Obama Losing Millennials

From Harvard's Institute of Politics:

The Chamber of Commerce Gears Up

At The Wall Street Journal, Gerald Seib writes:

The opening for action, business leaders believe, has been shown by polling Mr. [Doug] Schoen has done for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in recent weeks. At a time when the favorability rating of Congress lurks in the low teens, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's favorable rating is 71%—and 85% of voters have a favorable view of their local Chamber of Commerce, in Mr. Schoen's polling.

The polling also pointed toward one potentially significant mission for business groups: early voting. In 32 states, it's now possible to cast ballots before Election Day rolls around, and Democrats have jumped well ahead of Republicans in getting their voters to take advantage.
Mr. Schoen surveyed 2,000 early voters and found that 50% said a Democratic campaign helped facilitate their early vote, while just 35% said a GOP campaign had done so. Chamber officials now see an opening to use their financial and organizational network to drive early voting toward GOP candidates they prefer.

That finding is helping the Chamber plot its role in next year's congressional elections. On Tuesday it will launch a TV ad on behalf of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who faces a tea-party primary challenger in his home state of Kentucky. "Our whole strategy this cycle is we're going to go local," says Scott Reed, a veteran Republican operative who advises the Chamber. "We're going to run it like a sheriff's campaign."

The model was created in last month's runoff in Alabama's first congressional district to determine the GOP nominee to run for a vacant seat. It pitted Bradley Byrne, a lawyer and former state senator, against tea-party favorite Dean Young. Business groups backed Mr. Byrne with money and organization, says William Canary, president of the Business Council of Alabama, and helped drive turnout higher than in the original primary. That sets up an almost-certain victory for Mr. Byrne—and his business backers—in the general election in two weeks.

Fracking, Jerry Brown, and the Top Two Primary

Environmentalists are heckling California Governor Jerry Brown for not taking a tougher stance against fracking.

The protests will have no effect.  Brown -- who has championed environmental causes since the 1970s -- would never lose many votes over the issue.  If anything, the protests reinforce his image as a pragmatist.

What is more, the top-two primary eliminates a source of environmentalist leverage.  Under the old system, a Green Party candidate could siphon votes from the Democrats in the general election.  In a close race, this spoiler effect might even deny victory to a Democratic candidate -- as Ralph Nader did to Al Gore in Florida during the 2000 presidential election.   But now, only the top two candidates -- most likely Brown and an underdog Republican -- will be on the ballot in November.

Obamacare, Boratcare

At The Washington Post, Sarah Cliff reports on improvments in the Obamacare website:

Taking this all together, Medicare spokeswoman Julie Bataille told reporters that as of Dec. 1, "we're more in the zone of 80 percent of users being able to [sign up]."

As Ezra Klein and NPR's Julie Rovnerhave pointed out, it's difficult to verify this type of metric independently. "The zone of 80 percent" could stretch downward toward half of users having a successful experience, or upward, with nearly all shoppers getting through the enrollment process.

As noted earlier, the 80 percent standard is reminiscent of Borat's version of the Kazakhstan national anthem:  "Filtration system a marvel to behold. It remove 80 percent of human solid waste."

The Anecdote Factory

At Slate, John Dickerson explains that the Obamacare rollout will continue to provide Republicans with ammunition:

The first set of challenges will come from the delays the president used to lower the political pressure. On Wednesday the administration announced a delay in small businesses’ access to the online marketplace, which means a year of complaints from small business owners about having to manage the cumbersome signup through other methods. (Though businesses can still sign up through an agent or broker, which is how many of them do it now.) The employer mandate will also come up again. In July, the Obama administration delayed the requirement that businesses with more than 50 employees cover their employees. Next fall Democrats may face the same kinds of political pressure that forced the delay this year, including stories about how companies are cutting employees’ hours to avoid covering their health care.

One of the problems with the back-end issues insurance companies are facing is the problem of "orphan records"—people who think they've signed up on the web site but the information never actually made it to the insurance company. Those people are going to assume they're covered on Jan. 1, 2014. That's a possible anecdote factory of people who need care, were covered before, thought they'd switched to the new program, and are now are shocked and panicked because they're not. Another potential headache that needs to be managed is the president's promise that people can keep their doctor if they would like to. That won't be the case for many people as insurers restrict the choice of doctors to keep costs down. And then there's the fact that the IRS will be handling the enforcement of the law—a highly unpopular institution the Republicans have exploited for political gain before.

A GOP Wave in 2014?

At The Washington Post, Reid Wilson suggests that 2014 may be starting to look like 2010 -- a GOP wave election.  The generic ballot is moving in the GOP's direction and the president's favorability rating has turned sour.

