CBO Issues Devastating Report On Effects Of GOP Obamacare Replacement

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has projected that twenty-four million more Americans will wind up uninsured under the Republican health care plan (which calls into question whether this should be called a health care plan at all). The plan would provide inadequate funding for Medicaid, and risks destabilizing the individual market–unless you believe Republican predictions that the free market would respond with better products. This is rather hard to believe considering the failure of the market to handle insurance for those not receiving it through employer or government programs prior to the Affordable Care Act.

To put this in perspective, studies have projected that the loss of insurance by twenty million people (which is less than is predicted under the Republican plan) will result in 24,000 more deaths per year. This backs up the statement from Bernie Sanders that “thousands of Americans will die” if the Republican plan becomes law

Remarkably, a White House analysis projected that the plan will result in an even higher number losing insurance–26 million over the next decade. This is hardly consistent with what Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail. The plan also contradicts Trump’s promises that he would not cut Medicaid and would expand payment for treatment of opiate dependence.

The Center on Budget and Priorities notes how millions would be paying more for less coverage, along with facing higher out of pocket expenses. Aaron Blake points out:

According to the CBO, 64-year olds making $26,500 per year would see their premiums increase by an estimated 750 percent by 2026. While they are on track to pay $1,700 under the current law, the CBO projects the American Health Care Act would force them to pay $14,600. Even if you grant that inflation will allow them to make slightly more money by 2026, that’s still about half of their income going to health care.

There is additional information of significance. Despite Republican claims of a death spiral, the CBO report showed that the ACA is not “imploding.” As other studies have also found, it is stabilizing as more people obtain coverage:

Under current law, most subsidized enrollees purchasing health insurance coverage in the nongroup market are largely insulated from increases in premiums because their out-of-pocket payments for premiums are based on a percentage of their income; the government pays the difference. The subsidies to purchase coverage combined with the penalties paid by uninsured people stemming from the individual mandate are anticipated to cause sufficient demand for insurance by people with low health care expenditures for the market to be stable.

The Washington Post has fact checked White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s spin regarding the CBO report.

The Republican Health Care Plan Screws Many To Help Very Few

It looks like Republicans think that America has been demanding a new health care plan which will greatly reduce the number of people who are insured, increase costs for poor and older Americans, destabilize the individual insurance market, and cut taxes for the wealthy. While waiting for the CBO scoring, the Brookings Institute has made their calculations as to how terrible the Republican health care bill is, predicting that at least 15 million people will lose health care coverage:

There is significant uncertainty about exactly how CBO will model these provisions and how it will expect the various provisions to interact with one another. Nonetheless, we conclude that CBO’s analysis will likely estimate that at least 15 million people will lose coverage under the American Health Care Act (AHCA) by the end of the ten-year scoring window. Estimates could be higher, but it’s is unlikely they will be significantly lower.

 

Many will suffer from the cuts to Medicaid. Many of those who purchase private coverage on the exchanges will suffer because of how the subsidies are restructured, based on age as opposed to income and the actual costs of insurance. The Kaiser Family Foundation has posted projections regarding this.

Medical organizations and those representing the elderly including AARP, the American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association have objected to the Republican plan. AARP issued a statement opposing the “House plan that would make changes to our current health care system, such as shortening the life of Medicare, hiking costs for those who can least afford higher insurance premiums, risking seniors’ ability to live independently, and giving tax breaks to big drug companies and health insurance companies.”

The less affluent voters who backed Trump will be hurt by the changes. Of course some people do benefit. “Nearly everyone in the Top 1%, who earn more than $774,000 a year, would enjoy a hefty tax cut, averaging $33,000, according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center. Those in the Top 0.1% would get an average tax cut of about $197,000.” Insurance companies also benefit:

Obamacare allowed insurance companies to deduct only $500,000 of their executives’ pay as a business expense. The GOP bill would repeal that limitation, starting in 2018.

Top insurers pay their leaders millions in compensation every year so this provision could mean a nice tax savings for the companies.

