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After limiting himself mostly to fundraising during this years campaign season, President Barack Obama is heading out on the trail.

Obama is scheduled to appear on behalf of Democratic candidates for governor next week in Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine and Connecticut, where Democrats are in close contests. Obama also is making a rare appearance for a Senate contender, Democrat Gary Peters, who holds a comfortable lead over Republican Terri Lynn Land in Michigan.

With his approval ratings hovering at about 41 percent in most recent national polls, Obama has avoided most campaign appearances with Democratic congressional candidates as the party tries to hold its majority in the Senate.

Instead hes been raising money for Democratic campaign committees and working in other ways to rally the partys core constituencies: blacks, Hispanics, single women and young people.

If the president goes out on the campaign trail, its not like hes seeking to convert Republicans. Thats not going to happen, said Donna Hoffman, head of the University of Northern Iowa political science department. Hes a good campaigner. He can be very significant in terms of boosting enthusiasm.

Obama has set campaign-related appearances in six states before election day, and his schedule illustrates the restrictions he faces. Other than Peters in Michigan, Obama isnt appearing with Senate candidates even though the party is defending 21 seats and Republicans are poised to gain the six spots theyd need to gain control of the chamber.

In an interview on Bloomberg Televisions With All Due Respect program, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said Obama is actively helping the Senate campaign even though she couldnt name a competitive race where Obama was campaigning.

There are races that the president is campaigning in around the country, and hes also governing, she said Hes doing his job, and hes also spending time recording robo-calls and doing radio spots.

Only recently has Obama been making appearances with gubernatorial candidates. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said candidates across the country have benefited from Obamas fundraising work this year.

All Democratic candidates benefit from the kinds of resources that the president raised for the Democratic National Committee, Earnest said at a White House briefing. We have the party working very aggressively to benefit Democrats up and down the ballot, and thats one way in which theyll benefit from the presidents involvement.

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Obama Heads on Last-Minute Campaign Trail Spree Next Week

By Paul Waldman October 24 at 12:08 PM

Anyone who remembers the 2012 GOP presidential primaries knows that the 2016 contest will involve a lot of arguing about whos the most conservative candidate. Any contender who has strayed from party orthodoxy on anything will have to undergo a sustained campaign of grovelling and humiliation to prove to Tea Partiers, religious conservatives, and everybody else that he will be faithful and true forevermore. This process leaves its participants battered and bruised, diminished in the eyes of general election voters.

But what if placating the right isnt as hard as it appears? That question is right now being contemplated by Rand Paul, who is running for the White House harder than anybody.

Paul has now given a speech outlining his foreign policy vision (which every candidate is supposed to have). The speech shows just how Paul is navigating the tension between the two competing incentives that will define his candidacy. On one hand, he needs to reassure Republican voters that hes conservative enough for them, but on the other hand, he also very much wants to be the different kind of Republican who will continue to receive glowing media coverage and prove appealing to moderate general election voters.

If you took out the five Reagan references and changed some words and phrases here and there, the speech Paul gave could have been delivered by Barack Obama. The difference between a Republican and a Democrat, apparently, is that the Republican says that we should always be prepared for war, but war should be a last resort, while the Democrat says that war should be a last resort, but we should always be prepared for war. Paul also added the controversial ideas that American values lead the world, and were stronger abroad when our economy is stronger at home. And also, Reagan Reagan Reagan.

The interesting thing is that, despite the similarity of Pauls ideas to those of Obama, Pauls speech showed that it probably isnt all that hard to give GOP voters what tey want on foreign policy. All it takes is a little dexterity to push the right buttons, as Paul does in this passage:

Although I support the call for defeating and destroying ISIS, I doubt that a decisive victory is possible in the short term, even with the participation of the Kurds, the Iraqi government, and other moderate Arab states.

In the end, only the people of the region can destroy ISIS. In the end, the long war will end only when civilized Islam steps up to defeat this barbaric aberration.

He takes a policy position many Republicans will disagree with, but leavens it with the mention of the long war and civilized Islam, giving a nod to the clash-of-civilizations sentiment so common on the right. Mission accomplished.

This is a marked contrast to the domestic realm, where there are many specific positions that are beyond negotiation. You have to support tax cuts, oppose Roe v. Wade, proclaim your hatred of Obamacare, want to Drill Baby Drill, and so on. Paul has stepped outside of conservative orthodoxy on a few domestic issues, such as with his criticism of mass incarceration. But thats easy to do now, since crime rates have plummeted since then, the issue has receded and base conservatives wont be angry with him for taking a contrary position. And at any rate, for some time, Paul has been slowly stepping away from the libertarian ideas on domestic issues that GOP voters would find truly objectionable, like legalizing drugs.

