From a Democracy Corps E-blast:
For the first time in this election cycle, the WVWVAF-Democracy Corps Senate battleground shows a consistent move toward the Democrats across a broad range of indicators that suggest the Democrats are more likely to hold control of the U.S. Senate than not. This election is still on a knife-edge; the overall vote remains unchanged and many states are within a couple of points. But the underlying dynamics and key metrics have all moved away from the Republicans and some of these changes are dramatic. The context remains a battleground that Romney won by 8 points, though, Democrats are poised to hold on.
This is a unique and large scale survey for Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund. It includes a core battleground survey of 1,000 interviews and an additional 1,200 interviews conducted in the battleground states of North Carolina, Iowa, Georgia and Colorado. These surveys were completed on October 1 and were incorporated into the battleground.
The big story is that the Democratic campaigns have succeeded in making the candidates’ positions on women’s issues the second biggest reason voters are voting for the Democrat – after the economy, of course. At the same time, minority voters’ support for the Affordable Care Act has risen dramatically – and for them, the health care law has become the second largest factor in their vote.
The result is that those voting Democratic are as consolidated and as intent on voting as those voting for Republicans. That Republican advantage is now gone in the battleground.
A Democratic “in-your shoes” agenda for working women and men and strong populist message is beginning to become the dominant narrative, even in this very Republican battleground. But when Republicans are attacked on their opposition to equal pay and to women not being charged more for insurance, and when they are attacked on their use of unlimited secret money to keep taxes down for billionaires and CEOs, the race shifts from Republicans ahead by 2 points to Democrats ahead by 2. That gain is produced by even more gains among the Rising American Electorate, including unmarried women.
The reason why the battle has become less uphill is the improved position of the Democratic Party and Democratic incumbents, and the worsening standing of Republican candidates and Mitch McConnell. At the same time, the President’s approval rating has risen, and support for his handling of ISIS is strong. Support has risen for the Affordable Care Act. But perhaps as important, Republicans and conservative Republicans are not as strongly opposed to the President.
It all adds up to a final month where Democrats have the chance to take these gains a step further and hold on to their Senate majority.
Read the full memo here.

Despite all of the buzz about Democratic success in fund-raising outpacing Republicans, Elaine Kamarck reports at Brookings that conservative organization independent expenditures on Congressional primaries and the general election in 2014 is more than double that of liberal organizations.
According to a new NYTimes/CBS News/YouGov poll of more than 100K respondents conducted 9/20-10/1 reported by Nate Cohn at The Upshot, Democrats are 4 points ahead in 46 U.S. Senate races, but have only “a nominal edge” in NC, CO and IA. “If the Democrats sweep all three — an outcome by no means assured with such tenuous leads — Senate control could be decided by Kansas, where the Republican senator Pat Roberts is tied with the independent candidate Greg Orman. If Mr. Orman won and caucused with the Democrats, then they would hold the Senate.” If Dems can’t win KS or AK, explains Cohn, they will have to win one of four southern states, KY, AR, LA or GA, where “Republican David Perdue saw his lead fall to four percentage points against Michelle Nunn….Whether the Democratic turnout machine can turn its advantage in voter contacts into additional votes on Election Day might well determine Senate control.”
In GA, reports Bloomberg View’s Albert R. Hunt, “This race is surprisingly close because of the state’s changing demographics. As recently as 2004, whites, who vote overwhelmingly Republican, accounted for 71 percent of the electorate. In 2012, they made up a little more than 61 percent. The black vote, almost all Democratic, grew to 30 percent from less than 25 percent, and the small Hispanic vote is increasing. The Atlas Project, a Democratic organization that studies voting patterns, projects that this trend will continue.” Hunt calculates that Nunn needs 30 percent of the white vote, and for African Americans to be 30 percent of the electorate in GA.
Nunn’s opponent David Perdue is in some pretty scalding hot water, explain John Bresnahan and Manu Raju at Politico: “David Perdue has run aggressively as a “job creator,” touting his record as a top executive with Fortune 500 companies as the chief selling point in his Georgia Senate campaign…Yet during a…nine-month stint in 2002-03 as CEO of failed North Carolina textile manufacturer Pillowtex Corp…– Perdue said he was hired, at least in part, to cut costs by outsourcing manufacturing operations overseas. Perdue specialized throughout his career in finding low-cost manufacturing facilities and labor, usually in Asia…During a July 2005 deposition, a transcript of which was provided to POLITICO, Perdue spoke at length about his role in Pillowtex’s collapse, which led to the loss of more than 7,600 jobs. Perdue was asked about his “experience with outsourcing”…”Yeah, I spent most of my career doing that,” Perdue said, according to the 186-page transcript of his sworn testimony.”
Nunn’s ad on the revelations:

