 | | Thursday, January 14, 2010 |  | |  | | MORNING FIX
BY CHRIS CILLIZZA | | | | washingtonpost.com/thefix
Democratic groups outspending GOP 2-1 in Mass. Senate special election
1. Senate Democrats and affiliated outside groups are outspending their Republican counterparts by an almost two-to-one margin on television in the final week of the tight-as-a-tubesock special election between state Sen. Scott Brown (R) and state Attorney General Martha Coakley (D). The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is now committed to nearly $1 million in television ads in support of Coakley while the Service Employees International Union ($529,000) and Citizens for Strength and Security ($278,000), a labor- backed 527 group, are also spending heavily. The National Republican Senatorial Committee is not on television in the state although the Chamber of Commerce ($443,000), American Future Fund ($375,000) and Americans for Responsible Health Care ($204,000) are combining to spend just over $1 million for Brown. The spending by outside groups affiliated with Democrats is further evidence that the party is in triage mode, trying to fix the problems of the Coakley campaign through an major influx of cash and commercials. Coakley is doing herself no favors. Her most recent eyebrow raising comment came in a conversation with Boston Globe; when asked whether she wasn't doing enough to win the race, Coakley shot back: "As opposed to standing outside Fenway Park? In the cold? Shaking hands? This is a special election." Um, OK.
2. A new National Journal/Allstate/Heartland Monitor national poll shows that just 39 percent of the sample would definitely or probably vote for President Obama in 2012 while 50 percent definitely or probably would choose someone else. Inside the question, the intensity differential between the two parties' bases is abundantly clear with 23 percent saying they would definitely reelect Obama while 37 percent said they would definitely be voting for someone else. The survey, which is set to be released this morning, also showed a creeping pessimism in the country. Fifty five percent said the country was off on the wrong track while just 34 percent said it was headed in the right direction, a decline from the 38 percent right direction/50 wrong track numbers in the same poll in late September. While Obama's reelection numbers shouldn't be terribly concerning to the White House -- the president has two plus years to turn things around -- the poll should be more worrisome to any Democrat on the ballot in November. Not only is pessimism about the country's direction growing under Democratic control of the levers of power in Washington but Obama, once an unalloyed good for his party's candidates represents more of a mixed bag today; in the poll, 47 percent approved of the job the president is doing while 45 percent disapproved.
3. A new 73-page report penned by liberal commentator Ari Melber for the techPresident Web site offers a detailed examination of Organizing for America, the grassroots arm of the Democratic National Committee. OFA, created after the 2008 campaign in an attempt to transfer the grassroots energy of the campaign into a tool to push the president's policy agenda, has largely operated in a low-key manner with its successes (and failures) cloaked within the broader DNC operation. Melber's report, which is the result of dozens of interviews with congressional staff, former Obama campaign staff and activists on the OFA list, provided decidedly mixed reviews for the organization. While noting that OFA "successfully mobilized and sustained a new corps of super activists" between in its first year, Melber concludes that the actual legislative impact of this activity was minimal. "Congressional aides do not think OFA is changing Members' votes," he writes. "Aides in both parties say OFA has mobilized constituent lobbying but do not say that OFA is a major or powerful force on Capitol Hill." That perceived lack of influence in effecting legislation may well be the result, as Melber's report reveals, of OFA spending most of its time in its first year of existence on "supporting and thanking allies than targeting holdouts in Congress." That, to our mind, is the central dilemma of OFA that remains unresolved. Can a party committee -- or an organization that lives within a party committee -- do the sort of pressuring of its own members in the way that a Moveon.org on the left or a Club for Growth on the right can? And, if not, how can the organization hope to influence members on legislation given that pressure applied hard and often is the only demonstrated way of changing or making up minds? ALSO READ: OFA deputy director Jeremy Bird's defense of the group's work.
4. New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D), who had stayed quiet during the building buzz -- not all of it good -- around the potential primary candidacy of former Tennessee representative Harold Ford Jr., broke that silence late Wednesday night with a statement aimed at making clear she is ready for the fight. "If Harold Ford wants to move from Tennessee and run in New York, he is welcome to do so," said Gillibrand. BAM! And, just in case you missed the "he's not from here" message, Gillibrand later added of Ford: "His record of being anti-choice, anti-marriage equality, and now opposed to President Obama's health care legislation may be right for Tennessee but I just don't believe New Yorkers will stand for a senator that says they will oppose President Obama." POW! Gillibrand's statement seems the clearest indication yet that she now believes Ford is going to get into the primary fight -- although Ford himself continues to play coy about his plans. Ford's action over the last few days -- particularly sitting for an extended, and not particularly on message, interview with the New York Times -- suggest that he is an all but announced candidate. While Ford clearly sees a path to the nomination, most Democratic observers dismiss his likely bid as a vanity project akin to his last-minute challenge of Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) for the speakership earlier this decade. ALSO READ: Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin's Politico piece looking at the high life that Ford lives in New York City.
5. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) gets the profile treatment from Timesman' Adam Nagourney and comes across as, at turns, exhausted, resilient, brutally honest about his colleagues and starry-eyed about his hometown of Searchlight. The best bits: 1) "Harry has the toughest job in Washington," Obama told Nagourney. "He's done as good a job as anybody could have done. He just grinds it out." 2) Reid seems to suggest the former Senate Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), who lost his reelection bid in 2004, had gone Washington. "Senator Daschle went to dinner almost every night with someone," Reid said. "I go to dinner never, with anyone, during the week." 3) Reid on Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe (R): "It was a waste of time dealing with her because she had no intentions of ever working anything out." (Reid better hope that Martha Coakley wins in Massachusetts or he might have to eat those words as Senate Democrats need to get 60 votes to bring the bill to the floor.) 4) Writes Nagourney: "The health care negotiations demonstrated Reid's command of the Senate and his sway among his fellow Democrats -- which contrasts with his perhaps equally remarkable inability to master other elements of the contemporary politician's game." Put simply: Reid is the master of the inside game in an election cycle where outsiders are the in thing.
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