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.

At VOXXI Tony Castro explains “The midterm paradox of the US Latino vote,” noting a new Pew Research study which finds that “It comes as a disappointing paradox that though a record 25.2 million Latinos are eligible to vote in these midterm elections — comprising 10.7 percent of eligible voters nationwide — they only make up a small share of voters in the many states with close Senate and gubernatorial races this year…Specifically, in the eight states with the closest Senate races, just 5 percent of eligible voters on average are Latinos and average substantially under half of the national average.”
With respect to the TX governor’s race, however, Wendy Davis’s campaign is betting substantial resources on turning out the Latino vote, reports Gromer Jeffers, Jr. at the Dallas News. Davis describes “her voter turnout program as the “most significant field operation that state has ever seen.”
E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s column on “The Blue Collar Imperative” notes “The elections in Georgia and Kentucky are different in important ways, but one lesson from both is that Democrats can’t win without a sufficient share of the white working-class vote.” Despite oft-cited concerns about racial resentments among white workers, “race is not the only thing going on. Andrew Levison, the author of “The White Working Class Today,” says it’s important to distinguish between racial feelings today and those of a half-century ago. “It’s not 1950s racism…It’s more a sense of aggrievement — that Democrats care about other groups but not about the white working class.” Dionne adds “younger members of the white working class are more culturally liberal than their elders. They are also more open to a stronger government role in the economy, as Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin of the Center for American Progress have shown.” Further, “Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, says this points the way toward arguments that progressives need to make in the future: “We have to expose the unholy alliance between money and politics,” she says. “Concern about inequality is unifying, it’s cross-partisan, and it’s not ideological.”
The Wall St. Journal’s Janet Hook and Patrick O’Connor discuss the “Democrats’ New Senate Move: Backing Long-Shot Candidates.”
“On Friday, two Democrats running in key Senate races called for a temporary travel ban from countries battling Ebola: Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) and Georgia’s Michelle Nunn,” reports Sean Sullivan at Post Politics. Furher, “A Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that shows 67 percent of Americans would support restricting entry to the United States from countries fighting dealing with an Ebola crisis.”
In the CA state legislature, “Democrats’ hope of Senate supermajority could rest with 2 districts,” according to Patrick McGreevy’s L.A. Times post.
At The New Yorker Jelani Cobb’s “Voting by Numbers” shares some interesting data, including that “black women had the highest voter turnout of any segment in the country in 2008 and 2012” and “A Gallup poll conducted in July found that sixty-three per cent of respondents believed that we would be better off with more women in elected office. (The partisan divide on the question was noteworthy: seventy-five per cent of Democrats agreed with the sentiment; forty-six per cent of Republicans did.)”
In his post, “Dems Take Comfort from Early Voting Numbers,” The Plum Line’s Greg Sargent offers some encouraging data for Democrats re the IA Senate race: “The DSCC says that…over 170,000 Iowans have already voted in 2014, a 63 percent increase over 2010…A DSCC official emails: ‘Among those ballots cast, nearly 7,000 more registered Democrats have voted than registered Republicans. Our models show that Bruce Braley has a lead of over 15,000 votes among those who have already voted, thanks to a 25-point lead among the unaffiliated voters who have already voted…The recent Des Moines Register poll also showed Braley leading among early voters. But here’s the key nuance. The DSCC official says its model shows Dems are bringing in significantly more non-2010 voters than Republicans.”
From Stephanie Simon’s Politico post “GOP Schooled on Education Politics“: “Accusing Republicans of cutting programs for students while giving tax breaks to the rich motivates diffident voters more than similarly partisan messages on reproductive rights, the economy or health care, veteran Democratic political strategist Celinda Lake found in a series of focus groups and polls…Lake’s research, commissioned by MoveOn.org, included a survey of 1,000 Democratic voters who said they weren’t sure they’d bother to vote in the key states of North Carolina, Michigan, Kentucky, Colorado and Iowa. Coupling the education theme with talk about the middle class falling behind was “nearly a slam dunk with these targets,” Lake wrote…Democratic strategists James Carville and Stan Greenberg came to a similar conclusion after polling 2,200 likely voters in battleground states. They found that unmarried women in North Carolina and Georgia were particularly swayed by messages about expanding access to early childhood education. In Iowa and Colorado, affordable college loans hit the mark. Combining those issues with an appeal to raise the minimum wage, they wrote, creates a “powerful, populist opportunity to shift the vote.”