One excuse given by Republicans for repealing Obamacare is the increased cost of premiums. However, most people receive health care coverage through either government programs or employer programs, which have not had major increases in premiums. The individual market had frequent jumps in premiums, and that has continued, except under Obamacare most people receive subsidies to help cover this. As a consequence, only about three percent of the country is actually facing the increases in premiums which Republicans are using to justify their plan. In return, we receive more comprehensive coverage which cannot be denied based upon medical problems.

As one of the three percent who purchases health insurance without qualifying for subsidies, I certainly do not see the Republicans as doing me any favors. My premiums will be higher under the Republican plan than they are now, and the even bigger problem is that the plan may “threaten the stability of the individual market” per the Brookings report, possibly making it impossible to obtain coverage.

 

Resistance Is Not Futile

When even John Yoo is saying that Donald Trump is abusing executive power we know both that we have a problem, and that opposition to him is becoming widespread. We have already seen major protests against Donald Trump. Matthew Yglesias argues that resistance works, and provides these examples of where Donald Trump or the Republican Congress has backed down in the face of protest:

Having people get out to protest also makes it more likely that protests will continue: “Political action can be habit-forming. Once you’ve already made a sign and taken it to a protest, it’s easier to just bring it along again in the future. Once you know which of your friends might be interested in going with you, it’s easier to reconnect and do it again.”

What will be less easy to measure, as compared to the items in the list above, are moves to the right which the Republicans might give up on out of fear of protests. Congressmen might even begin to fear that their reelection is in jeopardy, despite gerrymandering designed to make their seats safe, if enough of their constituents protest at their offices.

The most concrete example of the benefits of opposition to Trump and the Republican Congress will be if some Republicans do lose their seats in 2018. This includes not only members of Congress, but also Republicans at the state level. If Hillary Clinton had won, we would now have Democrats defending her record, even when it includes the same types of policies they protest when coming from Republicans. Most likely we would see further Republican gains in Congress and state governments. While Trump will undoubtedly do many undesirable things, Democrats must take advantage of this in 2018. Of course their chances will be far better if they actually stand for something, as opposed to continuing to run as a Republican-lite party.

Related News:

New York Times: How Attorneys General Became Democrats’ Bulwark Against Trump

Der Spiegel: Europe Must Defend Itself Against A Dangerous President

Republican Attempts To End Obamacare May Have Died

As I’ve discussed previously, Republican plans to repeal Obamacare are not going well for them. Donald Trump is still talking about immediate repeal, while having no idea what is actually going on. Repeal might not be possible as more Senators, in addition to those mentioned in the previous post, are jumping ship.  Jonathan Chait writes that their plans to destroy Obamacare may have died, reporting that additional Republican Senators are now pushing to include a replacement plan with legislation to repeal Obamacare.

Over in the House, Paul Ryan is also talking vaguely about including portions of a new plan in the repeal legislation.

Including a replacement plan could very well kill off any Republican plans to repeal Obamacare. From a public relations stand point, they will have difficulty obtaining public support for a health plan which does not include popular components of the Affordable Care Act. Politico confirmed this in a new poll:

Voters want — and expect — President-elect Donald Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress to repeal the 2010 health care law, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released Tuesday, but they are skeptical of repeal without a plan to replace Obamacare and some of its most popular elements…

Testing eight separate elements of the law, more voters want to keep each of the eight provisions than want to repeal them, in some cases by overwhelming margins.

Nearly two-thirds of voters, 66 percent, favor keeping a provision that prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage to patients with pre-existing conditions. Sixty-three percent of voters want to keep the requirement that insurance companies allow policyholders to keep their children on their plans until age 26. Fifty-six percent think subsidies for low-income Americans to buy insurance should stay, and the same percentage wants to keep federal funding for states to expand their Medicaid programs.

A 55-percent majority also wants to keep the requirement that businesses and companies with more than 50 full-time employees offer health insurance to those employees, while only 27 percent want that provision repealed. Many Republicans say that requirement has led businesses to slash jobs and hours to avoid hitting that threshold.

And 53 percent of voters want to keep requiring insurance companies to cover prescription birth control, while just three-in-10 want that requirement repealed. (The Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that employers may exclude contraceptive coverage for their employees if it violates the employers’ religious beliefs.)

