“The 2014 midterm elections are days away, but preparation are already underway for the first debate of the 2016 presidential primary contest,” the AP reports.
“The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation announced on Thursday that it will invite GOP presidential candidates to attend a televised debate at California’s Reagan Library in September 2015.”
Politico: “After two years of obsessive focus on the teetering reelection prospects of red-state Democrats, the attention is about to shift in a major way to blue-state Republicans. Six of them who rode anti-Obama sentiment to office in 2010 are up in two years, and they’ll face the dual challenge of a more diverse electorate and potentially Hillary Clinton atop the Democratic ticket.”
“The leftward-tilting map means a GOP-controlled Senate could be short-lived if the party prevails on Tuesday. Even in the best-case scenario for the party, a Republican majority is certain to be slim.”
“The pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC Ready for Hillary is planning a National Finance Council meeting… The event, on Nov. 21, has been billed a strategy session at the Sheraton Times Square in New York City to discuss the next steps as the group and Clinton’s extended network wait for her to say definitively whether she is running for president in 2016,” Politico reports.
“But the speakers and attendees represent a cross-section of the party and of Clintonland, including people involved in other outside efforts to prepare for a potential candidacy. And the event itself comes after two years of Ready for Hillary, the low-dollar super PAC backing Clinton, signing up more than 2.5 million supporters and harnessing energy behind her potential candidacy — helping to freeze the Democratic field in the process.”
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Our good friends at the Cook Political Report have made their latest House and Senate analysis freely available.
It’s a must-read as we head into the final weekend before the midterm elections.
“American slaves were liberated in 1861, but did not get voting rights until 107 years later. So why can’t Hong Kong wait for a while?”
— Hong Kong Executive Council Member Laura Cha, quoted by The Standard.
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll in Iowa finds Joni Ernst (R) and Bruce Braley (D) tied in their U.S. Senate race, 45% to 45%.
“Democratic efforts to turn out the young and nonwhite voters who sat out the 2010 midterm elections appear to be paying off in several Senate battleground states. More than 20 percent of the nearly three million votes already tabulated in Georgia, North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa have come from people who did not vote in the last midterm election,” according to an analysis of early-voting data by The Upshot.
A new Christopher Newport University poll in Virginia finds Sen. Mark Warner (D) leads challenger Ed Gillespie (R) by seven points, 51% to 44%.
A new Vox Populi Polling survey shows Warner with a four point lead, 44% to 40%.
A new WMUR/University of New Hampshire poll in finds Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D) increasing her lead in the U.S. Senate race over Scott Brown (R) to eight points, 50% to 42%.
New York Times: “”m not a scientist,’ or a close variation, has become the go-to talking point for Republicans questioned about climate change in the 2014 campaigns. In the past, many Republican candidates questioned or denied the science of climate change, but polls show that a majority of Americans accept it — and support government policies to mitigate it — making the Republican position increasingly challenging ahead of the 2016 presidential elections.”
“For now, ‘I’m not a scientist’ is what one party adviser calls ‘a temporary Band-Aid’ — a way to avoid being called a climate change denier but also to sidestep a dilemma. The reality of campaigning is that a politician who acknowledges that burning coal and oil contributes to global warming must offer a solution, which most policy experts say should be taxing or regulating carbon pollution and increasing government spending on alternative energy. But those ideas are anathema to influential conservative donors like the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch and the advocacy group they support, Americans for Prosperity.”
A new Landmark Communications poll in Georgia finds David Perdue (R) and Michelle Nunn (D) essentially tied in the U.S. Senate race, 47% to 47%.
A new Boston Globe poll in Massachusetts finds Charlie Baker (R) with a solid lead over Martha Coakley (D) in the race for governor, 44% to 37%.
A new Survey USA poll in Kentucky finds Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) leading challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes (D) in the U.S. Senate, 48% to 43%.
“Thomas Michael Menino, who insisted a mayor doesn’t need a grand vision to lead, then went on to shepherd Boston’s economy and shape the skyline and the very identity of the city he loved through an unprecedented five consecutive terms in City Hall, died Thursday,” the Boston Globe reports.
“He was 71 and was diagnosed with advanced cancer not long after leaving office at the beginning of this year.”
A new Tampa Bay Times/Bay News 9/UF Graham Center poll in Florida shows Gov. Rick Scott (R) and Charlie Crist (D) tied, 36% to 36%.
An unusually high 13% refused to say whom they support and 7% were undecided.
A new Public Policy Polling survey in North Carolina finds Sen. Kay Hagan (D) leading challenger Thom Tillis (R) by one point in the U.S. Senate race, 47% to 46%.
A new Rasmussen survey has Hagan leading by the same result, 47% to 46%.
A new USA Today poll finds that two-thirds of Americans say the nation “faces more challenging problems than usual; one in four call them the biggest problems of their lifetimes. And many lack confidence in the government to address them.”
“By significant margins, those surveyed prefer congressional Republicans when it comes to dealing with the economy and ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria. By double-digits, they say congressional Democrats would do a better job in handling income inequality and social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage… But the bottom line seems to be that the downbeat mood of the electorate is favoring the GOP, whose backers are more enthusiastic about voting and animated by their opposition to Obama.”
Vice President Joe Biden, his wife and 11 other family members spent four nights on vacation this August at a lakeside log cabin overlooking the snowcapped peaks of Mount Moran in Grand Teton National Park, Time reports.
“The four-bedroom Brinkerhoff Lodge, where they stayed, is owned and operated by the National Park Service… While visiting the park, Biden held no events, kept no public schedule, and his staff initially declined to answer a reporter’s question about where he spent the night. Last week, after Time uncovered documents confirming his stay at the lodge, Biden’s office said the Vice President planned to personally reimburse the park $1,200 for ‘renting the Brinkerhoff’ for his family’s vacation.”
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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