One of the great hobbies of political junkies everywhere is the search for the magic indicator, the polling statistic that predicts more accurately than any other who is going to win. At CNN Politics, Peter Hamby reports on one such number:

The number making Mike Podhorzer anxious these days is 15…That’s the lead Democrats have over Republicans among working class voters in the final days of the 2014 midterm elections, according to his polling at the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation. That might seem good for Democrats, but in modern times, the party always wins voters making $50,000 or less….For Podhorzer, the AFL-CIO’s political director and one of the Democratic party’s top thinkers on voter turnout, it’s the spread that matters.

Quibble if you will that defining working-class voters as those earning under $50K is a tad simplistic. It doesn’t factor in race, for example. But “the under $50Ks” is a good as any demographic to eyeball as campaigns progress, if you know where to draw the line. Hamby points out that Dems won in 2012 with a 22 percent spread with the less than $50Ks, vs. the 11 percent spread they had in 2010 when they lost bad. He continues:

The 55-40 lead Democrats are clinging to among people making under $50,000 is wider than the 50-39 lead they had earlier this summer, making this year’s outcome harder to predict. Podhorzer said it does explain why Democrats are still in the hunt heading into next Tuesday, suggesting that next week’s election won’t resemble the GOP tidal wave of 2010.

The idea is to look for the spread in individual election polls. Magic number notwithstanding, Hamby adds,

Podhorzer, an engineer of the progressive movement’s superior voter turnout machinery, said the battle on election day will be about get-out-the-vote mechanics.
He framed the contest as a test of the GOP’s “wholesale GOTV” — paid media and base enthusiasm in a good Republican year — versus the “retail GOTV” of the Democratic coalition that relies on the party’s technological advantages and focuses on person-to-person contact…
…”The Democrats’ retail GOTV has gotten much, much stronger than in 2010, when the base was even more disillusioned,” he said. “Democrats will do a better job on retail GOTV, and have more of the personal networks on the ground to pull people out. It’s going to be interesting to see how effective that can be.”

The 15 point spread with the under $50Ks is a good polling indicator for how things are going in individual races and it can be helpful in telling campaigns where to put their resources. But to win, Dems will have to set a new midterm standard in retail GOTV, while keeping in competitive in ads, debates, speeches and the other elements of wholesale GOTV.

So how close is the battle for Senate control at this political moment? Princeton Election Consortium’s Sam Wang sees seven Senate races within 3 percentage points — a hell of a lot better for Dems than was supposed to be the case.
“Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd asked Schumer why voters should care about the prospect of the Democrats losing their current Senate majority…”You asked one reason: Supreme Court. The money that’s cascading into our system,” Schumer said in a reference to the 2010 Citizens United decision that legalized Super PACs. “If the Supreme Court continues to be the way it is and there’s a vacancy and they buttress that, we will be subject to these few people just dominating the elections for decades to come. The Supreme Court on voting rights makes a huge difference. The Supreme Court on women’s issues makes a huge difference.” — from Zach Carter’s HuffPo post “Chuck Schumer: Supreme Court Will Thwart Democrats For Decades If We Lose Midterms”
“Will last minute strength be enough for Dems?” Stephen Collinson ruminates on the prospects for Dems holding their senate majority at CNN Politics.
At The New Republic John B. Judis illuminates the strategy of pro-Democratic ‘Battleground Texas’: “Texas has already become a majority-minority state like California. According to 2013 census figures, only 44 percent of Texans are “Anglos,” or whites; 38.4 percent are Hispanic; 12.4 percent African-American; and the remainder Asian-American and native American. By 2020, Hispanics are projected by the Texas State Data Center to account for 40.5 percent of Texans and African-Americans for 11.3 percent compared to 41.1 percent of Anglos. Texas’s minorities generally favor Democrats over Republicans, but they don’t vote in as great a proportion as Anglos who have favored Republicans by similar percentages. Battleground’s strategy assumes that if it and other organizations like the Texas Organizing Project can get many more minorities, and particularly Hispanics, to the polls, then, as minorities increasingly come to outnumber Anglos, Democrats can take back the state.”
As the political parties kick their GOTV operations into high gear, NYT’s Ashley Parker and Jonathan Weisman discuss “For Midterms, Betting on Feet and Good Apps.”
Here’s a turnout clue from Thad Kousser’s L.A. Times op-ed, “Want to Increase Voter Turnout: Here’s How”: “…Targeting different types of often-ignored voters could also pay off for campaigns. Ethnic minorities, especially Latinos, Asian Americans and Middle Eastern Americans who do not speak English at home, often do not get the full attention of campaigns. But in their path-breaking book, “Mobilizing Inclusion,” Lisa Garcia Bedolla and Melissa R. Michelson used randomized experiments to show that well-designed outreach efforts to this group can lead to massive increases in voter turnout. And a group of Yale researchers found that formerly incarcerated felons, who are often ignored by campaigns even after their franchise rights have been restored, could also be effectively mobilized.”
This short-sighted article fails to consider that every vote cast for a Republican advances their efforts to win majority control, dominate congressional and senate committees and crush all environmental regulation. Some environmental groups sincerely want to reward those few Republicans who occasionally support environmental reform. Others are targeting gullible Greens in hopes of neutralizing informed environmental voters as much as possible.
Kennedy Elliot and Scott Clement of The Washington Post have a gizmo for “Measuring the midterm turnout gap,” which provides a helpful visual depicting the midterm shortfall when combining up to three different demographic variables of your choice.
Could we have a little more generosity toward Democratic candidates from outgoing Democratic Sens. Baucus, Harkin and Tim Johnson, whose campaign coffers are reportedly flush?