A new NBC/Marist poll of LVs has “Kansas GOP Sen. Pat Roberts down double digits, North Carolina Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan with a 4-point lead and a neck-and-neck race in Iowa,” reports James Hohmann at Politico. Hagan “has now led in the past 10 public polls.”
Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. explains “Why Democrats aren’t getting credit for the economy.” Dionne cites as key factors the “different worries” that come with better times and wage stagnation.
In addition to low wages, long-term unemployment and involuntary part-time employment are still too high, add Yulan Q. Mui and Katie Zezima, also at The Post.
2014 as best year for private sector job growth since 1999 is not a bad meme, however. Or if you want to up the ante, how about “Best Year for Job Creation This Century”

It’s been obvious that from the elite level to the rank-and-file, Republicans have been reapplying the war paint that had begun to fade a bit during protests against various national security positions of the Obama administration. And it’s also becoming apparent that this could affect the party message and nominating process in 2016, as I noted today at the Washington Monthly.

Yes, it’s suddenly a fine time once again to be a Republican super-hawk, what with the GOP rank-and-file getting back in touch with their inner Dick Cheney, and even Rand Paul getting all macho about “destroying” IS. At that neocon fortress, the Weekly Standard, Stephen Hayes can’t help but gloat.

The Republican flirtation with dovish noninterventionism is over. It wasn’t much of a fling.

No, it wasn’t.
Hayes quickly warms to the idea that this new mood of joy in blowing thing up overseas as well as at home will be a big factor in 2016. And though he mentions Paul’s back-tracking and some upcoming “big” speech by Bobby Jindal on defense (presumably because his effort to be the most ferocious Christian Right figure in the campaign hasn’t much worked), Hayes has no doubt who the biggest beneficiary will be:
Not immigration reform? Just kidding.

Rubio called for dramatic increases in defense spending. He said the United States should be prepared to send ground troops to Iraq if necessary to defeat ISIS. He argued that the United States must “be able to project power into multiple theaters in the world.” He said that the United States should embrace its role as a superpower and “conduct a multifaceted foreign policy.”

For the first time, I’m seeing a glimmer of how Rubio might be able to overcome the horrendous damage he suffered among conservative activists with his advocacy of comprehensive immigration reform.

The smell of gunpowder in the air in GOP politics has gotten so strong, in fact, that Lindsey Graham is imagining himself as a 2016 presidential candidate.
That ain’t happening, but it’s a sign of the times.

From Maria Liasson’s post “Senate Battleground Tilts Republican, But Still Anybody’s Game” on NPR’s latest new poll of LV’s, conducted by Republican Whit Ayres of Resurgent Republic and Democrat Stan Greenberg of Democracy Corps:

