I’m not sure what to think any more. Grassley and Judge had a debate last night. The night of the Presidential Debate. The most watched political event so far this century. They debate in Sioux City? At Morningside College.

For some reason, I missed the Sioux City throwdown (something about a presidential candidate threatening the entire voting process distracted me…,) but believe me, I would have loved to seen or heard Judge and Grassley today online somewhere. So far, I find nothing. Video, Transcripts or even a good newspaper story.

I know Grassley pulled out of IPTV debate but I had no idea that he could manage a ‘stealth debate’ so far off the radar. I would appreciate a link if someone has one.

Last night’s debate stirred up memories from my “past life.” In two of the most spirited exchanges, Hillary Clinton depicted Donald Trump as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s potential “puppet,” and Trump suggested the “corrupt media” and millions of people who don’t belong on the voter rolls could steal the election.

Large scale voter fraud has been more than a losing candidate’s fantasy in Russia. Observers have documented stuffed ballot boxes and other methods of undermining opposition candidates.

Dark political humor shone a light on some of those flaws in Russia’s early post-Soviet elections.

Donald Trump proved in his final debate against Hillary Clinton that he hasn’t run out of ways to demonstrate he is unfit to serve as president.

About an hour in, Chris Wallace asked the Republican nominee a simple question: will he accept the result of this election? Trump said, “I will look at it at the time,” then rattled off a bunch of bogus talking points. To his credit, Wallace pressed Trump on whether he would honor the tradition of a “peaceful transition of power,” with the loser conceding to the winner. “Are you saying you’re not prepared now to commit to that principle?”

Trump responded, “What I’m saying is that I will tell you at the time. I’ll keep you in suspense.”

Normal candidates may make gaffes. Unorthodox candidates may say things that are shunned in polite company. But before Trump, even the most offensive candidate didn’t refuse to accept the will of the voters. Associated Press reporters Julie Pace and Lisa Lerer conveyed the enormity of Trump’s break with tradition in the lede to their debate wrap-up: “Threatening to upend a fundamental pillar of American democracy […].”

Every GOP candidate and office-holder must repudiate Trump and affirm that they will respect the outcome on November 8. Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate spoke out on Monday, describing Trump’s warnings about “large scale voter fraud” as “not helpful” and “misinformation.” Governor Terry Branstad tried to have it both ways, expressing “confidence” in the election system but claiming Trump has been a victim of media bias, and that Iowa county auditors won’t be able to prevent all attempts at voter fraud.

That’s not good enough. By suggesting the result might be illegitimate, Trump could provoke political violence that is unprecedented following a U.S. election in our lifetimes.

Any comments about the third debate are welcome in this thread. For those who missed it, the full video is here, a full transcript is here, and the Los Angeles Times published transcripts of some noteworthy exchanges. Links to a few good fact checks: NPR, New York Times, ABC, Factcheck.org, and Politifact. I enclose below the clip with Trump’s rigged election claims and Clinton’s response to his “horrifying” remarks.

A few other moments stuck out in my mind:

• Clinton’s strong defense of a reproductive rights: “I will defend Roe v. Wade and I will defend women’s rights to make their own healthcare decisions.” Members of CNN’s focus group liked Clinton’s answer to that question better than any other from the Democrat.

• The exchange over immigration policy, in which Trump referred to some “bad hombres” while Clinton pointed out, “We have undocumented immigrants in America who are paying more federal income tax than a billionaire.”

• Clinton saying Russian President Vladimir Putin would “rather have a puppet as the president of the United States” and telling Trump, “You are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list, break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do.”

• Trump interrupting with “Such a nasty woman” while Clinton answered a question about Social Security and Medicare. Mental health experts say narcissists “project onto others qualities, traits, and behaviors they can’t—or won’t—accept in themselves.”

Wallace was a much better moderator than I anticipated from a Fox News personality, despite a few missteps.

The 48 hours before tonight’s town-hall debate were unlike anything seen before in a American politics: 42 Republican members of Congress or governors had announced since Friday that they could not support their party’s presidential nominee. Daniel Nichanian (known on Twitter as Taniel) listed the Donald Trump defectors in narrative form and on this spread sheet.

Hillary Clinton had already been gaining in nationwide and swing state polls since the first debate on September 26, improving her chances of winning the presidency to above 80 percent on FiveThirtyEight.com–before massive news coverage and social media chatter about Trump’s “grab them by the pussy” videotape. FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver speculated that “The Bottom Could Fall Out for Trump,” while Nate Cohn of the Upshot wondered whether the new scandal could send the whole Republican ticket “crashing down.”

Shortly before the debate, Trump staged a bizarre media stunt with three women who have accused former President Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct and one who was allegedly raped in 1975 by a man Hillary Rodham represented. Three of those women appeared on his behalf in the post-debate “spin room.”

Republicans are cheering Trump’s performance tonight, and on a superficial level, he clearly handled himself much better than in the first debate. After an excruciating early stretch defending his taped comments as merely “locker room talk” (in contrast to Bill Clinton’s alleged “actions”), Trump repeatedly hammered home his favorite talking points about Hillary Clinton: she’s been a “disaster,” her policies would be a “disaster,” she lies, she has bad judgment like Bernie Sanders said, she’s been there for 30 years but never done anything. He also gave wavering Republican voters plenty of reasons to hang in there with him: bashing Obamacare and the “terrible” Iran nuclear deal, proposing big tax cuts, promising to appoint Supreme Court justices in the mold of Antonin Scalia. Trump also finished the debate on a stronger note, managing a surprisingly gracious answer to the “say something nice about your opponent” question.

So arguably, the Republican nominee did what he needed to do tonight. And yet…

• Trump’s body language was angry and sometimes menacing. Many viewers commented that Trump was looming or hovering behind Clinton in a creepy, threatening, and stalker-like way.

• He denied that his “locker room talk” was tantamount to bragging about sexual assault. I have no doubt more women or previously unknown recordings will come out this week to undercut his denials.

• He vowed to put his political opponent in jail if he becomes president. Bob Schieffer of CBS News lamented, “this is what they do in banana republics.”

• He admitted that he had used a $916 million reported loss on his 1995 tax return to avoid paying personal federal income taxes in subsequent years.

• He made more than a dozen false or misleading statements (see also here).

• He acknowledged that he knows “nothing” about Russia and said he disagrees with his running mate on policy toward Syria. Incidentally, the Indianapolis Star reported on October 9 that unnamed sources close to Indiana Governor Mike Pence say he is “keeping his options open”–whatever that means. Pence is stuck with Trump through November 8, for better or worse.

Any comments about the presidential race are welcome in this thread. In CNN’s instant poll, 57 percent of respondents said Clinton won the debate, 34 percent said Trump did. YouGov’s respondents thought Clinton won the debate by a 47 percent to 42 percent but thought she looked “more Presidential” by a 57 percent to 31 percent.