Historically, Democrats have held an advantage of at least a few points on the generic ballot, even when election results are a wash: Democrats held a six-point edge just before Election Day 2000 and picked up a grand total of one seat. Democrats led Republicans by one point on the generic ballot just before the 2010 elections, when Republicans rode to a sweeping victory.

And there’s no sign that Obama will become more popular. Presidents who see their approval ratings dip so dramatically in the second term rarely see their numbers improve. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon’s approval ratings never recovered after the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal (Nixon, of course, didn’t stick around to see just how far his ratings could fall). George W. Bush’s approval rating sank in the spring of 2005, and continued falling through the end of his term. Obama’s numbers are starting to resemble Bush’s trend lines.
...
Reaction to the bungled rollout of the health care law is overwhelmingly to blame. Already, the fallout has been evident: Public surveys in Virginia showed Gov.-elect Terry McAuliffe (D) leading Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) by wide margins in the wake of the government shutdown. But Cuccinelli made the final weeks of the race into a referendum on ObamaCare, and McAuliffe’s support began to erode. On Election Day, McAuliffe won by just 2.5 points, a narrower margin than even his internal polls showed. Another week, and Cuccinelli might be governor-elect.
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But back in 2010, 40 percent told Post pollsters they viewed Republicans in a favorable light, 10 points lower than those who said they saw Democrats favorably. Republicans feigned a national platform, akin to the Contract With America, but their pitch to voters was more about what they were against — namely, Democrats and ObamaCare — than what they were for. Voters have backed the unpopular party with few ideas over the slightly-more-popular party with unpopular ideas before.

At National Journal, Josh Kraushaar adds detail:

Race-by-race polling conducted over the last month has painted a grim picture of the difficult environment Senate Democrats are facing next year. In Louisiana, a new state survey showed Landrieu's approval rating is now underwater; she tallied only 41 percent of the vote against her GOP opposition. In Arkansas, where advertising on the health care law began early, Sen. Mark Pryor's approval sank to 33 percent, a drop of 18 points since last year. A new Quinnipiac survey showed Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado, who looked like a lock for reelection last month, in a dead heat against little-known GOP opponents. Even a Democratic automated poll from Public Policy Polling showed Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina running neck-and-neck against Republican opposition, with her job disapproval spiking over the last two months. These are the types of numbers that wave elections are made of.

...
"You want to prevent your race from being about Obamacare. If you enable your race to be about Obamacare, you're making a mistake," said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, who's working for Landrieu. "You need to explain what you're trying to fix, and you better be trying to fix something. If there's nothing you want to fix, there's something wrong with you. At this point, it's hard to defend the benefits, but you can say we're not going back to the evils of the old system."

Obamacare Turkey

Organizing for Action seriously wants people to talk Obamacare at their Thanksgiving tables.  Seriously.

At National Review Online, Jim Geraghty writes:

T here’s a whole website for it: “Health Care for the Holidays.” (Somehow they managed to meet the deadline for getting that website to work.)

Apparently liberals have gotten the message. MSNBC host Chris Hayes cheerfullytweeted Monday, “Devoting our whole show on Wednesday to how to talk about politics, news with conservative family members. Should be fun!”

If you need the advice of an MSNBC host in order to respectfully and pleasantly talk with family members, you’ve got real problems.

Here’s a crazy idea: Treat your family members as people you love and appreciate — or at least tolerate — instead of targets for political conversion. You only get one or two families in this life — the one you’re born into, and the one you marry into. Maybe if you’re lucky, you become “like a son” or “like a sister” to another. There’s a lot to talk about in this world beyond politics, and chances are you’re not going to persuade disagreeing relatives, anyway.

A healthy society does not feature a leader who sends messages to his followers, asking them to make a pledge to have a conversation with their families about his agenda at Thanksgiving. This is cult-like.

CNN reports:

The Obama administration is promising a much smoother ride on HealthCare.gov come Saturday, but insurers worry that behind-the-scenes glitches will keep consumers from enrolling in the health insurance plans they want.

Insurance industry insiders tell CNN that when some people sign up for coverage through the website, their personal data is not being properly transmitted to the insurance companies of their choosing.

Insurers are still getting inaccurate and duplicative data. And that's even if it makes it to them at all.

So how do insurers know they aren't getting the information?

Customers who signed up for coverage are calling the companies with questions and finding they aren't in their systems. And insurers have been testing the site, submitting John Doe records and not seeing them come out the other end, an industry official said.

"There's no part of us that thinks all of this will be fixed in three days from now," the industry official said, referring to the administration's self-imposed Saturday deadline to make the site work for a "vast majority" of users.