“The direction of the country is overwhelmingly perceived to be in the wrong direction. Barack Obama is exceedingly unpopular in the Senate battlegrounds,” he says. “The generic party preference for a Senate candidate favors the Republicans by three points. So the playing field still tilts strongly to Republicans in these 12 battleground states.”
Democrat Greenberg doesn’t try to sugarcoat the outlook for his party. But he points out that although not that much has changed since we last polled the Senate battleground in June, the president is a little more popular today, mostly because the public supports his military action against ISIS.
“The mood is bleak, the president’s not popular,” Greenberg says, “but it’s not entirely stable. That is, we’re looking at a president that is slightly improved. … The Democratic candidates, incumbents, are a net positive in their own personal favorability and their job approval. And so they’re clearly withstanding the trend that we’re talking about.”
There’s another phenomenon this year that shows up in the poll. In the battleground, Democrats and Republicans are equally energized, highly likely to vote, and they are not up for grabs. Big majorities of both parties say their minds are made up.
“But these elections are still within a point or two, and so despite this consolidation, the campaigns matter and can still impact both on preference and on turnout,” Greenberg says.
Ayres says he agrees. “Democrats are locked in, the Republicans are locked in, and that’s why it’s so important the independents prefer a generic Republican by 53 percent to 37 percent — 16-point preference,” he says.

Liasson adds, “But the poll also shows that Democrats have been successful at driving an agenda aimed at their top targets — female voters. Democrats in our poll rank a candidate’s position on women and women’s issues just behind the economy.” Ayers notes “there’s not yet evidence of a wave comparable to 2006 or 2010” and Greenberg notes that many recent elections have “broken at the end for Democrats, winning almost all the competitive Senate races.”
Liasson concludes, “History and the number of red states voting tells us that the GOP should win the Senate. But Republicans have fallen short of expectations in the past two cycles.”
Dems can also hope that the just-announced decline of the unemployment rate below 6 percent and other signs of economic recovery may also give their senate battleground candidates a little nudge, which could help tip a close race or two into blue territory (The poll shows that “Jobs/Economy” are still the top priority for voters of every stripe). But all indications are that a fierce GOTV effort remains the Dems best hope for holding their senate majority.

The excerpt below comes from a cheesy staff story in the “Washington Free Beacon,” pretty much what you would expect from a conservative e-rag:

In last night’s Iowa Senate debate, Rep. Bruce Braley used the familiar Democratic attack alleging Republican candidate Joni Ernst will “owe the Koch brothers everything” after election day.
Morning Joe’s Joe Scarborough wasn’t buying it. The MSNBC host ridiculed the Iowa congressman’s attack.
“This Koch brothers thing, it’s ridiculous,” Scarborough said. “Especially when they’re getting tons and tons of money on their side.”
…”It doesn’t even work in Manhattan, where people thank God for David Koch,” Scarborough said. David Koch has donated nearly $300 million to New York City medical and cultural institutions.
“If you go to the hospital for special surgery because you’re mortally injured you will be thanking David Koch,” co-host Mika Brzezinski said.

Apparently the Morning Joe gang thinks their Koch Brothers sponsors should get a free ride on their support of voter suppression (see here, here or here, for example), trashing Social Security, their polluting industries, crushing labor unions, gutting health and safety regulations, opposition to the minimum wage and lavishly supporting right-wing candidates who oppose reforms to help working people.
There may a point when Democrats get diminishing returns on the strategy of calling out the Koch brother’s funding of extremist causes and candidates. But characterizing the Koch brothers as humane business leaders is a stretch too far for all but the more willfully ignorant media puppets.

Joan McCarter has a Daily Kos post up flagging a McLaughlin & Associates poll which generated the Weekly Standard headline “60 percent of voters want Obamacare to be repealed.” Here’s the question that produced the numbers behind the headline:

“Would you support or oppose repealing and replacing Obamacare with a conservative alternative that would save $1 trillion, reduce premiums, enhance access to doctors, and increase the number of people with private insurance by 6 million, but would cover 6 million fewer people overall because fewer people would be on Medicaid?”

No, this is not a joke. In the interest of even-handedness, however, we would like to suggest a follow-up question to insure a semblance of balanced inquiry:

“Would you support the Affordable Health Care Act if it lowered your federal taxes, paid for your kids college education, cured breast and lung cancer, secured the border and gave you a coupon for five all-expense-paid nights in Vegas with the movie star of your choice?”

OK, we’ll throw in an Ipad.

