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?”

At NBC News Alastair Jamieson, Kiko Itasaka and Kelly Cobiella ask “Will Scotland’s Independence Referendum Be Decided by Teen Voters?” Like Brazilians, Scots can now vote at age 16.
HuffPost Pollster reports that “A Quarter Of Gubernatorial Races Look Like Tossups.”
Union organizer gets McArthur “Genius grant.”
Tired of all the pundit prognosticating about the midterm elections? The Upshot has a gizmo you can use to “Make Your Own Senate Forecast.”
This is an interesting take on faith-based GOTV.
Michael D. Shear and Carl Hulse make a case at The New York Times that “World Events Muffle Democrats’ Economic Rallying Cry.” They are right that there’s not much that can be done about media giving most of the air time and ink to the horrific violence in the Middle East. But Dems should be able to score a few points by reminding voters that Republicans initiated the disastrous occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan that helped create it and sent the U.S. and world economies into a tailspin.
Here’s a good update on political apps.
Lots of “Dems in disarray” hoo ha in the MSM this week. But Greg Sargent flags a telling comment from Karl Rove that “each passing day brings evidence as to why a GOP Senate majority is still in doubt.” Sargent notes also that Republicans get squirmy at the mere mention of anything to do with reproductive rights these days, and “Rove’s own Crossroads GPS has reacted by running ads designed to simply change the subject, which suggests that Dems really are turning cultural issues to their advantage.”
Wouldn’t it be more surprising if it were otherwise?

At The Nation John Nichols posts on “Scotland’s Referendum on Austerity,” with the theme of his argument well-encapsulated in the title. Nichols writes from Glasgow:

Thursday’s Scottish referendum vote is often framed in terms of the politics of nationalism–and the desire of a people for self-determination. And of course there have always been, and there still are, impassioned Scottish nationalists…But the reality that becomes overwhelmingly clear in the last hours before the referendum vote–which polls suggest will see an exceptionally high turnout and a close finish–is that this process is being shaped by the politics of austerity.
… [British Prime Minister David]Cameron has implemented an austerity agenda that threatens the National Health Service and broader social services, undermines trade unions and communities, and deepens inequality. Despite the devolution of some powers to a Scottish Parliament over the past decade, Scotland is still governed in many of the most important senses from London–even though less than 17 percent of Scots backed Cameron’s Conservatives in the last election, giving the Tories just one of Scotland’s fifty-nine seats in the British Parliament.

So, clearly, Scotland would be better off independent from a purely progressive standpoint, in the sense that it could get free of Tory economic austerity policies. He adds that the “Yes, Scotland” campaign will mean:

We can use Scotland’s wealth to build a fairer nation.
Scotland’s NHS [National Health Service] will be protected from creeping privatization.
We spend money on childcare instead of Trident missiles.
A lower pension age and higher pensions.
The end of Tory governments we don’t vote for.
Decisions about Scotland will be made by the people who care most about Scotland, the people who live here.

Even if the independence vote fails, writes Nichols, The Tory government will face enormous pressure to relax austerity policies. So the referendum will do some good for working people in Scotland, regardless of the outcome. Hard to argue with any of that if you are a progressive, right?
Hmmm. Maybe not. Michael Tomasky looks at it from a different angle at The Daily Beast. But first, consider that Scotland has a population of about 5.3 million, about the same as metro Detroit. England, however, has a population of about 53 million, about 10 times that of Scotland. Further, adds Tomasky:

The biggest implications of tomorrow’s Scottish vote are political, and they aren’t good for Labour in the long term.
Imagine with me for a moment that the states of New England left the United States of America. Yes, absurd–if anyone ought to leave someday, it’s the yellow-bellies who left the last time so that they could preserve their God-given right to keep other humans as property, not the patriots who founded the damn country. But let’s pretend.
Well, the implications would be many and weighty, both for the diminished USA and for the new entity. How would all the economic questions be sorted out? Would the New Englanders need passports? What would American higher education be without Harvard and Yale and the others? Would the Celtics stay in the NBA? But being a political person, I’d find the most interesting questions to be the political ones, and of the many that would arise, the bluntest would clearly be: Could the Democrats ever win a presidential election again?