The latest revelations about Iowa State University President Steven Leath’s use of university aircraft took up more of my brain space on Tuesday than the only debate between vice presidential nominees Tim Kaine and Mike Pence. Most voters make up their minds on the presidential candidates, not the running mates, and the debate wasn’t exactly gripping television. My mind wandered so much that I didn’t even notice when Pence made up a Russian proverb. (Later, I dragged out my Russian-English dictionary of idioms and can now confirm there is no traditional saying along the lines of “the Russian bear never dies, it just hibernates.”)

This thread is for any thoughts about the Kaine/Pence skirmish. Like many commentators, I felt that Pence performed better as a debater. He appeared calm, while Kaine was over-excited and too eager to interrupt with scripted talking points. However, Kaine struck me as more effective, because:

• He stopped Pence from getting into a groove that could be used for Trump campaign clips.

• He kept bringing up statements or actions by Donald Trump that Pence denied or was reluctant to defend. Meanwhile, the Republican absurdly claimed Hillary Clinton is running the “insult-driven campaign.”

• He cited Trump’s offensive comments about Mexicans and an Indiana-born federal judge so many times that Pence eventually complained in a memorable exchange, “Senator, you whipped out that Mexican thing again.”

• He repeatedly brought up Trump’s ties to Russia, while Pence took the surreal position of blaming President Barack Obama and Clinton for supposedly encouraging Russian aggression. (Earth to Pence: which presidential candidate has floated the idea of recognizing the annexation of Crimea and not defending our NATO allies?)

• He delivered a strong statement of personal Catholic faith while articulating the pro-choice position exceptionally well. I only wish moderator Elaine Quijano had asked Pence about the Indiana woman jailed for having a miscarriage, or the state law he signed requiring burial or cremation for all aborted, miscarried, or stillborn fetuses.

CNN’s instant poll showed that by a 48 percent to 42 percent margin, viewers thought Pence won the debate. But it’s not a plus for the Republican ticket when the takeaways are all about Pence running away from Trump, throwing him under the bus, or hanging him out to dry. CNBC’s John Harwood cited an unnamed Trump adviser as saying, “Pence won overall, but lost with Trump,” who “can’t stand to be upstaged.”

Adrian Carrasquillo posted a good summary of the vice presidential candidates’ back-and-forth on immigration during the debate.

Critics on the right and the left didn’t find much to admire in Quijano’s moderating skills.

For the first time in his six re-election campaigns, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley is on the air with a second commercial criticizing his Democratic challenger.

And in a move without precedent for a major-party candidate in Iowa, Grassley backed out of participating in a scheduled debate on Iowa Public Television, which would have been broadcast statewide.

Rescinding his acceptance of Iowa Public TV’s invitation looks like a risk-averse strategy. After several polls during the summer found Grassley 9 or 10 points ahead of former Lieutenant Governor Patty Judge, the last four public surveys showed double-digit leads for Grassley: 55 percent to 43 percent according to Quinnipiac, 56-39 according to Monmouth, 54-37 according to Loras College, and 50-37 according to RABA Research.

On the other hand, confident incumbents typically stay positive in their own tv ads, as Grassley has done in every previous re-election campaign.

Follow me after the the jump for the video and transcript of Grassley’s latest negative tv ad, along with statements from both campaigns and Iowa Public Television regarding the senator’s change of heart about the debate.

Who could have predicted that after his poor performance in Monday night’s debate, Donald Trump would spend most of the past week re-litigating his fat-shaming of former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, culminating in an overnight tweet-storm that Hillary Clinton described as “unhinged, even for Trump”?

Trump’s “aggressive bullying” is textbook behavior for a narcissist–so much that many survivors of domestic violence and emotional abuse found his behavior during the first debate triggering their traumatic memories. Even more disturbing: look how easily Trump fell for the “trap” Clinton set during the debate, validating the narrative that he “lacks the temperament and emotional stability to be president.” Foreign adversaries would have a field day manipulating this guy.

No wonder the Arizona Republic, which had never supported a Democrat for president since its creation in 1890, endorsed Clinton this week, saying Trump is “not conservative” and “not qualified.”

Today’s New York Times features tax documents showing Trump declared a $916 million loss in 1995, which “would have been large enough to wipe out more than $50 million a year in taxable income over 18 years.” The Trump campaign did not deny the authenticity of what they called “illegally obtained” documents but said in a statement,

Mr. Trump is a highly-skilled businessman who has a fiduciary responsibility to his business, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required. That being said, Mr. Trump has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes, sales and excise taxes, real estate taxes, city taxes, state taxes, employee taxes and federal taxes.”

Mr. Trump knows the tax code far better than anyone who has ever run for President and he is the only one that [sic] knows how to fix it.

The New York Times scoop doesn’t point to any illegal tax avoidance by Trump, but David Fahrenthold’s reporting for the Washington Post has uncovered several Trump Foundation practices that appear to violate federal and state law.

Clinton was already gaining ground in some polls before the first debate. As of September 30, she led Trump in all eleven swing-state polls that were in the field after the debate. None were from Iowa, where Trump has led the latest public surveys and is slightly favored, according to various election forecasters. I wonder whether Clinton will get a bounce here as well. I’m disappointed not to see a new Iowa poll by Selzer & Co this weekend. Usually during election years, the Des Moines Register commissions a Selzer poll to run in late September.

Speaking of public opinion, Charles Franklin of PollsandVotes.com gave me permission to post below graphs he created, comparing President Barack Obama’s second-term job approval rating with that of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Donald Trump’s unrehearsed speaking style has been an asset for most of this campaign. People want to watch a guy who could say any off-the-wall thing at any moment.

Perhaps for that reason, or perhaps because he has a short attention span, Trump spent a lot less time preparing for last night’s debate than Hillary Clinton did. His aides didn’t try to hide that fact. His spokesperson mocked Clinton’s intense prep sessions. Trump himself needled his opponent about it during the debate.

Not doing his homework turned out to be a big mistake.

A must-read review of what recent history tells us about the impact of presidential debates. You can find Dan Guild’s past writing for this site here and here. -promoted by desmoinesdem

Debates have arguably remade the race for the Presidency in 1976, 1980, 2000, 2004 and 2012. Even in races where arguably they are less important, they still are significant events. Having said all of this there are patterns that repeat themselves. Guideposts that can help evaluate how they will affect this race. Here they are:

1. Typically debates consolidate support within their Party for each candidate. Where this is unequal, the candidate who is behind tends to benefit.

2. In races where there is significant discontent, debates often help the candidate of the party that is on the outside.

3. Third Parties frequently decline afterwards

Libertarian presidential candidate and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson made his first Iowa campaign stop this year over the holiday weekend. His September 3 rally in Des Moines attracted hundreds of people, making it possibly the largest Libertarian event in Iowa history. You can watch his full speech at C-SPAN or Caffeinated Thoughts.