At the Princeton Election Consortium, Sam Wang cautions that, while “Republicans are finally in the lead in election polls…as a profession, pollsters have a small tendency to underestimate Democratic performance, by an average of 1.5%.” Further, he believes that “Kentucky is basically lost to Democrats,” and it would be better to invest resources in winning Senate races in Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, and Louisiana and “maybe Georgia and North Carolina.” All in all, however, “Considering the margins of error in polling, things could still go either way.”
John Dickerson argues at CBS News that Democratic candidates are better off not talking much about “Obama’s unpopular foreign policy” and they appear to have embraced a strategy of changing the subject to domestic policy when it comes up. Dickerson notes that polls indicate that voters trust Republicans more on national security concerns. This last meme is somewhat problematic, since most Republican leaders not named Rand Paul seem to favor a more interventionist stance, and the polls rarely probe the popularity of such views in depth. Obama’s “bombs yes, boots no” approach may have a better public opinion shelf life, compared to the alternatives.
WaPo’s Ed O’Keefe discusses those annoying email pitches for Democratic donations you are receiving in droves — and why they seem to be working. The word “begging” appeared in five subject lines in my e-box yesterday.
Alex Altman of Time Politics discusses the increasing importance of ‘gotcha’ oppo research in 2014 campaigns: “…On the left, the dominant player is American Bridge 21st Century, a super PAC founded in 2010 by the liberal activist David Brock. In the 2014 cycle, American Bridge has an $18 million budget, which pays for 44 trackers in 41 states, plus more than 20 researchers in the group’s Washington office. It has caught [Illinois Republican candidate for Governor Bruce] Rauner on video opposing the minimum wage, captured Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter extolling the billionaire Koch brothers, and documented Michigan Senate candidate Terri Lynn Land arguing that women are “more interested in flexibility in a job than pay.”
At Politico Bill Scher updates the dicey “why it might be good for Democrats if they lose the midterms” argument.
Richard L. Hasen’s Slate.com post “The Voting Wars Heat Up” previews the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court battle over repressive voting laws. Hasen spotlights four major cases before the court and ads, “If the Supreme Court gives the green light to all the voting cutbacks, and especially if it does so reading the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act narrowly, then expect to see even more Republican legislatures pass voting cutbacks in time for the 2016 elections…The longer-term prospects for court protection of voting rights appear bleak. We cannot expect the Supreme Court to read voting rights protections broadly, and we cannot expect a polarized Congress to pass any new voting rights protections to make up for the loss of preclearance. Instead, the battle over voting rights will have to be fought state by state, through political action and agitation.”
Crystal Ball’s Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley report that “One popular dataset that analysts keep an eye on is early and absentee voting numbers, particularly in states with competitive races. At this point, seven states have entered their early voting periods, and 33 states and the District of Columbia will have early balloting this cycle, while 27 states and DC have no-excuse absentee voting as an option. And in many states with party registration, we can see the number of requests and total votes cast by each party’s registrants (though not for whom they voted). For example, Nate Cohn of the New York Times recently read the early ballot tea leaves in Iowa, which has a very competitive Senate race on its hands. His general conclusion: Both Democrats and Republicans are much more engaged in a state that hasn’t had a Senate contest decided by less than 10 points since 1996, and absentee requests are up over 2010 for both parties and among independents. In North Carolina, Catawba College Prof. Michael Bitzer says that absentee ballot requests and returns are looking better for Democrats than they did in 2010.”
Women are still lagging badly behind men in their share of elective offices nationwide. But 2014 may be the year that women roar at the polls in a different way. In “Why Women Are Democrats’ Last Best Hope to Salvage the Senate” at The National Journal, Scott Bland notes, “…a National Journal analysis of public polls, and interviews with strategists from both parties, suggests that the gap has ballooned to historic proportions across 2014’s battleground states…”I think the gender gaps are growing compared to past election cycles,” said Matt Canter, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s deputy executive director. “We’ll see how that turns out, but that’s certainly what the public and internal polling shows, in every race across the board.”
All of the buzz about the importance of women voters in this election cycle notwithstanding, GOP ads targeting them are still clueless.