In his Washington Post article, “Hurricane Sandy highlights how Obama and Romney respond to disasters,” Ed O’Keefe describes the President’s course of action addressing frankenstorm Sandy:

…Obama has signed at least nine federal emergency disaster declarations in the past 24 hours at the request of state governors, directing FEMA to deploy more resources in anticipation of significant recovery efforts. He canceled campaign stops for Monday and Tuesday to return to the White House to oversee the federal government’s evolving storm response.
…Obama campaigned four years ago on a promise to revamp the federal government’s disaster-response functions and has embraced changes long sought by state governors and professional emergency managers. Since becoming president, he has led the federal response to multiple natural disasters, including tornadoes, flooding and major hurricanes, learning from government stumbles during the presidency of George W. Bush — most notably in the case of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Obama’s posture has been to order federal agencies to aggressively prepare for and respond to major storms and other disasters.

It’s a portrait of a president leaving no task unmet. O’Keefe sees “a moment of sharp contrast between President Obama and Mitt Romney and how their different ideas of governing apply to the federal response to large-scale disasters.” O’Keefe adds that “Obama has been aggressive about bolstering the federal government’s capability to respond to disasters, while his Republican challenger believes that states should be the primary responders in such situations and has suggested that disaster response could be privatized.” Further,

As governor of Massachusetts, Romney requested federal disaster assistance for storm cleanup, and he has toured storm-ravaged communities as a presidential candidate, but he has agreed with some who suggest that the Federal Emergency Management Agency could be dissolved as part of budget cuts.
When moderator John King suggested during a June 2011 CNN debate that federal disaster response could be curtailed to save federal dollars, Romney said: “Absolutely. Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.”

At the time, Romney didn’t have much to say about, ahem, how states should work together when a natural disaster overlaps state borders, as they most always do. But in the Romney campaign’s partial walkback statement, we get this:

“Governor Romney believes that states should be in charge of emergency management in responding to storms and other natural disasters in their jurisdictions,” said campaign spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg. “As the first responders, states are in the best position to aid affected individuals and communities and to direct resources and assistance to where they are needed most. This includes help from the federal government and FEMA.”

Which is pretty much how the system works, as O’Keefe points out. He adds that the Romney campaign is also collecting supplies for the storm’s victims, which FEMA says is not such a good idea in the earliest part of the relief effort, because cash and blood donations are more urgently needed and donated supplies can cause logistical bottlenecks too early on.
After President Bush botched the Hurricane Katrina relief effort the agency has undergone major restructuring and reorganization under the leadership of President Obama and FEMA administrator Carl Fugate, as O’Keefe explains:

Fugate and Obama have earned praise for restoring the agency’s reputation in the years since Katrina. Despite working for then-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as head of the state’s emergency agency, Fugate said he rebuffed overtures from George W. Bush to lead FEMA after Katrina, saying that the GOP administration did not want to rebuild the agency in the fashion since embraced by Obama.

O’Keefe adds that “Fugate has batted away questions before about possible privatization of his agency: “I’m too busy working on other stuff. Ask that to somebody who would give you the time and day to answer that,” he said in a 2011 interview. O’Keefe notes that Obama’s FEMA reforms have “earned plaudits from then-Gov. Haley Barbour (R) of Mississippi and Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) of Louisiana — usually tough Obama critics — and professional emergency managers who had sought the changes for years.” O’Keefe concludes with a quote recalling Bush’s ‘Heckuvajob Brownie” mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina relief:

Obama’s changes at FEMA “have been night and day” compared with those under previous administrations, according to one veteran emergency manager who was not authorized to speak publicly for fear of jeopardizing federal disaster grant requests. “I don’t know who will be the next president, but they can’t put a political hack in the job of leading FEMA ever again.”