The strangest thing about the battle for the Senate going on this year is how much trouble Republicans are having in states won by Mitt Romney, and not necessarily the ones where they expected trouble. Contests in South Dakota, Kentucky and Georgia have all spent some time panicking Republicans, and none of those states has been put away by the GOP in the interim. But the biggest surprise still has to be Kansas, a profoundly Republican state with multiple struggling statewide Republican campaigns. Playing off Mark Benelli’s fine profile of events in Kansas for Rolling Stone, I discussed the plight of the GOP there at Washington Monthly today:

[Benelli’s] precis of how Sam Brownback made the state an experiment for the discredited fiscal theories of doddering supply-siders is an instant classic:

Back in 2011, Arthur Laffer, the Reagan-era godfather of supply-side economics, brought to Wichita by Brownback as a paid consultant, sounded like an exiled Marxist theoretician who’d lived to see a junta leader finally turn his words into deeds. “Brownback and his whole group there, it’s an amazing thing they’re doing,” Laffer gushed to The Washington Postthat December. “It’s a revolution in a cornfield.” Veteran Kansas political reporter John Gramlich, a more impartial observer, described Brownback as being in pursuit of “what may be the boldest agenda of any governor in the nation,” not only cutting taxes but also slashing spending on education, social services and the arts, and, later, privatizing the entire state Medicaid system. Brownback himself went around the country telling anyone who’d listen that Kansas could be seen as a sort of test case, in which unfettered libertarian economic policy could be held up and compared right alongside the socialistic overreach of the Obama administration, and may the best theory of government win. “We’ll see how it works,” he bragged on Morning Joe in 2012. “We’ll have a real live experiment.”
That word, “experiment,” has come to haunt Brownback as the data rolls in. The governor promised his “pro-growth tax policy” would act “like a shot of adrenaline in the heart of the Kansas economy,” but, instead, state revenues plummeted by nearly $700 million in a single fiscal year, both Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s downgraded the state’s credit rating, and job growth sagged behind all four of Kansas’ neighbors. Brownback wound up nixing a planned sales-tax cut to make up for some of the shortfall, but not before he’d enacted what his opponents call the largest cuts in education spending in the history of Kansas.

Brownback added political to fiscal risk by securing big bags of money from friends like the Koch Brothers and using it in a 2012 primary purge of moderate Republican state senators who didn’t support his fiscal plans. And it’s all blown up on him this year, with the shock waves potentially engulfing the state’s senior U.S. Senator. Binelli’s portrait of Pat Roberts as an “unloved Beltway mediocrity” who stands by trembling with fatigue as more famous and charismatic conservatives campaign to save his bacon is as acute as his portrayal of Brownback as a mad scientist whose lab has blown up.
Because of the nature of the state and the year and the outside (and inside, from the Kochs Wichita HQ) money flooding Kansas, Brownback and Roberts may survive–Brownback to preside over the damage he’s done to the state’s fiscal standing and schools, and Roberts to return to a final stage of his long nap in the Capitol. But both men have richly earned the trouble they are in.

At a minimum, Browback’s presidential ambitions are now officially laughable, and moderate Republicans have gotten his full attention. But it would be nice to see an object lesson taught in the limits of Republican extremism.

The indisputable winner of the “Pundit Whopper of the Week” Award has to be David Brooks, who writes in his Friday New York Times column that “The fact that the federal government has not passed major infrastructure legislation is mind-boggling, considering how much support there is from both parties.”
Yes, that’s right. He actually went there.
It did not go unnoticed by his colleague Paul Krugman, who responded in his “Conscience of a Liberal” blog:

Well, the Obama administration would love to spend more on infrastructure; the problem is that a major spending bill has no chance of passing the House. And that’s not a problem of “both parties” — it’s the GOP blocking it. Exactly how many Republicans would be willing to engage in deficit spending to expand bus networks? (Remember, these are the people who consider making rental bicycles available an example of “totalitarian” rule.)

