This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
As the long-time policy director for the once-influential (if now-defunct) Democratic Leadership Council, I have often been asked whether a clear defeat of Mitt Romney on November 6, of the sort we saw yesterday, might drive Republicans to create a similar party-changing “centrist” organization.
The short answer is “no.” (And I’m tempted to say the long answer is “Hell, no!”) Yes, like the Democrats of the 1980s, the GOP has just gone through a string of brutal national elections. Yes, the GOP is looking down the barrel of a large and growing demographic disadvantage. The Republicans undoubtedly have the occasion to reconsider their direction. But that doesn’t mean they’re actually going to do so.
Perhaps the simplest way to explain why is to re-examine the conditions that led to the formation and rise of the DLC, and compare them to those now facing the Republican Party.
The so-called Electoral College “lock.” When the DLC was founded in 1985, Democrats had just experienced a 525-13 wipeout in the electoral college, and had been particularly demolished in the South, the foundation of their one presidential victory in the previous five elections. Whatever their problems, polarization has given Republicans a virtually unshakable base in both popular and electoral votes. They could run a candidate in clown makeup for president–and in 2012, they might have, judging from the party’s other leading primary candidates–and still win 45 percent of the vote and 150 electoral votes.
Alienated elected officials. The DLC’s real “base” was among congressional, state and local elected officials–not just in the South, but in every competitive state and region–who feared the national party (and the interest and constituency groups that were thought to control it) were in the process of dragging them towards defeat. The dominant Republican office-holders today at every level are products of two GOP landslides–1994 and 2010–that were accompanied by an aggressive, ideologically conservative message. On that basis, there’s no reason to think that any Republican revolt against the “presidential party” will be “centrist” in any tangible way.
Regional disunity. While the southern character of the DLC was always exaggerated by its critics, it’s true it was strongest in areas of the country (the South, but also the West and growing suburbs everywhere) where Republicans were making major gains, and the perceived “paleoliberal” message of the party was not helping. The most remarkable development in the GOP during the last decade, by contrast, has been the gradual extinction of major regional differences, at least outside New England (and even there on many issues, as reflected in the remarkable unanimity of Republican congressional voting on economic and fiscal issues). In particular, Midwestern conservatives are now ideologically very close to their southern cousins on such previously Dixiefied issues as the legitimacy of unions. Pro-choice Republicans are very rare. Perhaps a DLC-style “centrist” organization might serve as a symbolic “triangulating” device in New England, but it would not represent a nationally significant party faction.
Alternative explanations for defeat. Much of the ongoing argument between “New Democrats” and “traditional liberals” that enlivened (or depending on your point of view, enervated) Democrats in the 1980s and 1990s involved varying explanations for the party’s loss of its old majority status. Many of them, on both sides of the intraparty barricades, can be found in the classic 1989 DLC analysis of the presidential party, William Galston and Elaine Kamarck’s The Politics of Evasion. If there is such a debate in the Republican Party today, it is well-hidden (beyond a few notably non-influential party heretics like David Frum and Jon Huntsman, and ex-Republicans like Charlie Crist), or is more a matter of arguing campaign tactics. The overwhelming point of view in the GOP today is that a clearly-articulated “movement conservative” message embracing smaller government, laissez-faire economics, and cultural conservatism (there is a bit, but only a bit, of dissension on national security and immigration) is and remains a winner. “Bad candidates,” or worse yet, half-hearted conservatives, can still lose presidential elections and congressional majorities, but too much conservatism is never the problem.