Pluralities of voters also want to keep two other provisions of the law, though by narrower margins: 46 percent want to keep the elimination of lifetime and annual limits on health reimbursement to individuals, while 32 percent want that repealed. And 33 percent of voters want to repeal the long-derided medical-device tax, compared to 37 percent who want to keep it.

The most-popular elements of the law are also well-regarded by Republicans. Sixty-three percent of Republicans want Trump and Congress to keep the prohibition on denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions, and 56 percent want to retain requiring insurance companies to allow the children of policyholders to stay on their plans until age 26.

In other words, as has been the case all along, the public opposes Obamacare by name but supports its components when asked.

Besides the public relations issues, the repeal of Obamacare might be dead due to Senate rules. The Senate can repeal Obamacare as part of a budget resolution with a simple majority, but a bill which repeals Obamacare and establishes a replacement program can be blocked with a filibuster if it lacks sixty votes. If Republicans cannot get a simple majority for repeal now, they could wind up with a choice of continuing Obamacare or only replacing it with a plan which can obtain bipartisan support. Such a plan will very likely be much like Obamacare, even if under a different name.

Republicans Show Contempt For Ethics; Trump Plays The Press

Among the first actions by the House Republicans were rules changes to reduce the power of the Office of Congressional Ethics, and then reversing course. The bad news is that it highlighted their priorities. The good news is that it did show that Republican House members are susceptible to pressure. The media does tend to concentrate more on ethics than policy. An action such as this was bound to receive more scrutiny than actions such as destroying Medicare as we know it, or reducing health coverage for those who have received coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

The impact of the adverse media coverage was helped by many voters taking this seriously. Google searches for “who is my representative” surged. Republican members of Congress were flooded with phone calls.

Donald Trump also played this well when he tweeted on the subject. If you look at the headlines alone, it appears that Donald Trump protested and the Republicans backed down. He called the Office of Congressional Ethics “unfair,” and protested more on the timing of the action than the actual rules changing. It doesn’t appear that he would object to reversing course on the principle of “draining the swamp” as long as they acted to (in his view) making America great first. Of course this doesn’t make very much sense as setting the rules for the upcoming Congress is among the first matters handled.

Republicans In Political Chaos, Clinton “Covering Up Some Shaddy Shit”, And Sanders’ Unconventional Debate Preparation

McCarthy Drop Out

Both political parties are facing a fight against the party establishment in their presidential campaigns, with the Republican battle extending to Congress. Unfortunately the insurgents on the Republican side are the extremists who, while right in finding fault in the establishment, seek to paralyze the political system rather than improve it. Kevin McCarthy dropped out of the race for Speaker, and at this point it is difficult to predict how the Republicans will get out of this mess. It is even possible that Boehner will be around a lot longer than he intended.

It is likley that anybody in the Republican leadership would fail to receive enough Tea Party support to become Speaker, but McCarthy sure did not do himself any favors with his comment on the Benghazi hearings in late September. His statement will probably be quoted quite frequently by Hillary Clinton, who has a strong case in criticizing that witch hunt.

Unfortunately for Clinton, she is also guilty herself of quite a bit of unethical and foolish behavior, along with violation of multiple government regulations. There is another quote mentioned in The Hill which Clinton will hope does not get repeated very often (emphasis mine):

Perhaps Clinton has learned the value of distraction from Donald Trump; fresh off her comedy skit on “Saturday Night Live” she mailed copies of her book “Hard Choices” to the entire GOP presidential field with a cheeky note about them starting a book club together. She also spoofed McCarthy’s blunder in an online video and her surrogates continue to rage about it on Twitter.

But a Senate investigation has now revealed a second company that backed up Clinton’s emails, and it has turned over its data to the FBI investigation into whether she mishandled classified information. Documents also show the first company is now concerned it may have deleted emails following the initial request the State Department made for her work records. One employee of Platte River Networks, which turned the server over to the FBI in August, wrote to another of concern that “this whole thing is really covering up some shaddy [sic] shit,” according to documents.

Next week’s debate has the potential to further shake up the Democratic race. The trend so far has been that the more people see of Bernie Sanders, the more they like him, and the opposite for Hillary Clinton. Politico reports on Sanders’ unorthodox debate preparation:

Hillary Clinton has had aides lined up to run her debate prep for months. A Washington super lawyer is mimicking Bernie Sanders, and her top policy staffer is acting as Martin O’Malley.