Tomasky adds with impressive candor “I can’t say that I care about Scotland one way or the other, but I do care whether Labour can continue to win elections, and if you care about that too, this is the sense in which you have a stake in the outcome… You take away Scotland, you take a major base of Labour strength. No wonder Labour is making a huge “no” push, sending native son Gordon Brown up to campaign as the vote nears.”
Tomasky links to a nifty graphic representation of the political stakes of the vote on Scottish independence, which you can see right here.
No doubt Prime Minister Cameron doesn’t want to be the U.K. leader who presided over the final dissolution of the empire, but some of his fellow Tories are licking their lips at the prospect of purging Scotland’s Labour M.P.s. Cameron is also surely worried that a “yes” vote would restart the troubles in Ireland in a big way, and perhaps lead to the unification of Eire, and history would say it’s all his fault.
But it’s not an easy call for thoughtful progressives. Sure self-determination is a good thing from a liberal point of view. But millions of English workers — and the Labour Party of our closest ally getting politically-screwed — not so much.

From Samnatha Lachman’s HuffPo post “Here’s How Progressives Plan To Beat Back The GOP Tide“:

“How do you encourage a discouraged electorate?” Karen Nussbaum, Working America’s executive director, asked at a press briefing last week…”It’s a matter of reaching these folks,” she said, explaining that the organization has set a goal of reaching 1.5 million households — or 2.5 million voters — by Nov. 4. The group plans to hold 25,000 face-to-face conversations with voters every week until then.
…As part of this effort, roughly 400 Working America canvassers will go door-to-door between now and Election Day to talk to voters, with instructions to steer the conversation away from disapproval of President Barack Obama toward more local economic issues. The group’s rationale is that while white, working-class males might remain agitated with Obama, they could nonetheless be persuaded on economic grounds to vote for Democrats in key races, like Mark Schauer, who is running against Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R), or Alison Lundergan Grimes, who is challenging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Lachman quotes Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, “who surveyed 1,000 low-propensity Democratic voters in the group’s target states, such as those who did not vote in the 2010 midterms but voted in 2012 because Obama was on the ballot.”

In a memo for MoveOn summarizing the poll results, Lake listed a number of messages that motivated so-called “drop-off” voters, including: “Republicans will take away a woman’s right to choose and restrict access to birth control”; “Republicans will cut access to health care for 8 million people and let insurance companies refuse to cover people with preexisting conditions”; “Republicans will cut back workplace protections for women, denying them equal pay for equal work”; and “Republicans will cut funding for Head Start and K-12 education.” Voters were also swayed by the idea that their state could decide which party controls the Senate.

Meanwhile, AFL-CIO Political Director Michael Podhorzer says that his canvassers will be “talking with voters “about how they’re going to pay their gas bills or rent, how they’re going to get by,” they will understand how voting for a Republican incumbent will lead to more of the same…”This is about taking the election down from the cacophony on television to, ‘How are you going to make your mortgage payment?”
All good messages for 2014. But it’s about making it personal this time, not only with ad buys and other tools of the media arsenal, but with more up-close, face-to-face contact and the human touch.

Jonathan Martin’s “Democrats Put Cultural Issues in Their Quiver” at The New York Times pegs the political moment exceptionally-well. Martin focuses on the senate campaigns in bellwether Virginia, Colorado and North Carolina, with drive-by references to Louisiana, Florida and Arkansas, to illuminate why Dems are getting their better-than-expected performances across the nation. As Martin observes:

After a generation of campaigns in which Republicans exploited wedge issues to win close elections, Democrats are now on the offensive in the culture wars.
Democrats see social issues as potent for the same reasons Republicans once did, using them as a tool to both stoke concerns among moderate voters, especially women, and motivate their base.

Virginia is the poster state for Martin’s argument. Moderate Democrat Mark Warner, who can be fairly described as one of the more cautious U.S. Senators, has morphed into an all-out progressive cultural warrior, confidently hammering his adversary, GOP veteran Ed Gillespie about his positions on abortion, contraception and same-sex marriage.
Martin shares that Republican candidates in FL, AR and LA are reluctant to even talk about such cultural issues, for fear of alienating moderate women voters, in stark contrast to 2004, when the GOP fronted state referendums supporting restrictive laws addressing same-sex marriage. Further, adds Martin, “On issues like gun control, drugs, the environment, race and even national security, this demographic shift has substantially weakened the right’s ability to portray Democrats as out of the social mainstream.” In addition,

“The Republican Party from 1968 up to 2008 lived by the wedge, and now they are politically dying by the wedge,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant who has used the “super PAC” of the billionaire Tom Steyer to inject climate change, same-sex marriage, abortion and contraception into a series of recent campaigns.