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Lots of buzz about Nate Silver accurately predicting the electoral vote allocation of all nine battleground states, as well as the other 41 states. At the moment he also is on target for the popular vote percentage spread, which may change a little when all of the votes are finally tallied.
Mark Blumenthal has a compelling wrap up explaining how the serious pollsters and poll analysts way outperformed the poll skeptics, including the confident but clueless Peggy Noonan, who wrote on Monday, “While everyone is looking at the polls and the storm, Romney’s slipping into the presidency. …I suspect both Romney and Obama have a sense of what’s coming, and it’s part of why Romney looks so peaceful and Obama so roiled.”
Noam N. Levey has an encouraging L.A. Times post explaining that “Obama’s win means his healthcare law will insure all Americans.” Levy says “Starting in 2014, millions of Americans should be able to get health insurance for the first time. Millions more who don’t get coverage through work should be able to buy a health plan that meets new basic standards. Critical GOP state leaders “must decide in days whether to implement it or have the federal government do it for them.”
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, on Tuesday Dems gained upcoming control of five state legislatures (CO, MN, NY, OR and ME), while the GOP gained control of three (AK, WI and AR), with NH not yet decided. Republicans will have control (both/all houses) of 23 state legislatures, while Dems will control both houses in 14 states, with 12 split. Reuters reports: “Heading into the election, Republicans filled almost 55 percent of all partisan legislative seats and controlled 59 legislative chambers, while Democrats controlled 36 chambers and three were tied.” Most of the governorships, lieutenant governorships, secretaries of state and half of the nation’s attorneys general are still held by Republicans.
It will be interesting to see what California Democrats can do with a supermajority (two-thirds) in the state senate, while nearing the two-thirds threshold in the state assembly. CA may once again become a model for progressive government, however tempered by formidable economic and immigration problems. As AP’s Don Thompson writes, “If Democrats win two-thirds majorities in both chambers, it would be the first time since 1933 that one party held simultaneous supermajorities.”
An AP/Edison Research exit poll in VA shows half of state voters favoring tax hikes on those earning $250K+ and two-thirds “favored keeping abortion legal in most or all cases.”
At PBS NewsHour, Judy Woodruff has a revealing interview about the presidential campaign strategy and tactics with WaPo’s Phillip Rucker, WSJ’s Carol Lee and Slate.com’s Sasha Issenberg, author of the much-buzzed “The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns.”
At the National Journal, Beth Reinhard’s post-mortem credits President Obama with doing an excellent job of making the election more about Romney’s character than Obama’s track record. “President Obama won his first term by being the right guy at the right time. He won his second term making Mitt Romney the wrong guy…Obama turned what could have been a stinging referendum on his economic stewardship into a pass-fail test on Romney’s character.” It was a potent meme, but Romney (and most of the pundits also underestimated the nation’s demographic transition since ’08.
Kyle Scott opines at the Houston Chronicle that “Obama won by saying yes to more Americans.” Says Scott: “President Barack Obama’s victory was secured by a politics of yes. Telling voters yes is essential to victory since most voters do not like to be told no. The key to political victory is figuring out how to tell the most people yes and the fewest people no. The president secured a second term by successfully employing this strategy.” It’s an appealing notion, but it doesn’t help to explain the collective outcome of the House races — unless Dems just didn’t have enough strong “yes” candidates.
The “Ya Think?” award for headline writing should probably go to the Washington Post for “Long voting lines suggest a need for reform.” It’s a good editorial, though.

The following article, by Democratic Strategist Mike Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, is cross-posted from HuffPo.
In the face of five years of the deepest economic troubles this nation has seen since the 1930s, which put voters in a bad mood, and veritable floodgates of millionaire money unleashed by Citizens United (far, far surpassing anything in American history), an incumbent president won a clear victory and over 50 percent of the vote. Except for FDR in 1936, Barack Obama is the only Democratic president to win reelection in an economy this tough, and he is the only one except for FDR and Andrew Jackson to get over 50 percent of the vote. And beyond the presidency, with Democrats having to defend over twice as many seats in the Senate as the Republicans and pundits earlier in this cycle suggesting that a Republican Senate was practically a lock — and again with all those hundreds of millions of dollars of millionaires’ money spent against them — the Democrats actually look like they will be picking up two seats.
This remarkable, historic achievement was accomplished with the kind of old-fashioned middle class populism that modern day DC sophisticates have been saying for 25 years doesn’t work anymore.
Little more than a year ago, in the fall of 2011, after an ugly deal with the Republicans on the debt ceiling that had followed two earlier deals with the Republicans on the budget that left a bad taste in Democrats’ mouths, the president was at his lowest point, politically. His poll numbers were bad, his base was upset, the swing voters he was trying to court thought he looked weak. The reelection looked like it was in deep trouble. But the president made the right political decision and made clear he was fighting for the American middle class and those young and poor people who were striving to get into it. He channeled his inner Teddy Roosevelt, giving a speech that was a tribute to TR and was the kickoff for a yearlong campaign firmly rooted in the hopes and aspirations of working- and middle-class voters.
He enthusiastically embraced the car company bailout that had been so unpopular when he had first done it. He started strongly defending Obamacare after Democrats had run from it — and been pilloried with it — in 2010. He recess-appointed aggressive consumer watchdog Rich Cordray to the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and asked aggressive Wall Street prosecutor Eric Schneiderman to co-chair a new task force to investigate financial fraud. He hammered the Ryan budget for voucherizing Medicare and block-granting Medicaid and cutting taxes for the wealthy. He stuck to his guns on boldly attacking Romney’s role at Bain Capital when Wall-Street-friendly Democrats were calling on him to back off. He started talking about, and working on, rebuilding our manufacturing base.
It worked. Turns out that both Democratic base voters and the mostly working class swing voters liked this new populist approach. So despite those tough odds that I discussed in the first paragraph, President Obama found his rhythm and found his way. After Mitt Romney — the perfect candidate to run a populist campaign against — became the Republican nominee, the Obama campaign established a small but steady lead in the key swing states which, through all the ups and downs of a long, tough campaign, they never relinquished.

