AS DEMOCRATS’ MESSAGE LAGS, GOP AWAITS WIN

All major indicators point towards Republican gains in midterms.

By CHARLES BABINGTON, LIZ SIDOTI

The Associated Press

updated 10/17/2010 5:22:26 AM ET 2010-10-17T09:22:26

WASHINGTON — Two weeks before Election Day, Democrats fear their grip on the House may be gone, and Republicans are poised to celebrate big gains in the Senate and governors’ mansions as well.

Analysts in both parties say all major indicators tilt toward the Republicans. President Barack Obama’s policies are widely unpopular. Congress, run by the Democrats, rates even lower. Fear and anger over unemployment and deep deficits are energizing conservative voters; liberals are demoralized.

Private groups are pouring huge sums of money into GOP campaigns. An almost dizzying series of Democratic messages has failed to gain traction, forcing Obama to zigzag in search of a winning formula.

At a Democratic rally in Boston on Saturday, Obama acknowledged that the enthusiasm of his presidential run two years ago may have faded in the face of the country’s economic problems. And he said Republicans believe they can “ride people’s anger and frustration all the way to the ballot box.”

“There is no doubt that this is a difficult election, Obama told the crowd of 10,000. “That’s because we’ve been through an incredibly difficult time as a nation.”

With early voting under way in many states, Democrats are trying to minimize the damage by concentrating their resources on a dwindling number of races.

“The poll numbers and the enthusiasm on the right versus the lack of the enthusiasm on the left suggest a pretty big Republican night,” said former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, who once headed the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

With Democrats in power while the unemployment rate stands at 9.6 percent, “it’s difficult to say, ‘Well it could have been worse,’” Kerrey said.

Polls, campaign finance reports and advisers in both parties indicate that Republicans are in line to seize on a level of voter discontent that rivals 1994, when the GOP gained the House majority for the first time in 40 years. Democrats are embattled at every level.

Democrats desperate in House
Republicans need to win 40 seats to regain the House majority they lost four years ago. Even some Democratic officials acknowledge that their losses could well exceed that.

A GOP takeover would depose Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as the first female House speaker and force Obama to negotiate with Republicans on every significant legislative issue.

Every day brings fresh evidence of Democratic officials virtually abandoning House members whose re-election bids seem hopeless. Republicans are expanding the field to pursue races that once appeared unattainable. In the coming week, Republicans or GOP-leaning outside groups plan to spend money in a 82 House races that they see as competitive or within reach of a last-minute upset.

Democrats, desperate to hold their losses to three dozen seats, plan to run TV ads in 59 races in the remaining days. But their chief House campaign committee has recently canceled millions of dollars worth of advertising for struggling Reps. Steve Driehaus and Mary Jo Kilroy of Ohio, Suzanne Kosmas of Florida, Betsy Markey of Colorado and Steve Kagen of Wisconsin.

They are shifting some of that money to incumbents once considered safe, such as Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva. But in a sign of the election’s volatility, they also are helping viable incumbents they had expected to be trailing significantly — South Dakota Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, for example.

The Democrats’ House campaign committee raised almost $16 million in September and has $41.6 million in the bank.

That’s a big fundraising advantage over the GOP’s House campaign committee. But the figures are misleading because heavy spending by outside groups, which often hide their donors’ identities, clearly favors Republican candidates.

Some Senate races close
To gain the Senate majority, Republicans must hold all 18 of their seats on this year’s ballots while picking up 10 of the 19 Democratic seats. It’s a tough task, but not inconceivable.

Democrats trail badly in states where they once held some hope of supplanting Republicans: Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio and Florida. Kentucky is the only one that’s still close. But Democrats have reduced their spending there, a sign that Republican and Tea Party favorite Rand Paul is clearly ahead.

Among seats now held by Democrats, Republicans are favored to win open races in North Dakota and Indiana, and to oust Sen. Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas.

In Pennsylvania, where Republican Pat Toomey had comfortably led Democrat Joe Sestak in polls, the race has tightened in recent weeks, forcing the GOP to spend more than it had planned. The Republican Party also is pouring am additional $2 million into Illinois, where Republican Mark Kirk has slipped somewhat in polls in his race against Democrat Alexi Giannoulias for Obama’s old seat.

That said, Democrats say Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold is struggling mightily, and Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet is in a tough fight.

Races are extremely close in West Virginia and Nevada, where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is battling Tea Party-backed Republican Sharron Angle in a bitter and costly campaign.

Democrats are anxiously watching Sens. Barbara Boxer in California and Patty Murray in Washington. Private polls show Republicans pulling closer but still trailing.

