Dan Balz’s “A consumer’s guide to the final weeks of Campaign 2014” at The Washington Post provides a sort of drive-by tour of where things stand in the battle for control of the U.S. Senate. He cites polls and forecasts indicating a Republican edge, but neglects to address Sam Wang’s prediction that Dems will hold the Senate, despite Wang’s impressive track record.
Michael P. McDonald reports “robust” early voting in states with competitive races thus far — and it’s just gutting started.
“…One of the most fascinating numbers from Elect Project’s excellent round-up of early voting is this: 34.5 percent of Georgians who requested a mail ballot this year did not vote in 2010,” reports Jef Singer in a Daily Kos e-blast..
In “Cassidy’s Count,” at The New Yorker John Cassidy has one-paragraph updates on 10 key senate races.
At MSNBC.com Benjy Sarlin concludes, ” It doesn’t look like a Republican wave in which a national tide boosts candidates around the country – some races have moved in the GOP’s direction in recent weeks, others the opposite way. On the other hand, almost all the top tier races are currently either tossups or not much better for either side.”
For more on an issue Dems might be able to leverage, read “Ebola Vaccine Would Likely Have Been Found By Now If Not For Budget Cuts: NIH Director” by Sam Stein at HuffPo.
And a new poll conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for RespectAbility indicates that LVs and swing voters in battleground states strongly favor more federal and state support for employment of Americans with disabilities. “Said Stan Greenberg, PhD, “Issues of employment among people with disabilities can affect outcomes in competitive races for Senate and Governor. This community is far bigger than many people realize, including people in my profession.”
At The New Republic, Rebecca Leber, Naomi Shavin, and Elaine Teng have a warning: “What the Next Two Awful Years Will Look Like: The five things to fear about a Republican Congress.” Their concerns include: The Gutting of Dodd-Frank; A Keystone Showdown–And Possible Shutdown; The Continuance of NSA Snooping; Strategic Slashes to Obamacare; and Confirmation Chaos.
And if that doesn’t wake up your friends who are considering whether or not to vote:

Paul Krugman’s “In Defense of Obama” at Rolling Stone is getting lots of deserved buzz. Krugman, who was initially skeptical about his policies, now sees an impressive record of accomplishments, despite unprecedented opposition.

…Obama faces trash talk left, right and center – literally – and doesn’t deserve it. Despite bitter opposition, despite having come close to self-inflicted disaster, Obama has emerged as one of the most consequential and, yes, successful presidents in American history. His health reform is imperfect but still a huge step forward – and it’s working better than anyone expected. Financial reform fell far short of what should have happened, but it’s much more effective than you’d think. Economic management has been half-crippled by Republican obstruction, but has nonetheless been much better than in other advanced countries. And environmental policy is starting to look like it could be a major legacy.

Krugman shrugs off the right-wing opposition Obama has faced as irrational partisanship appropriately enough, and then addresses the criticism from the left:

There’s a different story on the left, where you now find a significant number of critics decrying Obama as, to quote Cornel West, someone who ”posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit.” They’re outraged that Wall Street hasn’t been punished, that income inequality remains so high, that ”neoliberal” economic policies are still in place. All of this seems to rest on the belief that if only Obama had put his eloquence behind a radical economic agenda, he could somehow have gotten that agenda past all the political barriers that have con- strained even his much more modest efforts. It’s hard to take such claims seriously.

Krugman gives MSM pundits a proper thrashing for mindlessly parroting every report citing the President’s “low approval ratings,” as if it were holy writ. Further, he adds,

…In a year when Republicans have a huge structural advantage – Democrats are defending a disproportionate number of Senate seats in deep-red states – most analyses suggest that control of the Senate is in doubt, with Democrats doing considerably better than they were supposed to. This isn’t what you’d expect to see if a failing president were dragging his party down.