In Virginia, Warner is following the successful template of fellow Dems, Senator Tim Kaine in 2012, and Gov. Terry McAuliffe in 2013, as well as Michael Bennet in Colorado in 2010, all of whom leveraged cultural issues adroitly in their victories. This year in CO Democratic Sen Mark Udall “has pounded his Republican challenger, Representative Cory Gardner, on abortion, contraception and same-sex marriage.” At the first Senate debate in NC, Democrat Kay Hagan boldly asked her Republican opponent,”Speaker Tillis, it’s 2014 — why did you work to make birth control so inaccessible?”
Martin concludes with a quote from Stephanie Schriock, the head of Emily’s List, that the women’s vote is “absolutely now deciding elections…And they will decide this year by going or not going to the polls.”
The stakes couldn’t be much higher. If women do improve their showing at the polls, and African American voters also turnout in higher percentages than in previous midterm elections, Democrats will have a new formula for winning state-wide races — and the stage will be set for taking back the House majority in 2016.

The New York Times editorial board outlines a workable program for increasing midterm voter turnout to healthy a level, which includes the following key elements, some of which “are being tested on a broader scale”: Better use of data; more paid workers and volunteers; big registrations drives and; reducing voter barriers. In terms of numerical goals, write the Times board members, “According to Catalist, a data analysis company, the groups with the biggest declines in turnout between 2008 and 2010 were voters younger than 30, down nearly 35 percentage points; black and Hispanic voters, down 27 points each; and single women, down 26 points. Those groups have historically been the most resistant to the right’s message of lower taxes, sharply reduced spending on social programs and job creation, and tighter restrictions on women’s reproductive rights.”
Policy.Mic’s Peter Moskowitz proposes “6 Easy Ways the Government Could Turn Around Our Abysmal Voter Turnout.”: Same-day registration; longer hours at polling places; expand early voting; vote by mail; online voting and; make elections interesting. My hunch is that the last one is more up to the candidates and parties than government.
At Daily Kos Denise Oliver Velez reports on the effort to suppress the student vote and the coalitions rising up to resist it, including National Voter Registration Day, coming up on September 23rd.
Politico tries to trash Democratic leaders’ push for reforms to slow “tax inversions” — U.S. businesses relocating to other countries as a tax dodge. The post notes, however, that “Polling does, in fact, suggest that when you explain what inversions are to voters, they don’t like them. In fact, they pretty much hate them…A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll this week showed that 59 percent of registered voters support Congress taking action to “penalize and discourage” inversion transactions.”
Further, as Jeff Sommer reports in The New York Times: “In the end, Walgreen decided that the outcry over tax inversions was too much to bear: Gregory D. Wasson, the Walgreen C.E.O., decided to go ahead with the Alliance Boots merger — but not with a tax relocation overseas. “We had to consider the consumer backlash,” Mr. Wasson said in a meeting with employees in August. “We had to consider the political backlash.”
Read Jeremy W. Peters’s NYT article, “Building Legacy, Obama Reshapes Appellate Bench” to better understand “one of the most significant but unheralded accomplishments of the Obama era” — and a good message point for mobilizing Democratic turnout.
The low expectations in this headline are understandable. But isn’t the more important part of the story found in the lead sentence?: “Americans by a 3-to-1 margin support President Barack Obama’s decision to take military action against the Islamic terrorist group called ISIS, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Annenberg poll conducted after the president’s primetime speech on Wednesday.”
Sean J. Miller of Campaigns & Elections magazine has an interview with Democratic political ad strategist Martha Mckenna, in which she explains her firm’s view of the virtues of animated ads: “We like to make animated spots. An animated spot might be a little bit more expensive than using stock footage; we put the price tag on it because it’s liable to stand out more than another spot would. They are really time-intensive. It’s a lot of time and energy for the artist. It’s one thing to bring words on paper and video together; it’s another thing to animate a 30-second spot. So we have learned a lot about ways to do what we think are really creative spots within a tight budget. We recognize, as former campaign managers, that money is hard to raise and so we really look for efficiencies wherever we can, so our production costs often come in lower in the range of what other firms charge…”
It’s hard to understand why, but serial voter suppression advocate Mike Huckabee is apparently leading the baggage-laden field of GOP 2016 contenders. Looks like a lot of room for a dark horse to blast through the pack.

