mother-in-law are on Social Security and Medicare. “I certainly will work to protect their benefits,” she says.