Johnson will qualify for the ballot in all 50 states and is consistently polling far better than the Green Party’s Jill Stein, the only other minor-party candidate routinely included in public opinion surveys. I continue to hear the Libertarian’s radio ads on various Des Moines-based stations and have seen pro-Johnson television commercials by the Purple PAC on some cable networks.

The four most recent Iowa polls measured Johnson’s support at 8 percent (Emerson College), 12 percent (Quinnipiac), 6 percent (Suffolk), and 12 percent (Marist). Polls have historically overstated support for third-party candidates. Nevertheless, if the competition between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump remains very close here, even a 2-3 percent showing for Johnson could determine who wins Iowa’s six electoral votes.

Though I wasn’t able to attend Saturday’s rally, listening to Johnson’s stump speech reinforced my view that he is on track to outperform all previous Libertarian presidential candidates in Iowa by a considerable margin.

Senator Chuck Grassley was in damage control mode yesterday after letting it slip earlier in the week that his supposedly principled stand on the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy could change if fellow Republicans see a political advantage in confirming Judge Merrick Garland.

His efforts to salvage some credibility did not succeed.

Who’s up for a thread about Hillary Clinton’s potential running mates? Jeff Zeleny and Dan Merica reported for CNN yesterday that Clinton has a short list of “fewer than five” candidates for vice president. Possible names include: U.S. Senator and former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack.

Citing unnamed “Democrats close to the process,” Zeleny and Merica say Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro and U.S. Representative Xavier Beccera of California “are no longer thought to be in serious contention.”

Today Public Policy Polling released results from six news polls of battleground states, conducted on behalf of Americans United for Change and the Constitutional Responsibility Project. The full results from the Iowa survey are here (pdf). Key findings: only 43 percent of respondents approve of Senator Chuck Grassley’s job performance, while 40 percent disapprove and the rest are unsure. If Iowa’s U.S. Senate election were held today, 46 percent of respondents would vote for Grassley, 39 percent for Democrat Patty Judge, and 14 percent would be undecided. In the presidential race, 41 percent of respondents support Hillary Clinton, 39 percent Donald Trump. After the jump I’ve enclosed highlights from Tom Jensen’s polling memo.

Another PPP poll taken earlier this month also found Grassley below 50 percent and only seven points ahead of Judge. No public poll released in 2010 ever found the senator so narrowly leading his Democratic challenger Roxanne Conlin. Republicans are likely to discount today’s survey, because it was commissioned by progressive advocacy groups. I am reserving judgment until I see other pollsters test these Iowa races. That said, the PPP questionnaire showed no sign of “priming” voters to evaluate Grassley or Trump on any particular issue. Respondents were asked about job approval and candidate preferences before answering questions related to the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy. By the way, 64 percent of respondents support Senate hearings for Judge Merrick Garland, and only 35 percent trust Donald Trump to pick a Supreme Court justice.

PPP surveyed 897 registered Iowa voters on June 22 and 23, producing a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percent.

UPDATE: Added below Judge’s letter to Grassley, asking for four televised debates and one radio debate.

Needing a victory in Indiana’s May 3 primary to have any hope of stopping Donald Trump from winning a majority of delegates before the Republican National Convention, Ted Cruz announced yesterday, “If I am nominated, I will run on a ticket with @carlyfiorina as my Vice President.”

Many politics-watchers laughed at the idea of Cruz picking his running mate a day after distant third-place finishes in five primaries put him 400 delegates behind Trump. But Cruz has nothing to lose from the alliance, and neither does Fiorina.

A record number of South Carolina Republicans turned out to vote today, a solid majority of whom were evangelicals, and a plurality went to Donald Trump despite (because of?) recent comments by the billionaire that defied all conventional wisdom about what conservatives can and can’t say. Major news organizations called Trump the winner early in the evening. Bitter rival Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are battling for second place, at least ten points behind Trump, despite having lots of things going their way over the past week. Trump gave Cruz an opening to highlight the businessman’s past “pro-choice” position and positive comments about Planned Parenthood. Rubio was endorsed by South Carolina’s popular Governor Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott, bolstering his case that he represents a bright future for the Republican Party.

Exit polls indicated that Cruz had strong appeal for the most conservative Republicans but was way behind the leaders among other ideological groups. In contrast, Trump won self-identified moderates (as he did in New Hampshire) and held his own among conservatives. It’s getting harder to see how anyone can stop Trump from winning the nomination.

While huge numbers of Republicans are drawn to the substance of Trump’s message–bigoted comments about immigrants, an ugly enchantment with torture, and outlandish promises about the economy–I am convinced that Trump’s speaking style is an equally important factor in his success. Cruz and Rubio deliver their stump speeches and handle themselves in interviews reasonably well, but when you listen to them, you can’t forget that they are politicians sticking to a script. Trump often sounds like he is talking off the top of his head. You know his comments weren’t drafted by a speechwriter or approved by campaign strategists.

After the jump I’ve enclosed two videos of Trump, dubbed in a Cockney and in a posh British accent. Besides making me laugh, the clips are a good example of Trump’s stream of consciousness style. His rhetoric is hateful and scary, but his thinking out loud is more appealing than the safe and boring way most candidates express themselves.

Tonight’s results are the end of the road for Jeb Bush, who suspended his campaign after finishing a distant fourth (possibly fifth), in the single digits. Bush’s presidential bid will be studied for many years as proof that money and insider support can’t overcome a candidate’s fundamental weaknesses.

John Kasich will hope to inherit the more moderate voters who had favored Bush, but it’s hard to see any path for the Ohio governor.

Ben Carson told his supporters that he will continue his campaign, despite an apparent sixth-place finish. His persistence will disappoint Cruz, who would be more likely than anyone else in the field to pick up the values voters who favor Carson. But after the Cruz campaign spread false rumors about Carson dropping out on Iowa caucus night, I’m not surprised Carson isn’t eager to step aside.

Any comments about the Republican presidential race are welcome in this thread.

P.S.- The winner of the South Carolina primary has gone on to win the GOP nomination in every cycle since 1980, except for 2012 (when Newt Gingrich carried the state).

Who watched the six remaining Republican presidential candidates debate in Greenville, South Carolina last night? It was such a free-for-all that the Washington Post’s Alexandra Petri had trouble satirizing some of the exchanges: “nothing I can say is actually more ridiculous than what the candidates in fact said.”

The New York Times posted the full transcript here. I’ve enclosed some excerpts below.

What struck me most about the debate was how Donald Trump kept playing to the nationwide audience, ignoring the crowd that booed many of his comments. In contrast, Ted Cruz seemed to do better with the house, but I’m not convinced he came across as well on television. Jeb Bush continues to gain confidence on the debate stage, but where he can start winning states remains a mystery. Marco Rubio seemed relieved to have most of the attention on others and neither reverted to “robot mode” nor lost his cool in a heated exchange with Cruz over immigration policy. Carson and Kasich failed to make any case for their candidacies. The Ohio governor’s whining about negative campaigning won’t win any votes, nor will his defense of expanding Medicaid–though I agree with him on that issue. Carson’s only memorable comment was a Joseph Stalin quote that turned out to be fake.