Sanders started studying for next Tuesday’s event not even a full week ago. And that’s because his two top aides sat him down in Burlington on Friday and asked whether he had a plan.

Sanders has briefing books, a couple of meetings with policy experts and an abiding aversion to the idea of acting out a debate before it happens. He knows the stakes are high, his staff says. But the candidate, whose New Hampshire polling and fundraising prowess have put a scare into Clinton, is uninterested in going through the motions of typical debate practice.

The Vermont senator’s debate preparations, in other words, don’t look a ton like debate preparations.

While CNN is billing the event as a showdown, Sanders’ team sees the first Democratic debate as a chance to introduce a fairly niche candidate to a national audience. So his team intends to let him do what he’s been doing. Far from preparing lines to deploy against Clinton — let alone O’Malley, Lincoln Chafee or Jim Webb — Sanders plans to dish policy details, learned through a handful of briefings with experts brought in by his campaign.

He won’t attack Clinton personally but will instead identify where their positions differ — on foreign policy, for example — and try to leave an impression with viewers of the substantive differences between the party’s two front-runners.

“You’re looking at a candidate who has run in many, many elections who has never run a negative political ad in my life — and hopes never to have to run one. You’re looking at a candidate who does not go about attacking personally, I just don’t do that,” Sanders said Wednesday.

He’s working to be prepared to stand his ground if Clinton — or O’Malley — comes after him. His team contends, though, that those defenses won’t come through as pre-written one-liners.

“The one thing Bernie’s not going to do is be a politician that delivers canned soundbites. That would be a disaster,” said Tad Devine, the campaign’s chief strategist, who met with Sanders and campaign manager Jeff Weaver last week to kick off the debate planning. “And one of the reasons to not do formal debate prep sessions is it gets rehearsed.”

This is quite a contrast from how Joe Biden has decided that, even should he announce that he is running, he does not plan to participate in the debate because of not having time to prepare his “canned soundbites.”

Unlike Clinton, Sanders has been saying the same things throughout his career, and perhaps this has served as sufficient debate preparation. I just hope that he is not making a mistake. I think back to occasions such as Obama’s first debate in 2008 where I suspect he felt over-confident as he knew the material, which is not the same as being prepared for a televised debate. Plus sound bites cannot be ignored, as these are what appear in subsequent newscasts where impressions of the debate by the public are often different from those who watch the entire debate. Regardless of how Sanders prepares, what I hope does come out of the debate is how he has been right, and Clinton wrong, on so many of the key issues over the past decades.

Control Of The Senate Too Close To Call–Several States Still Can Go Either Way

With under a month to go, the race for control of the Senate remains too close to call. The fundamentals support the Republicans and they maintain a slight edge based upon current polling, but there are so many close races that we cannot be certain what will happen, despite the pessimism of some Democrats. Some Republicans are starting to get worried.

Looking at Electoral-Vote.com, the latest polls do give the Republicans 51 seats. However look at how many races are extremely close. Polls this close could easily be off if the pollster is incorrect in their assumptions as to who will actually turn out to vote. In other words, Democrats could retain control of the Senate if their  turn out is better than in previous midterm elections. Only a slight increase could flip several of the states where Republicans are leading.

Some states might still change from basic changes in a campaign, such as Mary Landrieu replacing her campaign manager.

Unexpected events in other states could change things. We have already seen the situation in Kansas where an independent has a real chance of winning. Now South Dakota has unexpectedly turned into a three way race. Republican Mike Rounds has led Democrat Rick Weiland, but suddenly former senator Larry Pressler, running as an independent, has closed the gap. There is no run off in South Dakota making it possible that any of the three could win with less than forty percent of the vote. Pressler is a former Republican but has become disenchanted with the GOP. He endorsed Obama in the last two presidential elections and says that if elected he would be a friend of Obama in the Senate.

Another factor working against the Republicans is their problem of nominating candidates who are extremists, if not outright bat-shit crazy. Terry Lynn Lands disastrous campaign has turned Michigan into a safe seat for the Democrats to hold. Republican leads in Iowa and even Georgia are now in jeopardy. Michelle Nunn’s chances in Georgia are now much better after a 2005 deposition surfaced in which Republican David Perdue bragged about his record of outsourcing:

The controversy stems from a 2005 legal deposition focused on the money he made at Pillowtex, a North Carolina textile company that closed and laid off thousands shortly after he left as CEO in 2003.