Should Republicans win all the close races and knock off either Boxer or Murray, they may rue the nomination of tea partier Christine O’Donnell, who badly trails Chris Coons in Delaware. That once-promising state could have provided the 10th GOP win needed to take the Senate majority.

Democrats risk losing a dozen governors’ chairs they now hold, including those in pivotal presidential states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, Maine and New Mexico. Also possibly falling into GOP hands are Oklahoma, Kansas, Wyoming, Tennessee, Illinois and perhaps Oregon.

Democrats have good chances to pick up GOP-held governorships in four or five states, including California and possibly Florida.

The Republican Governors Association’s $31 million haul over the past three months enables the GOP to jump into more races. The Democratic Governors Association raised $10 million in that period.

Shaky messaging
Perhaps nothing has frustrated Democrats more than their yearlong failure to find a message that could puncture the anger of millions of voters who seem bent on punishing the party in power. It wasn’t for a lack of trying.

Obama may have charmed stadiums full of voters in 2008, but he and congressional Democrats never recovered from barrages of criticism in 2009 about unemployment, bank bailouts and strong-arm legislative tactics used on issues such as health care.

Eight months ago, Democrats boldly predicted that voters would embrace the new health care law once portions took effect, such as the right to keep children on their parents’ insurance plans until age 26. Obama practically dared GOP lawmakers to urge the law’s repeal.

“Go for it,” he said in Iowa in March. “If these congressmen in Washington want to come here in Iowa and tell small-business owners that they plan to take away their tax credits and essentially raise their taxes, be my guest.”

It didn’t work out that way. By the time the health bill’s first elements became law on Sept. 23, most Democratic candidates were ducking it, and many had to defend their votes amid harsh attacks from Republican opponents.

Democrats turned their energies to framing the election as a series of one-on-one contests about local issues, while Republicans kept portraying it as a national referendum on Obama and the economy.

The national theme persisted, so Democrats tried to turn it to their advantage. Obama repeatedly reminded voters that former President George W. Bush had left him with a major recession, failing banks and a rapidly growing deficit. Don’t give the car keys back to those who drove the economy into the ditch, Obama would say dozens of times.

In the early autumn, the president and his allies tried another tack: portraying House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, as the well-tanned face of a party that would let Wall Street run amok while the richest Americans kept enjoying deep tax cuts. In an Ohio speech, Obama cited Boehner’s name eight times.

Voters seemed to shrug. Obama and his top aides then tried a new approach: accusing Republican supporters, particularly the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, of funding campaigns with millions of undisclosed dollars, some of them possibly from foreign sources.

The group and others angrily denied the allegations, and Democratic strategists said they saw little evidence that the debate was moving voters.

As Election Day draws nearer, top Democrats seem almost desperate and hyperbolic. The chairman of the Democratic Party, Tim Kaine, compared conservative groups’ campaign spending with the Watergate scandal, even though no one has provided evidence of wrongdoing, let alone criminality.

Kerrey, the Nebraska Democrat, said the White House has careened from message to message all year without finding an economic pitch to reassure Americans deeply worried about finding or holding jobs.

“They said, ‘It could have been worse, we did pass health care reform, we did pass financial services industry reform,’” Kerrey said. “Those arguments don’t do much to much to confront what is a building momentum in the opposite direction.”

Many Republicans say there’s almost nothing that Obama and other Democrats can do at this stage.

“It’s as if the concrete has already been poured around the Democrats’ feet,” said GOP consultant Kevin Madden.

Associated Press writers Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Jim Kuhnhenn and Julie Pace contributed to this report.

Meg Whitman vs. her illegal housekeeper

AP – Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin waves after speaking at the Republican Party of Iowa’s Ronald Reagan Dinner, …

With Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee all making moves indicating they may run for president, their common employer is facing a question that hasn’t been asked before: How does a news organization cover White House hopefuls when so many are on the payroll?

The answer is a complicated one for Fox News. (See: GOP’s struggles play out on Fox)

As Fox’s popularity grows among conservatives, the presence of four potentially serious Republican candidates as paid contributors is beginning to frustrate competitors of the network, figures within its own news division and rivals of what some GOP insiders have begun calling “the Fox candidates.”

With the exception of Mitt Romney, Fox now has deals with every major potential Republican presidential candidate not currently in elected office. (See: Romney treads lightly in New York)

The matter is of no small consequence, since it’s uncertain how other news organizations can cover the early stages of the presidential race when some of the main GOP contenders are contractually forbidden to appear on any TV network besides Fox.  (See: Poll shows rocky road ahead for Obama)

C-SPAN Political Editor Steve Scully said that when C-SPAN tried to have Palin on for an interview, he was told he had to first get Fox’s permission — which the network, citing her contract, ultimately denied. Producers at NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC all report similar experiences.

