Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com hits on an interesting common denominator of campaigns (especially GOP) leading up to today’s elections — candidates’ reluctance to own their party affiliation. Silver displays a Bob McDonnel VA Gube ad, which super-imposes him on a bright Democratic blue background, and adds:

Go to McDonnell’s website, in fact, and the word “Republican” does not appear anywhere on his homepage. But McDonnell is not alone in this department. Chris Christie’s homepage does not identify his party affiliation, nor does Creigh Deeds’s (although the branding is very Obama-esque), nor does Jon Corzine’s (although he not-so-subtly places an [R] by Chris Christie’s name any time it appears in one of his commercials.) Bill Owens’s homepage does twice identify him as the “Democratic candidate in New York’s 23rd Congressional District”, although both instances are below the fold, and this is a guy who desperately needs to boost his name recognition. Doug Hoffman does refer to himself in passing as a “Conservative Republican” — even though, technically, he’s not a Republican, and scared the Republican nominee out of the race.
The Democratic brand is marginal in about half the country, but the Republican brand is radioactive in about two-thirds of it. The biggest story of the cycle is that a non-Republican conservative, Doug Hoffman, might win. Counterfactual: if Hoffman had in fact been the Republican nominee in NY-23 all along, would he be in the same strong position that he finds himself in today? Methinks not: it would have been easier for Owens — who isn’t much of a Democrat — to identify himself as the moderate in the race.

Silver could have also added Atlanta Mayoral candidate Mary Norwood, who Georgia Democratic Party Chairman Jane Kidd has called a “duplicitous Republican,” who is hiding her party affiliation with exceptional effectiveness, and doing quite well as front-runner in the polls. Silver also wonders if Republicans might profit in future elections by identifying themselves as Conservatives with a “C”, instead of Republicans. The hidden party affiliation thing may be a growing trend in the years ahead. Democrats need to develop some clever ads for ‘outing’ affiliation-hiding Republicans in the 2010 round.

The Governorships races in NJ and VA, along with the congressional race in NY-23 have gotten a lot of news coverage. But there is a lot more going on, election-wise, than just these three contests. For a quickie guide to today’s most interesting elections across the nation, check out CNN.com‘s “Ten Races Worth Watching.” The article has paragraphs on ‘Why it matters” and “What’s the story” for each of the ten races, plus video clips and links to more in-depth coverage for many of the ten run-downs. A sample:

Houston, Texas, mayor
Why it matters: The nation’s fourth-largest city could elect its first openly gay mayor.
What’s the story?: City Controller Annise Parker, who has been elected six times to citywide posts, has an even chance of winning, according to polls. Among her competitors are City Councilman Peter Brown and City Attorney Gene Locke.
Watch how a Texas candidate could make history
Houston Chronicle: Scouting report on mayoral race

If there are any trends with implications for national politics that can be identified, perhaps looking at the results of these ten races as a whole, rather than focusing on one or two, will provide some insight.

TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira’s latest ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress web pages takes a look at conservatives’ success in propagating the “It’s Obama’s fault” meme regarding health care and the economy. Teixeira shows pretty conclusively that the public isn’t buying it. On the economy:

…A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds just 20 percent blaming Obama’s policies for current economic conditions, compared to 63 percent who say this is a situation Obama has inherited.

On the difficulty of securing health care reform:

…A question in the same poll also asked respondents who was to blame for making health care reform legislation so difficult to pass. Almost half—49 percent—said “special interest groups such as big pharmaceutical and health insurance companies” deserved “a great deal of blame” and another 26 percent thought these special interests deserved “quite a bit of blame.” By comparison, just 18 percent thought Obama deserved a great deal of blame and another 20 percent thought he deserved quite a bit of blame. Almost three-fifths (58 percent) thought he deserved very little blame or none at all.

Teixeira adds “…The Bush administration and big insurance and pharmaceutical companies—are associated strongly with the conservatives and their policies. That should make conservatives very, very nervous.”