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For insightful analysis of elections, it’s always good to check in with the National Journal’s ace Ronald Brownstein, who observes today:

President Obama won a second term by marrying the new Democratic coalition with just enough of the old to overcome enduring economic disenchantment and a cavernous racial divide.
In many places, particularly across the Sun Belt, Obama mobilized the Democrats’ new “coalition of the ascendant,” winning enough support among young people, minorities and college-educated whites, especially women, to overcome very weak numbers among blue-collar whites and college-educated men. But in the upper Midwest, where there are not enough of those voters to win, Obama attracted just enough working-class whites to hold the critical battlegrounds of Wisconsin, Iowa, and above all Ohio against Mitt Romney’s forceful challenge.

Brownstein notes that with Obama’s victory, Democrats have matched the GOP record of winning the popular vote in 4 of 5 elections. he adds that “Obama also held all 18 “blue wall” states that have voted Democratic in each election since 1992. By doing so he set a new milestone: that is the most states Democrats have won that often since the formation of the modern party system in 1828.”
Brownstein explains that Obama adroitly rode the “tailwind” of demographic transformation, as people of color now cast 28 percent of the ballots in a presidential election, and Obama received 80 percent of their votes, “including not only more than nine in 10 African-Americans, but also about seven in 10 Hispanics, and about three in four Asians.”
“In the key Midwestern battlegrounds with much smaller minority populations,” adds Brownstein, “the president engineered a different formula for victory…Obama exceeded his national performance among white voters by just enough to repel Romney’s challenge” by successfully characterizing Romney as “an insensitive plutocrat.” yet, nationwide, “Obama captured a smaller share of the white vote than John Kerry did when he lost in 2004.”
In that way, the election offered warning signs to each party.
It’s a warning sign for Democrats, says Brownstein, but a disaster for Republicans: “By winning nearly three-fifths of whites, Romney matched the best performance among white voters ever for a Republican challenger–and yet he lost decisively in the Electoral College.” Brownstein adds,

…By failing to compete more effectively for the growing minority population, Republicans have lowered their ceiling in presidential politics, and left their nominees trying to thread a needle to reach a majority either in the popular or Electoral College vote.

Brownstein concludes of Obama’s re-election,

…His victory underscored the enduring polarization along ideological, regional, and racial lines: For instance, while about three-fifths of Hispanics and three-fourths of African-Americans who voted said they wanted his health care law maintained or even expanded, nearly three-fifths of whites said they wanted it repealed…How Washington makes progress on the biggest challenges we face while the nation is both deeply and closely divided is the largest question looming after Obama’s historic victory.

There is no question that President Obama and the Democrats have won an impressive mandate. The challenge ahead is to increase the comfort level of white working class voters as a permanent constituency in the new Democratic coalition,

From the Carville-Greenberg Memo:

by James Carville
It’s Election Day…the latest and last pre-election Democracy Corps poll shows President Obama up by four points nationally…so Stan and I are feeling pretty good about today’s results. There’s nothing in other national polls or state polls to contradict our assessment about this election – and if anything, the president gained momentum in the final day or so.
Instead of learning from experience, the Republicans continue their war on science and facts. Now they’re furious that anyone would dare use polling data to predict an election outcome that isn’t going their way, and taking it out on Nate Silver, the polling blogger at the New York Times.
If a play were opening tonight, I think the title should be “The Ass-Whuppin’ Cometh.”