“Yeah, I spent most of my career doing that,” he said when asked to describe his “experience with outsourcing.”

Perdue then walked attorneys through his career helping various countries increase production in Asia, and discussed his goal at Pillowtex of moving production overseas to try to save the company. That never occurred, as the company ended up collapsing before it could do so.

His initial response to the revelations didn’t help put out the fire.

“Defend it? I’m proud of it,” he said on Monday when asked by a local reporter about his “career on outsourcing.”

“This is a part of American business, part of any business. Outsourcing is the procurement of products and services to help your business run. People do that all day,” he continued before blaming bad government policies for killing American jobs.

With all these races which could still go either direction, I do not believe it is possible to determine before election day who will control the Senate. We very likely will not even know that Tuesday. With Alaska in play, we won’t have all the results until at least Wednesday. Complicating matters further, if the races in Georgia and Louisiana remain close we cold very easily have a situation in which neither candidate has a majority and we have to wait for a runoff election in December (Louisiana) and/or January (Georgia). Should Larry Pressler win in South Dakota and Greg Orman win in Kansas, the pair of independents would very likely be in a position to decide who controls the Senate and we might not know how that plays out until January.

Republicans Running Seinfeld and Wizard of Oz Campaigns

Land Empty Chair

Brian  Buetler is unfair to Seinfeld, but on target with regards to the Republican Party. He attacked them on two fronts. First he looked at the contradictions in Reince Preibus’ policy speech:

As if to signal his awareness that there’s a gaping void in the GOP’s midterm election strategy, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus did something a little unusual for a party chairman, and gave a speech about policy.

Republicans have made little secret of the fact that they hope to recapture the Senate in November by exploiting President Obama’s unpopularity rather than pitting their substantive agendas against their opponents. When Priebus says, “People know what we’re against. I want to talk about the things we’re for,” what he means is that his candidates’ conspicuous silence on substantive matters has become a little too conspicuous.

To combat that, he has laid out a list of eleven “Principles for American Renewal.” Most of these will be familiar to students of Republican politics. Some contradict each other, or previous iterations of the Republican agenda. The first principle holds that “Our Constitution should be preserved, valued and honored,” while the third proposes a Constitutional amendment that would force Congress to shred government spending. The eleventh calls for a secure border, whereas the GOP’s 2012 post-mortem called for comprehensive immigration reform.

Of course whenever Republicans talk about the Constitution there are bound to be contradictions as Republicans tend to back a version of the Constitution which exists only in their heads. The type of country they are trying to turn the United States into is hardly what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

From there, Buetler pointed out that Preibus isn’t on the ballot, and the actual Republican Senate candidates are running campaigns based upon, sort of like Seinfeld, nothing. Buetler looked at the races in Wisconsin, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, and North Carolina. In each state the Republican candidate is avoiding actual issues and are running campaigns based upon nonsense.

If avoiding issues is the goal of Republican Senatorial candidates, the best of all might be in Michigan. Buetler most likely ignored Terry Lynn Land as she is trailing Democratic candidate Gary Peters by double digits. Land differs from conventional candidates who are trialing by refusing invitations to debate, while Peters would love to debate her, knowing that would probably eliminate any possibility of a last minute recovery should there otherwise be a strong Republican wave in November.  Last month Peters debated an empty chair, Clint Eastwood style, in order to mock Land.

Frank Luntz criticized an ad from Land as “the worst ad of the political process” saying it lacks any message or substance. Video above. In contrast, Peters has successfully campaigned on issues such as climate change along with how Land’s support from the Koch Brothers affects her views. Of course the Koch Brothers aren’t going to waste their money on a futile cause, and have abandoned her. Liberal PACs have found Land to be an easy target.

