How The Dems Get To 50

Greg Sargent goes through the scenarios on how the Dems keep the Senate. (Hint: runoffs in December will decide Senate control.)

Democrats do still have paths to retaining control. But they are increasingly narrow. 

Look at the map this way. If Democrats can hold on in just one of the four following toss-up states — Colorado, Iowa, Arkansas, or Alaska — their hopes of holding the Senate remain alive. That is plausible. But a lot has to go their way after that.
Let’s give Republicans West Virgina, Montana, and South Dakota up front, while giving Democrats North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Michigan — outcomes that are consistent with the polling averages. If Dems can limit Republicans to wins in three of these four (CO, IA, AR, AK), that puts the GOP at 51 seats. 

That would probably send us into overtime, with Louisiana and Georgia likely to head to run-offs due to election rules. To keep the Senate at a 50-50 split, Democrats would then have to win one of those run-offs (so they cancel one-another out) and Greg Orman would have to win in Kansas andhe would have to caucus with Dems. Without Kansas, Democrats would have to win both those runoffs. This is not entirely impossible. As Harry Enten has explained, recent history doesn’t tell us much about how these runoffs will go, and high African American turnout could scramble them. But it’s a very tall order, partly because the outcome of these red state run-offs would decide which party controls the Senate. 

Alternatively: Democrats would have to win two out of the following four core toss-ups: CO, IA, AR, AK. This, too, is not an impossible outcome. Democrats trail by 2.1 points in Iowa and 1.5 in Colorado. As Nate Silverhas detailed, the polls only have to be a little off for Dems to win in such states. What’s more, there’s a great deal of uncertainty remaining: No one knows what sort of electorate will result from Colorado’s first experiment in all-mail balloting. Democrats insist mobilization efforts will enable Bruce Braley to close his small deficit in Iowa, a possibility that can’t be dismissed. Arkansas, which hasn’t been contested in recent presidential elections, has never seen this level of organization. (For these reasons, Dems winning one of these is plausible, too.)

Bottom line: Dems have to win 2 of the following 7 races: Colorado, Iowa, Arkansas, Alaska, Georgia, Kentucky and Kansas (with Greg Orman caucusing with the Dems) while winning in NC, NH, and Michigan. It's not impossible, but all seven favor the GOP right now.

Either way it's an uncertain, uphill battle that would only get the Dems to 50, with zero room for error.

We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• US forces have airdropped weapons and medical supplies for Kurdish fighters near the Syrian border town of Kobani to bolster ground defenses against ISIS.
• Japanese Trade Minister Yuko Obuchi has resigned in disgrace after just a month on the job as reports of misuse of campaign funds to buy personal items including makeup have surfaced.
• Indonesia's new reform-minded President Joko Widodo faces an angry parliament and economic issues as the country's first outsider president.
• Dallas health officials say the remaining 48 people who came in contact with Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan are expected to be given a clean bill of health by Monday.
• The Obama administration is expected to nominate former Google patent lawyer Michelle Lee as Director of the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Last Call For Out Of Their Gourd

As many people have wondered on Twitter this weekend, what in the hell happened at the Keene, New Hampshire Pumpkinfest that caused the proceedings to degenerated into riots?

Tear gas and pepper spray hung in the air as police in riot gear descended on Keene, New Hampshire, on Saturday night, trying to disperse a rowdy crowd that brought chaos to the city's 24th annual Pumpkin Festival, CNN affiliates reported.

"State and local public safety officials are on the scene and have been working closely together to defuse the situation," Gov. Maggie Hassan said a statement. "We will continue to monitor the situation and provide any assistance necessary to Keene."

Bonfires burned into the early hours of Sunday morning on city streets that were littered with broken beer and liquor bottles, video from CNN affiliate WMUR showed.

"I am saddened and disheartened at the events surrounding this year's Keene Pumpkin Festival," said Keene State College President Anne Huot. "Despite the concerted efforts of organizers, city officials, police, and Keene State College, there continued to be disruptive behavior at parties in multiple locations around the city, injuries, and property damage."