From Brad Plumer at Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog:

Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight: Obama 303, Romney 235. “The model estimates that Mr. Romney would need to win the national popular vote by about one percentage point to avert a tossup, or a loss, in the Electoral College,” Silver writes.
Sam Wang, Princeton Election Consortium: Obama 303, Romney 235. “In terms of EV or the Meta-margin, [Obama has] made up just about half the ground he ceded to Romney after Debate #1.”
Drew Linzer, Emory University: Obama 326, Romney 212. “The accuracy of my election forecasts depend on the accuracy of the presidential polls,” Linzer writes. “As such, a major concern heading into Election Day is the possibility that polling firms, out of fear of being wrong, are looking at the results of other published surveys and weighting or adjusting their own results to match.”
…Larry Sabato, UVA Center for Politics: Obama 290, Romney 248. “Who could have imagined that a Frankenstorm would act as a circuit-breaker on the Republican’s campaign, blowing Romney off center stage for three critical days in the campaign’s last week, while enabling Obama to dominate as presidential comforter-in-chief, assisted by his new bipartisan best friend, Gov. Chris Christie (R)?”

From Mark Blumenthal at HuffPo Pollster:

The HuffPost Pollster tracking model created by Stanford political scientist Simon Jackman, which combines all available national and statewide polling data, finds that if polls fall within the historical ranges of polling accuracy, Obama stands a 91 percent chance of victory…If Obama wins every state in which the model currently shows him ahead (including the non-significant margin in Florida), he would win a total of 332 electoral votes, which is also the model’s median estimate.

From a phone interview with Emory University professor Alan I. Abramowitz, author of The Polarized Public:

Popular vote edge between 1 and 2 percent favoring President Obama, with 303 electoral votes

From TDS Founding Editor Stan Greenberg:

The final national survey for Democracy Corps shows Obama ahead with a 4-point lead in the presidential race, 49 to 45 percent (actually, 3.8 points to be exact)…The President has brought this back to the contours that gave him the lead before the debates – and that is enough to win, especially since he has a 7-point lead in the 12-state battleground for the presidency.

From Bob Dylan, via an AP report from his concert in Madison, WI:

Don’t believe the media. I think it’s going to be a landslide.

In his article, “Analysis: If Obama Wins, Thank Latino Voters,” at ABC News/Univision web page, TDS Founding Editor Ruy Teixeira explains why Latinos are such a pivotal constituency in this election:

…President Barack Obama looks set to surpass his 2008 performance among Latinos (67-31 or a margin of 36 points). An average of the last eight national polls of Latinos has him ahead by 70-22, a margin of 48 points. The final Latino Decisions tracking poll released Monday shows Obama with a 73-24 percent lead among Latinos, with Obama’s share being the largest ever for a presidential candidate. This strong support from Latinos seems likely to drive Obama’s overall support level among minorities this year close to the 80-percent level he received in 2008.
As for turnout, there will be 23.7 million eligible Hispanic voters this year, an increase of 22 percent over 2008. This has brought the Hispanic share of all eligible voters up to 11 percent, 1.5 percentage points higher than 2008. Recent data also indicates that Hispanic voter enthusiasm, after flagging early in the campaign, is now, if anything, higher than in 2008. This data suggests that the Latino share of voters in 2012 should go up relative to 2008, helping drive up the overall share of minority voters in the process.
…If the minority vote share in 2012 merely matches its 26 percent share in 2008, then Romney needs a 22-point margin among whites (better than any Republican candidate since Ronald Reagan) just to nose out Obama by two-tenths of a percentage point in the popular vote. And Obama likely will win the popular vote if he can get just 39 percent of the white vote (he got 43 percent in 2008).
But Latinos should help drive the minority vote even higher than its 2008 level. If the minority vote were to exceed expectations and reach 28 percent, Romney would need a 25-point margin among whites to prevail in the popular vote. He has been nowhere close to that level in polling during this campaign.

