Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg joins us on the Political Wire podcast for a look at the midterm elections, one in which he sees now Democrats “more likely to hold control of the U.S. Senate than not.”
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Fox News released new polls in five key U.S. Senate battleground states:
Kansas: Sen. Pat Roberts (R) leads Greg Orman (I), 44% to 39%.
Alaska: Dan Sullivan (R) leads Sen. Mark Begich (D), 44% to 40%.
Arkansas: Tom Cotton (R) leads Sen. Mark Pryor (R), 46% to 39%.
Colorado: Cory Gardner (R) leads Sen. Mark Udall (D), 43% to 37%.
Kentucky: Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) leads Alison Lundergan Grimes (D), 45% to 41%.
Harry Enten: “Fox News polls throughout this election cycle have had a fairly strong pro-Republican ‘house effect,’ a measure of how a pollster’s results compare to other polls.”
“A group of Senate Republicans have their eye on another Obamacare showdown in the lame-duck session,” according to Roll Call.
“The 14 Republicans, led by Marco Rubio of Florida, wrote a letter urging Speaker John A. Boehner to “prohibit the Obama administration” from spending money on an ‘Obamacare taxpayer bailout.’ They point to a legal opinion from the Government Accountability Office that said additional funding authority would be needed to make payments to insurance companies under the risk-corridor component of the Obamacare health care exchanges. The Republicans say taxpayers could be on the hook for bailing out insurance companies that suffer losses.”
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Before choosing Chuck Todd, NBC News president Deborah Turness held negotiations with Jon Stewart about hosting “Meet the Press,” three senior television sources tell New York magazine.
One source explained that NBC was prepared to offer Stewart virtually “anything” to bring him over.
A new CNN/ORC poll in Kansas finds Sen. Pat Roberts (R) has galvanized rank-and-file Republican voters to close the gap with challenger Greg Orman (I) and now leads by one point, 49% to 48%.
Most other recent polls show Orman with a lead.
“The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will spend $1 million in South Dakota — mostly on television and the rest on field operations — in a last-minute attempt to hold a U.S. Senate seat they now view as winnable,” Bloomberg reports.
“A DSCC official said advertising will likely be on the air by Monday. As in the Kansas Senate race, Democrats believe they now have a chance to offset inevitable losses elsewhere and maintain control of the Senate.”
A new USA Today/Suffolk University poll in North Carolina finds Sen. Kay Hagan (D) just ahead Thom Tillis (R) in the U.S. Senate race, 47% to 45%.
A new Rasmussen poll finds Hagan leads 48% to 46%.
Joshua Green: “Colorado’s Senate race has become a presidential campaign in miniature, with two strong candidates who are both career politicians facing off over mainly national issues, as billionaires on the left (Steyer) and the right (the Koch brothers) saturate the airwaves with tens of millions of dollars’ worth of attack ads.”
“Politically, Colorado is a slightly exaggerated version of America. Because the state makes it so easy to place initiatives on the ballot, it’s a testing ground for highly charged national issues.”
“The great thing about not being president anymore is you can say whatever you want — unless your wife might run for something.”
— Bill Clinton, quoted by NBC News.
A new SurveyUSA poll in Georgia shows David Perdue (R) leading Michelle Nunn (D) by just one point in the U.S. Senate race, 46% to 45%.
Former President Jimmy Carter criticized President Obama saying it was hard to figure our exactly what his policy is in the Middle East, the Fort Worth Star Telegram reports.
Said Carter: “It changes from time to time. I noticed that two of his secretaries of defense, after they got out of office, were very critical of the lack of positive action on the part of the president.”
He also said the U.S. waited to long to respond to the Islamic State: “We let the Islamic state build up its money, capability and strength and weapons while it was still in Syria. Then when [ISIS] moved into Iraq, the Sunni Muslims didn’t object to their being there and about a third of the territory in Iraq was abandoned.”
Sarah Silverman released a very funny but probably not safe for work video on pay equity.
“I cannot predict precisely what the rate would be at the end of one year. I can tell you that over a period of four years, by a virtue of the polices that we put in place, we get the unemployment rate down to 6 percent, perhaps a little lower.”
— Mitt Romney, quoted by MSNBC in May 2012, noting the unemployment rate is already down to 5.9% without Romney’s policies.
Democratic pollster Celinda Lake told The Hill that her party “will have a tough time getting out the Hispanic vote, because President Obama did not take executive action on deportations affecting millions of workers in the U.S. illegally.”
Said Lake: “It was a real disappointment to the Latino voters — rightly so. I think if we’d done something, it would have energized the Latino vote and drawn a clear distinction with the Republicans.”
She added that it will be “a big uphill battle for the Latino turnout, and that’s going to affect our candidates.”
“I don’t need a semi-automatic rifle to shoot a duck. Maybe you do. Maybe you should spend more time on your shooting range.”
— Rep. Rick Nolan (D-MN), quoted by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, to challenger Stewart Mills (R) in a debate.
Wall Street Journal: “The backdrop of this fall’s voting is a mood of voter anger over the status quo, polls suggest. Just one month before the Nov. 4 election, it isn’t even clear what exactly the midterm contests are about. No single issue dominates, except unhappiness with the established order.”
A new Survey USA poll in South Dakota finds Mike Rounds (R) barely leading a three-way Senate race with 35%, followed by Larry Pressler (I) at 32% and Rick Weiland (D) at 28%.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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