At issue are basic matters of political and journalistic fairness and propriety. With Fox effectively becoming the flagship network of the right and, more specifically, the tea party movement, the four Republicans it employs enjoy an unparalleled platform from which to speak directly to primary voters who will determine the party’s next nominee.

Their Fox jobs allow these politicians an opportunity to send conservative activists a mostly unfiltered message in what is almost always a friendly environment. Fox opinion hosts typically invite the Republicans simply to offer their views on issues of the day, rather than press them to defend their rhetoric or records as leaders of the party.  (See: Bill O’Reilly popular, Rachel Maddow unknown)

Fox, in an e-mail to POLITICO, indicated that once any of the candidates declares for the presidency he or she will have to sever the deal with the network.

But it’s such a lucrative and powerful pulpit that Palin, Gingrich, Santorum and Huckabee have every reason to delay formal announcements and stay on contract for as long as they can.

That fact alone has sparked buzz in political and media circles, particularly as it applies to Palin, a major ratings draw. Can she remain on Fox’s payroll if, while not formally a declared candidate, she’s visiting early primary states and assembling a presidential campaign in 2011? Or will Fox at least relax its exclusivity provision to let the candidate appear on other cable or broadcast networks?  (See: Gaga, Colbert get political)

Fox said it doesn’t relax exclusivity provisions.

“All contributors are exclusive to Fox News. On occasion, they will make appearances on other networks — when they have books to promote — and in those cases their contributor agreements are suspended during that period. Fox News has made rare exceptions for various contributors in terms of appearances on other networks, but instances are few and far between,” Fox News said in a statement.

All of the four potential candidates either declined comment or did not respond to inquiries on whether they will adhere to their Fox contracts if they explore a presidential run.

The idea of the four prospects — and especially the former Alaska governor — facing media questions only on a network that both pays them and offers limited scrutiny has already become a matter of frustration in the political and journalistic community — and not just among those the intensely competitive Fox is typically quick to dismiss as jealous rivals.

“It is all new territory,” said Scully, who’s widely respected for his evenhandedness. Palin “will not do any other interviews. We’ve never had to deal with this before.”

So far this year, none of the four GOP contenders on the Fox payroll have appeared on any other television news outlet except Gingrich, who has appeared twice on ABC and three times on NBC since January. ( See

“We have tried to book many of them, but they have always refused, saying they are exclusive to Fox,” said one rival network staffer.

But it isn’t just competitors that are uneasy about the arrangement; there are figures within the network who, as the early jockeying for 2012 begins, are growing increasingly uncomfortable with the specter of paying candidates they’re supposed to cover.

Fox insiders, speaking anonymously about what is a sensitive topic for a network worried about outside perception, said no word has been conveyed from the corporate brass to reporters about how to treat what are, for now at least, their colleagues.

Angst is building among news-side employees who want to know when, if ever, the four Republicans will have to cut ties with the network.

“We’re acutely aware of this” stuff, said one Fox insider of the quandary.

“The cold reality is, nobody at the reporter level has any say on this,” added another source familiar with the inner workings of Fox. “They’re left in the lurch.”

Of particular concern to some at the network is what the situation means when it comes to dealing with candidates who are not employed by Fox.

Even before the midterm elections, top Fox figures are fielding complaints from aides to the non-Fox hopefuls that the arrangements are unfair to their candidates.

“I wish we could get that much airtime, but, oh yeah, we don’t get a paycheck” was what one aide told a Fox employee, according to a source familiar with the conversation.

While they won’t talk about it on the record — no one wants to offend a news outlet with a potentially outsize role in determining the next GOP nominee — officials with some of the other campaigns in waiting are plainly annoyed at the advantage they see the four potential GOP candidates have with Fox.

“The longer they can remain ‘undecided’ about running, the longer they can stay at the network and get paid,” carped a top aide to one potential GOP candidate.

This aide noted that all of Palin’s recent comments about why she may enter the presidential race have come within the cozy confines of Fox — and suggested that the network would have much to gain in retaining its exclusive access to the Alaskan for as long as possible.

“She’s definitely putting a toe in the water, and that’s great for Fox,” said the aide.

Jim Dyke, a veteran GOP strategist who isn’t affiliated with any 2012 candidate, predicted that the issue would gain steam after the midterms, when the so-called invisible primary begins in earnest.