Teixeira goes on to explain why it’s not just the advantage Latinos provide for Obama nationwide; It’s also the powerful edger Hispanic voters provide in three key battlegound states:

…The first is Colorado, where the Hispanic share of eligible voters increased by about four percentage points to 15 percent of eligible voters, accounting for all the increase in the minority share of eligible voters in the state in the last four years. Colorado is extremely tight, with Obama leading the race by less than a percentage point, so victory for Obama probably depends on his campaign’s ability to mobilize this burgeoning population of Hispanic voters, who lean heavily to Obama, according to the polls.
The second is Nevada, where the state’s gain in the share of Latino eligible voters was essentially the same as Colorado’s, taking the overall Hispanic share of eligible voters up to 17 percent. But in Nevada, gains among other minorities–blacks, Asians and those of other race–were also strong. Indeed, between 2008 and 2012, the overall minority share of eligible voters increased by an astonishing nine points, more than two points a year. Minorities are now almost 40 percent of Nevada’s eligible voters. But within that group, Hispanics loom large, being the biggest component of the minority vote and currently favoring Obama by large margins. They are probably the key reason why Obama’s average lead in the state is now three points and he is a currently favored to take the state.
The third state is Florida. Florida had roughly a two-point growth in the share of Hispanic eligible voters between 2008 and 2012, taking the overall Hispanic share up to 18 percent, with growth driven by increases among relatively liberal non-Cuban Hispanics in the state. Another two-point increase was contributed by growth among African American, Asian and other race-eligible voters, making for a total four-point increase in the overall minority share of eligible voters. If Obama has any chance of taking the state (he is currently behind Romney by less than a percentage point), it will be due to mobilization of minority voters, especially the fast-growing Hispanic population.

Democrats have a lot to be grateful for in 2012. But President Obama’s embrace of the Latino community, along with the GOP’s Latino-bashing, may top the list.

The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross-posted from HuffPo.
In 2000, our consulting firm helped put together a field operation in the South Florida Congressional race for a wonderful Democratic woman named Elaine Bloom.
We organized a terrific program – great voter identification – great get-out-the-vote. But in the end, Bloom lost by about 550 votes. They were the same 550 votes that cost Al Gore the Presidency of the United States.
In the end it didn’t matter that we had done a great job. What mattered was that if we had gotten just one more vote per precinct in the last half hour of that Election Day in 2000, Elaine Bloom would have gone to Congress – and George W. Bush would never have been President.
As you consider whether you should take the day off to knock on doors to re-elect Barack Obama – or whether after you have worked your heart out all day you will go out in the last ten minutes before the polls close to get that one last voter – remember what happened because we fell 550 votes short in Florida in 2000.
If Elaine Bloom and Al Gore had won those 550 additional votes:
There would never have been a War in Iraq. That would have saved the lives of five thousand Americans, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi’s. It would have saved tens of thousands of Americans from being injured and maimed. It would have saved trillions of our dollars that could have been invested in building schools and roads and creating jobs. Our enemies would never have been able to create recruiting posters featuring the shame of Abu Ghraib or an Administration that embraced torture.
There would never have been the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy that channeled trillions into the hands of the wealthiest one percent and – together with the Wars – wiped out the surplus left by Bill Clinton and created the worst federal deficit in American history.
There would never have been the Bush trickle down economic policies that created zero net private sector jobs – the worst record of jobs growth in 60 years.
Bush would never have had the opportunity to preside over Wall Street’s recklessness that sunk the American economy and created the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Bush would never have been able to cut off all U.S. funding for family planning organizations around the world that use their own money to pay for abortions.
Those 550 votes had enormous, historic consequences.
So might the votes that are cast – or not cast – Tuesday.
The bottom line is simple. Your vote could be the vote that determines whether we have another War in Iraq – or go back to the trickle down policies that benefit only the wealthiest few and do nothing to create jobs.
You owe it to your kids. You owe it to your friends. You owe it to yourself.
Before the day is out. Make sure you have cast your vote. If necessary stand in line. Stay in line.
Make sure your wife or husband or adult kids vote. Make sure your mother and mother-in-law vote. Make sure the people you work with, or go to school with vote. Make sure that everyone you know goes to the poll and votes.
Don’t let Tuesday pass and look back and say: it was so close, I wish I had taken the time to vote – I wish I had volunteered to get that last handful of votes that would have changed history. It’s happened before – not long ago. Don’t let it happen again.