Then he provides the reality check about the polls which seems beyond the ken of most pundits: “More important, however, polls – or even elections – are not the measure of a president. High office shouldn’t be about putting points on the electoral scoreboard, it should be about changing the country for the better. Has Obama done that? Do his achievements look likely to endure? The answer to both questions is yes.”
He offers some facts to buttress the claim, regarding the Affordable Care Act:

…Multiple independent surveys show a sharp drop in the number of Americans without health insurance, probably around 10 million, a number certain to grow greatly over the next two years as more people realize that the program is available and penalties for failure to sign up increase.
…Obamacare means a huge improvement in the quality of life for tens of millions of Americans – not just better care, but greater financial security. And even those who were already insured have gained both security and freedom, because they now have a guarantee of coverage if they lose or change jobs.
What about the costs? Here, too, the news is better than anyone expected. In 2014, premiums on the insurance policies offered through the Obamacare exchanges were well below those originally projected by the Congressional Budget Office, and the available data indicates a mix of modest increases and actual reductions for 2015 – which is very good in a sector where premiums normally increase five percent or more each year. More broadly, overall health spending has slowed substantially, with the cost-control features of the ACA probably deserving some of the credit.

In sum, “In other words, health reform is looking like a major policy success story. It’s a program that is coming in ahead of schedule – and below budget – costing less, and doing more to reduce overall health costs than even its supporters predicted… with the basic guarantee of adequate coverage not only intact but widened to include Americans of all ages.”
As for the political consequences of Obamacare, Krugman nails the new reality that has pissed off Republicans beyond measure:

And this big improvement in American society is almost surely here to stay. The conservative health care nightmare – the one that led Republicans to go all-out against Bill Clinton’s health plans in 1993 and Obamacare more recently – is that once health care for everyone, or almost everyone, has been put in place, it will be very hard to undo, because too many voters would have a stake in the system. That’s exactly what is happening. Republicans are still going through the motions of attacking Obamacare, but the passion is gone. They’re even offering mealymouthed assurances that people won’t lose their new benefits. By the time Obama leaves office, there will be tens of millions of Americans who have benefited directly from health reform – and that will make it almost impossible to reverse. Health reform has made America a different, better place.

Krugman relates his initial disappointment with Obama’s financial reforms, but concedes:

It’s easy, however, to take this disappointment too far. You often hear Dodd- Frank, the financial-reform bill that Obama signed into law in 2010, dismissed as toothless and meaningless. It isn’t. It may not prevent the next financial crisis, but there’s a good chance that it will at least make future crises less severe and easier to deal with.
…Unemployment in America rose to a horrifying 10 percent in 2009, but it has come down sharply in the past few years. It’s true that some of the apparent improvement probably reflects discouraged workers dropping out, but there has been substantial real progress. Meanwhile, Europe has had barely any job recovery at all, and unemployment is still in double digits. Compared with our counterparts across the Atlantic, we haven’t done too badly.
Did Obama’s policies contribute to this less-awful performance? Yes, without question. You’d never know it listening to the talking heads, but there’s overwhelming consensus among economists that the Obama stimulus plan helped mitigate the worst of the slump. For example, when a panel of economic experts was asked whether the U.S. unemployment rate was lower at the end of 2010 than it would have been without the stimulus, 82 percent said yes, only two percent said no.
…Obama has done more to limit inequality than he gets credit for. The rich are paying higher taxes, thanks to the partial expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the special taxes on high incomes that help pay for Obamacare; the Congressional Budget Office estimates the average tax rate of the top one percent at 33.6 percent in 2013, up from 28.1 percent in 2008. Meanwhile, the financial aid in Obamacare – expanded Medicaid, subsidies to help lower-income households pay insurance premiums – goes disproportionately to less-well-off Americans. When conservatives accuse Obama of redistributing income, they’re not completely wrong – and liberals should give him credit.

