No Republican Wave With One Week To Go
Several Democratic Senate seats are not threatened, notes W. Post's E. J. Dionne: "Just as striking is how many Democrats seem to have nailed down races the Republicans had once hoped to make competitive. This has narrowed the GOP’s path to a majority. Among them: Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota, Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Rep. Gary Peters of Michigan, who is likely to retain Sen. Carl Levin’s seat. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia is also polling well ... underappreciated fact No. 2: How important economic issues have been in shoring up the party’s incumbents and in giving life to Democratic challengers in Georgia, Kentucky and (a much longer shot) South Dakota."
Dems have edge in gubernatorial races. NYT: "The fight for control of the Senate has received most of the attention this year, but the results of the governors’ races may ultimately play a big role in how analysts interpret the results Nov. 4, including whether this will be viewed as a 'wave election.' Republican incumbents in purple and red states should have no business losing in a 'wave' year, yet as many as seven Republican incumbents remain vulnerable at this stage."
CO's Udall polling strong among Latinos. Yahoo! News' Andrew Romano: "The firm Latino Decisions focuses exclusively on polling hundreds of Latino voters at a time ... 66 percent of Latinos say they will or are likely to vote for Udall, while only 17 percent say the same about Gardner ... Udall appears to be on track to perform almost exactly as well with Latino voters as he did in 2008 — which suggests the group isn't abandoning the Democratic Party just yet."
WI Gov. Scott Walker is struggling because voters know his record. Bloomberg: "Despite the ideological differences dividing Wisconsin, the dominant issue in the campaign is job creation and the state’s sluggish economic performance since Walker took office. As a candidate for governor in 2010, he pledged to create 250,000 private-sector jobs by the end of his first term. He’s fallen short."
The Nation urges NY voters to support Gov. Cuomo on Working Families line: "One area in which the WFP has emerged as uniquely effective has been in getting Governor Cuomo and state legislators to respond to human needs rather than corporate donors. In the governor’s drive to win the WFP endorsement last spring, he bent where he did not want to bend ... The party’s ability to put pressure on Cuomo, and to shape better politics and policies, is at stake on November 4. It must receive 50,000 votes for governor to maintain its ballot line..."
Simpson-Bowles backfires. Politico: "In North Carolina, a television ad accused Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan of backing a 'controversial plan' that 'reduces the home mortgage deduction.' In New York, Republican Rep. Tom Reed has been under fire for wanting to raise the Social Security retirement age. So too is Rep. Joe Garcia (D-Fla.), who is accused of 'failing seniors' in a new ad by the National Republican Congressional Committee."
"Would Warren Really Run?" asks HuffPost's Robert Kuttner: "I have no inside information on this, but I suspect that Warren softened her Shermanesque declaration of non-candidate because Clinton in fact may not run. If Clinton decided not to make the race, for health or other reasons, Warren would find grassroots pressure well nigh irresistible ... Warren may also want to keep Hillary guessing in order to put salutary pressure on her to run as a more resolute progressive."
Obamacare Looking Good
NYT investigation shows how Obamacare is working: "The number of Americans without health insurance has been reduced by about 25 percent this year — or eight million to 11 million people. Of that total, it appears that more than half of people who are newly insured signed up for Medicaid ... dire warnings that the law would cause premiums for most people to rise sharply have proved unfounded ... opponents of the Affordable Care Act have warned that it represented a 'government takeover' [but] the industry appears to be largely flourishing, in part because of the additional business the law created."
Republicans attack anyway. Bloomberg: "...while the GOP is still gleefully pointing fingers at President Barack Obama ... the Affordable Healthcare Act has not proved to be the club Republicans first imagined. Trashing the president's signature legislative achievement is one thing; telling millions of Americans that you might want to take away their new health insurance is far trickier."
Obama Boosts Manufacturing
President Obama to act on manufacturing by executive order. The Hill: "Obama will announce [today] that the departments of Defense, Energy and Agriculture and NASA will invest more than $300 million in advanced materials, advanced sensors and digital manufacturing ... The Department of Labor will also launch a $100 million competition to spur new apprenticeship models. To help improve the business climate, the Department of Commerce’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership will launch a $130 million competition over five years in ten states to help small firms adopt new technologies and sell new products."
We're not investing in infrastructure because of Republicans, says NYT's Paul Krugman: "...this didn’t have to happen. The federal government could easily have provided aid to the states to help them spend — in fact, the stimulus bill included such aid, which was one main reason public investment briefly increased. But once the G.O.P. took control of the House, any chance of more money for infrastructure vanished. Once in a while Republicans would talk about wanting to spend more, but they blocked every Obama administration initiative."