Josh Kraushaar has a clue for Dems, particularly Michelle Nunn in GA in his National Journal post, “The Democrats’ Most Effective Midterm Message: Outsourcing: Taking a page from Obama’s 2012 playbook, Democrats have found a winning message in a dismal political environment.” But it’s not only Georgia; Kraushaar notes that the issue has traction in IL, MN, CT, MA, or pretty much any electorate with substantial numbers of “blue- and gray-collar voters that aren’t that enthused about shiny young capitalists.”
Luke Brinker presents compelling evidence at Salon.com for “How the minimum wage could tip key midterm races.”
At NBC News.com Mark Murray writes of the GOP lead in a new national bipartisan NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll: “Their edge over Democrats (two points among likely voters) is narrower than it was at this same point in 2010 (seven points), suggesting the GOP won’t see the wave-like gains it made in the last midterm cycle.” Republican Bill Mc Iturff notes, “When you are sitting on top of an unstable electorate, there is a joker in the deck.” Murray notes further, “And in perhaps the best news of all for Democrats…they’re leading Republicans in congressional preference among registered voters in the top-11 Senate races, 47 percent to 42 percent. That’s a reversal from a month ago, when Republicans held a 10-point lead in the top Senate races.”
Crystal Ball’s Sean Trende observes, “To predict Democrats retaining Senate control, you basically have to bet on (a) Democrats sweeping South Dakota, Iowa, Colorado, and North Carolina; (b) picking off enough Republican seats in very red states like Kentucky, Kansas, or Georgia to offset any losses in (a) or; (c) systemic polling failure. You can make a plausible case for each of those scenarios, with (b) probably being the most likely. Regardless, given the current state of polling and knowing how races have behaved over the past few cycles, those really do appear to be the options left for Democrats.”
At Post Politics Sean Sullivan explains “Why Georgia looks more promising than Kentucky for Senate Democrats.”
Talking Points Memo’s Dylan Scott explores “The Strategy Dems Are Betting Will Save Mark Udall — And The Senate“:…Focus on two core Democratic constituencies — women and Hispanics — and an unprecedented, data-driven get-out-the-vote effort…The methods have evolved — better software this time, an all mail-in ballot election — but the foundation remains the same, Paul Dunn, DSCC’s national field director, told TPM in a phone interview.” Scott notes that Udall’s campaign supposes “Bennet’s operation in key categories: 25 field offices in 2014, versus 15 in 2010; 100 field organizers versus 40; and 3,200 volunteers in the last month versus less than 1,000.”
Marquette law School poll has stat tie in Governor’s race, with Republican Scott Walker trending down.
At Time Politics Jay Newton-Small notes an encouraging trend, “Midterm Elections See Surge in Tough-to-Lure Candidates: Young Moms.” Newton-Small notes, “On average, women enter politics four years later–at the age of 51 versus 47–than men, according for Rutgers University’s Center for American Women in Politics. But not so this cycle: A remarkable number of young mothers are running for Congress.”
Timothy Cama reports at The Hill that “Six organizations are teaming up to visit college campuses and encourage young people to vote in the name of environmental protection….The groups, led by the Environmental Defense Fund’s (EDF) Defend Our Future campaign, are backing a Campus Consciousness Tour in eight college towns.”

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:

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.

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”

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.

At The Washington Spectator Lou Dubose explains why “Ignoring Obama’s Record Rewards the Party of No“:

Caught between the unmet expectations of the left and the animosity of the extreme right, the president is defined by two narratives that work against a dispassionate appraisal of his record. In particular, a domestic record that will likely play a decisive role in the midterm elections.
Is Obama deserving of disapproval numbers that range between 50 and 55 percent?
Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley has suggested a different criterion by which to evaluate the president.
Brinkley describes Obama as a new type of 21st-century Democratic chief executive: a curatorial president. Obama, he writes, is a “progressive firewall” standing between an energized right-wing Republican Party and the legacy of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier and the Great Society.