Huot said Keene State students bore some of the responsibility for the unruly behavior, but also suggested that some outside the community had billed the event "as a destination for destructive and raucous behavior."

There are a lot of snide remarked to be made about "destructive culture of pumpkin spice lattes" and "it's dangerous to have groups of white people together because they might riot over pumpkins" that are pretty well deserved after the way the media treated (and still treat) black America after demonstrations protesting the killings of Trayvon Martin in Florida and Michael Brown in Missouri.

But underneath those cheap shots you notice that 1) police didn't dare use live firearms on this crowd despite the kind of property destruction that resulted in armed riot squads in military gear in Ferguson and the fact that 140 people were arrested last year for similar destruction (those violent white people, you know) and 2) it's being played off as "college kids being rowdy" whereas more than four black people is a militant, dangerous mob.

In other words, there's a definite case of a double standard here in "post-racial" America.

It's probably Obama's fault.

Black Or Bleak For Dems In November

An internal election 2014 memo from Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher to the White House is both blunt and dismaying,and as NY Times political reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg details, the message is clear: black voters will make or break the Dems in 2014.

The confidential memo from a former pollster for President Obama contained a blunt warning for Democrats. Written this month with an eye toward Election Day, it predicted “crushing Democratic losses across the country” if the party did not do more to get black voters to the polls.

“African-American surge voters came out in force in 2008 and 2012, but they are not well positioned to do so again in 2014,” Cornell Belcher, the pollster, wrote in the memo, dated Oct. 1. “In fact, over half aren’t even sure when the midterm elections are taking place.”

Mr. Belcher’s assessment points to an urgent imperative for Democrats: To keep Republicans from taking control of the Senate, as many are predicting, they need black voters in at least four key states. Yet the one politician guaranteed to generate enthusiasm among African Americans is the same man many Democratic candidates want to avoid: Mr. Obama.

On one hand the fact that Senate Dems have stabbed President Obama in the back time and time again, on Gitmo, on his Surgeon General appointee, on gun control, and in commercials where white Democrats do everything they can to slag a black President is going a long way towards turning off black voters.

On the other hand, the cynic in me is hearing alarm bells.  Guess who will be blamed should Democrats lose in November?  Hint, it won't be the Senate Dems who trashed Obama.

Black voters made history in 2012, exit polling and census data show, when they turned out at a rate higher than whites to help re-elect Mr. Obama. But fewer voters go to polls in midterm elections. In 2010, a disastrous year for Democrats, blacks voted at a rate lower than whites, creating a “turnout gap.”

The numbers are significant. Although more than 1.1 million black Georgians went to the polls in 2012, only about 741,000 voted in 2010. In North Carolina, Democrats say there are nearly one million black registered voters who did not vote in 2010.

Mr. Belcher declined to discuss for whom he had written the memo, saying it was private, but the document was circulated by the Democratic National Committee. In the memo, he also argued that the turnout gap, more than any Republican Tea Party wave, was responsible for Democrats’ 2010 defeats. So the challenge for Democrats is to get midterm voters to the polls at presidential election-year rates.

There are those alarm bells again.  Note the memo blames black voters for Democratic losses in 2010.  How come the onus for voting falls only on black voters now?

If Dems win, that'll be great.  But if black turnout is so vital to the Democrats, why aren't we seeing more efforts to stop obvious black voter suppression through GOP voter ID laws?

And if Dems lose, well, guess whose fault it's going to be?

The Democrats' Brand New Problem In Kentucky

There's nothing more depressing to see the fate of the Democratic brand in Kentucky.  Gallup finds that where Democrats had a 14 point edge in 2008, those days are now long gone.

A series of disheartening figures could make Democratic Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes' attempt to unseat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell all the more difficult. Kentuckians are now more likely to identify as or lean toward Republicans (45%) than Democrats (39%). In the prior six years, Gallup found Democrats held at least a slight advantage.

The six-percentage-point edge favoring Republicans, based on interviewing conducted in Kentucky from January through June of this year, underscores the uphill battle Grimes faces in trying to unseat McConnell. And given typical Republican advantages in voter turnout, the Democratic deficit on partisanship among those Kentucky residents who actually turn out to vote may be even greater than six points.

