On The Trail

HENDERSON, Nev. -- "I'm going to preach to the choir, because sometimes the choir needs a kick in the pants too," Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., told a union crowd at an office park a few miles off the Las Vegas Strip. Berkley urged the 200 or so AFSCME workers and supporters to get on massive tour buses, parked just outside, that would whisk them to a local mall in order to cast early ballots.

Two years after record-breaking turnout in Nevada and elsewhere, the choir needs the preaching. Poll after poll says that Democrats are not, to borrow a phrase that drove voters to the polls in 2008, fired up and ready to go. Still, at the end of an hour-long rally featuring two of the biggest names in Democratic politics -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and AFSCME President Gerald McEntee -- the Nevada union loyalists boarded buses for the short trip to the polls.

Getting those voters to cast ballots before Election Day, whether by early vote or by absentee ballot, has become an integral part of both parties' strategy nationwide. It's how Democrats woke up on Election Day 2008 already millions of votes ahead of their Republican rivals. That meant Democrats could lose key states and districts on in the Election Day balloting and still win, thanks to big margins run up in the days and weeks before.

Nowhere is early voting more essential to a candidate's chances than in Nevada, where the parties are fighting over Reid's Senate seat and a House seat held by Rep. Dina Titus (D). Election analysts and officials estimate that between 55 and 60 percent of voters will cast their ballots early. Since early voting began Saturday, 10.6 percent of Democrats and 12 percent of Republicans who live in Clark County have already visited one of the nearly two dozen permanent and temporary sites.

For Berkley's fellow Democrats, a good early voting turnout in Clark County is essential. In 2008, President Obama beat John McCain by more than 123,000 votes in the state's most populous county -- effectively the margin of victory in the state. Obama won Nevada by 120,909 votes.

Titus beat then-Rep. Jon Porter by about 18,000 votes in the 3rd Congressional District, after winning the early voting round by a decisive 26,953 votes.

In a midterm, when turnout is down, the extra days and weeks afforded to parties intent on getting voters out have become essential. The GOP's vaunted 72-hour program is out of date; instead, both parties are establishing month-long turnout programs in order to capture as many votes as possible.

Despite surveys showing Democrats on the wrong end of a voter enthusiasm gap, early voting numbers tell a more mixed story.

Updated at 12:49 p.m.

Barack Obama broke new ground in 2008 by winning states that were long considered out of reach for Democratic candidates, and he did so by substantially broadening the electorate.

Just two years later, some Democratic strategists worry that the electorate is reverting to normal size, and that the White House is pursuing a misguided election strategy that threatens many of the House and Senate Democrats swept into office along with the new president.

The disagreement has created a rift among Democrats at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and opened a quiet but intense debate as some move to cover their backsides in the event of a catastrophic Election Day.

Both sides of the family feud are focusing on ground game and voter turnout. The disagreement is over which voters the party should be expending precious dollars trying to turn out.

The White House strategy is focused on an unprecedented effort to turn out the voters who cast their first ballots for Obama in 2008. The Democratic National Committee has pledged $30 million in voter turnout efforts this year, largely geared toward those first-time voters through Organizing for America, the outgrowth of Obama's political operation.

The DNC estimates that 15 million voters cast their first ballot in 2008. Fully 72 percent of those voters backed Democrats. They are predominantly younger and more ethnically diverse -- in other words, the next generation of the Democratic base. Those voters could be key to a number of races in which Democrats and Republicans are running dead even.

Senate races in Colorado, Illinois, Nevada, Washington state, and West Virginia are all within two to four points in both public polling and in private party surveys. Perhaps dozens of House races will be decided as much by turnout as anything else. Increasing the number of voters ready and willing to come out for Democrats could mean the difference between losing majorities and hanging on, however narrowly.

But this strategy relies on the assumption that Obama's 2008 campaign transformed the electorate that will decide the 2010 midterms.

Old school Democrats, mostly affiliated with the labor movement and congressional campaigns, aren't buying it. They don't believe the DNC understands what the midterm electorate will really look like.

Actions speak louder than words. That's why Democratic control of the House is looking more tenuous by the day. As the party begins to build its firewall to prevent a GOP takeover, top strategists are working to salvage seats that few considered Republican pickup opportunities just a few months ago.

