RUN LIKE YOU'RE 10 POINTS DOWN

Everyone feels good at the news from the polls that the congressional generic ballot continues to drift slowly in the Democrats’ direction.

But before Democrats get all comfortable with the idea that they will buck the mid-term odds and keep the House and expand the Senate, they’d better start realizing that my old boss Willie Brown was right when he said the best way to win is to act as if you’re ten points down, until five minutes after the polls close.

Run. All-out. All-in. All the way.

Recent polls are showing some tightening in key Senate races in Arizona and Pennsylvania and Georgia that have looked promising for Democrats. It’s nothing major; these are very small shifts, and since many of them are within the margin of error, they are as likely to be noise as actual trends.

But there’s the small but important fact that almost of these small moves are in the direction of the Republicans suggests it’s something more than noise.

The simplest explanation is that a variety of factors allowed Democrats to dominate the airwaves through the late summer.

While Democrats were raising record sums, Republicans had fundraising challenges. Most of the primary races were among Republicans; they hadn’t settled yet on nominees. There were feuds between McConnell’s PAC and other PACs; their various committees and mega-donors were feuding among themselves.

That’s changed now. And it seems to be showing up in the polls.

There is also the fact that Democrats have the strategy of campaigning early and “locking in” voters, while Republicans wait for the final stretch, when they figure the average voter is finally paying attention.

These indications in the polls show the Republicans are right. Reports are that Republicans are now spending millions where Democrats are spending hundreds of thousands, if that. Winnable Democratic candidates are being outspent.

Republicans have shifted away from inflation, economy and COVID to immigration and crime.

An Axios report last night says crime has become an effective cudgel for Republicans in numerous races around the country. I have no doubt that’s true, even if the actual facts are that crime levels are still nowhere near where they were ten years ago But physical security and fear will always be among the very most motivation political levers.

Right now, this is the “fog of war” phase of the campaign. Everyone interprets the different data in light of their own preconceptions.

I will make this single point: A lot of campaigning is not just being more popular on the issues but keeping the issues your side is most popular on at the forefront of the news.

Here we come back to the politics of abortion. The Dobbs backlash has been enormously beneficial to Democrats’ electoral fortunes. And most people aren’t going to forget about it because other things are in the headlines.

But it won’t stay at the center of the campaign narrative and dialogue on its own.

These fine gradations of connection can make all the difference in the world. A pledge and the headlines and drama that surround such a pledge is what will make a difference. Look at the special elections in upstate New York and Alaska. Democrats who campaigned on their support of choice, their opposition to government intervention in personal medical decicisions won. And they won because they took that position.

It’s the Democrats’ biggest cudgel and for some reason it remains oddly and frustratingly on the shelf.

The House Republicans are announcing today their 2022 version of the 1994 Contract With America. The news reports may have them back-pedaling on support for ending abortion, but their actual words betray them.

One of the most notable items in the plan reads: “Protect the lives of unborn children and their mothers.”

The phrase “unborn children” is shorthand for the concept of “fetal personhood,” the anti-abortion position that fetuses are just small children who have rights under the 14th Amendment.

Fetal personhood laws would push past the abortion bans that are now in place in many red states, and reclassify the procedure as murder. In his Dobbs opintion, Justice Samuel Alito spread hints of support for the theory.

It used to occupy the fringes, but has since trickled into the mainstream of the anti-abortion movement as the best way to outlaw abortion nationwide.

The over-educated, under-intelligent, otherwise-unemployable trust fund babies playing Boy and Girl Reporter in the D.C. Press Corpse may not have the brains to spot that, but every single abortion-opposing GOP voter hears that dog whistle.

All the news over Lindsay Graham’s proposed outlawing of abortion-on-demand after 15 weeks was that Republicans were running away from him on the issue.

That’s well and good, but it just so happens that yesterday 90 Republicans co-sponsored a bill in the House to implement Graham’s ban.

Look at what they’re doing, not what they’re saying.

The Democratic political expert class (an oxymoron if there ever was one nowadays - the Chardonnay-swilling Volvo drivers of the current Democratic political class wouldn’t qualify as interns responsible for keeping the coffee pot full and hot if they were applying to work for Jess Unruh or Willie Brown - two Democrats who knew how to win elections) needs to be running an ad on maximum repeat in every single one of those 90 congressional districts, announcing the support for criminalizing abortion by that Republican member of congress.

Forget “supporting winnable races.” You have to be ignorant enough to think Rahm Emanuel is a smart person to believe that idea is any good. Do it in every single one of those campaigns, and then be happy over the “unexpected victory” you score here and there on November 8. Every one of those unexpected victories is a victory for defeating the Thousand Year QMAGA.

“Run like you’re ten points down till five minutes after the polls close.” We won races with that, back when California wasn’t a “blue state.”

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