Some may protest that it’s unseemly to call attention to the differing approaches of the candidates in a time of national emergency, when Americans should be pulling together. But lives are at stake and it’s important that voters pay attention to the management philosophies and track records of the two candidates in addressing major disasters. This is a matter of national security as much as any foreign policy issue.
What voters are left with is an image of Romney posturing his ideologically-extravagant privatization schema and federal government-bashing, and a more grounded and experienced President Obama taking care of business. My hunch is that the clear distinction will not be lost on observant swing voters.

Sandy has distracted attention from and cast doubts about every aspect of Election 2012. But here are some relatively weather-proofed items of interest from today’s talk at Washington Monthly:
* More analysis–this time relying on John Sides–showing that too much obsession about undecided voters is a strategic mistake for Team Obama.
* Summary of public opinion on California’s eleven ballot initiatives.
* Given all the talk about the Des Moines Register‘s endorsement of Mitt Romney, you’d hope some people would actually read it and discern its idiocy.
* Query: Should climate change activists go over the top in using Sandy as a teaching moment?
We’ll see how the hot wind of the campaign interacts with Sandy’s wild weather.

The following comes from a new Democracy Corps memo.
We will poll this week – awaiting the unfolding storm on the East Coast – but we want to share why we think the national tracking averages likely underrepresent Obama’s vote. The main issue is cell phones and the changing America that most are under-representing. Our likely voter sample includes 30 percent reached on cell-phones from a cell-phone sample conducted in parallel with our random-digit phone sample. Some other surveys have moved to that level and methodology, but most have not. They are missing the new America, and we’re not sure we are keeping up either.
In the real America, most Americans are now cell-phone only or cell-phone mostly users. With no one really sure what is the right proportion for the likely electorate, everyone has been cautious but that may be the riskier option.
Pay attention to this. In the last half of 2011, 32 percent of adults were cell-phone only according the Center for Disease Control that is the official source on these issues; 16 percent were cell phone mostly. But the proportion cell-phone only has jumped about 2.5 points every six months since 2008 – and is probably near 37 percent now. And pay attention to these numbers for the 2011 adult population:
More than 40 percent of Hispanic adults are cell phone only (43 percent).
A disproportionate 37 percent of African Americans are cell only.
Not surprisingly, almost half of those 18 to 24 years are cell only (49 percent), but an astonishing 60 percent of those 25 to 29 years old only use cell phones.
But it does not stop there: of those 30 to 34 years, 51 percent are cell only.
You have to ask, what America are the current polls sampling if they are overwhelmingly dependent on conventional samples or automated calling with no cell phones? Democracy Corps reached 30 percent by cell; 35 percent were cell only or cell mostly, but only 15 percent are cell only, well short of where we should be.
Read the full memo at Democracy Corps.

Thomas B. Edsall’s “Billionaires Going Rogue” at The New York Times warns of an unintended consequence of the Citizens United decision — the end of political parties as a moderating force and the empowerment of fewer and fewer wealthy individuals as king-makers. Edsall explains:

…The Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and appeals court decisions such as Speech Now v. F.E.C., opened the door to unlimited contributions to technically independent political action committees (super PACs) from corporations, unions and individuals.
The result has been a stupefying array of PACs, 501(c)4s and 501(c)6s that even professionals can barely keep track of…While, the rapid growth of well-financed and autonomous competitors threatens all existing power structures, the bulk of the costs are likely to fall on the Republican Party. The right wing of the Republican Party has more disruptive potential than the left wing of the Democratic Party because it is more willing to go to extremes: see the billboards showing Obama bowing down before an Arab Sheik, or the ads and DVD claiming that Obama is the bastard son of the African American communist, Frank Marshall Davis.
There are, furthermore, structural and historical differences between the parties: the Republican Party and the conservative establishment is institutionally stronger than the Democratic Party, with an infrastructure that served as a bulwark through the 1960s and 70s – the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Olin Foundation, etc. – when Republicans appeared to be a permanent congressional minority. Its financial prowess enabled the party to enforce more discipline on its consultants and elected officials. The Republican establishment also exercises more authority over policy and candidate selection than does its Democratic counterpart.
In recent years, the Democratic Party organization has gained some strength and it plays a much more active role in campaigns at all levels than in the past, but as an institutional force capable of command and control, it remains light years behind the Republican Party.
Republicans, in contrast to Democrats, prefer hierarchical, well-ordered organizations, and are much more willing to cede authority to those in power. Democrats, despite the discipline of individual campaign efforts, tend more toward anarchy than hierarchy. Historically, one result of this partisan difference is that the Republican establishment has tightly managed candidate selection at the presidential level. With extraordinary consistency, the party has crushed insurgent candidates and selected the next in line. Ronald Reagan and Bob Dole, for example, both had to wait until it was their turn.