Krugman goes on to credit Obama with groundbreaking leadership in fostering environmental reforms, via executive order — with no good faith compromise provided by GOP members of congress. Renewable energy, fuel efficiency standards, efforts to reducing greenhouse gas emissions have all improved under President Obama, despite Republican roadblocks at every intersection.
With respect to national security concerns, Krugman cites “a huge improvement over what came before and what we would have had if John McCain or Mitt Romney had won. It’s hard to get excited about a policy of not going to war gratuitously, but it’s a big deal compared with the alternative.” In terms of social issues, like women’s rights and same-sex marriage, “We have, in a remarkably short stretch of time, become a notably more tolerant, open-minded nation” under the Obama Administration.
Despite the disappointments of the last six years, concludes Krugman, “This is what a successful presidency looks like. No president gets to do everything his supporters expected him to…I don’t care about the fact that Obama hasn’t lived up to the golden dreams of 2008, and I care even less about his approval rating. I do care that he has, when all is said and done, achieved a lot.”
Krugman has made a strong case, not only for Obama’s record, but also for voting against Republicans, who have tried to block his every initiative. His argument should appeal to persuadable voters among his Rolling Stone readers who may have been sitting on the fence. But the last thought they should consider on the morning of November 4 is that not voting is, in reality, a vote to affirm Republican obstruction indefinitely.

Wisconsin voter i.d. law bites the dust in 6-3 Supreme Court decision. No surprise that dissenters are the most partisan ideologues, Scalia, Thomas and Alito.
How ActBlue has raised $619 million over the last ten years.
NYT’s Jeremy W. Peters discusses whether the GOP’s Downerama strategy can work. Obama should have some fun with it.
At The Upshot Nate Cohn reports on new RAND study showing Dems have a retention problem.
A Charleston Gazette editorial nonetheless meditates on “America’s ‘blue’ future?”
More evidence that Dems have not done a good job of explaining why the midterm elections are important. Only 15 percent are “closely following news about the midterms” — down from 25 percent in 2010.
But here is great news from the sunshine state.
At Campaign for America’s Future, Bill Scher makes the case that Georgia’s Republican senate candidate David “the Outsourcer” Perdue may deserve “The Worst Gaffe of 2014” honors for his remarkable “Defend it? I’m proud of it” double down on the merits of exporting jobs from Georgia, which has the highest unemployment rate of all 50 states.
Well, yeah. That’s why they do it.

Like a lot of people, I’m gazing in awe at the “outsourcing” brouhaha in the Georgia Senate race, which is fascinating because David Perdue entirely brought it on himself. That actually kind of figures, as I observed at the Washington Monthly:

In the endless argument between political scientists and “traditional” political people about how elections are decided, I’m with the Poli Sci crowd more often than not, and don’t much believe individual “moments” in campaigns usually matter all that much. But there are obviously exceptions; nobody really thinks Todd Akin was done in by “fundamentals” in 2012.
And so, I suggested a while ago that there are two Senate candidates this year who strike me as especially capable of delivering the kind of gaffe that could blow up a campaign: Joni Ernst of Iowa and David Perdue of Georgia. Turns out Ernst’s problem is less what she is saying now (which is very little other than “farmer! farmer!”) than the crazy stuff she’s said in the recent past And that’s partially true for Perdue as well, insofar as his latest problem emerged from something Politico (operating on a tip?) found in a 2005 deposition wherein he allowed as how he’d spent most of his career “outsourcing.”
But then redeeming my faith in him as a gaffe-master, Perdue compounded the error by saying in the present tense that he was “proud” of his involvement in outsourcing, and Michelle Nunn’s campaign has not wasted a moment in exploiting the comment….
[T]hose who remember the palpable relief Republicans everywhere expressed when Perdue made a runoff spot and then won the nomination, the latest developments are kinda rich. Wouldn’t it be funny if GOPers ultimately wished they’d had Paul Broun or Phil Gingrey on the ballot in November?

In the meantime, Perdue’s making me look prescient, and making his backers look for more mud to throw at his opponent.