Charles Pierce offers some perceptive insights about the President’s address last night, including that it was: “…a speech that was neither as bellicose as some people wanted, nor as isolationist as other people wanted. (Rand Paul, of course, feels strongly both ways.)…The president also asked the Congress, and the political elite of this country, to take ownership of all that loose talk that has come out of our government since that day 13 years ago, the incoherent babble of our national derangement…There are substantial political constituencies, both here and abroad, for the national derangement that began in 2001 to continue. And I think that last night’s speech was, in part, a attempt to challenge those constituencies to come out of the shadows and show themselves.”
From Greg Sargent’s Plum Line post “For Republicans, the midterm elections are all about Obama“: “The poll finds that 54 percent of voters — including 64 percent of independents and 63 percent of moderates — say Obama is “not a factor” in their vote…But 62 percent of Republicans — and 67 percent of conservative Republicans — say a reason for their vote is to “express opposition to Obama.” Perhaps Dems need an ad campaign along the lines of ‘Obama ain’t running, but Boehner and his obstructionist minions are on the ballot. End Gridlock, vote Democratic.”
In his wrap-up of the midterm primary season, Geoffrey Skelley notes at Sabato’s Crystal Ball that “On the House side, the percentage of incumbents that won less than 60% in their primaries was up from the last two midterm cycles. At the same time, the percentage of incumbents facing major-party opposition in November will be lower in 2014 than in 2010 or 2006…Although no incumbent lost in the Senate this cycle, 2014 continued the trend of increased competition in primaries seen in 2010. While 2010 saw more senators face actual opposition, both cycles saw six members win less than 60%…”
At The New Yorker Sam Wang rolls out the case that “Democrats Now Have a Seventy-Per-Cent Chance of Retaining Control of the Senate.”
Chris Cillizza posts at The Fix, however, that heavyweight pundits Charlie Cook and Stuart Rothenberg believe the Republicans have a significant edge — Rothenberg smells “a sizable Republican senate wave.” Cillizza doesn’t even mention Wang’s take.
Sometimes they just come right out and say it.
GA Governor’s race now in stat tie, according to SurveyUSA/11-Alive poll of registered LV’s. Democrat Michelle Nunn down 3 in Senate Race, with 14 point drop in support from women.
Re the proposed constitutional amendment to restore congressional authority to limit outside campaign spending that is up for a vote: A New York Times editorial supporting the measure notes that “outside spending on this year’s midterm elections ($189 million so far) is more than three times what it was at this point in 2010.”
File this idea under “not gonna happen,” since there is no strategic upside.

Ed Kilgore has the best wrap-up of the latest primary, which is also the last of 2014. There were no major surprises, but there were some interesting outcomes, as Kilgore explains at his Talking Points Memo post, “Rebuke, Rebirth, Rejection, Rematch: The Last Primary Night of 2014“:

The rebuke was to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who despite a vast advantage in money, name ID, and institutional support, struggled to win 60 percent in a low-turnout primary competition with progressive activist Zephyr Teachout. He barely ran ahead of his little-known running mate for lieutenant governor, Kathy Hochul. Since the benchmark for an “embarrassment” of Cuomo among most cognoscenti going into the primary was Teachout reaching 30 percent of the vote, her 35 percent performance (with 88 percent of precincts reporting) certainly qualifies. And it verifies the strong progressive opposition to any presidential campaign by Cuomo — who is reliably reported to have seen a future president of the United States in his bathroom mirror each morning for many years — in the near future, thanks to his conservative fiscal policies, coziness with Wall Street, and perceived indifference to the New York Democratic Party.
The rebirth was of the political career of Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, who famously and astonishingly blew a special Senate election in 2010 to former Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) that nearly derailed enactment of the Affordable Care Act, and caused legislative shortcuts that are still causing legal problems for the ACA. She won the Massachusetts gubernatorial primary last night, though not with many votes to spare, and will be strongly favored over Republican Charlie Baker in November unless she is truly accursed.
The rematch will be in the first congressional district of New Hampshire, where former Manchester mayor Frank Guinta won the Republican nomination for the third straight time, having beaten Democrat Carol Shea-Porter in 2010 and lost to her in 2012. This will presumably be the rubber match.
The rejection was of Rep. John Tierney (D-MA), whose ensnarement in his wife’s legal problems nearly took him down in 2012 and almost certainly led to his primary loss to Seth Moulton. Tierney was the fourth House incumbent but the first Democrat to lose a primary this year, the three Republicans being the over-the-hill Ralph Hall of Texas, the “accidental” Kerry Bentivolio of Michigan, and the hubristic Mr. Cantor.