As has so often occurred since last summer, pundits quickly concluded that Trump “went too far” and would be hurt by some of his attacks, especially denigrating President George W. Bush’s leadership. I’m not so sure. A sizable number of Republicans may share Trump’s views: Bush didn’t “keep us safe” on 9/11, the Iraq War was a disaster, and the Bush administration lied about weapons of mass destruction. The only comment likely to do significant harm to Trump with the GOP base is his admission that Planned Parenthood does “wonderful things” for women outside of its abortion services.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Expanded from a short take for CNN

The seventh Republican presidential debate and the first without Donald Trump produced more substantive talk about issues and some strong performances by candidates near the bottom of the pack. For political junkies who missed the debate for whatever reason, the New York Times posted the full transcript here. My thoughts are after the jump.

Expanded from a short take for CNN

Hillary Clinton was solid and Bernie Sanders turned in his best debate performance yet in Charleston last night. Can anyone deny that Democratic National Committee leaders should have allowed more debates and scheduled them on nights when more voters would watch? The sometimes sharp exchanges between the front-runners probably didn’t change many Democratic minds, but Clinton and Sanders both delivered plenty of lines that should reinforce the inclinations of voters who are supporting them or leaning in that direction.

I suspect the following moments will particularly resonate with Iowa caucus-goers, based on my conversations with hundreds of Iowa Democrats and on how I’ve seen multiple crowds react to the candidates.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

The foolishness of the Democratic National Committee’s policy on debates was on display again last night, as three knowledgeable, articulate presidential candidates met in a televised debate bound to draw relatively few viewers because of its timing. I decided to try something different and watch this debate without taking notes or live-tweeting, to experience the event more like a normal person would (to the extent that a person who spends a Saturday night during the holiday season watching a presidential debate could be described as normal). My impressions are after the jump, along with good links on the data breach that allowed Bernie Sanders staffers to access proprietary information about Hillary Clinton’s campaign from the voter file.

Although it didn’t get the biggest play online or on television, the most important political news of the week was arguably Congress approving legislation to fund the federal government through next September. Bleeding Heartland covered the Iowa voting and reaction here. Reading Representative Steve King’s lament about House leaders not including his nine “defunding” amendments in the omnibus budget bill reminded me of one of my all-time favorite King press releases. After House conservatives failed to get language into Homeland Security legislation on defunding President Barack Obama’s immigration-related executive orders, King’s official statement featured an image of interlocking fishing nets to illustrate his analysis: “The fish trap that Republicans have been swimming further and further into finally trapped them today. The White House is having a fish fry.”

The New York Times had to publish major corrections to another blockbuster scoop this week. Matt Apuzzo and Michael Schmidt, the two main authors of the inaccurate story about a San Bernardino shooter, also wrote the almost completely wrong New York Times front-pager from July about Hillary Clinton’s e-mails. The Times’ public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote a strong column about the latest screw-up, a “failure of sufficient skepticism at every level of the reporting and editing process.” Absurdly, the newspaper’s editors tried to blame the unnamed government sources for not understanding social media. Journalists need to confirm key facts before publication, because their anonymous sources may be leading them astray, either accidentally or by design.

One of the best long reads I’ve seen lately was this harrowing piece by Ken Armstrong and T. Christian Miller for The Marshall Project about a serial rapist and one of his victims, whom police wrongly charged with filing a false rape report.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal suspended his presidential campaign today, acknowledging that “this is not my time.” I enclose below the full text of his “thank you” message.

Jindal had visited Iowa 27 times, spending all or part of 74 days here since the beginning of 2013. Republican audiences generally received him favorably, despite his disastrous record as governor. His riff on “hyphenated Americans” was a crowd-pleaser, as was his assertion that “Immigration without assimilation is an invasion.” But in a crowded field with at least half a dozen candidates targeting the social conservative niche, Jindal didn’t have a lot of money to raise his profile through direct mail or paid advertising. Nor did he have a path to the main debate stage, since television networks have made the cut using national polls rather than surveys of Iowa Republicans.

Jindal had been scheduled to visit Iowa again this week, including an appearance at the FAMiLY Leader’s Presidential Family Forum. I suspect Representative Steve King’s endorsement of Senator Ted Cruz yesterday factored into the governor’s decision not to waste his time on that event. Although the FAMiLY Leader has showcased Jindal’s illegal efforts to defund Planned Parenthood in Louisiana, it appears to be a foregone conclusion that Bob Vander Plaats will jump on the Cruz bandwagon.

Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread. Douglas Burns interviewed Jindal for his latest “Political Mercury” column in Cityview. It’s a good read and a reminder of why some had speculated Jindal might become this cycle’s social conservative peaking at just the right time before the Iowa caucuses.

UPDATE: Added below some reaction and commentary to Jindal dropping out.

The second Democratic presidential debate kicks off in a few minutes at Drake University’s Sheslow Auditorium. Why Democratic National Committee leaders scheduled this event on a Saturday night is beyond me; but then, their whole approach to debates this year has been idiotic. I wonder how many politically-engaged Iowans who would normally tune in for a debate will watch the Iowa Hawkeyes football game against Minnesota tonight.

I’m not a fan of curtain-raisers such as lists of “things to watch for” or mistakes candidates might make. I will update this post later with thoughts on each contender’s performance.

Any comments about tonight’s debate or the Democratic presidential race generally are welcome in this thread. I enclose below the latest commercials Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have been running in Iowa. The new 30-second Sanders spot mostly uses images and phrases pulled from his strong introductory commercial. Clinton’s ad-maker this year is putting out much better material than I remember from her 2007 Iowa caucus campaign. To my knowledge, Martin O’Malley has not aired any television commercials in Iowa yet, but the Generation Forward super-PAC has run at least one spot promoting his candidacy, which Bleeding Heartland posted here.

UPDATE: My first take on the debate is after the jump.

One of the three CNBC panelists for the Republican presidential debate in Colorado made clear earlier in the day that he wasn’t looking for dry policy discussions.

“We’ve had fireworks up to this point. I think the fireworks will just be as big if not bigger,” [Carl] Quintanilla said in an interview. […]

“[W]e hopefully won’t need to go in there with a blow torch. The fires are going to get stoked and it is the moderators job to make sure those fires don’t die,” [Carl] Quintanilla said. “[T]he race is getting serious. This is about the economy, which is our wheel house, and our hope is this gives the candidates a different set of pitches at which to swing and I think that will, it will mark a turning point in the race one way or another.”

The biggest home runs on stage last night came when candidates swung at the debate moderators. For once, Republican whining about the “mainstream media” was mostly justified.

Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders as the first choice of likely Iowa Democratic caucus-goers by 48 percent to 41 percent, with all other candidates far behind, according to a new poll by Selzer & Co. for the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics. Jennifer Jacobs reported the main findings in today’s Des Moines Register. Since the poll was in the field before Vice President Joe Biden ruled out running for president again, the Register reallocated Biden’s supporters to their named second-choice candidate. Selzer’s previous Iowa poll showed Clinton ahead of Sanders by 37 percent to 30 percent with Biden in the field and by 43 percent to 35 percent without Biden as an option.

After the jump I’ve posted excerpts from Jacobs’ report, focusing on weak points for Clinton and Sanders.

Just 2 percent of respondents named Martin O’Malley as their first choice in the Register’s latest poll, behind “not sure” at 4 percent and “uncommitted” at 3 percent. Bleeding Heartland has a post in progress with my hypothesis on why O’Malley is getting no traction in Iowa, despite doing all the right things in terms of organizing and retail politics. Every time I’ve seen the former Maryland governor campaign here this year, audiences have responded favorably to his stump speech. I usually hear good feedback from other Democrats who have attended his events too, but it’s not translating into enough people signing supporter cards. Unfortunately for O’Malley, both Clinton and Sanders performed very well in last week’s debate, which drew record viewership for a debate featuring Democratic presidential candidates.

Jim Webb made the right choice to drop out of the race; the Register’s new poll showed him tied with Lincoln Chafee at 1 percent. Yesterday, Webb tweeted that it’s time for this country to “fix” the criminal justice system. I hope he will become heavily engaged in criminal justice reform efforts at the federal and state levels, instead of pouring his energy into an independent presidential bid.

The most shocking finding in the the Register’s latest poll: Iowa Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement is “good for Iowa.” Among likely Democratic caucus-goers, 39 percent said the TPP deal is good for Iowa, 27 percent said bad for Iowa, and 34 percent were unsure. Among likely Republican caucus-goers, just 27 percent said TPP was good for Iowa, 30 percent said bad for Iowa, and 42 percent were unsure. For decades, the Iowa business community and in particular representatives of Big Ag have spun “free trade” agreements as good for this state, so I would have expected much stronger support for TPP among Republicans.

UPDATE: Quinnipiac released a new Iowa poll on October 23 showing Clinton leading Sanders by 51 percent to 40 percent, with O’Malley at 4 percent. I enclosed below excerpts from the polling memo. Last month’s Quinnipiac poll of likely Democratic caucus-goers showed Sanders at 41 percent and Clinton at 40 percent.

In a few moments, five Democratic presidential candidates will take the stage in Las Vegas for their first televised debate. I wish the Democratic National Committee hadn’t stood in the way of scheduling more debates, starting this summer. Listening to DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz try to defend her stance in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer today, all I could think was, thank heaven for the “Big Blue Wall.” We aren’t going to win elections on Wasserman-Schultz’s strategic skills, that’s for sure.

All of the candidates are under pressure tonight. Hillary Clinton wants to change the dominant media narrative, which has been relentlessly negative about her candidacy for months. Bernie Sanders has his first substantial block of tv time to talk about his policies. In recent months, network news coverage has devoted far more air time to Joe Biden’s possible presidential bid than to Sanders’ actual campaign, which is drawing record crowds.

As the loudest voice for more debates, who has received relatively little media attention so far, Martin O’Malley needs a strong showing tonight, especially since the other debates scheduled before the Iowa caucuses are all happening on weekends, when viewership will likely be low. Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee will also want to break through to a national audience, but they are not building real campaign organizations the way O’Malley has done. Twitter user dcg1114, who posted this guest piece at Bleeding Heartland last month, noted today that the first debate of the 1984 election cycle gave Gary Hart his “first real sign of life.” In particular, that debate helped Hart improve his standing for the Iowa caucuses.

Incidentally, former Iowan and Democratic activist Tommi Makila wrote a blistering commentary contrasting O’Malley’s criticism of the DNC’s “rigged” process with the “rigged” Democratic primaries Makila has observed since moving to Maryland years ago.

Please share any relevant comments in this thread. I’ll update this post later with first thoughts on the debate. UPDATE: My impressions are below.

After the jump I’ve posted videos of the latest commercials Clinton has been running, as well as the debut tv ad the Generation Forward PAC put on the air in Iowa supporting O’Malley.  

Eleven GOP candidates are just starting the “varsity” debate on CNN now. I will update this post later with some clips and thoughts. This thread is for any comments about today’s debates or the presidential race in general.

I only caught part of the first debate, featuring four candidates who didn’t make the cut for prime time. But from what I saw of Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal, George Pataki, and Rick Santorum, I think former Libertarian candidate for Iowa secretary of state Jake Porter said it best: “It is like the comments section decided to run for President and is now debating on live TV.”

10 PM UPDATE: My immediate reaction is that Carly Fiorina had an excellent debate, except for her closing statement, which sounded too memorized and rehearsed. Some of what she said was false (for instance, her comments about the Planned Parenthood videos), but that will go over well with the GOP base viewers. She did exceptionally well at modulating her voice, so that she sounded forceful and knowledgeable but also calm and steady. Everyone expected her to have a good comeback against Donald Trump, and she did, but it wasn’t just that answer. She was able to articulate a credible-sounding response on most of the topics that came up. She also produced the “most-tweeted moments” during the debate.

Trump made little sense, as usual. He started out as a caricature of himself, bragging about how many billions of dollars he has made. He claimed to have fought hard against going to war in Iraq–will be interesting to see whether there is any evidence to back that up. I don’t remember Trump speaking out against the war. I was surprised to hear Trump argue that vaccines can cause autism if kids get too many close together. I would guess that won’t hurt him.

Ben Carson gained the most from the first debate, and I don’t think he lost any ground tonight. That’s bad news for Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz, who are fighting hard for evangelical support but didn’t seem to make their mark in this debate.

Chris Christie had more strong moments tonight than in last month’s Fox debate. I think he will gain more than John Kasich, who is essentially fighting for the same Republican moderate voters.

Rand Paul didn’t make a big impression during most of the debate, but he did well during the discussion on drug policy, especially calling out Jeb Bush for wanting to lock up poor people for using the same drugs Jeb used as a young man.

Bush had the second-most speaking time after Trump, and he landed some decent punches, but overall, I question whether he gained many supporters. He didn’t do a terrible job, though it was laughable when he suggested putting Margaret Thatcher on the ten-dollar bill.

Scott Walker had the least speaking time, according to NPR, and didn’t create any memorable moment. This event won’t reverse his falling poll numbers.

I saw some people saying on social media that Marco Rubio had a good night. The only comment that stood out for me was his saying his grandfather taught him about the American Dream in Spanish. Otherwise, I am still baffled by what so many people see in Rubio.