The following article by Democratic Strategist Mike Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Every D.C.-area Democrat I know not already deployed to various swing states around the country headed to northern VA for door-knocking this weekend, so figuring that they had plenty of volunteers, I decided to go to an equally important place I knew had a whole lot less, Pennsylvania. I have been worried about the closing gap in the PA polls, knowing that while the Obama campaign never took their field operation out of the state, they have still received generally less attention than VA, OH and the other most hotly contested states. My wife and I drove up to the Gettysburg area because being the old Midwesterner that I am, I love small town door-knocking.
The campaign was having us do a combination of voter ID and Get Out the Vote to those who were Obama supporters and, as it always is, it was fascinating. I think everyone who is in politicis full-time should make sure they go out and door-knock at least once or twice a cycle, because even though it isn’t scientific, you pick up a lot of important vibes about where people are coming from when you are knocking on their doors and talking to them in their homes. The towns we were in were blue collar, overwhelmingly white, modest single family homes with kids and dogs in most of them. There were lots of very Irish sounding names which, being a little bit Irish-American myself, was pretty fun.
One interesting and surprising thing I ran into was the number of people who were genuinely undecided. Most polls are showing only 2-3 percent undecided, but we were finding a a lot of people in these towns hanging back, unsure who they were going to vote for and actually glad to talk it through with us and get more information. If a pollster called them and pressed them to say who they were leaning toward, my gut is that many of the people we talked would have said Obama, but it wasn’t a done deal. People weren’t thinking Romney gave a damn about the middle class or their lives, and liked Obama better for the most part, but felt like things hadn’t been very good so were still open to change. The pro-Obama pitch we were giving about the president fighting for the middle class (and Romney definitely not being for the middle class) seemed to be working.
We did run into some Romney supporters, almost all of them were men. There was a big gender gap in this neighborhood, as many of the women told us they were voting for Obama but their husband would be voting for Romney.
It really felt good to be doing this, like we were making a difference.
You know, that’s how door-knocking always feels to me. I realized this weekend that I had been doing it now for 40 years. When I was 12-years-old, I went door to door in my Lincoln, NE neighborhood for George McGovern. It didn’t work, as Nixon won Nebraska that year with about 75 percent of the vote. But I was hooked and have been doing it in elections ever since. There is something about getting out there and looking people in the eye and talking about the election with them that makes you feel like you are making a difference and doing your part in America’s democracy. We are lucky to live in a country where people can freely, openly talk to their neighbors about politics without fear of being arrested or shot at. To be a part of that kind of civic interaction gives me joy, makes me feel like I am a part of the American story.
So if you are trying to decide tonight or tomorrow whether to get off your butt and get involved in turning out the vote, go do it. Every state has close races, and you can always get on the phone and do calling, as well. You won’t regret it, it will make you feel good, that you are doing your part in this great democracy we are living in, that you are helping to make sure your choice for president and senator and Congress gets in. And it matters: a few votes per precinct makes the difference in a whole lot of big elections. Make your voice heard, not just with your vote, but with your feet, your door-knocking knuckles, and your voice.

So the Big Day has finally arrived, and everyone not involved heavily in GOTV efforts is getting nervous and/or excited. FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver has Obama’s probability of re-election at 86.3%; Princeton Election Consortium’s Sam Wang has it at 98.4% HuffPost’s final polling average gives Obama a 1.2% popular vote lead. RCP has Obama leading by 0.7%. Obama has been up in every poll of Ohio taken in the last two weeks, other than those conducted by Rasmussen, which has the race tied. The standard Republican spin has moved from “Romney landslide!” to “Too close to call!”
With this background, here’s some items from today’s blogging at Washington Monthly that may be of special interest to TDS readers:
* Romney’s late effort in Pennsylvania isn’t a “feint” or a sign of an “expanding map,” but simply a desperate tactic of a campaign blocked from other routes to 270. Sorta like Lee’s invasion of the Keystone State in 1863.
* GOP prospects of taking over Senate now lower than chances of Democratic gains, which could go as high as four or five seats.
* Obama on track to beat 2008 margin among Latinos, and enthusiasm is high; GOP gamble on wedge politics backfiring.
* State legislative elections offer targets for both parties, but drive for supermajorities (especially in California) could be biggest story.
Get some rest tonight!