The Narrow Path to Victory: Dems fight to keep control of Senate in final week

Democratic control of this country has all but destroyed it. Another victory for them will probably be the last nail in the coffin for America as we knew it.

Amid all the predictions of a Republican-led stomping on Election Day, Democrats and the outside groups supporting them still see a path to victory and are planning a blitz in key states that could act as a firewall against a GOP Senate takeover.
As the campaign enters its final full week, Democrats also are trying to keep Republican attacks at bay by focusing on local issues – as opposed to President Obama – and are training resources on getting out the vote, including with early voting.
Republicans continue to voice confidence about their chances, and political prognosticators largely predict the GOP will control Congress next year.
But Democrats are staying focused.  
Justin Barasky, at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, pointed to key races where, despite what Republicans are saying about Obama being an albatross, the numbers appear to be improving for the Democrats.
That includes Democrat Michelle Nunn in her race against Republican David Perdue for the open Senate seat in Georgia. Recent polls have shown her up by a few points, though the race still is very close – and the winner needs over 50 percent to avoid a runoff.
Another open question is Kentucky, where Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes has endured a rough few weeks in her race against Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell. But the DSCC, after letting its previous ad buy expire, now is going back on air in the state in support of Grimes with a $650,000 purchase.
“The race is closing,” Barasky said. “I think Kentucky voters are sick of Mitch McConnell.” He added that “in every state the message will be different,” but it invariably will concentrate on Democrats fighting for the middle class while painting their opponents as subservient to outside interests.
McConnell’s campaign has pushed back hard on the contention that Grimes may be gaining, releasing its own numbers showing the incumbent well ahead. Grimes lately had been tripped up on the campaign trial after refusing to say if she voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012, reflecting the mine field that Democrats everywhere are facing over their ties to the president.
The Obama factor alone is one of the biggest challenges for many Democrats in battleground states.
Bill Scher, senior writer for the progressive Campaign for America’s Future, acknowledged they “are not asking him to stand with them on the stage together.”
However, he noted, “even though there is dissonance going on personally with Obama, it’s not like they are abandoning what they believe.”
This is nothing new: at the end of President George W. Bush's term, he was so much of a drag on GOP tickets that he was barely mentioned during the Republican National Convention in 2008. The Obama factor, though, is used as a bludgeon in almost every competitive Senate race this year by Republicans.
Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, who is in a toss-up race with Republican Dan Sullivan, told the Washington Examiner the “president’s not relevant” to his race. “He’s gone in two years,” he said.
When asked in a recent television interview if he is a strong leader, endangered North Carolina Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan couldn’t seem to think of any issues where the president has shined. “[He’s got] a lot on his plate,” she said, before stumbling through the rest of her response.
Barasky insists these races will be won on local issues and not on any national narrative driven by the GOP.
To advance their message in critical states, some candidates have brought in the big guns – not Obama, but figures like Bill and Hillary Clinton – who have been barnstorming across the country, stumping and fundraising on Democrats’ behalf. In just the last week, this included stops for Grimes, Sen. Al Franken in Minnesota, Sen. Mark Udall in Colorado, Sen. Mark Pryor in Arkansas, and a number of gubernatorial candidates. Mrs. Clinton is scheduled to make appearances this weekend for Hagan and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire. Shaheen, though, is seeing Republican Scott Brown make significant gains in the polls.
Hillary Clinton recently raised $3.5 million in California for the campaign committees of House and Senate Democrats, including $2.1 million at a Hollywood event with Democratic mega-donors Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg.
“In close races like Arkansas, Bill Clinton is as good a trump card as they can play to inoculate Mark Pryor from Obama there,” points out political strategist Dan Gerstein. “Clinton makes the race more about Arkansas.”
Most importantly, appearances by A-listers can help not so much draw undecided voters to the Democratic candidate but mobilize the troops, Gerstein said.
Getting out the vote in a typically sluggish midterm election is critical. Traditional constituencies like black and women voters are being targeted with television and radio ads to make sure they turn out. Particularly with women, Democrats are feeling the heat as recent polling shows Republicans closing the gender gap in Colorado, New Hampshire and Iowa, despite attempts to rally women on issues relating to contraception and abortion rights.
With black voters, The New York Times reported that Obama had also launched an “under-the-radar” campaign, including video ads and outreach to reporters, to ensure that millions of black voters go to the polls in states where they will make a big difference, specifically Georgia and North Carolina.
On “Fox News Sunday,” the heads of the two parties each voiced confidence about their chances.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said the GOP “absolutely” will take the Senate.
“We feel really good about our chances of taking the Senate. And it's partly because number one, the president has taken the country in the wrong direction. These lieutenants out there across the country have followed the president off the plank,” he said.
His Democratic counterpart, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, claimed Democrats would hold their ground, and not give the GOP the six seats it needs to take control.
“The one question that voters are going to ask themselves … is who has my back? And on issue after issue, Democrats have stood up for jobs, for the economy, for investing in education and health care, those are the issues that voters are talking about,” she said.
She cited Georgia, and also South Dakota and Kansas – where independent candidates have caused problems for the GOP nominees – as battlegrounds in the final stretch.
But even Democrats acknowledge Republicans appear to have the enthusiasm edge – something that recent polling underscores.
“The side with the more energy is going to have an advantage and at this rate, in the states that are in play, the Republicans have the advantage because there is so much negative energy toward the president,” Gerstein said. “So the Democrats are doing whatever they can do to get their base out, plus whatever they can do to prevent Democratic-leaning voters and independents from voting Republican.”