It was a huge mistake for the Democratic National Committee not to schedule any debates between the first two Republican clashes. The contrast in the level of discourse would have been tremendous for the Democratic candidates.  

CNN responded quickly yesterday to an appeal from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the advocacy group Define American to “modernize and improve the accuracy of its editorial guidelines and discontinue the use of the word ‘illegal’ when referring to undocumented immigrants.” From a statement released on September 14, two days before CNN broadcasts the second Republican presidential debate:

“NAHJ is concerned with CNN, CBS News and other news organizations use of pejorative terms to describe the estimated 11.7 million undocumented people living in the United States,” said Mekahlo Medina, NAHJ President. “NAHJ is particularly troubled with the growing trend of the news media to use the word ‘illegals’ as a noun, shorthand for ‘illegal aliens.’ Using the word in this way is grammatically incorrect and crosses the line by criminalizing the person, not the action they are purported to have committed. NAHJ calls on the media to never use ‘illegals’ or ‘illegal immigrants’ in headlines.”

The statement also noted that the term “illegal” to describe immigrants is “factually flawed. Being in the U.S. without proper documents is a civil offense, not a criminal one.” Griselda Nevarez reported for NBC News,

On Monday night, Medina wrote that CNN had informed the journalist group that it will re-issue guidelines to their editorial departments regarding the term “illegals” as well as “illegal immigrants.”

“The word illegal alone should never be used as a standalone noun to refer to individuals with documented or undocumented immigration status,” said Geraldine Morida, Vice President of Diversity for CNN, to NAHJ.

Define American and the NAHJ are now turning their attention to the New York Times, saying a review had found hundreds of examples of the newspaper using the term “illegal immigrant” in the past year. Unlike the Associated Press guidelines for covering immigration-related stories, the New York Times does not ban the use of “illegal immigrant” but “encourages reporters and editors to ‘consider alternatives when appropriate to explain the specific circumstances of the person in question, or to focus on actions.’”

I noticed that Define American and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists praise the example set by AP, but also suggest that journalists use the terms “undocumented immigrant” or “undocumented American”–which are no-nos, according to the AP Stylebook.

Pejorative language in news coverage of immigrants who entered or remain in the U.S. without legal permission is a pet peeve for me, and I applaud efforts to raise awareness of the problem. I encourage Bleeding Heartland readers to watch for and alert me to any Iowa media reports referring to “illegals” outside of a direct quotation from a newsmaker.

Four Iowa Democratic county chairs made cogent arguments today for expanding the number of presidential debates before caucuses and primaries begin. In an accompanying statement, 27 local Democratic leaders in Iowa joined the call for more debates, starting sooner this year.

As usual, the Democratic National Committee failed to offer a compelling defense for their unprecedented and ridiculous policy limiting candidates to six officially sanctioned debates, starting in mid-October.  

Three days have passed since presidential candidate Martin O’Malley blasted the Democratic National Committee’s “cynical move to delay and limit our own Party debates” during a speech to members and leaders at the DNC’s summer meeting. I enclose below the full text of O’Malley’s remarks, as prepared. The first section presses his case against the “unprecedented,” “rigged process” for allowing only six presidential candidate debates. O’Malley noted that just four debates are scheduled before the early caucuses and primaries, and “the New Hampshire debate is cynically wedged into the high point of the holiday shopping season so as few people watch it as possible.” For those who haven’t had a chance to see O’Malley campaign yet, the other sections of his remarks are adapted from his standard stump speech.

I have yet to hear any good argument for limiting presidential debates. You won’t find any response to O’Malley on the DNC’s official website. While the governor’s comments about debates were the big news from the summer meeting, dominating most media coverage of the event, the DNC’s Twitter feed picked this bland quote to highlight: “‘Whether or not we make the American Dream true again for all American families is up to us.’ -@MartinOMalley #dems15”

At the Iowa State Fair, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz couldn’t be distracted from her laundry list of talking points to respond to hecklers demanding more debates. Nor could she be bothered to engage with O’Malley’s substantive case last Friday. CNN reported that Wasserman Schultz “spent most of the speech looking down at a table just feet from the governor,” rarely clapping. Asked about O’Malley’s claim that it might be illegal for the national party to prohibit candidates from debating in non-sanctioned forums, the DNC leader told CNN, “I am quite confident that the process we have established is directly compliant with our rules and completely legal, whatever that means.” But why is she so set on those rules?

Conventional wisdom says the DNC intervened in the process to put a thumb on the scale for Hillary Clinton. Although long-shot candidates arguably have more to gain from debates than the front-runner, I reject the premise that the DNC’s asinine policy helps Clinton. She and all Democrats would benefit from a large national audience watching five (or perhaps six) candidates intelligently discuss issues that matter to people’s lives. More important, Democratic voters should have more than a handful of chances to see our candidates side by side.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Saturday was the final day for politicians to speak at the Des Moines Register’s Iowa State Fair “soapbox.” You can view all of this year’s videos here. Heckling was the running theme from yesterday’s appearances. O.Kay Henderson summarized the incidents at Radio Iowa.

I have zero sympathy for Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, whom protesters repeatedly interrupted to demand more Democratic presidential debates. Wasserman-Schultz had nothing new to say on the soapbox–certainly nothing as newsworthy as the DNC’s asinine policy limiting the presidential candidates to only six sanctioned debates, with the threat of exclusion if they participate in any unsanctioned ones. The DNC’s position serves no public interest whatsoever. It only creates the appearance of the party establishment putting a thumb on the scale for current front-runner Hillary Clinton. All Democrats, including Clinton, could benefit from starting the debates before October. In sharp contrast to the Donald Trump freak show dominating the other side’s discourse, Democrats have five (perhaps soon to be six) candidates who can talk intelligently about policy.

A group of protesters from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals provided some drama by storming the soapbox while New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was taking questions. Tactics like those make PETA one of the most ineffective advocacy organizations I’ve seen. Christie deserves criticism for vetoing a New Jersey ban on gestation crates for sows, which passed with massive bipartisan support. But PETA only managed to generate sympathy for the governor. He came up with a great line after law enforcement pulled the animal rights activists off-stage:

“I have to tell you the truth when something like that happens and I’m here in Iowa, man, I feel right at home. It feels like I’m back in Jersey for a couple of minutes, so thank you, Iowa, for doing that,” Christie said to cheers from the crowd.

On the other hand, a little heckling that doesn’t go over the top can throw a candidate off his or her game. The best example was the Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement member who got Mitt Romney to say, “Corporations are people, my friend,” at the 2011 Iowa State Fair. Democrats across the country eagerly made use of Romney’s gaffe. Within a matter of weeks, though, Iowa CCI members’ heckling of Senator Chuck Grassley at a town-hall in Carroll drew criticism from Iowa Democratic Party leaders for going too far.