In the hours before the Virginia Democratic primary, it was almost impossible to visit a major website from a computer in Virginia without staring at an advertisement for Creigh Deeds.
After Deeds won the nomination, lots of people took notice, including Patrick Ruffini, blogging at TheNextRight:

The coup de grace came in the final 24 hours, when with money to burn Deeds bought a “network blast” on Google’s ad network, essentially taking over ad inventory on every website (including this one) if you lived in Virginia.

Ruffini is a consultant for Deeds’ opponent, Republican Bob McDonnell, and now that we’re hours out from Election Day in Virginia, he’s putting the lesson to use.
On his Flickr feed, Ruffini posted a screenshot taken this morning from TechCrunch, an incredibly popular tech blog based in Silicon Valley.
McDonnell’s face is everywhere.
This is yet another reminder that the Democratic technological advantage is not self-sustaining.
Whether it’s a willingness to experiment with Twitter, a drive to release new mobile applications, or putting the best lessons from Democratic campaigns to use, Republicans are determined to close the Internet gap.
And while it’s easy to point fingers and laugh when those experiments fail, Democrats ought to at least recognize that we cannot get complacent.

Robert Pear and Sheryl Gay Stolberg provide a fairly balanced assessment of White House leadership on health reform in their Sunday New York Times overview, “Obama Strategy on Health Care Legislation Appears to Be Paying Off.”
As the authors report, the bills have advanced “further than many lawmakers expected” and “five separate measures have been pared down to two” — the farthest advance of major health reform legislation to date. They quote senior White House advisers saying the bills’ advancement “vindicated Mr. Obama’s strategy of leaving the details up to lawmakers.”
Stolberg and Pear describe the White House strategy as calibrated to encourage momentum above spending a lot of time trying to win on specific policy disagreements:

White House officials approached their work like a political campaign, and they said they had learned as much from the 2008 presidential race as from the health care fiasco of 1993-94. They said they learned the importance of pressing on and keeping up momentum, even when cable television commentators — and some fellow Democrats — declared their initiatives dead.
Congressional Democrats said it often seemed as if the top priority for the White House was simply to advance health care bills to the next step in the legislative process…Indeed, that is exactly what White House officials were trying to do. They described their legislative strategy as a very step-by-step process, in which they kept intensely focused on the next specific goal: passing a bill out of this or that committee, resolving the doubts of particular lawmakers, like the liberals who met with Mr. Obama on Thursday.

The article quotes White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel describing the President’s strategy as giving “leeway to legislators to legislate,” but “not leeway to take a policy off track.” But he cautions against overconfidence, adding “you don’t see any shimmying in the end zone…No spiking the ball on the 20-yard line here.”
Pear and Stolberg touch on the critique of the President’s strategy:

The legislative progress has come at a price. In the absence of specific guidance from the White House, it has moved ahead in fits and starts. From here on, the challenges will only grow more difficult…In the Senate, where Democrats will need support from every member of their caucus to reach a critical 60-vote threshold to avoid a potential filibuster, Mr. Obama’s hands-off strategy carries particular risks. ..Without clear direction from the president on the public option, the Democratic leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, moved ahead last week on his own, unveiling a bill that includes a government-run plan, but allows states to opt out.
Even close allies of the White House sometimes questioned its approach…“It felt like it was getting out of control at the end of July and in the beginning of August,” said John D. Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton who informally advises the Obama White House. “People were getting nervous that it was going every which way.” Mr. Podesta said the president risked “giving too much rope to a Congress that is liked a lot less than he is.”

