Mediaboss Marketing

TIME Politics 2014 Election Democrats See Obamacare Silver Lining in 2014 Playbook From fierce opposition to a "fading issue"

A year ago, the health care reform law was an albatross around the Democrats collective neck. Its disastrous roll out dominated headlines. Republicans gleefully predicted they would build on their House majority and take back the Senate in the midterm elections thanks to the unpopularity of President Barack Obamas signature domestic achievement.

Republicans may well still pick up House seats and win the Senatebut if they do, it wont be because of Obamacare. The incredibly fading issue, as U.S. News and World Report recently called it, it has become background noise in an election dominated by parochial interests, as Politico put it. Indeed, some Democrats are going so far as to predict that Obamacare could end up a silver lining come Election Day.

The Affordable Care Act is now the second-most important issue for unmarried women, according to a new poll by Democracy Corps for the Womens Voices Women Vote Action Fund, a key demographic Democrats are hoping to turn out this November. Unmarried women vote reliably Democratic, but tend not to turn out in midterm elections. If Democrats can turn out that one group at the same levels they voted in 2012, forecasts indicate Democrats would keep the Senate and take back the House.

That kind of turnout is highly unlikely. But every little bit counts as Democrats try to fend off the kind of wave election that drowned them in 2010. That year, a genuine backlash against Obamacare helped Democrats lose the womens vote for the first time since Ronald Reagan, and the House with it. In most battleground Senate races, Democratic candidates are winning by double-digits with women, particularly unmarried women

The law is also popular with minorities, another demographic with which Republicans have struggled. Some 74% of minorities support the Affordable Care Act, according to the Democracy Corps poll. The health care law has become much more important as a reason why people are voting for Democrats, says Stan Greenberg, a co-founder of Democracy Corps. The threat of repeal appears to be giving unmarried women and minority voters a reason to vote.

Republicans seem to have felt the tide receding. In April, Obamacare was the subject of 54% all political TV ads; by July that number had fallen to 27%, according to a July report from nonpartisan analysts Kantar Media CMAG. Obamacare will not be the most important issue, GOP pollster Whit Ayres, co-wrote in an August memo outlining 57 alternate lines of attack for outside spending groups such as Crossroads GPS and the American Action Network.

Still, opponents still use the issue far more than supporters; overall this election cycle, anti-Obamacare groups have spent 15 times as much on ads than groups supporting the law, the Kantar Media CMAG found. Did Obamacare dominate the midterms as some Republicans had predicted? Definitely not, says Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginias Center for Politics. But has it been used widely by GOP candidates for House and Senate in their TV ads and on the stump? A resounding yes. And that makes sense. Midterm elections are low-turnout battles between the two party bases. Any hot button issue that gets partisan voters to cast a ballot is used extensively. Obamacare still causes Republicans blood pressure to rise.

The Affordable Care Act almost surely remains a net negative for Democrats. It helped bake voters opinions into the general election cake, says Jennifer Duffy, who follows Senate races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. The early advertising effort also kept vulnerable Democratic incumbents on the defensive. This was particularly helpful in states in which Republicans had primaries.

Support for Obamacare remains in the red, with 51.1% opposing the measure and only 38.7% supporting it, according to a Real Clear Politics average of national polls. Which is why the handful of positive ads Democratic candidates have attempted to run on behalf of the lawmost notably in Arkansas and West Virginiahave been resoundingly mocked by Republicans.

See more here:
Democrats See Obamacare Silver Lining in 2014 Playbook

By Mark Murray

Democrats are getting ready to drop a big chunk of change in a Senate contest almost no one's been talking about.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is going to spend $1 million for advertising and ground game operations in South Dakota's Senate contest, NBC News confirms.

The cash infusion was first reported by Bloomberg News.

It's notable because Democrats had all but written off the race months ago.

A recent robo-poll (which doesn't meet NBC's methodological standards) showed the three-way race featuring former Gov. Mike Rounds (R), Rick Weiland (D), and former GOP Sen. Larry Pressler (I) to be very competitive.

The South Dakota Senate seat is currently held by retiring Sen. Tim Johnson (D), and Democrats winning the seat -- or convincing a victorious Pressler to caucus with them (he endorsed Barack Obama in 2012) -- would mean Republicans would have to win AN ADDITIONAL seat to win control of the Senate.