I wonder what happened in 2008 that could have driven Kentuckians from the Democratic Party?  It almost seems like there was some major political event that happened in 2008 that was the last straw for many Kentucky Democrats, one so unique that it turned them into Republicans, at the rate of a 20 point swing in just six years.

It has to be unemployment, right?  It was 8.9% when Barack Obama took office in January 2009.

Only it's dropped to 6.7% in September 2014, down from a high of 10.7% in August 2009.

What about evil Obamacare?  Well, Kynect is one of the most successful state insurance exchanges in the country, if not the most successful. Nearly 500,000 Kentuckians have health insurance now that they didn't before, most of those now qualifying for low-cost Medicaid insurance.

So by a broad measure things are a lot better in Kentucky then when Bush destroyed the economy in 2008, and it was a Democrat who fixed it.

I guess we'll never know why Kentuckians hate President Obama...

Gosh I'm stumped. Maybe Hillary Clinton knows why.

The last time Hillary Rodham Clinton campaigned in Kentucky, she was delivering her victory speech after defeating Barack Obama in the state’s 2008 Democratic presidential primary on the strength of a huge advantage among white working-class voters. 

White Democrats voted for Mrs. Clinton over Mr. Obama by 49 percentage points in 2008, a telling indication of both her strength and Mr. Obama’s trouble in attracting traditional Democratic voters.

I'm not sure what the problem could be here.  I guess Kentucky really wanted a woman in the White House and that will only help Alison Grimes...

“I think if Hillary Clinton were in the White House today, McConnell would be behind by 20 points,” said Todd Hollenbach Sr., a former Jefferson County judge executive whom Mr. McConnell unseated in 1977.

It's on the tip of my tongue, although for some reason Grimes is behind, even though she's a woman...

Jonathan Miller, a former Kentucky state treasurer, said it was voters’ animosity toward Mr. Obama, and not necessarily excitement for Mrs. Clinton, that was energizing Democrats here. “We’re just nostalgic for when Democrats were different than Obama,” he said.

Animosity towards the guy that gave 500,000 affordable health insurance and cut 4 points off unemployment?  I'm sure I'll figure out why someday.  Kentuckians must have a real problem with left-handed Presidents, I guess.

A Deficit Of Attention

To recap, President Obama has kept his promises to cut the unemployment rate (from 10% to 5.9% and falling) and to cut the deficit (now down to $483 billion from $1.3 trillion) but apparently this makes him the worst president in American history for some reason.

The Obama administration hailed lower budget deficits as a "return to fiscal normalcy" Wednesday, announcing that the budget deficit ended fiscal year at $483 billion -- the lowest level since 2008.

That's $197 billion less than last year, and $165 billion less than even President Obama forecast in his budget.

As a share of the economy, the deficit is now at 2.9% -- less than the average deficit over the last 40 years.

But still Obama is hated and awful and unpopular (even though his approval is still in the low 40s, where it was five years ago) and collapsing and coming apart and doomed and he's a lame duck and incompetent and...

...and black.  Maybe that has something to do with it.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Hurricane Gonzalo slammed into Bermuda as a strong Category 3 storm overnight, and Hurricane Ana is menacing the Hawaiian islands as a Category 1 storm this weekend.
• Michael Dunn, the man convicted of shooting unarmed black teenager Jordan Davis over a dispute involving loud music, was sentenced to life in prison plus 90 years.
• Iraqi pilots who have joined ISIS are training the group to fly three older fighter jets, but are not considered a major threat to US and coalition partners in the region.
• CDC officials say none of the people who came into contact with an Ohio nurse who has been diagnosed with Ebola are showing any symptoms themselves.
• New figures show cyber attacks on large US companies costs each firm an average of $12.7 million per year, up nearly 10% from 2012.

Last Call For Rand On Third Baseless

The GOP plan to win in 2016, specifically Rand Paul's plan to win in 2016, is to somehow split the black vote by running issues that "appeal" to us.

Personally, I think Rand's been in the Maui Wowie again.