Land has also been trying to avoid talking to the media. Michigan Radio’s political analyst Jack Lessenberry says that she is running a Wizard of Oz style campaign. Lessenberry first showed how Land’s campaign messed up the facts on the auto company bail out, with Land avoiding any direct contact with the media. Instead responses were limited to factually incorrect claims from her spokesperson, Heather Swift:

What’s oddest about all this is that we essentially have a campaign where Gary Peters is running against not the GOP nominee, but Heather Swift. However, I don’t think Swift is either a registered Michigan voter or legally old enough to be in the Senate.

Consider this: Whoever does win this race is going to replace Carl Levin, one of the most powerful figures in Washington. The last time I had questions about Levin’s position on something, his spokesperson asked if I could meet the senator for breakfast that weekend, and we talked for an hour.

Now the question is: Do we really want a U.S. senator who is unwilling or unable to explain her views to the press or in person?

Land did show up for call in show in Michigan Public Radio on Friday, but didn’t really answer the questions. She repeatedly responded to  questions by informing the audience that she is a Mom. You know, a Mom, the type of Mom who has kids. If you feel like listening to the full audio at the link, you might make a drinking game out of how often she repeats this line. Beyond that, she will support policies which put Michigan first, and insists that President Obama must submit a plan before she will say more. Land also said we should do nothing to reduce carbon emissions and the United States should ban travel “from countries that have Ebola” to keep it from spreading here.

Fortunately Michigan looks like it will soundly reject this Sarah Palin imitation.

Election Forecasts Now Improving For Democrats To Retain Control Of Senate

Various forecasts for who will control the Senate are now tilting in the direction of the Democrats, with most still agreeing the race is very close, continuing a trend I noted at the beginning of the month. Some of the predictions more favorable to Democrats have been those which concentrate more on polls as opposed to historical trends and other factors. Nate Silver had previously discounted many of the polls, noting both the low number and often poor quality of polls available. Silver is now reconsidering his prediction, decreasing chances for Republicans to take control of the Senate from 65 percent two weeks ago to 55 percent.

Others have even more favorable predictions for Democrats. Electoral-vote.com, based purely on polls, has the race even. The Upshot gives the Republicans a 51 percent chance, essentially a toss up. Election Lab gives the Democrats a 51 percent chance. The Princeton Election Consortium even gives the Democrats a 78 percent chance of retaining control of the Senate.

In changing his prediction, Nate Silver looked at factors such as the Democratic ground game, and believes money might be the most important factor.

Charlie Cook looked at the same factors:

Two things may be keeping Republican strategists up at night: money and the Democratic ground game. Perhaps the biggest untold story of this election is how so many Republican and conservative donors, at least those whose last name isn’t Koch, have kept their checkbooks relatively closed. In many cases, GOP candidates are not enjoying nearly the same financial largesse that existed in 2012, and in some races, they are well behind Democrats. While Republican candidates, national party committees, and super PACs are hardly starving, their Senate and House campaign committees have not been able to keep pace in fundraising with their Democratic counterparts. Their super PACs do not have nearly the funding that they had in 2012 (even allowing for the absence of a presidential race this year). And, in a number of key races, Democratic candidates, party committees, and their allied groups have been on the air significantly more than Republicans. GOP strategists have privately said that if it were not for spending by organizations affiliated with the Koch brothers, they might well be in really bad shape.

Many Republican and conservative donors appear to be somewhat demoralized after 2012. They feel that they were misled about the GOP’s chances in both the presidential and senatorial races that year, and/or their money was not well spent. In short, they are giving less if at all, and it has put Republican candidates in a bind in a number of places.

Another reason things might not turn out for Republicans is if the highly touted Democratic Senate ground game comes together. Clearly the Obama campaign and Democratic allies had a superior voter-identification and get-out-the-vote operation two years ago. Earlier this year, Senate Democrats announced the Bannock Street Project, a $60 million program with the goal of putting in place 4,000 paid workers to use techniques perfected and put to work in 2010 by DSCC Chairman Michael Bennet in his race, and again two years ago by the Obama campaign. While some Republicans have scoffed at the likelihood of Democrats being able to mount such an effort, they concede that the Democratic ground game was superior two years ago. In midterm elections, if Democrats can crank up the turnout among young, female, and minority voters, then their chances of success this year increase.

The GOP might be paying for its divorce from reality when Republicans were predicting victory in 2012 despite all the polling data showing that they were delusional.