The White House has received a lot of criticism for giving verbal support for the public option, but not fighting for it, Indeed the Administration made a point of saying the public option was not essential. It appears that Team Obama decided that joining in the public option debate more energetically might have endangered the reform package by prolonging debate and attracting more attacks from the right. Instead they will support the Democratic consensus that will be worked out between the House and Senate distillations. Keep it moving forward.
They may be right. If Democrats can keep losses in next year’s mid-term elections to a reasonable minimum, it is possible that economic recovery will kick in more vigorously, placing Obama and the Democrats in good position for ’12. With even modest gains in ’12, they can pass an amendment providing a stronger public option. OK, that’s three big “ifs,” but not an implausible scenario.
Polls indicate a solid majority of the American people want a public option of some kind. For example, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll conducted by the polling organizations of Peter Hart (D) and Bill McInturff (R). Oct. 22-25, 2009, indicated that 72 percent agreed that it was “quite important” (27 percent) or “extremely important” (45 percent) to “give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance.”
But Obama and Reid can add, and they don’t yet have 60 votes to support a strong public option, although Open Left‘s Chris Bowers believes a ‘robust’ public option, including “the original vision of a public option, tied to Medicare rates, that is available to everyone in America” is still a possibility.
It appears some of the DINOs and moderate Republicans are bucking the will of their constituencies. That’s where the progressive fight should be going forward: to hold those Senators accountable in their states for dissing their constituents to curry favor with the health insurance industry. Sens. Joe Lieberman (CT), Ben Nelson (NE), Blanche Lincoln (AR), Olympia Snowe (ME) and Susan Collins (ME) should be hammered with reminders that a lot of voters in their respective states want a public option.
A Daily Kos poll, conducted 9/8-10, found that 55 percent of Arkansas respondents supported a public option. Another Daily Kos poll, conducted back on August 17-19, asked Nebraskans “If Ben Nelson joined Republican Senators in filibustering and killing a final health care bill because it had a public health insurance option would that make you more or less likely to vote for him or would it have no real effect on your vote?,” 21 percent said “more likely” with 15 percent chosing “less likely” and 64 percent selecting “no effect.” Not much of an advantage either way there.
Sen. Joe Lieberman’s Connecticut constituency supports the public option by 64-31, according to a Quinnipiac University poll, conducted 9/10-14. Regarding the two Maine Republicans, a poll by Democracy Corps, conducted 9/23-27, found,

…Mainers overwhelmingly support a government sponsored non-profit health insurance option, 63 to 27 percent. And they support this option from the start significantly more strongly than they support a “trigger” (52 to 34 percent) that would create the government sponsored non-profit health insurance option only if private health insurance companies do not make affordable coverage available within several years.

Alternatively, if Reid is unable to cobble together 60 votes for allowing a majority vote on a bill with a public option, Dems could go the ‘budget reconciliation’ route, with 51 votes needed to get one. In that event, there will be even more weeping an gnashing of teeth among conservatives about the lack of bipartisanship, a theme they will try to make into a prevailing meme. Dems can challenge it by emphasizing majority rule — not super majority rule — is the moral standard of democracy and the public option is consistently supported by a majority of Americans.
Despite the assertion of Stolberg and Pear, Obama and Reid can both credibly argue that they have made a sincere effort to recruit Republicans to support the public option voters want, and media coverage has been adequate to back them up. But the GOP has become an ossified, hard-line political party that places a higher value on obstructing change than bringing it about. That’s not a tough sell.
Democratic leaders should fight like hell to get 60 votes to allow a vote on the public option. There’s no getting around the fact that support of 60 percent of the Senate would add credibility to health reform. But if we don’t get it, then anything over 51 votes through budget reconciliation is an acceptable — and defensible — alternative.