Politically engaged people tend to have strong feelings about what kinds of protests are appropriate. Pat Rynard used unusually harsh language to condemn the activists who disrupted Wasserman-Schultz’s speech. John Deeth has long expressed contempt for Iowa CCI’s “counterproductive” tactics. Though I’ve never heckled a politician at a public event, my take on what I viewed as the Iowa Democratic Party’s “hippie-punching” of Iowa CCI generated one of the most heated comment threads in Bleeding Heartland’s eight-year history.

When, if ever, do you think heckling is a justified and/or effective political tactic?

The Republican presidential candidates debated for the first time today in Cleveland. First, the seven contenders who didn’t make the cut for the prime-time event participated in a “happy hour” debate (some commentators called it the “junior varsity” or “kids’ table” debate). I missed the beginning of that event, but from what I saw, Carly Fiorina and Bobby Jindal stood out. Jindal’s closing statement seemed the strongest to me (if I try to imagine how a conservative would receive the messages). Rick Santorum and Rick Perry had some good moments. Lindsey Graham seemed to give rehearsed answers that weren’t always relevant to the question. George Pataki was memorable only for being the sole pro-choice candidate in a field of seventeen. Jim Gilmore failed to provide any good reason for him to be there.

The Fox News panel seemed determined to go after Donald Trump. He didn’t have a convincing story for why he has changed his mind on issues like abortion rights and single-payer health care. His answer to the question about his corporate bankruptcies struck me as extremely weak and weaselly. On the plus side, he deflected a question about his disgusting sexist remarks by beating his chest about political correctness. He also got the most speaking time–twice as much as Rand Paul, who had the least time to speak.

Paul scored a hit by calling attention to the fact that Trump won’t rule out running for president as an independent. Paul also slammed Chris Christie for giving President Barack Obama “a big hug.” Although Christie handled that exchange well, I am skeptical he can overcome his high negatives with GOP base voters. I felt Paul got the better of Christie during their heated exchange over warrantless wiretapping and the Fourth Amendment. UPDATE: As of Friday morning, a “Vine” of Paul rolling his eyes while Christie talked had more than 4 million loops.

John Kasich staked out a moderate-conservative niche that the pundits loved. I’m not convinced he can become a real contender for the nomination, but he certainly has a story to tell.

I don’t understand the hype about Marco Rubio. He doesn’t impress me at all.

Jeb Bush didn’t speak fluidly or forcefully. I read that he didn’t do “live” debate prep with his staff. If that’s true, it was a mistake. Scott Walker was also underwhelming, and I expected more of a splash from Ted Cruz, though maybe they had some better moments in the parts I missed. In contrast, Mike Huckabee is an excellent communicator. Ben Carson didn’t seem to get questions that allowed him to distinguish himself. His tax reform proposal is based on what the Bible says about tithing.

Factcheck.org exposed some false statements from the “happy hour” and the prime time debate.

Any comments about the debates or the Republican presidential race are welcome in this thread.

UPDATE: Trump’s further insults to Megyn Kelly of Fox News got him uninvited from this weekend’s Red State forum, prompting a typically outrageous response from the Trump campaign. Meanwhile, sexist tweets about Kelly have exploded since the debate. I believe women watching the debate would have felt deeply alienated by how many in the audience approved of Trump’s answer to the question about his sexism.  

Governor Terry Branstad will appeal to television networks and the Republican National Committee leadership to allow more GOP presidential candidates to participate in debates, Radio Iowa’s reported today. It’s not every day I agree with Iowa’s governor, especially on a matter of political fairness, but Branstad got this one right.  

Democrats in Iowa and nationally have been worried all year that a more competitive GOP presidential campaign will boost Republican organizing and enthusiasm going into the 2016 general election.

Yet this week, while the Iowa GOP announced plans to help long-shot presidential candidates be heard on equal footing, the Democratic National Committee sharply limited opportunities for voters to compare the whole presidential field side by side.  

Iowa’s state auditor is a low-profile position and a difficult office to campaign for, even without a marquee U.S. Senate race sucking up all the oxygen. But there are huge contrasts between Republican incumbent Mary Mosiman, appointed to the office last year, and her Democratic challenger Jonathan Neiderbach.

Last week, Robert Rees hosted a mini-debate of the state auditor candidates during his “Morning Drive” program on the Des Moines-based talk radio station 98.3 The Torch. You can listen to the 15-minute exchange here or look it up on the list of Morning Drive podcasts for October 21. The big takeaway is that Mosiman wants to maintain the status quo in State Auditor’s office operations, despite mismanagement including secret payouts to state employees, which several years of audits failed to uncover. Neiderbach wants to improve the audits so that they are meeting the tasks set out in Iowa Code.

Follow me after the jump for highlights from last week’s debate and two more reasons to support Neiderbach for state auditor.

In a few minutes, six-term Republican incumbent Steve King will debate his Democratic challenger Jim Mowrer in Storm Lake. Iowa Public Television’s “Iowa Press” is hosting the debate, and C-SPAN is also televising. King hedged for weeks about whether he would participate and refused to accept the Sioux City Journal’s invitation, so this will be the only time the two candidates appear on the same stage. King debated his 2012 opponent Christie Vilsack, but before that he had never agreed to debate any of his Congressional challengers.

I’m liveblogging after the jump, where I have also enclosed the latest commercial King’s campaign is running.

UPDATE: You can watch the debate video on the “Iowa Press” page.

In a few minutes, Bruce Braley and Joni Ernst will hold their third and final debate. KCAU in Sioux City and ABC-5 in Des Moines are televising the debate locally, and C-SPAN is showing it nationwide. I’ll be liveblogging after the jump.

Before the first debate, I was concerned that Braley might lose his cool, but he did well both that night as well as in last Saturday’s debate.

UPDATE: C-SPAN has the debate video archived here, for those who missed it.

Governor Terry Branstad and State Senator Jack Hatch debate for the third and final time tonight, starting at 7:00 pm. The candidates are meeting in Sioux City’s Orpheum Theater. KTIV will live-stream here. I’ll be liveblogging after the jump and will also update later with reaction to the debate. C-SPAN does not appear to be televising.

Any comments about the governor’s race are welcome in this thread. It’s been a discouraging couple of months for Democrats, as Hatch had to pull his television advertising in late September for lack of funds. Meanwhile, Branstad’s campaign has been advertising statewide almost continuously since early June. For a lot of this year, polling indicated that there was an opening for a challenger to make a case against Branstad. The governor’s re-elect numbers were below 50 percent in many polls, despite decent approval ratings–indicating that quite a few Iowans who liked Branstad questioned whether he deserved another term. I liked Hatch’s commercial that hammered on the theme of Branstad being around too long, but he wasn’t able to follow up with other spots to raise his profile and highlight the incumbent’s failures. Most recent polls have shown Branstad ahead of Hatch by 15 to 20 points. I wish money were not so influential in our campaigns and elections.  

