Steven Pearlstein:
Now ask yourself: Do you think the results of the coming election would be tilting in favor of Democrats if the "individual mandate" had been omitted from health reform, if the consumer protection agency had been dropped from financial regulatory reform and if General Motors had been left to die. Somehow I doubt it.
The dirty little secret is that most Americans don't really know what they think about the issues that so animate the political conversation in Washington, and what they think they know about them is often wrong.
WaPo:
"This is the big test election to see if voter mobilization really has an effect on turnout." said Michael McDonald, a George Mason University government professor who has tracked early voting for several election cycles. "And at least according to the very earliest early-voting numbers, people who thought the Democrats were going to roll over and play dead, that's not what's happening."...
Iowa Secretary of State Michael Mauro, a Democrat, said his party is targeting students and minority voters who supported Obama in 2008 but don't usually show up for midterm elections. Spot checks with county auditors suggest the tactic may be working.
"I don't know if the pundits have missed this, but I think there's more engagement than we were expecting," Mauro said. "There was a belief that Democrats would stay home - but they're coming out."
But the real test is WA, CO and NV.
Jon Ralston, following NV early voting:
Democrats: 31,103, or 7.4 percent
Republicans: 27,551, or 8.3 percent
So, so far, nothing out of the ordinary for a midterm.
DeWayne Wickham:
"Our numbers and our ability to organize the grassroots have to counter those millions of dollars" Republicans are using "to try to take this election," Obama told the black columnists.
A day earlier, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies said a large black turnout could put a big dent in the loses Democrats are expected to suffer in the midterm elections.
But that won't happen unless Democrats make it clear that what is at stake in this election, more than the Congress, is Barack Obama's presidency.
Gallup's latest plunging Obama numbers (approve 48):
NY Times:
A secretive network of Republican donors is heading to Palm Springs for a long weekend in January, but it will not be to relax after a hard-fought election — it will be to plan for the next one.
Koch Industries, the longtime funder of libertarian causes from the Cato Institute to the ballot initiative that would suspend California’s landmark law capping greenhouse gases, is planning an invitation-only, confidential meeting at the Rancho Las Palmas Resort and Spa to, as a confidential invitation says, "develop strategies to counter the most severe threats facing our free society and outline a vision of how we can foster a renewal of American free enterprise and prosperity."
Politico:
MOMENTS OF ZEN: President Obama will tape a segment on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" next week and hit the road the weekend before the midterm election, but he will otherwise be absent from the campaign trail in the homestretch to Nov. 2.