Edsall goes on to explain how, in the past, the Republican party establishment was able to stifle it’s more extreme candidates through various instruments of party discipline. But all that is fading away at an increasing rate, as Edsall observes:

The newly empowered billionaires are positioned to challenge the Republican Party at its point of greatest vulnerability, during the primaries. The three major party organizations – the Republican National, Congressional and Senatorial Committees – cannot, except in unusual circumstances, intervene in primaries. Those are to be decided by voters, not the party.
The new class of financial bosses, equipped to legitimate primary candidates at all levels, has no such restriction over participation in primaries. Instead, the incentives are substantial to engage full force in the nomination process where the marginal value of each dollar is higher and more likely to influence the outcome than in the general election.
These new players, along with their super PACs, undermine the influence of the parties in another crucial way. Before Citizens United, the three major Republican Party committees exerted power because their financial preeminence gave them the final word on the award of contracts to pollsters, direct mail, voter contact, and media consultants – very few of whom were willing to alienate a key source of cash.
The ascendance of super PACs creates a separate and totally independent source of contracts for the community of political professionals. Super PACs and other independent groups already raise more than any of the political party committees and almost as much as either the Republican or Democratic Party committees raise in toto.
…Nathan Persily, a professor at Columbia Law School and a political scientist, made the point to me with a question: “Who is the Republican Party in the Citizens United age? If you had to point to the ‘Republican Party’ would you be more likely to point to Reince Preibus (and implicitly the R.N.C.) or Karl Rove (and Crossroads G.P.S.)? I think candidates might consider Rove more important.”…So far in the 2011-12 election cycle, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS have spent $174.28 million, a sum two million dollars greater than the $172.2 million spent by the Republican Congressional and Senatorial Committees combined.

As Edsall concludes,

…The diminishment of the parties means that the institutions with the single-minded goal of winning a majority will be weakened. When parties are influential, they can help keep some candidates and office holders from going off the ideological deep end. The emergence of independently financed super PACs give voice to those with the most extreme views…For all their flaws, strong political parties are important to a healthy political system. The displacement of the parties by super rich men determined to flex their financial muscles is another giant step away from democracy.

As we are seeing in this presidential election, the effect Edsall describes will likely apply more to the Republican Party than to the Democrats, which is scant comfort in a close election, not only for Democrat-leaning progressives, but also for voters of all parties who value political moderation.

Facing South’s Chris Kromm takes a look at “What’s going on in the Southern swing states?” and concludes that that “the reality is that polls show Obama’s changing prospects in the Southern swing states are completely in line with what’s happened nationally.” Regarding Virginia and Florida, Kromm notes:

* Virginia is Obama’s best hope in the South. He won the state by more than 230,000 votes in 2008, and it still ranks with Ohio among the most hotly-contested national battlegrounds. In the polls, Obama averages a miniscule .8-point lead. According to The New York Times’ popular poll-watching blog FiveThirtyEight, as of now that translates into an equally-narrow 54 percent chance of Obama winning the state.
* Florida has some Democrats more worried. After Obama won the state by 2.5 points in 2008 — and enjoying good polling numbers at different times in 2012 — there’s sharp debate about his chances this time around. In a reverse image of Virginia, Romney leads the polls by a mere .6 points. But FiveThirtyEight’s analysis finds a state where Obama has struggled to gain traction; right now, they peg his odds of winning Florida at just 35 percent.