Looking at the primary season as a whole, Kilgore observes “Despite many efforts to impose a national “narrative” on the primaries, none really stuck. Some observers have insisted on a “Republican Establishment Defeats Tea Party” meme. But Eric Cantor’s loss, some ideologically ambiguous Senate winners, and a notable lurch to the Right by many “Establishment” candidates, make this claim questionable, and perhaps if true rather meaningless.”
Kilgore cites seven major factors favoring Republicans moving toward November 4, though some pundits believe they are underperforming in polls thus far, despite these advantages. When all of the votes are tallied, he reminds us that “we will have fully entered a presidential cycle…with many arrows immediately shifting to an opposite direction. So the true legacy of this cycle will only be determined when its influence over the next one is fully absorbed.”
The new cycle will lift a lot of Democratic spirits. Until then the challenge for Dems over the next eight weeks is do ‘better than expected’ and to put the Democratic party and 2016 candidates in the best possible position.

To read the most recent posts by Nate Silver and Sam Wang regarding their predictive models vis a vis the November midterms, you might think the main event on November 4 is between them. It’s an entertaining dispute, no doubt about that and the two wizards are having fun and getting plenty of attention from political data junkies.
Here’s the latest from Wang’s “Is Nate Silver a little too excited about his model?” in a couple of nut graphs:

The PEC Election Day prediction indicates a 70% probability of Democratic+Independent control. That is based on polls alone, plus the assumption that September-October will act like June-August. FiveThirtyEight’s probability is 64% favoring the Republicans, based on a model with polls plus a substantial dose of special sauce (a.k.a. fundamentals).
…I have to say, this special sauce is messy stuff. Really, the GOP has an 25% chance (3-1 odds) of getting 54 or more seats? I’d put it at more like 5%. Even 53 GOP seats is a fairly outside outcome. If a betting person were offered the chance to put up $3000 against Nate Silver’s $1000 on that outcome…that would be taking his money.
Joking aside, there are two serious points to be made here. First, nobody should be getting excited about any probability that is in the 20-80% range. That includes Nate Silver, who should knows better. He must need the media attention. Second, the addition of “fundamentals” and other factors adds considerable uncertainty to the projection.

Meanwhile, over at FiveThirtyEightPolitics, Silver’s “Registered Voter Polls Will (Usually) Overrate Democrats” adds this to the donnybrook:

Polls of so-called likely voters are almost always more favorable to Republicans than those that survey the broader sample of all registered voters or all American adults. Likely voter polls also tend to provide more reliable predictions of election results, especially in midterm years. Whereas polls of all registered voters or all adults usually overstate the performance of Democratic candidates, polls of likely voters have had almost no long-term bias….We can infer that, because likely voter polls have no long-term bias and registered voter polls show more favorable results for Democrats, registered voter polls usually have a Democratic bias.
…Likely voter polls have been unbiased, whereas registered voter polls have had a median Democratic bias of 2 percentage points.
That’s why our model adjusts registered voter polls in the way it does; their Democratic bias is fairly predictable, especially in midterm years.

Silver links to an informative chart at The Upshot, comparing forecaster snapshots of senate races, which show a slight Republican edge. But Wang isn’t in it, and he still ain’t having it.
There’s more to Silver’s analysis, and yes, it’s complicated. Of course Dems hope Wang is right. But Silver is extremely cautious in his assumptions, and his track record is pretty damn good, so who knows?
There’s room enough here for either Wang or Silver to be wrong when all the votes are counted. But neither one of them would argue with the conclusion that it’s high time for Democrats to pour on the GOTV in the battleground states on an unprecedented scale. That simply has to happen if Dems want to keep a senate majority.