The majority party is slowly starting to open its checkbook, spending millions of dollars on hard-hitting advertisements and mail campaigns aimed at undermining Republicans around the country. But the districts in which it is advertising were once considered safe, indicating that it is Republicans who have had the most success in putting seats in play.

This week, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee began running ads in seats held by Reps. Bill Delahunt (Mass.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Phil Hare (Ill.), Bill Foster (Ill.), Leonard Boswell (Iowa), Sanford Bishop (Ga.), and John Salazar (Colo.). In each district, Democrats won re-election by significant, if not overwhelming, margins in 2008. Now, Democrats view every one of those seats as endangered.

The districts represent a broad cross-section of the country, from Foster's suburban Chicago seat to Delahunt's tony Cape Cod district, from Salazar's Western Slope to Boswell's mix of urban Des Moines and rural farmland. President Obama won six of those seven districts with more than 54 percent of the vote (Obama took 48 percent of the vote in Salazar's district, narrowly losing to John McCain).

Those races have drawn attention from Republicans and their outside allies as well. Republicans and third-party groups have already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars against Donnelly, Foster, and Salazar. On Wednesday, the National Republican Congressional Committee said it would add Bishop, Hare, and Salazar to its already packed target list. Bishop, Boswell, and Delahunt have, so far, been spared -- and yet Democrats still feel compelled to defend them with TV spots.

Democrats are endeavoring, in essence, to find the edge of the Republican wave and begin fighting back. By defending members who are least at risk, the theory goes, they can put those races away early, leaving them free to concentrate their fire on Republican candidates more likely to win Democratic seats.

Democratic strategists have recently started experiencing a new feeling of optimism. There are indications, they say, that the party is showing the smallest signs of a turnaround, and that rumors of their electoral demise have been premature.

But instead of a comeback, Democrats are only experiencing the benefits of a base that is finally engaging. That base will help some Democratic candidates, but in total, the party still faces serious rehabilitation work with independent voters. The party's major problems are most evident in three prominent races that are slowly, but inexorably, sliding toward Republicans.

This week, Democrats confirmed what many were beginning to suspect -- that West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin (D) faces a more difficult race for the state's open Senate seat than he once contemplated. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee purchased television time on Manchin's behalf, even though most surveys peg his approval rating north of 60 percent. But Manchin finds himself running neck and neck with businessman John Raese, who took just 34 percent of the vote when he ran for the seat in 2006.

Manchin's problems are manifest in one individual: President Obama. Obama took just 43 percent of the vote in West Virginia in 2008, and his popularity has only slid further. Republicans are using the same playbook against Manchin as they are against other Democrats, labeling him an Obama rubber stamp.

In a coal state that fears cap-and-trade legislation as a threat to an already teetering economy, that label is deadly. Manchin, who won re-election in 2008 with more than 70 percent of the vote, suddenly finds himself in serious jeopardy as Republicans build rhetorical bridges between him and the national Democratic Party. If those associations can hurt the popular Manchin, they can hurt lesser-known House members running their first re-election campaigns.

First in war, first in peace, last on the priority list of every political activist in America: Washington, so long accustomed to controlling much of the national political landscape, is playing a diminished role in midterm elections this year thanks to conscious efforts on both sides of the aisle to decentralize the decision-making processes.

Credit (or blame) a number of factors: An incensed Republican base still bent on changing the way its party does business. A dispirited Democratic activist class that doesn't view its party as liberal enough. Even President Obama himself shares responsibility for the reduced control Washington has over the grassroots, thanks to his groundbreaking 2008 campaign.

Perhaps Obama deserves most of the credit or blame. His 2008 campaign involved an unprecedented swath of the Democratic activist class, and the party has sought to keep that activist class engaged. But those in power often disappoint their followers; the energized Democratic activists, working with control of Washington for the first time since the 1994 elections, have expressed frustration with their party's slow and, in their minds, too conservative pace.

That frustration has been borne out in key primary races. Labor unions spent millions of dollars trying to defeat Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., survived a close fight against a former state legislator that sapped his campaign war chest of millions of dollars. And Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., lost his primary to Rep. Joe Sestak after switching parties. All three incumbents had Obama's support, and in all three cases the Democratic activist class turned out to impose its own will.

The diaspora of political power from Washington into the states has been all the more obvious in the Republican Party. Incumbents lost nominating contests in Alaska, Utah, South Carolina and Alabama. And establishment favorites couldn't win election in a half-dozen states this year after more conservative challengers seized the momentum.