Electoral-Vote.com also looks at how Democrats are spending their money more effectively, along with factors such as the culture war issues  now favoring the Democrats and the Republicans big demographic problem–a considerable decrease in the low-information, non-college-educated white males who provide such a large percentage of Republican votes (emphasis mine):

Republicans used to use cultural issues like same-sex marriage and abortion to rev up their supporters and get them to vote. Now the shoe is on the other foot. It is the Democrats who are talking about cultural issues and scaring the voters with them. Not only has same-sex marriage gained enormous popularity in the past five or ten years, but Republican support for limiting birth control (such as in the Hobby Lobby case) is scaring women and driving them to the Democrats. Much of the Republicans’ problem has to do with shifting demographics. In 1980, when Ronald Reagan was first elected, white voters without college degrees made up 65% of the electorate. In 2012, that number was 36%. Ever since Richard Nixon began his Southern strategy, Republicans have been basing their campaigns on getting older white men without college degrees to back them. They still do, but there aren’t enough of them any more and it is beginning to be a real problem, hence the action in many states to limit who can vote (voter ID requirements) and when they can vote (shortening early voting periods). This year in states as diverse as Colorado and North Carolina, Democratic candidates are claiming that the Republicans are out of the mainstream. Such an approach was unthinkable 10 years ago, when it was the Republicans making these claims about the Democrats.

What Democrats in red states are also desperately trying to do is make the race between them and their actual opponent, not between President Obama and their opponent. In a new ad the Democratic candidate for the Senate in Kentucky, Alison Lundergan Grimes, literally says “I’m not Barack Obama” while shooting a gun. Then she shows a photo of her opponent, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), waving a gun with her saying he doesn’t know how to hold it. The Republicans, in contrast, are running against Obama everywhere. Obama himself is not sitting idly by. In October he will begin serious campaigning, although he may be limited to states where he is relatively popular, such as Colorado, Iowa, and Michigan. And of course he can show up in New York and California any time he wants to in order to raise money for the DSCC.

First Read points to how the gender gap continues to help Democrats.The Washington Examiner looked at how Democratic super PACs have been more effective in their use of advertising money.

The Republican playing field has also been narrowing, with states such as Michigan, and now North Carolina moving firmly in the direction of the Democrats. Having Kansas be unexpectedly in play also makes a huge difference. An election which initially looked highly favorable for Republicans now looks to be even.

Democrat Drops Out Of Kansas Senate Race, Giving Independent Candidate A Chance To Win

Greg Orman

In late August I wrote about the Senate race in Kansas, where there was felt to be a real chance of defeating Republican Pat Roberts  if the Democratic candidate,  Chad Taylor were to drop out. In that situation, polls show that independent Greg Orman  has a real chance to beat Roberts. Orman has run as a Democrat in the past, and Democrats hope that he will caucus with them if he wins. Taylor did drop out of the race on Wednesday,increasing the chances that the Democrats can retain control of the Senate. While there has been speculation that the Democrats might be able to beat the incumbent Republican in Georgia or Kentucky, this probably does make Roberts the most vulnerable Republican.

One reason that Orman out polls Roberts in a two-way race is that Roberts has run a poor campaign. In response, the national Republican Party now seeks to take control of the Roberts campaign. This further shows that they do feel that Roberts is now vulnerable.

Different pundits differ on how much of a difference this will make. Sam Wang now gives the Democrats an 85 percent chance of retaining control of the Senate. Nate Silver been far more pessimistic, and in his model this only increases the chances for the Democrats retaining control from 35 percent to 38 percent. The difference is that Wang has been concentrating more on polls, where Democrats have been out-performing expectations. As polling in these Senate races is of variable quality and number, it is also possible that Silver is correct in discounting them.

There remain complications. Earlier in the day The Hill pointed out legal issues which might prevent Taylor’s name from being removed from the ballot. Subsequently Secretary of State Kris Kobach announced on  Thursday afternoon that Taylor’s name will remain on the ballot. There is bound to be a legal battle over this. Even if his name remains on the ballot, Taylor’s decision to end his campaign might still result in enough Democratic voters backing Orman to enable him to beat Roberts.

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/election/article1504835.html#storylink=cpy