Obola Expert Cartoon

Dem. Sen Shaheen, GOP candidate Brown spar over Ebola, ISIS in NH debate

CONCORD, N.H. –  Picking up where they left off, U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and her Republican challenger Scott Brown on Thursday used their latest debate to again emphasize their differences on immigration, the Islamic State group, Ebola and their efforts to help small businesses.
Shaheen, a Democrat and former governor, is seeking a second term in the U.S. Senate. Brown moved to New Hampshire last year after losing the seat he had won in 2010 to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts. Polls show a tight contest, and the race is among those expected to determine control of the Senate.
In their third debate this month and second one this week, Brown criticized Shaheen on Thursday for not joining him in backing a ban on travel to and from the West African countries ravaged by the Ebola virus, calling it the latest example of her blind devotion to President Barack Obama.
"It's very typical that Senator Shaheen waits to get the OK from the president to do many different types of things," Brown said.
Shaheen said she'd support a ban if experts determine it would work, but that Brown is fear-mongering by trying to tie the issue to the need for greater U.S. border security.
"We don't need people who don't have medical expertise trying to get people concerned about what we've got to do to respond," she said.
Brown, who has made border security a key issue in his campaign, bristled when Shaheen later criticized him for not backing a comprehensive border security and immigration reform bill and for missing Homeland Security Committee hearings in the Senate. Noting his long career in the National Guard, he said he doesn't need anyone to tell him how porous the border is.
"There is a rational fear from citizens in New Hampshire and throughout this country that people are coming — criminal elements, terrorists, people with diseases coming through our border. So with respect, I don't need to attend those hearings," he said.
Brown in turn criticized Shaheen for missing Foreign Relations Committee hearings, including one about the rising threat of the Islamic State group. He argued that Obama's decision, backed by Shaheen, to not leave a transitional force in Iraq allowed the militant group to flourish, and repeated his claim that the group "wants to plant a flag at the White House." Shaheen said Brown was being irresponsible in "repeating ISIS talking points."
The two also tangled over their support for the state's small businesses, with Brown touting his endorsement by several national business groups, one of which gave Shaheen a "zero" rating. Shaheen listed several bills Brown voted against that she said helped New Hampshire companies, and said he voted to give tax incentives to companies that ship jobs overseas.
"We don't need to import a candidate who's going to outsource our jobs," she said, repeating one of her applause lines from a Democratic Party fundraiser last week.
Brown countered that small businesses are being hurt by the health care overhaul law Shaheen supports. He wants to repeal the law and argues that states could develop their own plans to make health care more affordable and accessible. Shaheen said Brown wants to force thousands of people to lose coverage and return to a time when insurance companies could deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions.

