By now, if you have been imbibing every poll and pundit analyzing the voting trends in the November midterms, you know that Democrats are going to lose the House, possibly the Senate, their car keys, their cellphone stylus and dry cleaning stubs. They are going to lose everything, we have been told in historic proportions.
The headlines tell the story.
Democrats Could Lose Up To 8,000 Seats In Upcoming Midterm Election
WASHINGTON—According to recent media reports, Democrats stand to lose as many as 8,000 congressional seats and more than 917 gubernatorial races in November's midterm elections.
"Republicans are poised to pick up 1,500 seats in Ohio alone, and could wind up with a 23,576-to-12 majority in the Senate," Beltway observer Isaac Hundt said Wednesday, noting the GOP's advantage is likely to increase by Election Day given that its candidates are outspending their opponents by some $900 trillion.
"With Democratic disapproval ratings in the quadruple digits, it's a foregone conclusion that Republicans will not only retake Congress, but hold it for the next 20,000 to 25,000 years."
http://www.theonion.com/...
Apparently not everyone got the memo about the Democrats insurmountable and imminent losses.
Take my state for instance, the lovely and talented, State of California. The next Governor of California, will be Jerry Brown, the former Governor of California. As I write, he enjoys a 13-point lead over his Republican opponent Meg Whitman, after trailing the former Ebay CEO in August 47%-40%, he now leads 52%-39%.
Embattled Senator Barbara Boxer has also defied the Republican wave and outsourced her losing streak to Meg Whitman, and now leads her GOP opponent by 52%-43%.
The secret to their success is in their long view strategy. Rather than panicking and trying to outspend their deep-pocket opponents with negative ads, they waited until their audience was listening.
Democrats will win because their timing and their message is impeccable and that is why they are closing strong.
But what about Citizen's United and all the anonymous money coming in? Even though the Democratic National Committee raised more than the Republican National Committee, we have been told numerous times that that amount of money they raised is insignificant because of all the anonymous money being showered on Republicans.
Well it turns out that Republicans aren't the only ones receiving anonymous money. They just got theirs early. Democrats are getting theirs now when it counts.
Unions and other Democratic interest groups are rapidly closing the gap with their conservative opponents in spending on the midterm elections, using fresh support from well-heeled donors to quicken the pace of expenditures in the final days of the campaign.
Democratic leaders from President Obama on down have assailed the spending by outside conservative groups, complaining that the business lobby and other Republican allies are pouring millions of dollars into the election as they shield donors from public scrutiny.
But now independent groups that support Democrats - including unions, environmental groups and new players - are fast gaining ground, often while using some of the same techniques condemned by Democrats. The strategies include using money from nonprofit organizations that can keep their donors secret and tapping into union dues to pay for unlimited attack ads.
Nearly four of every 10 dollars spent by independent groups last week was aimed at helping Democratic candidates, according to a Washington Post analysis of campaign-finance disclosure filings. The number is a dramatic improvement from just a few weeks earlier, when Democratic allies were being outspent by 7 to 1, the data show.
Once spending by the parties themselves is added into the mix, Democratic candidates are getting the benefit of nearly half - 46 percent - of independent spending reported to the Federal Election Commission.
Yeah but no matter how you spin it, look at Harry Reid he's still losing. This is part of a national trend. All the hope in the world can't change a national trend.
Right?
Looking at the national polls, the situation is dire for the Democrats. In the latest Politico/George Washington University Battleground Poll, Republicans have a 6 percent advantage over Democrats (48%-42%) in the generic ballot and 64 percent of voters feel the nation is on the wrong track. If congressional elections were a national referendum where typical midterm voters were the only ones to show up Democrats would surely lose.
Facing this national environment, Democrats have been focused for the last few months on doing what the Obama campaign did - changing the math on the ground in key states. While getting African Americans and young voters out to the polls in key races is important, the party is also focused on irregular Democratic who show up in presidential years but not as often in midterms.
Not only does the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee report ground operations in over 65 congressional districts but Organizing for America, the successor organization to the Obama campaign has gotten fully integrated into state parties all over the country. They have been knocking on doors, calling voters and sending them mail to remind them to show up for the Democrats in this election.
One staffer told me that OFA and the Democratic National Committee helped state parties contact more African American voters in September than they contacted in all of 2006. Meanwhile the Republican National Committee has been plagued by reports of a more lackluster GOTV effort, including cutting their program to send congressional staffers to districts and denying state parties the cash to compete with Democratic ground troops....
While Republicans and their allies spent much of the summer trying to run up the score on vulnerable Democrats, it does not seem to have worked. Democrats smartly held their advertising fire until voters were most likely to be paying attention in the fall and focused intently on the weaknesses of their opponents.
All of this activity looks like it is paying off. The polls on the ground in states tell a different story than the national narrative....
Those who watch early voting returns are beginning to see a pattern too. Democrats are voting in greater numbers than Republicans in the first counts from many of these contests.
http://www.cbsnews.com/...
Democrats are campaigning in one of the worst economic and political climates in recent memory to persuade voters and maintain their majorities.
But that's only part of the story.
They are also facing the most flawed, unqualified and in some instances, dangerous candidates ever to be inflicted on an American ballot.
For example, the Republican candidate in North Carolina's 7th congressional district, Ilario Pantano.
Here's his story:
The basic facts are undisputed: on 15 April 2004 Ilario Pantano, then a second lieutenant with the US marines, stopped and detained two Iraqi men in a car near Falluja. The Iraqis were unarmed and the car found to be empty of weapons.
Pantano ordered the two men to search the car for a second time and then, with no other US soldiers in view, unloaded a magazine of his M16A4 automatic rifle into them, before reloading and blasting a second magazine at them – some 60 rounds in total.
Over the corpses, he left a placard inscribed with the marine motto: "No better friend, No worse enemy."
Six years later Pantano is on the verge of a stunning electoral victory that could send him to the US Congress in Washington. He is standing as Republican candidate in a district that was last represented by his party in 1871.
With the help of the right-wing Tea Party movement, and with the benefit of his image as a war hero acquired from what happened on that fateful day in 2004, he has raised almost $1m (£630,000) in donations and is now level-pegging with his Democratic opponent, Mike McIntyre.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
We will win because we have better candidates, better timing, better messages, about as much money and a superior ground game.
We will win because we've got something they don't have and Rupert Murdoch failed to buy: you.
Let's do this. Let's go save this country again.