If the Dems’ KS gambit wasn’t tricky enough for you, how about a sudden assault on the South Dakota seat being vacated by retiring Democrat Tim Johnson, which the Republicans have been taking for granted as theirs?
Here’s how Alex Altman explains it at Time:

If Democrats hold the Senate in November, it could be due to surprising success in states the party never expected to be competitive.
Just weeks after independent candidate Greg Orman surged in a Kansas Senate race that had been chalked into the Republican column, Democrats have spied another unlikely opening on the prairie. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) on Wednesday pumped $1 million into the surprisingly competitive South Dakota Senate race.
The DSCC poured in the cash just hours after a new poll showed Republican Mike Rounds locked in a three-way contest with independent candidate Larry Pressler and Democrat Rick Weiland. The SurveyUSA poll released Wednesday showed Rounds with 35%, Pressler with 32% and Weiland with 28%. The race also includes a Tea Party candidate who could siphon votes from the GOP frontrunner.

Of course the GOP establishment is making dismissive comments. But rest assured they will be forced to spend lots of the party’s campaign cash and scarce GOTV resources to win the seat. If the polling margins narrow even a little, a muscular ground game could win it for Dems.
As for the reasons behind the Republican candidate’s tumble in the polls, Altman adds:

…Rounds, a former governor, has been dogged by a controversy over the state’s EB-5 program, a federal visa program that grants green cards to wealthy immigrants who invest at least $500,000 in economic development project. As governor, Rounds was a booster of the program, which has drawn criticism for mismanagement and lack of transparency after it was privatized by one of the governor’s allies.

It’s another indication that the Democratic Party is alert and agile, heading into the final month of the midterm campaign. Regardless of the outcome of the midterm elections, no one can fairly say that Democrats were caught napping anywhere in the Senate battlefield.
Ed Kilgore sums up the SD wrinkle at the Washington Monthly:

Now the SUSA poll could be an outlier, and I suspect the NRSC will be sending a lot of emergency help to Rounds while privately cursing him for somehow blowing a huge lead (controversy over Rounds’ support for and his brother’s role in the federal EB-5 visa program, which gives families of foreign investors a big advantage in applying for citizenship, has been a factor in his lagging poll numbers). But you can’t help but wonder what the evening of November 4 will be like if not only we are waiting for the usual insanely slow count from Alaska, and possibly two runoffs (LA and GA), but also not one but two indie senators who may or may not act in concert (and/or with Angus King). That’s some serious uncertainty, folks.

And in a year that was supposed to include a cakewalk Senate takeover for Republicans, more uncertainty cuts into their edge in a big way.

Not a good message at a time when Georgia has the highest unemployment rate of all 50 states. Meanwhile Kristina Torres reports at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Georgia is experiencing a surge in voter registration.
Democratic Senate candidate Michelle Nunn looked sharp and assertive in last night’s debate in Perry, GA, as did Democratic candidate for governor Jason Carter. Both Democratic candidates seem to have amped up their media skills significantly in recent weeks. Republicans should be very worried.
Neither Democrat has done too much with their respective political pedigrees, perhaps assuming that name recognition alone does the job adequately. But one long-time observer of Georgia politics suggests that the most potent use of Michelle Nunn’s father, former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn and Jason Carter’s grandparents, former President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter would be to deploy them in interviews, rather than ads, and have them work nursing homes to get a larger share of the high-turnout senior constituency.
UPDATE: For more insight on uptick in GA voter registration and new details on how Georgia’s demographic transformation is not well-reflected in most recent polls, see Jay Bookman’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution column, “Warning to Ga. GOP: Demographic change may be closer than it appears.” See also Kos’s “If we turn out, we win: A Georgia update.”