To be fair, the rest of Brooks’s column is not so bad, almost reminiscent of Republicans of yesteryear, back in the day when they actually negotiated in good faith.
Nonetheless P.M. Carpenter piles on in his commentary,

In fact it’s such a stunningly counterfactual claim, I just now violated my day’s Brooks-abstinence and checked his column to see if it was taken out of context by Krugman. It was, in a way. Here’s how Brooks led into his befuddlement over the federal government’s infrastructure inaction: “If you get outside the partisan boxes, there’s a completely obvious agenda to create more middle-class, satisfying jobs.” If you get outside the partisan boxes….
In other words, if one altogether ignores the ruthless, relentless, existing Republican partisanship that is obstructing infrastructure projects, then one’s mind is boggled at the lack of such projects which otherwise enjoy tremendous bipartisan support!
In precisely what sort of Maxwell Smart Cone of Silence walled off from reality does David Brooks write?

Me, I would just ask Brooks to identify GOP supporters of serious infrastructure upgrades, beyond pork projects in their districts only.

The following article, by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Here’s the bottom line: If your idea of leadership is a guy who cries fire in a crowded theater, then vote for the Republican candidate nearest you (or at least most of them) in the November election — and help make Mitch McConnell Senate Majority Leader.
There is an Ebola crisis. It is in West Africa. And it could surely affect people in other areas of the world if the entire international community does not respond to contain it.
It is absolutely in the entire world’s interest to develop treatments for those who become infected, and a vaccine to prevent future epidemics. After all we all live on the same tiny “spaceship earth” where infectious diseases that affect some of us can surely spread to others.
But we do not currently have an “Ebola crisis” in the United States. Those who have fomented panic for their own political gain are engaging in the worst form of demagoguery.
At this moment one person who was infected with Ebola came to this country. Two others have been infected. Forty-three others who lived in close proximity to the original Ebola victim have failed to develop any Ebola symptoms and been cleared from quarantine after the 21-day incubation period elapsed. Others are still being monitored.
To date, Ebola has infected .0000006 percent of the U.S. population of 316 million. It has infected one person in every 158 million. Remember that 36,000 people die annually in the United States from the flu.
At this moment there is no Ebola epidemic in the United States. But some have tried — quite intentionally — to create an epidemic of fear and panic for their own political gain. That is irresponsible and reprehensible.
Many of the Republican Party’s most strident voices — including the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — have absolutely no shame when it comes to exploiting the Ebola outbreak in West Africa to sow fear in the United States with the hope of harvesting votes in the November election.
There has been a chorus of inflammatory comments.
Then they proposed cutting off flights from the affected countries to the United States. Of course, since there are no direct flights from these countries, that would involve cutting off connecting flights — mostly from Brussels, Amsterdam and other European cities. As usual, they shot first and aimed later.

Read more…

One of the things I dread about every Election Night is the tendency of pundits and spinners to over-interpret the results. It could very easily happen this year, because this has every appearance of being a sui generis election, and one with virtually no predictive value for the next cycle. I went through some of the reasons this is the case at TPMCafe today:

If Democrats hang onto the Senate, it could be a sign that the election was not as “nationalized” as expected, or inversely, that a national GOTV effort succeeded in helping them overcome the usual “midterm falloff” problem. And if Republicans win Senate control, it will show their ability to take advantage of a very favorable landscape and adjust to unexpected challenges like viable independent candidacies in Kansas and South Dakota, or underwhelming campaigns like those of Thom Tillis and David Perdue.
But is any of this an omen for what will happen in the next cycle, as big elements of the punditocracy will undoubtedly try to make it? Not so likely. 2016 will feature a different electorate (younger and more diverse) and a very different landscape. In the Senate, that landscape will go from being extremely pro-Republican this year (21 Democratic seats up, 8 in states carried by Romney, and 15 GOP seats up, just one in a state carried by Obama) to being extremely pro-Democratic in 2016 (24 GOP seats up, 7 in states carried by Obama, and just 10 Democratic seats up, none in states carried by Romney). Only three of this year’s Senate battlegrounds (North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa) are expected to be presidential battlegrounds (if a fourth, Georgia, becomes one, that will be very good news for Democrats).
Moreover, the issue landscape and candidate dynamics in 2016 are likely to be different. If the U.S. economy continues its slow but steady improvement, by 2016 the “economic issues” will likely focus on the quality rather than the quantity of jobs. While it’s possible the sort of plague-of-frogs international environment the U.S. is dealing with now will continue or even intensify, that’s hardly probable. And of course, whereas 2014 is an indirect and partial “referendum” on Barack Obama’s performance as president, 2016 will be more of a “two futures” campaign dominated by presidential nominees. The likely (though hardly certain) Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, is probably not going to be viewed as any sort of protege of or surrogate for Obama, thanks to her own vast public profile.

