Quinnipiac:
A candidate's "understanding of the problems of people like you" is extremely important, 44 percent of voters say, while 38 percent say very important. Voters are divided on McAuliffe as 38 percent say he understands and 42 percent say he doesn't. By a wide 51 - 37 percent margin, voters say Cuccinelli does not understand.
Q-poll makes the point that empathy trumps experience.
Charlie Cook:
The truth is that the public has a poor opinion of Democrats, and a horrible impression of Republicans on Capitol Hill. Which side goes into a card game with a weaker hand—one with approvals of between 32 and 36 percent with disapprovals of between 55 and 61 percent, or the one with approvals of between 22 and 26 percent and disapprovals that range from 66 to 69 percent?
Let's factor in the other player in this game, President Obama. Obama's job-approval ratings have been in a very gradual decline since February, losing roughly a point every three weeks. No, it's not Benghazi, the IRS, or domestic surveillance, it's just the slow leak that has become pretty standard for second-term presidents—call it "Lame-Duck Fatigue." In a second term, on most subjects and most days, the mute button has been hit for the president. But even that being the case, Obama's current Gallup job-approval rating is 46 percent, with a 51 percent disapproval (a net of minus 5 points). Fox News polling from early this month puts Obama's approval rating at 42 percent with a disapproval of 52 percent (net of minus 10 points). The July Pew Research poll put Obama's approval and disapproval ratings at 46 percent, while CBS put him a little better with 48 approve/45 percent disapprove (a net positive of 3 points).
While Obama's numbers are hardly impressive, they are still much better than those for congressional Democrats, and they aren't even in the same time zone as the bleak numbers for Republicans in Congress. This being the case, who goes into this fight with the least credibility? The answer is Republicans in Congress.
Al Jazeera America spent more time covering climate change in its first show than other cables do in months. cc @HeidiCullen @MichaelEMann
— @koronet
More politics and policy below the fold.
A terrific Quinn Norton piece on Bradley Manning:
Somewhere in the Iraqi desert in 2009 in the middle of a flailing war, a soldier committed a seemingly small crime. Private Bradley Manning didn’t kill anyone, or rape anyone, but by nabbing information from his commanders and giving it to WikiLeaks, he lit up the world, like a match discarded into a great parched forest.
NY Times on the
Guardian's chances to fight the UK on secrecy [which should be read with the
CJR piece Meteor Blades
posted last night]:
The Guardian, which leans left and used to see itself as the voice of Britain’s socially conscious middle class, has struck a more combative tone in the last few years. It was deeply involved in publishing the WikiLeaks material and with that organization’s impresario, Julian Assange, and now with the lawyer Glenn Greenwald and the former National Security Agency contractor, turned leaker, Edward J. Snowden.
Having gone global and remained free to readers on the Web, with a newsroom in New York as well as in London, The Guardian is a much harder news organization than most to intimidate or censor, as the British government, with no written Constitution or Bill of Rights to enshrine protections of free speech, has discovered.
Jonathan Bernstein's must read on Obamacare:
We’re hearing more and more rumblings from top Republicans that the GOP’s current position on Obamacare is untenable — that the party can’t continue to call for the destruction of Obamacare forever without offering any alternative. The push from the right for a shutdown has only drawn that into sharper relief, and so we’re finally hearing that Republicans — finally! — will make good on their promise, now 30 months overdue, to come up with the “replace” part of repeal-and-replace.
It ain’t gonna happen. There won’t be any serious GOP alternative to Obamacare.
Greg Sargent:
If Republicans kill immigration reform, could it result in a 2014 cycle that sees uncommonly high Latino turnout for a midterm election — high enough to possibly tip the House to Democrats?
Nope.
Okay. Anything else you want to know? Just ask.
More Obamacare fallout, via the NY Times:
Farm labor contractors across California, the nation’s biggest agricultural engine, are increasingly nervous about a provision of the Affordable Care Act that will require hundreds of thousands of field workers to be covered by health insurance.
While the requirement was recently delayed until 2015, the contractors, who provide farmers with armies of field workers, say they are already preparing for the potential cost the law will add to their business, which typically operates on a slender profit margin.
“I’ve been to at least a dozen seminars on the Affordable Care Act since February,” said Chuck Herrin, owner of Sunrise Farm Labor, a contractor based here. “If you don’t take the right approach, you’re wiped out.”
Note for the record: In Bernstein's piece he notes, as this article notes, a unique thing: Obamacare actually tries to provide people with health coverage. Nothing the Republicans suggest does.