“The Curatorial President” or “The Firewall President,” neither moniker is very inspiring. Yet the terms illuminate an extremely important accomplishment — preventing the GOP’s wholesale rollback of the gains of the New Deal and the Civil Rights Movement. It’s fortunate that we have a President who had the guts to pick up the fallen torch of Sen. Ted Kennedy, as a force against Republican excess. Dubose elaborates:

As long as he is president, Social Security will not be privatized (as proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan); Medicaid will not be turned into a voucher program (per the Ryan budget that the House passed in 2008); the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio will not be defunded (a John Boehner initiative); and the EPA will not be abolished (as proposed by Senators Richard Burr, John McCain, Mike Enzi, John Thune and Roy Blunt).
The role squares with Obama’s character: a deliberative (perhaps excessively deliberative) chief executive deciding where to draw the line on domestic programs he considers essential to the lives of ordinary Americans.

In addition to his “firewall” leadership, let’s give Obama due credit for his pro-active accomplishments, which required some deft politicking, including the Affordable Care Act and saving the all-important auto industry, in stark contrast to the GOP’s laissez faire demolition derby alternative.
Dubose recounts the horrific statistical litany of Bush II’s 2008 meltdown, including the sudden evaporation of $16.4 trillion in personal wealth and 3.8 million private-sector jobs. All of which were soon followed by the Republicans explosion of vitriolic lies and all-out obstruction of even modest reforms that would benefit working Americans.
The Republican response to President Obama’s efforts to get America back into a semblance of economic health was described by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein as “ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.” Dubose adds “No modern president has been confronted by an opposition party that is as nihilistic in its determination to thwart virtually every initiative proposed by the executive branch.”
Further, President Obama’s executive orders, which have enraged Speaker Boehner and other Republicans to initiate a lawsuit, include some eminently defensible measures:

• Providing legal status for more than half a million undocumented residents brought to the country as minors by their parents
• A minimum wage of $10.10 an hour for anyone working for federal contractors
• Blocking companies with a history of workplace violations from receiving federal contracts
• Adding sexual orientation and gender-identity provisions to existing federal workforce protections
• Allowing debtors paying off college loans to cap payments at 10 percent of their annual income
• EPA and Transportation Department rules that will increase fuel economy in cars and light trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

Sigificant reforms, yes, but hardly deserving of the Republicans’ accusations and tantrums about socialism run amok. The President’s latest executive actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, also overwhelmingly supported by the public, has Republicans even more apoplectic.
As Dubose sums up and concludes,

“…$787 billion in stimulus invested in roads, bridges, schools, police forces and public school faculties; health care reform that LBJ biographer Robert Caro describes as a major advance in the history of social justice; public investment in an auto industry to avert its collapse; the expansion of Medicaid to 10.5 million uninsured indigent Americans; ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy; and fulfilling a campaign promise to wind down two wars.
In a healthy political ecosystem, that is a record that candidates would be running on, rather than disowning.”

What President Obama has accomplished, despite the toxic environment created by the GOP and their refusal to negotiate in good faith is remarkable. He may not get the deserved lift in his approval ratings in time to help much in the midterm elections. But average American families ought to be glad he was there to stop the Republicans from shredding the reforms of the New Deal, destroying the economy and weakening health care services for millions more citizens.