ISIS Inc.: US official reveals how terror network makes its millions

Islamic State militants are amassing a fortune through their web of criminal activity, including earning roughly $1 million a day from oil smuggling alone, according to a Treasury Department official who on Thursday provided unprecedented details about the illicit financial network.  
David Cohen, who leads the department's effort to undermine the Islamic State's finances, described the organization as one of the best-financed terror groups in the world.
"It has amassed wealth at an unprecedented pace,” Cohen said.
Cohen said the Islamic State, which the U.S. and its allies have been pounding with airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, is earning millions from a combination of oil sales, ransoms and extortion schemes.
Cohen said kidnappings and ransom payments have brought in at least $20 million this year. He said the extortion and other criminal activity is bringing in several million per month.
Cohen, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, spoke at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, and later at the White House.
Cohen stressed the black market oil sales, which he said bring in about $1 million a day. He said the U.S. is trying to track down the middle men and other players to interrupt those sales. Cohen said these smuggling networks have been around for a long time and did not “pop up overnight,” but now it is clear that the oil is coming from the Islamic State.
The Treasury Department said the group is selling oil at substantially discounted prices to a variety of middlemen, including some from Turkey, who then transport it to be resold. "It also appears that some of the oil emanating from territory where ISIL operates has been sold to Kurds in Iraq, and then resold into Turkey," he said.
Cohen said the Syrian government, too, has allegedly arranged to buy oil from the Islamic State – though the terror group ostensibly is fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Unlike the core Al Qaeda terrorist network, ISIS gets only a small share of funding from deep-pocketed donors and therefore does not depend primarily on moving money across international borders. Instead, the Islamic State group obtains the vast majority of its revenues through local criminal and terrorist activities, Cohen said, acknowledging that Treasury's tools are not particularly well-suited to combating extortion and local crime.
"They rob banks. They lay waste to thousands of years of civilization in Iraq and Syria by looting and selling antiquities," he said. "They steal livestock and crops from farmers. And despicably, they sell abducted girls and women as sex slaves."
In the Iraqi city of Mosul, Islamic State terrorists reportedly are going door-to-door, business-to-business, demanding cash at gunpoint, he said.
"A grocery store owner who refused to pay was warned with a bomb outside his shop. Others, who have not paid, have seen their relatives kidnapped.  ...  We've also seen reports that when customers make cash withdrawals from local banks where ISIL operates, ISIL has demanded as much as 10 percent of the value," Cohen said, using an acronym for the group.
Most of the group's money, however, comes from extracting oil and selling it to smugglers, who, in turn, transport the oil outside territory under Islamic State control.
Cohen noted that U.S.-led airstrikes on the group's oil refineries are threatening the militants' supply networks and that Turkey and the Kurdistan Regional Government -- the official ruling body of the predominantly Kurdish region of northern Iraq --are working to prevent the oil from crossing their borders.
Cohen acknowledged, however, that the group moves oil in illicit networks outside the formal economy, making it harder to track.
"But at some point, that oil is acquired by someone who operates in the legitimate economy and who makes use of the financial system. He has a bank account. His business may be financed, his trucks may be insured, his facilities may be licensed," he said.
"We not only can cut them off from the U.S. financial system and freeze their assets, but we can also make it very difficult for them to find a bank anywhere that will touch their money or process their transactions."

Michelle Obama apparently mixes up Colorado Senate candidates at campaign event

Aren't You Glad She's A Democrat?

Michelle Obama made yet another flub on the campaign trail Thursday when she apparently confused Colorado Democratic Sen. Mark Udall with his Republican rival.
Obama spoke in Denver Thursday as part of a campaign event for Udall, who is engaged in a heated battle with his Republican opponent, Rep. Cory Gardner.
She touted Udall’s Senate record in her speech, and called him a “fifth-generation Coloradan.”
“Mark understands what makes this state special,” she said.
The only problem? Udall is not a fifth-generation Coloradan. In fact, he was born in Arizona and his father, former Rep. Mo Udall, served as a congressman from that state for decades.
It is Gardner who is a fifth-generation Colorado resident, a fact he touts frequently on the campaign trail. His website states he has “family roots dating back to 1886” in the state.
The incident followed another gaffe earlier this month by the first lady and the White House as they campaigned for Democratic Senate candidates.
While campaigning for Iowa Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley, who is in a tight Senate race against Republican Joni Ernst, the first lady repeatedly botched the candidate’s name, calling him “Bruce Bailey.”
At her second campaign stop for him, she got it right. But then the White House made another mistake in the transcript of the event. The transcript identified Braley as the Democratic candidate for governor instead of the candidate for Senate.
In wake of the incidents, one senior Senate Democratic aide was quoted telling the National Journal that “the ineptitude of the White House political operation has sunk from annoying to embarrassing.”
However, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest on Wednesday defended the administration’s support of fellow Democrats.
"I think the fact that the first lady was campaigning in Iowa yesterday in support of Congressmen Braley's campaign, and that the vice president is headed there next week says all you need to know about the White House's commitment to the success of Democrats like Mr. Braley," Earnest said.