Those are a lot of "ifs," especially in a state where Obama got just 40% of the vote in 2012. But with Democrats now spending $1 million in South Dakota -- keep an eye on the race.

First published October 8 2014, 12:51 PM

Mark Murray is the Senior Political Editor at NBC News, where he covers politics for the network, writes and edits its popular First Read blog, and appears daily on MSNBC and Washington DCs NBC affiliate to discuss the latest political news.

See the rest here:
Democrats Are Getting Ready to Spend Big in SD Senate Race

In tight Senate races across the country, Democrats are frantically trying to win over the prized mix of voters dubbed the Obama coalition. They just don't want President Obama's help.

Unpopular in many states whose voters will determine which party controls the Senate, Obama has been relegated to the role of silent partner. He is asked to raise money and will do so Thursday in California and to stay on message but to keep out of the close races.

It's not an unusual demotion for second-term presidents, who are known to lose their electoral mojo by their sixth year. But in this case, the president on the sidelines wrote the playbook for modern campaigning, and one of his keys to success was cobbling together a coalition of voters including women, young people, blacks and Latinos.

The president's status is laid bare in his recent travel, mostly to true-blue territory. Obama spent time last week in his hometown of Chicago and rubbed elbows with top-dollar donors in New York and Connecticut on Tuesday. On Thursday, he'll hit up the Hollywood crowd for a fundraiser at Gwyneth Paltrow's home in Los Angeles before heading to San Francisco on Friday.

Less than a month from election day, he has yet to appear onstage with a Democrat for a fall campaign event. He has not stumped for voters in North Carolina's Senate race, although Obama in 2008 was the first Democrat win the state in 32 years. The president has not been to Colorado since July, another state he helped flip for Democrats. Even Iowa, where he began his road to the White House, has been off the calendar, not to mention Arkansas and Louisiana, two conservative states with closely contested campaigns.

"The irony is that a lot of these races, particularly in states like Arkansas, Louisiana, others, depend so much on African American turnout," said David Axelrod, the president's former senior advisor. "This is a place where the president could be very helpful. Those candidates are trying to figure out how to deploy him in some form or fashion, not necessarily in person. But they'll deploy his voice and image in a targeted way."

The White House says the president is happy to help Democrats however he can. The president and first lady have done their part with low-profile tactics that some strategists argue are more efficient and effective than large rallies. On African American radio and in mailers, Web videos and robocalls, Obama will close out the final weeks aiming to activate the universe of die-hard supporters who tend not to vote in midterm elections.

The president is also expected to step up travel to places where he is more welcome, particularly to such states as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois, which all have key governor's races.

Some strategists say the president's predicament is not merely a result of his lower approval rating. The lineup of Senate races this election cycle was daunting even before he lost popularity. Of the 24 states Obama lost in 2012, nearly 80% have Senate contests.

Although White House aides knew this terrain would be difficult, they acknowledge a frustration and an itchiness to get out on the trail. There's a persistent nostalgia for the crowds and the pace of a campaign season, they say, and a belief it could be good for Democrats and the president if he were out of Washington more, working the crowds. But with world crises looming particularly the war against Islamic State militants and the Ebola outbreak a more practical approach has prevailed.

See original here:
Democrats use Obama campaign playbook while benching the president

Update: An earlier version of this post spelled Justin Shalls name wrong.

Four years ago, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley (D) was the favorite in a January special election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D). She lost to a state senator named Scott Brown (R), the first siren that alerted Democrats nationally to an angry midterm electorate that year.

Now Coakley is running for governor, and Bay State Democrats are getting a sickening sensation of deja vu: Three reputable polling firms show Coakley statistically tied with businessman Charlie Baker (R) with less than four weeks to go before Election Day.

National party strategists on both sides started the year focusing on governors races in just a handful of mega-states: Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan. Now theyre dealing with a much larger electoral map, as voter unrest puts an unexpected number of gubernatorial contests in play and leaves Democrats on defense in states they ordinarily win.

Thats especially true in the Northeast, with Republican candidates performing surprisingly well in states like Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland and Connecticut.

Voters are fed up with politicians at every level, say polls, whether in Congress or at the state house. This years midterm elections are likely to turn on voter anger directed at incumbents. In races without actual incumbents seeking re-election, political analysts say, voters can register dissatisfaction by casting ballots against the party they perceive to be in charge, even in states with overwhelming advantages for one party: no Republican has won an electoral vote from any of those four states since George H.W. Bush won Maryland and Connecticut in 1988.