For the better part of two years, Republican operatives have been trying to figure out how to harness the energy of the Tea Party in order to further their electoral goals. After Tuesday, when Tea Party-backed candidate Christine O'Donnell beat Rep. Michael Castle in Delaware's Senate primary, it has become clear that the opposite is happening -- the Tea Party movement is clearly and inexorably taking over the Republican Party.

Earlier this year, Tea Party backers in Maine and Idaho helped install controversial new planks in state party platforms. In Arizona, Nevada, Michigan and elsewhere, Tea Party activists are filling up vacant precinct committee slots, which gives them votes at state conventions. Already, several state Republican chairs are concerned that their jobs are in danger, should they face a Tea Party uprising.

It is ironic that O'Donnell's win would come in the First State, the day before Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele embarked on a 48-state bus tour around the country. The RNC is promoting a new program based on the Democratic National Committee's 50-state strategy, hoping to capitalize on the positive political environment in order to win offices at all levels, in every state. The program is called D2H -- Delaware to Hawaii, encompassing the first state to the 50th.

As Steele travels, he may find a very different Republican Party than the one he took over last January. That may suit Steele just fine; while he's been criticized for not reaching out to some groups, he has made a point to create inroads with Tea Party leaders across the country.

"The Republican National Committee has, for over a year now, been engaged with leadership within the Tea Party movement across the country, and we look forward to continuing that dialogue," Steele said from the RNC's bus, en route to a stop in Charlottesville, Va. "The Tea Party movement, as I've said consistently from day one, are to be taken seriously. They're kindred spirits."

The battlefield on which the House will be won or lost is largely known, as both Democrats and Republicans focus their efforts on dozens of competitive races. But while some members of Congress know they are in trouble, others believe, mistakenly, they are more secure. It will be those members who become surprise losers, or narrow winners, on Nov. 2.

It happens during every wave election: Seemingly secure members wake up the morning after Election Day to find themselves out of a job. In 1994, Rep. Neal Smith of Iowa unexpectedly lost his seat after 18 terms in office. Rep. Jack Brooks of Texas had served 21 terms before losing his seat that year. Even House Speaker Tom Foley, D-Wash., lost his seat in the landslide.

In 2006, longtime Republican Reps. Jim Leach of Iowa, Nancy Johnson of Connecticut, Sue Kelly of New York, Anne Northup of Kentucky and Jim Ryun of Kansas all lost their seats. Only Northup was a top-tier target at the beginning of that cycle.

Now, given this year's turbulent political environment, Republicans have found opportunities across the country. Some are obvious. No one doubts that Reps. Frank Kratovil, D-Md.; Tom Perriello, D-Va.; Suzanne Kosmas, D-Fla.; and Dina Titus, D-Nev., are in trouble.

But others are not so obvious. Here are five members of Congress who could find themselves in hot water come Election Day, whether they know it or not:

President Obama on Tuesday assiduously avoided any appearance of declaring the mission in Iraq accomplished, but his second Oval Office address may be remembered as vividly as his predecessor's aircraft carrier speech, albeit for a very different reason: Tuesday was the moment Obama turned toward his own re-election bid.

Obama's address was aimed at claiming credit for a key campaign promise, but it was also an acknowledgment that the hardest part of his presidency -- revitalizing an economy that stubbornly refuses to recover -- lies ahead.

Re-election campaigns are a combination of reminding voters of the promises the candidate made, and kept, the first time he or she ran, and making new promises to be kept during the subsequent term.

That formula, said Democratic strategist Tad Devine, "will certainly be what [Obama and his advisers] want to focus on -- real accomplishment, a relentless focus on the economy, a path towards future economic growth, and later a strong push-off against the opposition."

Sure enough, on Wednesday, a top Organizing for America official e-mailed Obama's legendary multimillion-member contact list under the subject line "A promise kept." And perhaps no promise was more central to Obama's presidency than ending the war in Iraq. Obama had given a speech opposing the war in 2002, before he was a U.S. senator and long before such opposition was popular, even in Democratic circles. By the time he ran for president, most of his fellow Democratic candidates were taking heat for voting to authorize the use of force against Iraq. Former Sen. John Edwards went the furthest, apologizing for his vote seemingly at every turn.