“As it becomes clear somebody is looking at running, Fox gets into a bit of a box because doesn’t it become an in-kind contribution if they’re being paid?” Dyke asked.

The notion of a politician taking a paycheck from a news organization before mounting a presidential bid isn’t totally new. Pat Buchanan hosted CNN’s “Crossfire” in the 1990s in between GOP primary campaigns and certainly used the national platform to his advantage in the years before Fox News achieved its current status.

Buchanan, in an interview, said the rule should be: “As soon as you come close to declaring or declare, you’re gone.”

In the 1996 campaign, the populist Republican made his final appearance as a “Crossfire” host in February 1995 and then announced his candidacy the next month.

But Buchanan, now a paid MSNBC contributor, said, “We’re in a dramatically different era now.”

Roger Ailes, Fox News chairman and CEO and Buchanan’s old colleague from the 1968 Richard Nixon campaign, now has every incentive to keep Palin exclusive to the network for as long as he can, said Buchanan.

“He knows he’s got a real stable of talent and that people are attracted to Fox News in part because that’s where they can see Sarah Palin,” Buchanan said. “So I would think he would want to keep them there.”

Buchanan said the Fox reporters had no choice but treating those on the payroll as if they weren’t. “If you’re an objective journalist, you bring [the candidates] on and ask them tough questions.”

While the commentators who have their own Fox programs have largely offered friendly forums for the four contributors, some of the reporters who have covered the group have not. When Palin appeared in Iowa recently, for example, political correspondent Carl Cameron reported that she had failed to meet with local officials and didn’t solicit any advice from Republicans in the state — basic steps traditionally taken by presidential candidates.

What worries some in the political and media community, though, is that behind Palin’s incessant attacks on what she calls “the lamestream media” is a strategy to de-legitimize traditional news outlets so as to avoid ever facing any accountability beyond Fox.

Part of Palin’s thinking could be seen in her advice to Delaware GOP Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell — offered, naturally, on Fox.

“Speak through Fox News,” Palin urged the much-maligned tea-party-backed candidate.

And, speaking earlier this month in Louisville, Ky., Palin said: “What would we do without Fox News, America? We love our Fox News, yes.”

While having candidates with Fox contracts may be an ideal media strategy for the primaries, the GOP may suffer in the general election if its candidates avoid speaking to the mass audiences of the Big Three networks.

“Most people see that in order to win, you need a strong, devoted core, but you also need something beyond that in the general election,” said Paul Levinson, a professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University and author of “New New Media.” “So they could be hurting themselves.

OBAMA SLAMS MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD BUT PUSHES NEW TALKS WITH IRAN!

(Sept. 24) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be the United States’ best bet for isolating and forcing change from Iran.

President Barack Obama, in an interview today with the BBC service directed at Iran, lambasted Ahmadinejad for once again suggesting the U.S. government orchestrated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, even as the White House and its allies work to revive talks with Iran aimed at restricting Iran’s nuclear program.

“It was offensive. It was hateful. And particularly for him to make the statement here in Manhattan, just a little north of ground zero, where families lost their loved ones, people of all faiths, all ethnicities who see this as the seminal tragedy of this generation. For him to make a statement like that was inexcusable,” Obama said.

AFP / Getty Images

President Obama said today that recent remarks by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, right, suggesting that the U.S. government orchestrated the Sept. 11 attacks were “offensive” and “inexcusable.”

“It stands in contrast with the response of the Iranian people when 9/11 happened, when there were candlelight vigils, and I think a natural sense of shared humanity and sympathy was expressed within Iran,” Obama added. “And it just shows once again sort of the difference between how the Iranian leadership and this regime operates, and how I think the vast majority of the Iranian people, who are respectful and thoughtful, think about these issues.”

A senior administration official today told reporters on a conference call the administration was hoping that Obama’s interview would reach the millions of Iranians who can hear the radio arm of BBC Persian and access its Farsi-language website, and that the U.S. would try to amplify the message by reaching out to bloggers, using Twitter and by posting the interview on YouTube.

And if Obama’s goal is to prod Iran back to the negotiating table, Ahmadinejad might already be headed in that direction. The Iranian leader later told reporters in New York that his government hopes to resume talks sometime next month.

Ahmadinejad’s comments Thursday before the United Nations General Assembly prompted the American delegation and diplomats from most of the Western world to walk out, and came at a time when global support is growing for U.S. pressure on Iran to curtail the country’s nuclear ambitions.