So this election matters, but not because it’s necessarily going to tell us much of anything about 2016. Fortunately, that cycle begins on November 5, so maybe some gabbers will forget to tell us the outcome has already been determined.

Nate Cohn of NYT’s The Upshot doesn’t see any good news for Democrats in early voting data thus far. But maybe he should take a closer look at Texas, where early voting numbers are encouraging for Dems. As Zachary Roth writes at msnbc.com:

After an energetic Democratic campaign to get new Texas voters to the polls, turnout rates spiked on the first day of early voting in the state.
According to figures released by the secretary of state’s office, Texas’ six largest counties all saw increases in voting Monday compared to the first day of early voting in 2010, the last midterm election.
The voting surge came amid an intense push by groups supporting Wendy Davis, the Democratic candidate for governor, to register and mobilize millions of new voters, many of whom are minorities. The effort was led by Battleground Texas, a group of former Obama campaign veterans aiming to make the state competitive over the long term. Texas has long had some of the lowest voting rates in the country.

Roth notes, however, that Davis still trails in polls and cautions that more data will be needed to substantiate Democratic hopes for an upset in the making. Still, adds Roth:

The turnout numbers were striking. In Tarrant County, which contains Davis’s home base of Fort Worth, 29,391 people voted Monday, nearly three times the comparable number for 2010. Heavily Hispanic El Paso County also saw a nearly threefold increase.
Harris County, which contains Houston, saw 61,735 voters Monday — an increase of more than 11,000 compared to the number who voted on the first day in 2010. Bexar County, containing San Antonio, saw an increase of nearly 7,000 voters. In Dallas and Travis (Austin) counties, the increases were respectively nearly 3,000 and nearly 1,000.
More than one-third of Texans live in those six counties.

And those same counties have grown by 373,000 since 2010. Texas may indeed become the proving ground for the ‘GOTV can trump polls’ strategy.
It looks like Wendy Davis has created an exceptionally-tough campaign. Put that together with a sharp, appealing candidate, worrisome economic and education indicators and a Texas tradition of electing feisty Democratic women, and it all spells rising trouble for Republicans in the Lone Star state. Here’s her ActBlue page.

It’s too late to put any more minimum wage measures on Nov. 4 ballots, but signs are that it’s a good way for Dems to go, looking forward. As Sarah Burnett writes in an AP story:

Looking to motivate younger people, minorities and others in their base to go to the polls on Nov. 4, the party has put questions on the ballot in five states asking voters whether the minimum wage should be increased. The issue is also a near-constant topic on the campaign trail, as Democrats work to identify themselves as stalwarts for the middle class and to paint Republicans — who typically oppose raising the wage because they say it will lead to job cuts — as uncaring.
In one state, Illinois, the campaign to support the minimum wage would not actually raise the wage. The ballot question is non-binding and would only ask voters their opinion.
But for getting out the vote, the issue is “a winner with everybody in our state,” said Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, who said he urged party leaders to put it on the ballot. “So encouraging people to vote that issue when it came to the ballot questions, and contrasting Democratic positions with Republican positions, I thought was a worthy issue for this election campaign.”

Burnett notes that Republican candidate for IL Governor of Bruce Rauner “admitted he’d made a mistake after video surfaced of him saying he was “adamantly, adamantly against” increasing the minimum wage,” and now says he supports it. But his Democratic opponent Gov. Quinn’s campaign is playing the “adamantly” video clips repeatedly.
Minimum wage hike questions on the ballot could also help Dem Senate candidates s in Alaska, Arkansas and South Dakota, where Republicans have opposed it. In Nebraska the hope is that it will help Dems win a Republican-held congressional seat.
Burnett adds,

Minimum wage proposals tend to be popular even in conservative states, said John Matsusaka, a University of Southern California economist who studies public ballot issues. All 10 of the statewide measures considered since 2000 have passed, he said…Although ballot initiatives generally increase turnout by about 1 or 2 percent, Matsusaka said, it’s less clear how they affect candidates on the ballot.

In today’s polarized politics across the U.S., with so many close races, anytime Democrats strongly support a hugely popular measure like a minimum wage hike and their opponents oppose it, Dems should try to put it on the ballot wherever it is possible. To do otherwise would be political negligence.
And if Democrats retain majority control of the U.S. Senate it’s quite possible that these minimum wage measures on ballots will have played a pivotal role.