Silver’s FL projection may seem a tad pessimistic, given the less than 1 percent lead Romney has in the latest poll. Kromm has more of an insider perspective on NC, where he explains:

…Democrats insist it’s still in play, and point to recent good-news polls [pdf] as proof of revival in a state Obama won by just over 14,000 votes in 2008…The Obama campaign’s strategy in North Carolina has been hard to fathom, perhaps intentionally: On one hand, he famously skipped the state in a recent swing-state tour, and left North Carolina out of a recent round of ad buys. But now Obama’s bumped up advertising in the state again. The campaign claims their focus on “ground game” is the reason Democrats have made up 53 percent of early voters so far; the early voting rate is up 22 percent from 2008.
What do the polls say? Going by averages, Romney has only a 1.6-point advantage in North Carolina. But like Florida, FiveThirtyEight thinks Obama has too much catching up to do; they currently a meager 19 percent chance of winning N.C.

Kromm concludes that “Obama’s prospects may, as of now, appear to have dimmed in the Southern swing states compared to 2008 — but not any worse than they have in other parts of the country.” And it may be that a heroic GOTV effort, particularly in NC’s more progressive “research triangle” and “souls to the polls” mobilizations could offset the small polling leads the GOP may or may not have by election day.

As the northeast braces for Frankenstorm Sandy, it’s worth flagging this Think Progress post, “Mitt Romney: Federal Disaster Relief For Tornado And Flood Victims Is ‘Immoral,’ ‘Makes No Sense At All‘ by Brad Johnson.
Might be a little surprise a-brewing in the Tar-Heel state, reports Jason Easely at PoliticusUSA.
Maddow busts MTP host’s defense of the GOP’s rape dodge.
CNN’s Tom Cohen reports on a couple of potential ‘spoilers’ who are making the Romney campaign a little nervous.
The Economist has an insightful update on the presidential campaign ‘air war,’ noting, “From late April, when Mr Romney clinched the Republican nomination, until October 21st, Mr Obama and his allies spent $275m on advertising to the Romney camp’s $319m, according to the Wesleyan Project…What is more, those figures understate Mr Obama’s presence on the airwaves, since his money went further. He and his allies aired 521,675 ads, according to the project’s tally, to 469,539 for Mr Romney. That is partly because the Obama campaign booked its ads earlier, locking in cheaper rates. What is more, campaigns themselves, as opposed to parties or other outsiders advertising on a candidate’s behalf, are entitled to cheaper rates by law. So the fact that roughly half of the spending in favour of Mr Romney comes from independent outfits such as American Crossroads and Restore Our Future is something of a handicap.”
Liz Kennedy reports at Demos on the overwhelming bipartisan majority opposed to corporate political spending and favoring reforms.
Please, Republicans, unleash Sununu some more — he provides a marvelous poster-boy for Republican values. Heck, maybe also show some re-runs of the Trump endorsement, inter-weaved with footage of his latest birther drivel. Very classy.
Why serious (non-clown) business leaders prefer President Obama.
In similar vein, 100 top CEO’s have called for (gasp!) tax hikes, reports Rick Newman at US News.
The Daily Beast Salutes “America’s Greenest Politicians” — and the 24 elected officials chosen include zero Republicans.