Washington got a major boost on that front earlier in the week when Russia canceled a long-debated deal to sell its S-300 air-defense missile system to Iran, saying the sale was banned by sanctions adopted by the U.N. Security Council in June. Those sanctions, the fourth and toughest set in as many years against Iran, have been followed by a series of unilateral and multilateral moves by the the U.S., Europe, Japan and others that are aimed at ratcheting up pressure on Iran to return to the nuclear negotiating table.

Last October, Iran agreed to suspend its enrichment of uranium in a deal with the five permanent U.N. Security Council members — the U.S., France, Britain, Russia and China — as well as Germany. But the Iranian government quickly walked away from the agreement, giving Washington enough diplomatic capital with the so-called P-5+1 group to eventually pass the new sanctions.

A senior administration official this week said Washington is fully behind an effort by Catherine Ashton, the top European Union foreign affairs official, to restart the dialogue with Iran.

Meetings of the P-5+1 group this week, on the sidelines of the annual U.N. summit, included discussion of what the official called “a phased approach to resolving the nuclear issue,” and specifically a revised arrangement aimed at halting Iran’s enrichment of uranium.

The original deal involved an offer to provide Iran with uranium enriched — or purified — enough for the Tehran Research Reactor, which would theoretically relieve Iran of the need to enrich on its own. Such enrichment is a process key to the creation of atomic weapons.

But since the deal fell through, Iran has managed to produce much more highly enriched uranium, enough to build one or two weapons if the uranium is processed more. And the official said one issue Iran would have to address now is the larger uranium stockpile, possibly by agreeing to give some of it to Russia or France as part of any trade.

The senior administration official who spoke today said the administration bases its hope for new negotiations on the economic pain Iran has felt with the new sanctions.

“There’s a choice before the Iranian government,” he said. “The costs associated with … failure to live up to its obligations are growing. And those costs, frankly, have exceeded even what I think the Iranian government thought they would be. And you’ve seen not just the very real consequences of the sanctions — including private companies pulling out of Iran, people seeing the cost of doing business in Iran, the international isolation of Iran — but you’ve also seen statements from prominent Iranian leaders expressing concern about the sanctions.”

Asked about the discomfort sanctions bring to average Iranians, Obama sought to emphasize in his interview with BBC Persian that Russia, China and others have backed the sanctions as well. And he argued that “this is a matter of the Iranians’ government, I think, ultimately betraying the interests of its own people by isolating it further.”



O’REILLY HAS DIRT ON O’DONNELL!

Bill O’Reilly said that he has tape of some “crazy stuff” Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell has said on his show in the past, but that he’s not going to play it — yet (via Mediaite).

O’Reilly made the comments during a segment on Monday’s “O’Reilly Factor.” Speaking with Fox News analysts Juan Williams and Mary Katharine Ham, he called O’Donnell’s now-infamous comments about witchcraft “dopey,” but said that Democrats shouldn’t be using the comments against her. Yet O’Reilly also chided the Delaware Republican for backing out of her planned appearances on two Sunday talk shows last week.

And he said that he has dirt on the new star of the Tea Party:

“It just seems to me…I don’t know, Juan, I’m trying to be fair to Ms. O’Donnell. She’s been on this program a couple of times, and we have some kind of crazy stuff that she said. We’re not going to play it yet. I don’t think it’s relevant yet. We’d still like Ms. O’Donnell to come on the Factor. I’m not in the business of [injuring] her. I’d like to see if she’s the better candidate.”

Just a minute later, however, O’Reilly seemed to have made up his mind. Calling O’Donnell’s Democratic opponent Chris Coons a Marxist, he said, “I’d rather have the witch than the Marxist”

LARRY SUMMERS LEAVES WHITE HOUSE TO RETURN TO HARVARD

Larry Summers the economic adviser for White House is leaving the Obama Administration to join professorship at Harvard University, by the end of this year 2010.

The announcement about the departure of Larry Summers came yesterday on Tuesday September 21, 2010 by the White House.

Larry Summers has performed his duties as the director of National Economical Council at the White House. Larry Summer, who is the council and assistant to the President Obama for economical policy, has played a vital role to shape-up the economic policies of Obama Administration during first two years.

In Clinton Administration Larry Summers performed his duties as secretary of the Treasury. He is the chief economist of the World Bank.

Larry Summers also performed his duties as the president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006, but resigned due to Cornel West GS ’80 controversies.

Larry Summers is a huge name in the economic world and his return to the Harvard University will definitely benefit students, but on the other hand Obama Administration might regret on the loss of such powerful brain.