Jonathan Wesiman’s “Democrats’ Quiet Changes Pile Up” in The Wall St. Journal takes an insightful look at some of the more impressive ‘below the radar’ progressive reforms President Obama has secured so far, with the support of the Democratic majorities in Congress. Weisman explains:

Last week, Mr. Obama signed defense-policy legislation that included an unrelated measure widening federal hate-crimes laws to cover sexual orientation and gender identification — 12 years after it was first introduced. The same legislation also tightened the rules of admissible evidence for military commissions, an issue that consumed Congress in debate in 2007 but received almost no attention this go-round.
Other new measures signed into law since the administration took office, all of which kicked up controversy in past congresses, make it easier for women to sue for equal pay, set aside land in the West from development, give the government the power to regulate tobacco and raise tobacco taxes to expand health insurance for children. Congress and the White House, in the new defense-policy bill, also killed weapons programs that have survived earlier attempts at termination, among them, the F-22 fighter jet, the VH-71 presidential helicopter and the Army’s Future Combat System.

Not a bad tally for less than 9 months on the job, particularly in comparison the limited positive accomplishments of the previous train-wreck that careened through the White House for 8 years. it’s not hard to imagine conservative defenders of tobacco, insurance and timber companies, along with military contractors, fuming at these achievements. Give the Obama Administration credit for astute management of its broader legislative agenda and outflanking the GOP obstructionist machine. As conservative Republican Tom Price of Georgia is quoted as saying in the article, “The administration is pushing so many things so rapidly it’s difficult to concentrate on all of them.”
Add to these victories President Obama’s appointments and unraveling with executive orders, where possible, the Bush Administration’s institutionalization of incompetence and greed in government. No more Bush family friends and cronies running federal agencies charged with life or death decisions that affect millions — that alone is a quiet, but huge change for the better. The positive changes initiated by President Obama will continue to grow and benefit millions down the road. In terms of tangible reforms, his critics will have a very tough time comparing him unfavorably to post-war Republican presidents — and we’re only 8+ months into this presidency.

Say one thing about the Republican minority — they’ve shown readiness to embrace new technology in an effort to claw their way back to power that is occasionally something to envy.
Their newest effort is WhipCast — a BlackBerry application that, once downloaded, offers GOP staffers and activists the ability to pull up talking points, track votes, coordinate action on the floors of Congress, and follow the latest gossip and rumors.
This is actually a neat idea. Both parties need more tools for sharing information, and an application that can be accessed offline on mobile devices has the potential to be a winner. If I were a Republican, I could think of a lot of ways where this might be tactically useful.
The problem is, as a Democrat, I’ve got the same idea.
The POLITICO reports:

Starting Thursday, the GOP is making WhipCast available to the public for free as a way to show that the party is regaining the technical edge that has been lost to Democrats in recent years.

How valuable can the information on the application be if the GOP isn’t regulating who has the ability to access it?
If any Democratic hack can read, in real time, the Republican plan for coordinating action on a vote, then no matter how impressive a technical achievement WhipCast is, it fails in terms of usefulness.
If the information shared on WhipCast is watered down for the general public, then it fails in terms of usefulness.
If, in fact, the motivation behind WhipCast is, as POLITICO reports, to make the application available, “as a way to show that the party is regaining the technical edge that has been lost to Democrats,” then the ambition is wholly misguided.
Innovation should have a point, and in the business of politics, no one should care about a new piece of technology if it doesn’t do anything.
It’s a waste of resources to build a tool simply to prove you can.

At the end of this important week on the health care front, one thing clear is that the differences between what the House and Senate are likely to vote on are not as large as everyone expected a few weeks ago. Harry Reid’s advancing a public option bill with (it appears) a state opt-out, and the House is going with a public option that will negotiate rates instead of pegging payments to Medicare. Had the Senate gone with a weak trigger or something like co-ops, or the House had insisted on the Medicare peg, it could have caused some very serious problems down the road.
However you happen to feel about the substance of these nuances, anything that steadily narrows the gaps between Senate and House Democrats is a step towards enactment of health reform this year. Or at least that’s how it looks to me from an internet cafe a very long way from Washington.

