A new Public Policy Polling survey in North Carolina finds Sen. Kay Hagan (D) continuing to grow her lead over challenger Thom Tillis (R) as the legislative session drags on.
Hagan now has a seven point lead, 41% to 34%, with Libertarian Sean Haugh pulling in 8%.
A new Democracy Corps poll in 12 states where control of the Senate is being contested shows that control of the chamber “rests on a knife’s edge” with Republicans leading 46% to 44%.
A new report finds that turnout in the 25 states that have held statewide primaries so far has declined from 18.3% in 2010 to 14.8% this year.
First Read: “What’s more, the report says that turnout in 15 of these 25 states has reached historic lows, and only three of 25 (Nebraska, North Carolina, and West Virginia) had higher turnout in 2014 than four years ago. So take President Obama’s low job-approval ratings, add them with Congress’ lower numbers plus a sense that the political process is broken, and you get low turnout — record lows in some cases. Now we don’t know what turnout will be for the general election, but if these numbers are any guide, then you can probably bet some money that the number of Americans voting is going to be down in November. And that could produce some striking consequences.”
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A federal appeals court ruled that the government “could not subsidize health care premiums for people in three dozen states that use the federal insurance exchange, a ruling that could upend President Obama’s health care law,” the New York Times reports.
“The 2-to-1 ruling could cut potentially off financial assistance for more than 4.5 million people who were found eligible for subsidized insurance in the federal exchange, or marketplace.”
Wonk Wire has a map of where subsidies might not be allowed.
“Jack Kingston finished second in the Georgia Republican Senate primary back in May, but he’s the favorite to win Tuesday’s runoff,” Politico reports.
“David Perdue, who finished first in the May 20 primary but fell short of the threshold to avoid the runoff, made 50 stops over the final weeks on a statewide bus tour and was slated to finish Monday with an eight-city fly-around. Kingston has also kept up an aggressive travel schedule, campaigning so much that he lost his voice over the weekend.”
Atlanta Journal Constitution: 5 things to watch
Jeff Greenfield: “It’s a question that’s roiled the liberal universe for years: Why won’t 81-year-old Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg resign from the Supreme Court and give President Obama the chance to pick her successor, in case the Senate turns Republican after the mid-terms?”
“Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, one of the left’s jurisprudential heroes, had a ready answer to that question when it was posed to him at the University of California Santa Barbara late last month. There is, he said, not a chance in hell that this Senate would confirm her successor, no matter who he or she might be–not the way the process works today. And therein lies a tale about just how drastically the ‘advise and consent’ process has changed, and why the smart bet would be on a paralyzed process, and perhaps even a Court with fewer than nine Justices, no matter what happens in November.”
“Joko Widodo, the governor of Jakarta whose common touch has made him a political phenomenon, was declared the winner of Indonesia’s presidential election on Tuesday, completing an improbable ascent from child of the slums to leader of the world’s fourth most populous nation,” the New York Times reports.
“But the announcement, while widely expected, did not end a simmering controversy, as his opponent, Prabowo Subianto, a retired army general, rejected the results as fraudulent and threatened to withdraw from the race.”
“Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill are united on one thing: The best strategy this election year is to punt on any big decisions,” Politico reports.
“Senate leaders are set to join the Republican House soon to replenish the ailing Highway Trust Fund for just a few months. When lawmakers return to Washington in September from the August recess, they’ll very likely have to come together on a short-term funding bill to keep the government open because the traditional appropriations process is bogged down.”
“Congressional inaction is a time-honored tradition in the months before an election. But the stagnation in this Congress — even in the face of mounting national and international challenges — only bolsters the perception that this is really the least productive in history. And a thaw doesn’t appear to be in the offing as each party commits to seeking an elusive, post-election upper hand.”
A new Human Events/Gravis Marketing poll in Iowa finds Bruce Braley (D) with a one-point lead over Joni Ernst (R) in the U.S. Senate race, 44% to 43%.
A new Rasmussen survey finds that 23% of Americans still believe that Barack Obama is not an American citizen, with another 17% who aren’t sure. However, 60% reject that theory as false.
Nate Cohn: “This year seemed poised to turn into another so-called wave election, like in 2006 or 2010, when a rising tide of dissatisfaction with the incumbent party swept the opposition into power. Given a favorable midterm map, with so many Democratic Senate seats in play, some analysts suggested that Republicans could win a dozen of them, perhaps even picking up seats in states like Virginia, New Hampshire and Oregon.”
“The anti-Democratic wave might still arrive. But with three and a half months to go until November’s elections, the promised Republican momentum has yet to materialize.”
A new Public Policy Polling survey in Montana shows Steve Daines (R) continues to lead Sen. John Walsh (D) in the race for U.S. Senate but the gap has narrowed to just seven points, 46% to 39%.
Washington Post: “The Senate went three months this spring without voting on a single legislative amendment, the nitty-gritty kind of work usually at the heart of congressional lawmaking. So few bills have been approved this year, and so little else has gotten done, that many senators say they are spending most of their time on insignificant and unrewarding work.”
More color: “Senators say that they increasingly feel like pawns caught between Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-NV) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), whose deep personal and political antagonisms have almost immobilized the Senate. The two men so distrust each other, and each is so determined to deny
the other even the smallest political success, that their approach to
running the Senate has been reduced to a campaign of mutually assured
dysfunction.”
“I think that, for both Joe and for Hillary, they’ve already accomplished an awful lot in their lives. The question is, do they, at this phase in their lives, want to go through the pretty undignifying process of running all over again.”
— President Obama, quoted by the New Yorker, expressing “bewilderment that his friends would want to subject themselves” to another presidential campaign.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) announced “he is deploying up to 1,000 National Guard troops over the next month to the Texas-Mexico border to combat criminals that Republican state leaders say are exploiting a surge of children and families entering the U.S. illegally,” the Austin American Statesman reports.
“Perry, a vocal critic of the White House’s response to the border crisis — and who is mulling a second presidential run in 2016 — said the state has a responsibility to act after ‘lip service’ from the federal government. He rejected suggestions that Texas was militarizing local communities by putting National Guard troops on the ground or that crime data along the border doesn’t justify additional resources.”
Hillary Clinton has earned at least $12 million in 16 months since leaving the State Department, “a windfall at odds with her party’s call to shrink the gap between the rich and the poor,” Bloomberg reports.
“At least 12 organizations that previously booked President Bill Clinton — who has been paid almost $106 million in speaking fees alone since he left the White House — also hired his wife. Among them: Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and the National Association of Realtors.”
“The White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, faced a minor media revolt at his daily press briefing Monday after he criticized a Washington Post story for its reliance on anonymous sources,” Business Insider reports.
“Several reporters at the briefing challenged Earnest’s critique by pointing out White House officials regularly insist information be anonymously attributed to members of the administration in conference calls and other communications.”
Ted Nesi: “Could Clay Pell win the Democratic nomination for governor on Sept. 9? No small number of people have scoffed at that suggestion. But with 50 days to go before the primary – and nearly $1 million in Pell TV ads saturating the airwaves – there’s reason to think the 32-year-old political newcomer has a real, if still unlikely, shot at victory.”
“The evidence for a Pell surge is anecdotal at this point because there’s been no public polling in the race since a May WPRI 12/Providence Journal survey that put Providence Mayor Angel Taveras at 33%, General Treasurer Gina Raimondo at 29% and Pell far behind at 12%. But WPRI 12 political analyst Joe Fleming, who conducted the poll, suggested the next survey may show some movement.”
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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