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:
Almost every election year has a driving narrative that determines how voters (and, just as importantly, those who choose not to vote) are thinking headed into the election. Four weeks from November 4, the narrative of this election remains muddled. There are so many issues, so many contradictory trends in play, that no one knows for sure what election day has in store for us or what the key voters will come to view as the story of this election. That is especially true in presidential election years, but it is also true even in most off-year elections.
In 1994, the early missteps of Clinton and the perceived corruption of Democrats who had been a majority in the House fired up Republican base voters and depressed Democratic turnout: Republicans swept into control of both the House and Senate. In 1998, the over-reach and obsession of the Republican House with the Lewinsky scandal allowed Democrats to make a compelling case that it was time to move on and deal with the country’s real problems. The result was that for the first time since 1823, a president’s party picked up seats in the House in the 6th year of his presidency. In the wake of 9-11 in 2002, security against terrorism drove the election discussion, and the Republicans had a good year. In 2006, the combination of Bush’s incompetence and Republican corruption made for a big Democratic year. And in 2010, the rise of the tea party to “take back the country” was the dominant narrative, firing up a Republican base that turned out in big numbers.
The closest thing to a narrative today is that President Obama is facing a world of troubles. Pundits are assuming there will be low Democratic turnout and a bad year for Democrats. But things are more complex than that. In a fascinating memo from Stan Greenberg and James Carville’s Democracy Corps and Page Gardner at Women’s Voices Women’s Vote Action Fund, they suggest that there is a modest but nonetheless quite significant trend toward Democratic candidates in the battleground Senate races. Obama’s approval rating is beginning to go up; the Democratic base is more engaged; and key constituencies like unmarried women are starting to move toward the Democrats. They argue that a populist message especially focused on women voters’ top economic concerns and attacking the big money corporate interests that want to “make sure CEOs paid no higher taxes and that their loopholes are protected, while working men and women struggle” moves these razor-tight races an average of 4 crucial points, from -2 to +2.

Read more…

One of the more striking phenomena associated with the oncoming 2016 presidential cycle is the contrast between the massive enthusiasm for former Florida governor Jeb Bush in elite GOP circles and its notable absence anywhere else. But said elites are sometimes blinded by narcissism, and deafened by the puffery of their most prominent tribune, Mark Halperin (now with Bloomberg Politics), who wrote a much-mocked column on the world-historical potential of the Bush boom. I commented on this phenomenon earlier this week at Washington Monthly:

Mark Halperin is one of the most famous, and certainly one of the most richly remunerated, journalists in Christendom–yet is capable of writing graph after graph and page after page of palpable nonsense, expressing not only an indifference to but an active defiance of any objective evidence that transcends the “insider” information he purveys. But the problem here is in considering Halperin a “journalist” in the normal meaning of the term. His niche is to serve as a courtier and a vanity mirror for what Digby so aptly labeled The Village, the small group of elite beltway-centered movers and shakers who want to form the political world in their own image. He writes what Villagers want to read, and is rewarded with unequaled access to their most avaricious thoughts and intentions. And because they do matter in politics, albeit not as much as they would wish, there is a sort of “journalism” going on, but not of the sort that should be taken seriously as reflecting the broader world where activists, constituency groups, and, you know, actual voters have a little something to say about who governs them.
Back when he was flattering and pandering his way to insider influence at The Note, Halperin did a lot to popularize the concept of “the invisible primary,” the elite-dominated pre-election period when presidential candidates seek the money and influence necessary to mount a successful campaign. He remains adept at following that process, but only through the fun-house mirror of his subjects’ wildly inflated self-esteem. Republican insiders are frustrated that the GOP and the entire political system aren’t joining them in a plaintive wail for a third Bush presidency, so in a faithful reproduction of His Master’s Voice Halperin pens a column combining The Village’s ridiculously distorted idea of Jeb’s power and glory with the incredible phenomenon that America might be denied his services.

Personally, I think the acid test for Jeb Bush is whether he’s capable of looking beyond his elite support to the difficult realities of winning a presidential nomination. If he does, though, he probably won’t run.