This video deserves to ride another day:

Shane Goldmacher reports at The National Journal that “Democratic House Candidates Are Walloping Republicans in the Small-Money Game.”
Also at The National Journal, Alex Roarty asks “GOP strategists fret they aren’t scheduled to spend enough in a handful of battlegrounds. Are they lowering expectations or setting up the blame game?”
At Salon.com Thomas Frank has a good interview with Bernie Sanders entitled, “Bernie Sanders: Longterm Democratic strategy is “pathetic.”” Among Sanders’s insights is this one, which might make a pretty good meme for Dems in some campaigns: “I’m not one who says there’s no difference between the two parties. There are significant differences. The Republican Party is right-wing extremists. The Democratic Party is centrist. That is a big difference.”
Nate Silver makes his case that Republicans are still favored to win a Senate majority. But he answers “not quite” to the chicken little question in his headline.
Jacqueline Klimas argues at The Washington Times that “Online campaign ads may prove decisive in midterm elections“. Says Klimas “Even at just 3 percent of ad spending, online buys are much higher this year than they were in the 2012 campaigns. And analysts expect another big boost heading into the 2016 campaign cycle. Online campaign spending is expected to reach almost $1 billion, or 7.7 percent of total ad spending, in 2016, according to the Borrell report.”
Alexis Levinson reveals at CQ Politics what is “The Big Issue in the North Carolina Senate Race“: “The Tar Heel State is also uniquely suited for political messaging on education. The state’s public university system and the Research Triangle Park are considered local gems. North Carolina is the only state with a state constitution mandating the legislature provide funding for public institutions of higher learning…”Education motivates Hagan’s base, and that’s an urban corridor base,” said Morgan Jackson, a North Carolina Democratic operative. “Not only is it an issue that is a good issue for all of North Carolina, it is one that is off the charts on the people that she needs to motivate.””
A damn good question — and a good retort to ACA-bashers, as well as anti-choicers.
Ronald Brownstein explains at The Atlantic how the U.S. Senate got so “fickle”: “With each party consolidating Senate seats in its presidential strongholds, the prognosis is for narrow Senate majorities tipped by a few swing states and the handful of senators who win on the other side’s natural terrain. Looking forward, the Senate’s “natural division … is very close to 50-50,” says Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz.”

Georgia has highest unemployment rate of 50 states, Republican Governor suggests statistical conspiracy has suddenly erupted. Meanwhile Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp is reportedly “sitting on” 51 thousand voter registration forms.
From Jackie Calmes’s “To Win Back Older Voters, Democrats Talk Up Social Security” in the New York Times: “Democrats are stepping up their appeals to older voters in the final stretch before the midterm elections, spurred by polls showing the party has regained some support lost in the Obama years…”Doing even a little bit better with seniors can have a substantial impact,” Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, said.”…In the first half of September, one in five Democratic ads dealt with either a candidate’s commitment to the programs or, more often, the threat from Republicans, according to Kantar Media CMAG, a nonpartisan media monitor. By comparison, one in 10 Republican ads mentioned the programs, typically to answer Democrats’ assaults.”
At The Daily Beast Linda Kilian has a profile of Sam Wang, “Meet the One Numbers-Cruncher Who Foresees Democrats Holding the Senate.”
Costco, which used to favor Democrats in political contributions, is now shifting their money to Republicans in Washington state. Something to do with liquor taxes. “We’ve had support from certain Republicans in the Legislature, and we thought it was appropriate. It’s as simple as that,” [Costco CEO Jim] Sinegal said of the donations. “I’ve been supportive of Democrats in the past, and on a national basis continue to be.”
“Can Obama Use the Campaign Against ISIS to His Political Advantage? Probably Not,” argues George E. Condon at The National Journal.
Aaron Blake charts “The decline of the conservative Democrat” at The Fix, and cites an 11-point slide in NC and AR voters who self i.d. as Democrats since 2008.
“Younger voters, who tend to back Democrats but are less likely than other groups to turn out during midterm years, are among the least interested in the election. In the new Journal/NBC/Annenberg survey, only 20% of voters younger than 35 said they had a keen interest in the election…Among people age 65 and older, a far higher share, 62%, described themselves as highly interested in the election,” reports Reid J. Epstein at The Wall. St. Journal.
Kyle Kondik of Sabato’s Crystal Ball moves NC Senate race from toss-up to “leans Democratic.”
New American Media’s Khalil Abdullah explores “Will Ferguson Be a Tipping Point for Black Youth Voter Turnout?”