Only then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton stuck to her guns, believing a liberal turn in the primaries would hurt her in a general election; instead, it became the key differentiation between Clinton and Obama in the primaries, one in which Obama was on the right side.

"I think putting some punctuation mark on Iraq at this point was important for historic reasons and to remind the American people what we have done and what we are doing in that part of the world," said Mike McCurry, the former White House press secretary. "Americans tend to forget, and you have to remind them."

But the 2012 presidential campaign won't be about the war in Iraq, and it's not likely to be about the war in Afghanistan, either. Instead, voters now say they care about the economy and jobs above all else. With a recession lingering and showing as many signs of a double dip as of outright recovery -- Friday's monthly jobs reports are expected to detail another serious blow to the economy -- that's not likely to change anytime soon.

"I would rather have 30 Republicans in the Senate who really believe in principles of limited government, free markets, free people, than to have 60 that don't have a set of beliefs." So said Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., back in April 2009. Now, a little more than a year later, DeMint is on the brink of getting at least part of his wish.

The current crop of GOP candidates running for Senate will make the 112th Congress dramatically different from the 111th, almost regardless of how many seats Republicans pick up this fall. The one sure thing: The partisan gridlock that currently dominates Washington is only going to increase.

The Senate is already losing a number of members who have displayed a willingness to work across the aisle. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, who worked with a liberal Democrat on health care legislation that never came to fruition, was ousted in a primary. So was Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter, the Republican-turned-Democrat who bolted the GOP after DeMint's preferred candidate, former Rep. Pat Toomey (R), decided to run against him a second time (DeMint made his infamous "30 Republicans" comment in an interview with the Washington Examiner's Timothy Carney shortly after he told Specter he would be backing Toomey). And Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, a moderate interested more in earmarks than social issues who has worked with Democrats on climate change legislation, trails a more conservative primary challenger with just a few thousand absentee votes to be counted.

Other senators who have worked across the aisle are departing as well. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.; George Voinovich, R-Ohio; Judd Gregg, R-N.H.; and Evan Bayh, D-Ind., all had reputations as amiable legislators willing to find a partner within the other party.

In some cases, the newcomers most likely to take over for that bipartisan cohort will come with a track record of reaching out to the other side. Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., has worked with Democrats on a host of issues, while Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., has gotten in trouble for voting against his party at times. Castle is favored to win a Senate seat, while Kirk is running neck-and-neck with his Democratic challenger in his home state.

Add in former Rep. Rob Portman (R), running in Ohio, and North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven (R) -- neither of whom has a reputation as a bridge-burner -- and Democrats should have a number of new Republican senators with whom to form alliances.

But the pragmatist strain of Republicanism ends there, and the populist anger surging through the GOP ranks means a new crop of senators who are much more likely to fit the mold of a DeMint than of a Gregg, or even a Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who worked with then-Sen. Barack Obama on legislation.

House Republicans are measuring the drapes in preparation for big gains in the lower chamber, convinced that Minority Leader John Boehner is going to become the next Speaker of the House. On a macro level, that wouldn't be a bad guess -- Democrats are saddled with bad polls and unpopular leaders, and the national mood wants a change from the status quo.

But the Democratic apocalypse isn't guaranteed just yet. In fact, senior Democratic strategists say they're not only likely to keep the House, but they believe the GOP won't come close to gaining the 39 seats they need to take over.

That's not to say Republicans have no chance of taking back the House. Indeed, for every argument Democrats make about their strengths, Republicans have a counterargument. But Democrats have a compelling case. Here are the four reasons Democrats shouldn't be counted out of the majority, and Republicans shouldn't start counting their chickens, quite yet:

• Money: On both a macro level and a micro level, Republicans are seriously behind in the money chase. Most candidates enrolled in the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's Frontline program for endangered incumbents have huge cash leads over their rivals, and the DCCC has nearly twice as much on hand as the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Plenty of newly elected Democrats won in 2006 and 2008 while being outspent, but they weren't outspent by much. Only Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, D-N.H., won after being outspent by more than a 3-1 ratio. Republican challengers will close the gap over the next few months, but they have a long way to go.

On Tuesday, Boehner said his goal was to run a $50 million independent expenditure program through the NRCC. With $22 million on hand as of Aug. 1, Republicans are nowhere near reaching that goal. The DCCC, on the other hand, has already reserved airtime worth $49 million -- and that's only the first wave.