Sen. Rand Paul tells POLITICO that the Republican presidential candidate in 2016 could capture one-third or more of the African-American vote by pushing criminal-justice reform, school choice and economic empowerment. 

“If Republicans have a clue and do this and go out and ask every African-American for their vote, I think we can transform an election in one cycle,” the Kentucky Republican said in a phone interview Thursday as he was driven through New Hampshire in a rental car.

He's high.  Rand Paul, you are high as a kite in a Kansas tornado.

First of all, "school choice" is a terrible idea, because it's really "take money from public schools and give them to for-profit charter schools that fail."  The good schools don't have enough room for all the students who want to get into them, and those students still have to go to school somewhere. Where they end up going are the same crumbling, failing schools that they're trying to escape from, and that suburban and exurban taxpayers want to abandon totally since their kids aren't stuck there. See Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia schools, and to a lesser extent, John Kasich's charter school scheme here in Ohio, and Rick Scott's charter school scheme in Florida and Bobby Jindal's mess in Louisiana.

Second, Republicans aren't interested in criminal justice reform.  At all.  Rand Paul might be, but fixes to our overloaded criminal justice system are worthless without the major kind of infrastructure and job improvements that predominately black neighborhoods need, and again, that Republican taxpayers don't give a damn about.  It's one thing to reduce or get rid of mandatory sentencing, but entirely another to provide quality public defenders, clean and safe courtrooms that aren't backlogged for years, and not to use fines and court fees from people as a revenue stream for county and city funding.

Third, if anything the phrase "economic empowerment" means Republicans like Rand Paul want to cut food stamps, social services, Obamacare and Medicaid expansion, schools, and infrastructure spending in urban neighborhoods, not improve them.  Let's not forget this means "you're on your own to lift yourself up by your own bootstraps."

Finally, Rand Paul is stupid enough to think that decades of mistrust black voters have towards Republicans will be eliminated in the next two years, while the party is still actively engaging in "Southern Strategy" attacks involving President Obama and openly moving to disenfranchise black voters through voter ID laws in multiple red states?  And hey, let's not forget Rand Paul's own personal record on civil rights and voting right that both are unnecessary in today's age, and the fact that the GOP is sworn to get rid of legislation protecting them.  Republicans don't want a third of the black vote. They want to eliminate the black vote.

It's not just fantasy, but idiotic foolishness to take Rand Paul at his word on this.  Most of all, he seems to think black voters are stupid, and that's the most insulting part of all this.

Republicans will be lucky to get 3.3% of the black vote in 2016, not 33%.

Doctor, Doctor, Can't You See You're Lying, Lying

And once again GOP Sen. Rand Paul proves to be a massive embarrassment for Kentucky, the US Senate, and America with his flat out lies about Ebola to CNN.

Sen. Rand Paul said Ebola is "not like AIDS," offering what he says is a stark contrast from the White House's message on the disease. 

"[The Obama administration] has downplayed how transmissible it is," Paul said in an interview with CNN on Thursday morning. "They say it's the exchange of bodily of fluids. Which makes people think, 'Oh, it's like AIDS. It's very difficult to catch.'" 

"If someone has Ebola at a cocktail party they're contagious and you can catch it from them," Paul continued. "[The administration] should be honest about that."

Except being exposed to bodily fluids is exactly how Ebola spreads.  Just standing near a person at a cocktail party doesn't spread Ebola and Rand Paul knows this, but his obnoxious hair-splitting is actually dangerous and stupid fearmongering.

"They say all it takes is direct contact to get this," he said. "If you listen carefully, they say being three feet from someone is direct contact. That's not what most Americans think is direct contact. 

"You start to wonder about a basic level of competence," he said.

Yes, it makes me question your competence, Senator.  You represent me, ostensibly.  And you should know better.

How Ebola spreads:



Are we clear?  Unless that person at the cocktail party is ill and bleeding and vomiting on you, or you're sharing a used needle with them, you're not getting Ebola.

Now stop lying to the American people, you ass, because that's what you're doing here.

The Distinct Sound Of A Panic Button Being Smashed

Remember, there's no concerted effort to panic people using cheap and stupid Ebola scare tactics in the media, thus causing low turnout for the November elections in order to favor Republicans.  Why would anyone believe that's the case?