Veteran congressional staffer Bill Goold is doing some creative strategic thinking over at the HuffPo, where today he shares “Building Progressive Staying Power,” proposing the establishment of “a progressive legislative exchange” for shaping and refining ideas into legislative reforms. As Goold rolls it out:

The resurgent progressive movement needs to think more long-term, come together quickly, and systematically build a Progressive Legislative Exchange to share and hone a steady, perpetual stream of the best, actionable ideas that progressives and liberals, near and far, have to offer for public and private sector problem-solving. This is a very egalitarian, 21st century idea whose time has come and is all the more attainable because of the Internet and other far-flung communication capabilities. Progressive leaders and activists have it within our grasp to organize and create a permanent incubator and clearinghouse for conceptualizing and refining progressive legislation to serve the public interest and address myriad problems confronting our nation and our world that will connect and empower imaginative thinkers inside and outside of Congress as never before.
…Imagine an organized intersection on-line and otherwise through which progressives can exchange, funnel, and refine ideas and proposals for possible legislation that interested Members of Congress and their dedicated hard-working, over-stretched staff can easily survey and pick and choose for possible further development, introduction, and advancement in the House and Senate. Conversely, this Progressive Legislative Exchange could also make it possible for Members of Congress and their staff to efficiently post or otherwise make available any pieces of legislation they have conceived and want to further refine before the bill(s) and/or amendment(s) are formally introduced, subjected to hearings, and voted upon.

Among Goold’s interesting examples of ideas that can be shaped into legislation:

Provide a tax credit and other financial incentives to enable all taxpayers to invest more reliably in socially and environmentally responsible companies that employ Americans;

and,

Establish enforceable worker rights (e.g. freedom of association, prohibition against job discrimination) and environmental safeguards as cornerstones for all future U.S. trade agreements;

Goold cites a compelling need to “capitalize more fully upon this rare window of opportunity when lasting, historic change is attainable because of last year’s elections.” He see’s the exchanges as a unique way Dems can leverage “our existing comparative strengths,” including “a stronger hand in the free-wheeling intellectual marketplace of ideas” and faith in government, in glaring contrast to “the pinched, narrower marketplace of commercial ideas and self-interested, short-term profit-making” of the GOP.

Please, all moderate, centrist and conservative Democrats, take a few minutes to read Paul Krugman’s op-ed. “The Defining Moment ” in The New York Times, and then take a few more minutes for honest self-reflection. History is calling, and there may not be another chance to do so much to help so many people, whose very lives are at stake for a long long time. As Krugman explains:

…Everyone in the political class — by which I mean politicians, people in the news media, and so on, basically whoever is in a position to influence the final stage of this legislative marathon — now has to make a choice. The seemingly impossible dream of fundamental health reform is just a few steps away from becoming reality, and each player has to decide whether he or she is going to help it across the finish line or stand in its way.
…The people who really have to make up their minds, then, are those in between, the self-proclaimed centrists….Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut says, “I want to be able to vote for a health bill, but my top concern is the deficit.” That would be a serious objection to the proposals currently on the table if they would, in fact, increase the deficit. But they wouldn’t, at least according to the Congressional Budget Office, which estimates that the House bill, in particular, would actually reduce the deficit by $100 billion over the next decade.
…I won’t try to psychoanalyze the “naysayers,”…I’d just urge them to take a good hard look in the mirror. If they really want to align themselves with the hard-line conservatives, if they just want to kill health reform, so be it. But they shouldn’t hide behind claims that they really, truly would support health care reform if only it were better designed.
For this is the moment of truth. The political environment is as favorable for reform as it’s likely to get. The legislation on the table isn’t perfect, but it’s as good as anyone could reasonably have expected. History is about to be made — and everyone has to decide which side they’re on.

Health care reform legislation, because of its complexity, will never be perfect for anyone. But nothing will pass if moderates insist on having their way about every single aspect of health reform. Legislation to improve on the consensus bill can be passed later on, when problems become evident. It’s a work in progress. History is calling. Who will answer the call?