Two years after his coattails helped sweep two dozen Democrats into office, President Obama is proving more a boon to Republicans than to Democrats during the midterm elections. His poll numbers are so morose that Democrats are planning ways to avoid his shadow, while Republicans plot strategies aimed at tying Obama to every incumbent member of Congress they can.

The advice from Democratic consultants and strategists is almost unanimous: Run away from the president, and fast. A prominent Democratic pollster is circulating a survey that shows George W. Bush is 6 points more popular than President Obama in "Frontline" districts -- seats held by Democrats that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sees as most vulnerable to Republican takeover. That Bush is more popular than Obama in Democratic-held seats is cause for outright fear.

But disassociating oneself from an incumbent president is never easy, and Democrats have to walk a narrow line. Based on conversations with more than a dozen Democratic political operatives, here's some advice for candidates looking to chart their own course, one that will send them back to the 112th Congress:

President Obama won every state that touches the Great Lakes as he marched toward the presidency, while Democrats picked up 10 Republican-held House seats in the region. But in politics, timing is everything, and now the GOP looks poised to make new gains in key races that could give Republicans a long-term toehold in a region that has trended away from them for the last decade.

The often overlooked state legislative landscape is in as much turmoil as federal races are this year. And with state legislators set to take up decennial redistricting over the next two years, Republicans have chosen exactly the right time to surf the electoral wave.

State legislatures are as susceptible to national trends as federal races, if not more so. In recent wave election cycles, the party that picked up seats in Congress also dominated legislative chambers.

When Democrats picked up 49 seats in the House in 1974, the party also won control of 22 legislative chambers Republicans had previously held. Democrats picked up 27 House seats and 11 legislative chambers in 1982. Republicans had their own landslide in 1994, winning 54 House seats and taking control in 19 chambers.

It's no surprise that legislative campaigns feel the wind at their backs -- or in their faces -- more than federal ones, strategists on both sides say. After all, legislators run their campaigns with much less cash than higher-ticket races, rendering them unable to define themselves and therefore leaving their fates dependent on voters' moods.

"There are fewer resources dedicated to these downballot races. The name I.D. is going to be lower, so they are more susceptible to the national wave," said Chris Jankowski, a GOP strategist who heads REDMAP, the party's top redistricting initiative.

This year, the wave could wash over Great Lakes states and push half a dozen chambers into the GOP column. Republicans need to pick up just three seats to wrest control of the Indiana House; they need only four to take over the lower chamber in Ohio; two seats are all it would take to win the Wisconsin Senate; and four seats are necessary to win back the Wisconsin House.

All this matters because, as both parties say, control of governor's mansions and state legislatures means control of the pen that draws district lines. Republicans are expected to do well in governor's races in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Pennsylvania -- all seats currently held by Democrats.

"If it touches a Great Lake, it's a good state for Republicans this year," Jankowski said.

Voters may be focused on the economy, but members of Congress can't seem to help themselves when a new wedge issue comes along. Republicans are seizing, once again, on illegal immigration in the hopes of ginning up an already excited base. But if they aren't careful, the long-term consequences of threatening a re-examination of birthright citizenship will far outweigh the short-term benefits.

So far, only Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and James Inhofe, R-Okla., have said they want to alter the 14th Amendment itself. Graham has decried birthright citizenship with language that evokes the harshest rhetoric Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., used during debates over immigration in 2005.

Birthright "to me cheapens American citizenship. That's not the way I would like it to be awarded. And you've got the other problem, where thousands of people are coming across the Arizona/Texas border for the express purpose of having a child in an American hospital so that child will become an American citizen, and they broke the law to get there," Graham said Tuesday on Fox News.

Other GOP leaders have been more circumspect. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., joined Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl in calling for hearings, but none of the three have explicitly said they oppose the 14th Amendment.

The idea is little more than a clever way to allow Republicans to talk to their base without actually promising any movement on the issue. "Birthright citizenship" is the newest catchphrase that gets illegal immigration opponents riled up, and Republicans can safely talk about the issue without fear of being forced to act.

What they should fear is the wrath of Hispanic voters. The largest minority population in the country, Hispanics are also the fastest-growing. Polls show 4 in 5 Hispanic voters favor birthright citizenship, while Republicans largely oppose the idea. And Hispanics are quickly turning on the GOP for the party's perceived anti-immigrant rhetoric.