There could be as many as two dozen people in the U.S. infected with Ebola by the end of the month, according to researchers tracking the virus with a computer model. 

The actual number probably will be far smaller and limited to a couple of airline passengers who enter the country already infected without showing symptoms, and the health workers who care for them, said Alessandro Vespignani, a Northeastern University professor who runs computer simulations of infectious disease outbreaks. The two newly infected nurses in Dallas don’t change the numbers because they were identified quickly and it’s unlikely they infected other people, he said. 

The projections only run through October because it’s too difficult to model what will occur if the pace of the outbreak changes in West Africa, where more than 8,900 people have been infected and 4,500 have died, he said. If the outbreak isn’t contained, the numbers may rise significantly. 

Yeah, nothing like a using a sensational headline like

U.S. Ebola Cases May Exceed Two Dozen by November, Researchers Say

And then spending the rest of the article to walk it back.  Good job, Bloomberg News!

“We have a worst-case scenario, and you don’t even want to know,” Vespignani said. “We could have widespread epidemics in other countries, maybe the Far East. That would be like a bad science fiction movie.” 

The worst case would occur if Ebola acquires pandemic status and is no longer contained in West Africa, he said. It would be a catastrophic event, one Vespignani said he is confident won’t happen. 

“Let’s be rational for the next couple of months,” he said. “We aren’t going to have an invasion of cases. After November, we need to reassess the situation and see what is the progress of containment in West Africa.”

There's a worst-case, but it's not here in the US.  Africa needs help, which is coming in the form of US personnel and supplies.  But who cares?  EBOLA EBOLA EBOLA STAY HOME DON'T GO OUTSIDE.  Hell, we're pissing ourselves over 3 cases.

"And especially don't go vote" is the underlying implication.  Scary crowds of people there.  Maybe somebody's infected, you don't know.  If you wanted to wreck November turnout and then holiday shopping, this is the way to do it.

Right?

StupidiNews!

• US airstrikes in Kobani have dislodged ISIS fighters in the Syrian border town near Turkey, allowing Kurdish fighters to take territory.
• Vice-President Joe Biden's youngest son, Hunter Biden, has been discharged from the Naval Reserve after testing positive for cocaine use.
• President Obama says he is open to the idea of an "Ebola czar" to help coordinate the response of multiple US agencies to the disease, but does not support a travel ban from West Africa.
• London police say they are conducting a number of domestic counter-terror operations against militants inspired by ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq.
• Apple has announced its next generation of iPad and iPad Mini tablets, supporting many of the same features introduced earlier this summer with the iPhone 6.

Last Call For Redefining Down A Crisis

Please tell me once again how our liberal media is in the tank for President Obama, and that there's no evidence that he's being treated unfairly.

The Ebola crisis in the United States has become an anchor threatening to sink the Obama presidency. 

Already under fire from critics who saw the federal response to the outbreak as disorganized and timid, things went from bad to worse on Wednesday, when it was revealed a second nurse had contracted the disease while treating a Liberian man at a Dallas-area hospital.

More alarmingly, the diagnosis was made just hours after the nurse, 29-year-old Amber Vinson, had flown from Cleveland to Dallas on a commercial airliner, despite reporting to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that she had a fever.

That Vinson was allowed to travel at all — along with continued questions about why federal procedures for Ebola treatment appear not to have been implemented in Dallas — have prompted serious questions about the administration’s handling of the disease less than three weeks before the midterm elections.

Democrats are expected to lose significant ground in those contests, in no small part due to public dissatisfaction with Obama and resilient questions about the president’s competency.

FOX News?  World Net Daily?  NewsMax?  Nope, this is from The Hill's White House correspondent, Justin Sink.  He has the White House on the verge of collapse, assuring readers that it will cost Democrats in the midterms, and that it will be Obama's fault when it does.

The actions of a for-profit hospital in Dallas that admitted it wasn't prepared to safely handle an Ebola patient is now Barack Obama's personal fault.  We've gotten to the point where the news media is now reporting on its own fearmongering for ratings and that Americans are panicking over international travel now and apparenly unable to destroy his presidency so far, the media has found the method to do so.

