Based on the anecdata I’m seeing, voter turnout is fairly high for a midterm election for the most part. (Not in New Orleans, where there’s a monsoon.) The conventional wisdom is that high turnout helps Democrats, and I’d be willing to grant that. But WHERE the turnout is coming from matters, too. For instance, elevated [...]

I wanted to expand on a few things about my visit to the NACA loan modification event in Los Angeles this weekend, which I left out of the main body of the story mainly because it was getting too long already. • A question of scale: I did make this point, but I wanted to [...]

It’s tedious to go over this again, but since the White House clearly doesn’t have any political scientists on staff and thinks that whipping people out of lethargy will somehow reap rewards in the elections (or they think it’ll be a valuable tool to distance themselves from defeat), go over it we must. The economy [...]

Have you ever seen an athlete stay in the game for too long (no intentional resemblance to any quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings) because they cannot imagine a world without the adulation and cheering? That’s about the only analogy I can make to the persistent carping inside the White House, now a definitive strategy and [...]

A Research 2000/Daily Kos poll released on Friday gives the most direct evidence that Democrats face major trouble in the midterm elections because their base is completely unmotivated to vote. Obama remains in positive territory at 53% approval in the poll, and both the Democratic Party and Democratic leaders outpoll their Republican counterparts. On the [...]