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How Rand Paul is playing the GOP base, and what it means ...

How Not To Suck at Being A Libertarian
May have been more aptly named - WHY some libertarians suck at being libertarians - but I do mention some good points near the end on how to actually focus o...

By: Jillian Liberty #39;s Jilly-osophy. Voluntaryism. Libertarianism. Rantism.

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How Not To Suck at Being A Libertarian - Video

The liberals in the European Parliament have called for a last-minute reshuffle while the Greens decided to vote against the new European Commission led by Jean-Claude Juncker. EurActiv France reports.

Parliamentary groups have been trying to extract last-minute concessions from Jean-Claude Juncker in the run-up to a confirmation vote on the new Commission team scheduled in Strasbourg on Wednesday (22 October).

The main areas of contention are the distribution of portfolios and the Commission's priorities.

Despite having the support of the two main groups in the European Parliament, the new Commission President spent Tuesday negotiating with MEPs ahead of the vote on Wednesday.

The leader of the liberal (ALDE) group, Guy Verhofstadt, said on Tuesday "our group will make its decision tonight".

Liberals not prepared to grant free reign

For the liberals, the major obstacle is Tibor Navrascis, the Hungarian Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Citizenship, whom Parliament has condemned for his close links to the government of Viktor Orban, with its less than shining record on civil liberties.

"We do not think he can take on the Citizenship portfolio. We expect clarification on this issue," Guy Verhofstadt explained, adding that a reshuffle among the Commissioners was "absolutely necessary".

"The hearings must have consequences," he continued, referring to the Parliamentary Committee for Culture and Education's vote to reject the Hungarian Commissioner on 6 October.

The division of economic competencies across different portfolios is another cause of scepticism in the liberal camp. "We have received a letter from Jean-Claude Juncker detailing the responsibilities of each Commissioner, which we will discuss this evening within our group," Guy Verhofstadt said on Tuesday.

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Liberals demand last-minute concessions in return for Juncker vote

In an arena usually reserved for rodeos and livestock shows, Democratic Senate candidate Michelle Nunn told a boisterous crowd she was "glad to be home."

Her Republican opponent in the Georgia race, David Perdue, stood on the same debate stage and bellowed, "Welcome to Perdue country."

Neither candidate lives near the fairgrounds, much less among cattle or row crops. Nunn is a nonprofit executive who resides in a liberal neighborhood near downtown Atlanta, while Perdue is a wealthy former corporate CEO who lives behind multiple gates on a coastal island.

But both candidates spent their formative years in middle Georgia, and both have made a concerted play for rural and small-town voters despite the state's population shift to cities and suburbs. The same dynamic exists in Senate races in several other Southern states Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky and North Carolina that will help determine which major party controls the Senate after the Nov. 4 election.

For Republicans, six seats from a Senate majority, it's a matter of maximizing their edge outside of cities by capitalizing one more time among white voters who dislike President Barack Obama and Democratic standard-bearers like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. For Democrats, the challenge is making elections about something other than Obama as they again try to reclaim middle-class and poor whites who once anchored President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal coalition.

A Nunn campaign memo lays out the electoral math: To reach her 1.4 million-vote target, she needs about 160,000 more white votes than the 412,000 that Democrat Roy Barnes got for his gubernatorial bid in 2010, the last national midterm election. Ideally, much of the increase would come from suburban women, but Nunn still would need to add support outside metro Atlanta, home to 6 million of the state's 10 million residents.

Republicans acknowledge that Nunn may have a small opening, at least in south Georgia, where her father, former Sen. Sam Nunn, remains popular among erstwhile "Southern Democrats." Rob Collins, director of the national GOP's Senate campaign arm, said Perdue's name ID is low in some rural pockets because he concentrated on metro Atlanta in the primary, while his runoff rival, Rep. Jack Kingston of Savannah, dominated the south. "He's got to get down there and work on that," Collins said of Perdue.

GOP ads accuse Nunn of being a "rubber stamp" for Obama's "liberal agenda." In Kentucky, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell tells voters that his Democratic challenger, Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, was "handpicked by Barack Obama and Harry Reid." Republicans running against Democratic incumbents Mark Pryor in Arkansas, Mary Landrieu in Louisiana and Kay Hagan in North Carolina all say they're running to demote Reid and hamstring Obama.

Republicans attack the incumbents' 2010 votes for the president's health care overhaul. McConnell says Grimes would play along with Obama's regulation of coal-fired power plants, which he blames for 7,000 lost jobs in Kentucky. Perdue says he wants to serve on the Senate's Agriculture Committee and mocks Nunn's wish for the same appointment as window dressing.

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Democrats Try to Regain Lost Votes Outside Cities