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:
I am a huge fan of the idea of the Obama campaign closing with putting out an economic plan for the next four years. This is something I have been urging on them not only them but a number of other candidates in tough races for quite a while. I really believe that voters have a deep innate understanding that the economy came off the rails four years ago in a more serious way than usual, that it was due to some big structural problems that had been building for a long time, and that we needed some big, comprehensive ideas to revive the middle class and get the economy back on the right road. I think a great many Americans understand this deep in their bones, far better than the elites in DC who are in too much of a bubble, and are doing too well, to get it. Because of this, voters have been hungry for a serious plan, for big ideas on how to deal with what ails us.
So I am very glad that the plan is the central part of Obama’s final message, and I think it is working: Obama remains ahead in the all-important swing states. I would have opted for a bigger and bolder plan if I were writing it, both for political and policy reasons, but having this plan be at the heart of the closing argument is a great thing. But there are two other pieces to the message that I think should be part of the entire Democratic party’s end game message, and their progressive allies as well. These campaigns have a lot of ads running, and a lot of speeches being given, and there can be more than one element to the message.
The first is to bring the 47% video back to the table. That video came out shortly after the Democrats cleaned the clocks of the Republicans in terms of convention messaging. Voters had moved decisively toward Democrats, in races up and down the ticket, after hearing the two parties contrasting messages of “you’re on your own” vs. “we’re all in this together” — and then the 47% video reinforced and hardened voters’ rejection of Republican values. We had them on the run with a gap that was widening and solidifying. In the aftermath of the first debate, where Romney acted like he was a Democrat and the president failed to make a strong values argument, and worst of all failed to make the contrast between the ideas Romney discussed in the 47% video and Obama’s “we’re all in this together” values, the race returned to the deadlocked election it had been before the conventions. Worse, the Obama team and the many Democratic outside groups doing ads didn’t go back to that values argument which the 47% video invoked, and voters stopped thinking about it. I hope that both the progressive groups doing ads and mail and calls in the final days of the campaign and the Obama campaign make the 47% part of the closing argument.
Here’s the other thing I hope the president, vice president, and Democrats in general do in these closing days: remind voters that this is not just about Romney but about the entire philosophy and values of the Republican Party. One of the things that is absolutely clear in the polling reports I am reading is that the reason the president remains ahead in the swing states is that the brand of the entire Republican party, including Mitt Romney but not exclusively him for sure, is dragging them down. Congressional Republicans, whose intellectual leader is their VP nominee, is the most unpopular institution in American politics.
It’s been interesting to me throughout the campaign that Obama has run pretty much exclusively against Romney and to a lesser extent Ryan, and have never chosen to run against the far more unpopular Republican Congress the way we did in the 1996 Clinton re-elect, and the way Harry Truman did in his 1948 campaign — the last two Democrats to run for re-election with Republicans in control of the House. In our 1996 race, we made the decision early on to make the race not against Bob Dole but far more against Newt Gingrich — we ran far more attack ads against Newt than we ever did against Dole.
There are some differences between this year and ’96, of course. Boehner never made himself into the polarizing figure that Gingrich did early in ’95, and Romney has had far more vulnerabilities (the appalling things he did at Bain Capital and the 47% video among them) to exploit than Dole, who was, well, dull. But I hope we close this campaign by reminding voters that the values of the 47% video and the Republican convention are not just Romney’s values, but his party’s values, and that putting them in charge of the country would be a disaster. It would also be a big boost to all these House and Senate Democrats running with Obama, which they need given the fire hose of nasty ads Karl Rove and his big money boys are spewing out. When George W. Bush ran for re-election in 2004, his campaign made it a point to run on an anti-Democratic party message because they wanted to sweep more Republicans in with them, and it worked. In the closing days of this campaign, Obama should be doing the same.
None of this contradicts promoting the president’s plan. In fact, the contrast between Obama’s pro-middle class, we’re all in this together plan, and the values of a Republican party who believes that 47% of Americans are lazy welchers could not be a stronger end game message.

Things are definitely getting tense. Here are some items of interest from today’s posting at Washington Monthly:
* Hurricane Sandy is not only a major threat to life, limb and property for many millions of people on the East Coast, but could also seriously complicate the run-up to Election Day.
* Mitt Romney’s “closing argument,” delivered in Iowa today, claims a “big and bold” agenda, which is true, though it’s not one he’s willing to disclose.
* The conservative plan for a radical reshaping of government in 2013 is based on a serious miscalculation: taking a GOP Senate for granted.
* The math of undecided voters is tricky this year, and in most states probably less important than a successful turnout operation.
Stay safe if Sandy comes to visit your neighborhood!