Republicans are demanding that the White House take steps to make the issue worse by imposing a travel ban on Ebola-stricken West African countries that will do nothing to resolve the issue and calling for the resignation of CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden, which will definitely not do anything to resolve the issue.

The ridiculous panic escalation is completely political, and the GOP and news media are riding it all the way to a GOP Congress in November.  But nobody seems willing to admit all this idiocy is taking place because of an election around the corner.

I can't wait to see the news stories on "Ebola: is your polling place safe?"

Head Like A Hole

Republican Tom Cotton is running for Senate in Arkansas against incumbent Democrat Mark Pryor, and the race is very close.  But in their second and final debate this week, Pryor pretty much ended Cotton's run:

Tom Cotton, the Republican candidate for Arkansas’ U.S. Senate seat, has repeatedly denounced the Affordable Care Act as a failure and vowed to help repeal it if elected. But in his second and final debate Tuesday night against Democratic incumbent Mark Pryor, he went further, claiming the high-risk insurance pools that many states ran before Obamacare’s passage were better for people with pre-existing conditions than the current exchanges.

“Many people were happy with their coverage under the high-risk pool, before it was eliminated,” Cotton said. “They should have been allowed to keep that choice.”

Pryor shot back, saying his personal experience proved otherwise. “I am a cancer survivor,” he said. “I have been in the high-risk pool. I have lived there. It is no place for any Arkansan to be. If we go back to the high-risk pool, it’s like throwing sick people to the wolves.”

Many of the high risk pools Cotton praised were known for their sky-high costs, exclusion of many applicants, and strict limits on what care is covered. In Arkansas, out of pocket costs for patients in such pools could be as high as $20,000 and those with pre-existing conditions had an average 6 month waiting period for care.

Dear anyone who has gotten health insurance from Medicaid expansion or from an Obamacare exchange plan:  Republicans will take that plan away from you, and they think you're stupid enough to vote for them to do that.

I know if you have an Obamacare plan or Medicaid plan, you're thinking that the Republicans will find a way to take insurance away from other people, but not you.

Go on thinking that. you're going to get what you deserve.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Please, tell me again how voter ID laws aren't designed specifically to disenfranchise black and Latino voters, and I'll tell you you're full of crap.

Support among white Americans for voter ID laws increases when that question is asked alongside of a photo of African Americans voting, according to a new study.

The new University of Delaware study found that 67 percent of white Americans supported voter ID laws after the question was posed to them with text only or accompanied by a photo of white people voting. But that number increased to 73 percent when the same question is asked with an accompanying photo of African-Americans voting. 

"Our findings suggest that public opinion about voter ID laws can be racialized by simply showing images of African American people," David C. Wilson, who helped supervise the study, said. "The resulting increase in support for the laws happens independently of —even after controlling for— political ideology and negative attitudes about African Americans." 

The spike, from 67 percent to 73 percent, may not be huge but it's still statistically significant, The Washington Post noted. While there was an increase among white Americans who were asked about their support for voter ID laws, an accompanying picture of black people voting did not cause African Americans or Hispanic voters to show stronger support for voter ID laws.

You even show some white folks pictures of non-white people voting and they're more likely to support these laws.  Hell, you just have to introduce the idea of black or Latino voters existing and voting and they react to us with punitive measures.

But there's no racism in America because Chief Justice Roberts said so, so we don't need anything silly like a Voting Rights Act anymore.

StupidiNews!

• The Dallas hospital at the center of three Ebola infections is apologizing to employees and to the country for failing to take proper precautions to protect health care workers.
• An Oklahoma man has confessed to killing his parents and sister in order to inherit money, prosecutors are expected to seek the death penalty.
• Engineers at Lockheed Martin say they have made a major breakthrough in providing viable fusion power in testing which could become a commercial reality by 2025.
• Analysts as Citigroup say that recent lower oil prices could provide a $1.1 trillion boost to the world economy through lower fuel and heating costs this winter.
• HBO says it will offer online-only subscriptions to viewers who have cut the cable cord sometime next year.