In a state like Massachusetts, that works against Democrats. Gov. Deval Patrick (D) is retiring after two terms with healthy approval ratings, but voters take a dim view of the Democratic-dominated state legislature. Republicans have had success in recent gubernatorial elections Patrick broke a 16-year streak of Republican control of the governors mansion when they are able to portray Democratic candidates as products of Beacon Hill.

People in this state, which is dominated by the Democratic Party, will look at the Republican candidate as a balance to the Democratic legislature, said Maurice Cunningham, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

A Suffolk University poll conducted for the Boston Herald showed 51 percent of voters see Coakley as a Beacon Hill insider, while just 24 percent said she would be a reformer. Forty-six percent of those surveyed told Boston Globe pollsters in August that they preferred the governor and the legislative majority hail from different parties. Every one of the eight public polls released in the last two weeks has showed Coakley and Baker in a statistical tie.

In neighboring Connecticut, voters have the opportunity to weigh in with their views of Gov. Dannel Malloys (D) first term and they dont like what they see. Just 41 percent of voters and 36 percent of independents have a favorable view of Malloy, who stumbled over tax rebates he promised but failed to deliver, while 51 percent have an unfavorable opinion. Malloy is tied with former U.S. Ambassador Tom Foley (R) at 43 percent apiece, according to a Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday, with an independent candidate taking 9 percent, in a state President Obama won with 58 percent of the vote.

Original post:
GovBeat: Amid voter anger, Democrats struggle to lock down Northeast governorships

Taxes, polls show, have historically been a better campaign issue for Republicans than Democrats. This year, Democrats appear to be testing that assumption.

Democrats are dominating television advertising about the topic, according to data compiled by Kantar Media Intelligences campaign media analysis group. Of 43,245 tax-related ads that aired in House races through the end of September, some 63% were backed by Democrats, the numbers show. The disparity was even starker in Senate races, where some 73% of tax-related television advertisements came from the Democratic side, leaving Republicans with just 27%.

The Democratic push to gain an edge on taxes may have gotten new momentum with the inversions issue. Over the summer, as Democrats started talking in highly political terms about tax inversions companies reincorporating overseas for tax purposes the issue appeared to give them a one-two punch: Labeling companies as tax dodgers gave them a populist message, and they could accuse Republicans in Congress of not acting on legislation to stem the practice. GOP lawmakersare pushing for a tax-code overhaul that would make the U.S. more attractive for businesses in the first place.

Now Democrats are extending the tax theme into the 2014 campaigns, trying to paint Republicans as the defenders of tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.

Who will win the Senate? See the latest polls and enter our contest.

Elizabeth Wilner, a senior vice president at Kantar, said one reason Democrats have been able to seize on the issue is that Republicans have avoided promoting it. Republicans really havent had that much to say about taxes, Ms. Wilner said. They dont have an agenda, at least not one that they are promoting in their ads.

The muted Republican tax message is notable because House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) last month said that fixing the tax code was a necessity in order for Congress to lay the groundwork for economic growth and mobility. While Republicans have pushed for a tax overhaul, neither party is likely to tackle such complicated and fraught legislation in an election year. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman David Camp (R., Mich.) released an ambitious tax plan in February, but it quickly became clear that the GOP leadership would not rallying around it this year. Then Camp announced a month later that he was not running for re-election.

In the Senate, the tax-writing committee has also been in flux, as former Finance chairman Max Baucus, (D., Mont.) was appointed ambassador to China. His successor, Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) is eager to pass a tax overhaul. But Democrats are divided and the Senate leadership has shown little interest in the issue.

Republicans say that they are talking about taxes. Kirsten Kukowski, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, noted that RNC Chairman Reince Priebus last week gave a speech in which he said that overtaxing simply helps Washington D.C. Other Republicans have offered up tax plans, like to expand the child tax credit. If Democrats are running more tax-related ads, I have a feeling this has to do with us having a wealth of issues to talk about and them being fairly limited, she said.

Moreover, letting Democrats dominate the air war over taxes hasnt seemed to hurt Republicans in general. A September Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found that Republicans had a four-point advantage over the Democrats when people were asked which party would be better in dealing with taxes.

See original here:
Democrats Test Waters, and Dominate Airwaves, With Tax Ads