It's Election Day!
We begin with Katrina vanden Heuvel, who looks at the "minimum wage mandate":
For the national Democratic Party, there are only two possible outcomes in today’s elections: bad and worse. Even in the best-case scenario, Democrats will barely hang onto a narrow Senate majority that is virtually powerless in the face of Republican obstruction. However, while the headlines tomorrow are likely to be grim, progressives can take heart in tangible policy victories in four states, all solid red in the last election, where voters are set to give the working poor a much-needed raise.
Perhaps no issue has been a bigger political winner this year than raising the minimum wage. Indeed, after Seattle raised its minimum wage to a record $15 an hour and fast-food workers nationwide united to demand higher pay, the undeniable resonance of this issue with mostly apathetic midterm voters demonstrates the power of social movements to transcend partisan politics and drive the electoral agenda. Furthermore, it is a clear signal that these elections, whatever their outcome, should not be thought of as a triumph of right-wing politics over progressive Democratic ideas. To the contrary, if Republicans prevail, it will be in spite of their support for right-wing policies.
Jonathan Weisman and Ashley Parker:
The most expensive midterm campaign in American history stumbled into Election Day on Tuesday with voters’ interest at record lows and their divisions deep over what they want their government to do in President Obama’s final two years.
Republicans entered the final hours confident they will gain at least six seats and take control of the Senate, but polls showed several races too close to call. Likely runoffs in Georgia and Louisiana, along with late vote counts in Alaska, Colorado and Iowa, will mean Senate control may remain in doubt beyond Tuesday night.
The same could be true for governors’ races in Colorado, New Hampshire, Georgia and Florida.
The uncertainty about the outcome is a fitting match for the mood of the nation.
Much more on analysis below the fold.
Stephen Collinson at CNN:
Democrats have a message for voters during the final, frenzied day of campaigning: All is not lost.
Party leaders insist they can still hold onto the Senate -- their last bastion of power on Capitol Hill -- and are spending the remaining hours before the polls open on Tuesday trying to convince their voters not to give up.
"I don't agree with the oddsmakers," Vice President Joe Biden said in an exclusive interview with CNN Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger. "I predict we're gonna ... keep the Senate."
Patrick Egan analyzes Senate history to write that this Senate election is "the most unrepresentative Senate election since WWII":
[T]he rules on seat allotments and classes have yielded a Senate election cycle in 2014 that is profoundly unrepresentative of the nation as whole — and particularly tough for Democrats. A good measure of the parties’ relative strength in the states holding Senate elections is the share of the state vote each earned in the most recent presidential election. [...] For most of the past six decades, these two trends tracked each other very closely: the parties’ relative strength in the set of Senate seats up for election was no different from their strength nationally. But that changed after the 2000 presidential election, in which the Republican Party’s dominance in the South emerged in full force. This in turn led Class 2 Senate seats to be particularly strong for the GOP: There is a Class 2 seat in all but one state of the former Confederacy — Florida.
Senate elections took place in Class 2 states in 2002, 2008 and now 2014. In each of these cycles, there is a substantial difference between the parties’ relatively even performance at the national level and the Republicans’ strength in Senate seats up for election. This year, the gap is profound: in the typical Senate election state, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney ran ahead of his national margin by more than seven percentage points.
Matea Gold analyzes the grim new campaign finance reality:
The 2014 midterm elections mark a new level of collaboration between candidates and independent groups, eroding the barrier that is supposed to separate those running for office from their big-money allies.
The vast sums of cash raised by independent groups have reordered the political landscape, compelling campaigns to find new ways to communicate their wants and needs without officially coordinating with outside players. Such direct coordination is prohibited under 40-year-old campaign finance rules.
Eugene Robinson:
Somehow, we seem to have lost the capacity for long-range planning and execution — at a time when, arguably, foresight and patience are more essential than ever before.
There is a ready-made excuse for doing nothing on climate change: the fact that other nations, too, must act if we are to avoid parboiling the planet. But this is not true of the other big issues that our leaders acknowledge but cannot bring themselves to properly address.
Begin with the hollowing-out of the American middle class. Both parties proclaim that no issue is more important or more urgent. The Republican solution is more tax cuts and more deregulation. The Democratic solution is to level a playing field that has been tilted to favor the wealthy. It is safe to say, given polls showing widespread disdain for politics and politicians, that neither message is hitting home.
And here is a must-read from
Chris Frates on what all that campaign money could have been spent on:
Tuesday's elections are projected to be the most expensive midterms in history - costing almost $4 billion, according to Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan group that tracks money in politics.
Four billion bucks is a boatload of cash. It's 10 times more than the government has committed to fighting Ebola in West Africa and would be enough to build 100 treatment centers and run them for years.
That kind of money could also buy 25 F-18 fighter jets, pay for more than 12,000 students' K-12 education and have enough left over to produce a summer blockbuster.
Or, maybe it makes more sense to think about elections for what they are - glorified marketing campaigns. It took Apple, the world's most valuable company, the last four years or so to spend four billion advertising dollars.
USA Today runs down 50 quick facts:
The main political result everyone is waiting for is whether Democrats keep control of the Senate, which they've held since 2006. While a shift in the balance of power is the big drama, there is more at stake in every state.
Here are 50 facts to help you understand what's happening in the election. [...]
4. Arkansas: Will prohibition finally end?
For most of the U.S., prohibition ended in the 1930s. Not in Arkansas, where 37 dry counties prohibit alcohol sales. Some people in the state are trying to change that. There's a ballot initiative that would legalize the manufacture and sale of alcohol statewide.
On a final note,
Jesse Holland lists five voter suppression to watch out for:
The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which is gathering reports on its website, has already fielded complaints during early voting of poll workers questioning voters' citizenship in Texas, police officers hanging around polls in Florida and robocalls in Georgia and Florida urging voters to "Do what you did in 2010, stay at home," said Barbara Arnwine, the group's president. […]
"DO NOT VOTE" MESSAGES
Some sides try to depress voting by telling the electorate that polls show a certain race is already over, or that one candidate or the other is so far ahead that one more vote won't matter. The truth is, every vote counts — as shown by many close elections in the past.