Although 13 independent or minor-party candidates running for federal or statewide office qualified for the Iowa ballot this year, only Democratic and Republican candidates for governor, U.S. Senate, and the third Congressional district have been invited to televised debates. After each of these events, I’ve seen comments on social media complaining that third-party candidates were denied the opportunity to speak directly to voters.

Libertarian nominee for secretary of state Jake Porter announced yesterday that he “is filing an open records request on Iowa Public Television (IPTV) regarding an episode of Iowa Press that was recorded on Friday, October 3 […] The open records request will look into possible collusion and violations of Iowa law to keep him out of the debate.” I’ve posted the full press release from Porter after the jump.

According to Porter, Iowa Public Television claimed that edition of “Iowa Press” was not a debate. The program in question was presented as a “job interview” for Democrat Brad Anderson and Republican Paul Pate. It sure looked like a debate to me. The format was virtually identical to programs Iowa Public Television billed as debates between Dave Loebsack and Mariannette Miller-Meeks in IA-02, and between Staci Appel and David Young in IA-03 (excluding an independent and a Libertarian candidate who are also running for Congress in that district). The main difference was that the Congressional debates were one-hour special programs, whereas the “Iowa Press” show featuring Anderson and Pate was the usual 30 minutes long, aired at the usual time. So was last month’s show featuring Attorney General Tom Miller and his Republican challenger Adam Gregg.

I sympathize with Porter’s frustration, because unlike some third-party candidates, he has been running for a long time and has staked out substantive and relevant policy positions. He was included in the 2010 “Iowa Press” program alongside Democratic Secretary of State Michael Mauro and his GOP challenger Matt Schultz.

I doubt Porter will get far in any legal action against Iowa Public Television. A 1998 U.S. Supreme Court ruling held that “public television stations have the right to choose which political candidates appear in the debates they broadcast.” They can exclude candidates they deem to be on the fringe, with little campaign infrastructure or public support. I’ve enclosed below more details on that case. Click here to download a scholarly analysis of that ruling.

I suspect Iowa Public Television would have invited Porter to participate in this year’s “job interview” if not for Spencer Highland, the unknown candidate representing the unknown “New Independent Party Iowa” who also qualified to run for secretary of state. Offering four candidates equal time on a half-hour show would be unwieldy, especially since Highland has not given the media any reason to take him seriously as a candidate for this office. Limiting the show to the two major-party candidates may have seemed easier to justify than inviting Anderson, Pate, and Porter but not Highland.

Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread.

Whose idea was it to hold so many Iowa candidate debates on Saturday nights this year? At 7 pm this evening, Bruce Braley and Joni Ernst face off in the second of three scheduled debates. (C-SPAN will televise nationwide, and KWQC TV will televise in the Quad Cities area.) Immediately after that, KWQC will broadcast the second and final debate between Representative Dave Loebsack and Mariannette Miller-Meeks in the second Congressional district race. (That debate will be taped earlier in the day.)

I won’t be able to watch either showdown live because of a family wedding, but I will catch up later with some links and recap, as well as highlights from the new Selzer poll for the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome. A bunch of links related to the IA-Sen race are after the jump. I still see the debate as equally risky for Braley and Ernst, for different reasons.

UPDATE: The new Des Moines Register/Bloomberg poll by Selzer & Co has Braley and Ernst nearly tied. Ernst is ahead by a statistically insignificant 47 percent to 46 percent. I do not believe Ernst lost a lot of ground during the last two weeks. I believe she was never as far ahead as the last Selzer poll indicated. Other polls in the field around the same time showed a much closer race. In particular, I do not believe that in two weeks, Braley went from a 25-point deficit among men to a 16-point deficit now.

SECOND UPDATE: The full debate video is on the KWQC website.

THIRD UPDATE: I wish every undecided voter in Iowa had seen this debate. Having finally watched the full video myself, I understand why shills for Ernst kept reaching for their security blankets on Saturday night. Talk about a disastrous performance. She repeatedly fell back on rote talking points that didn’t answer the question. On several occasions it was apparent that she did not understand the policy implications of her own words. I particularly loved how she insisted that the bipartisan Senate-passed immigration reform bill was “amnesty,” even though Braley had already explained why it was different from amnesty. She talked about securing the border, even though Braley had already explained that we would have 20,000 more border control agents if that immigration reform bill had become law. Toward the end of that exchange, though, I was pleasantly surprised to hear Ernst say she would not vote to repeal President Barack Obama’s DACA program (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). A lot of conservatives were presumably surprised too, but not in a pleasant way.

At the end of this post I’ve linked to several pieces summarizing the debate highlights.

Both major-party candidates for Iowa secretary of state started running paid advertising within the past two days. After the jump I’ve enclosed the video and transcript of Democratic nominee Brad Anderson’s first television commercial, as well as my transcript of Republican Paul Pate’s first radio ad. Both candidates call for making it “easy to vote” but “hard to cheat” in elections. CORRECTION: Anderson’s ad was released online on October 9 but started running on television stations across Iowa on October 13.

I’ve also enclosed below the voter ID discussion from the debate Pate and Anderson held on Iowa Public Television last weekend. Pate has embraced outgoing Secretary of State Matt Schultz’s pet project, in the absence of any evidence that voter impersonation is a real problem in Iowa (or elsewhere). Anderson explains his plan to strengthen election integrity without changing current state law on voter ID.

Two other candidates are running for secretary of state this year. Libertarian Jake Porter is making his second attempt at the job. In 2010, he received about 3 percent of the statewide vote. To my knowledge, he has not run any paid advertising yet this year. When Iowa Public Television excluded him from the recent “Iowa Press” debate, Porter said he will consider a lawsuit and fight to reduce Iowa Public Television’s taxpayer funding. The fourth candidate on the ballot is the little-known Spencer Highland of the “New Independent Party Iowa.”

Closer to election day, Bleeding Heartland will post a comprehensive review of the this campaign. Public Policy Polling’s Iowa survey from late September found Pate slightly ahead of Anderson by 36 percent to 33 percent, with Porter and Highland pulling 3 percent each.

Four weeks before election day, six-term Representative Steve King has finally started running television commercials in Iowa’s fourth Congressional district. His Democratic challenger has been on the air for two months already, thanks to strong fundraising over the past year.

King’s introductory spot has the cinematic look and feel of his 2012 campaign commercials, and echoes that year’s strategy of making a virtue out of his “outspoken” and “straight-talking” nature. The video and transcript are after the jump.

I’ve also enclosed below Jim Mowrer’s recent comparative ad, which has King threatening to back out of the candidates’ only scheduled debate later this month.

So far, neither the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee nor the National Republican Congressional Committee is advertising in IA-04, which suggests to me that both sides see King ahead. However, Mowrer’s campaign has called the race a “dead heat,” pointing to a survey by DFM Research, commissioned by a railway workers’ labor union. That poll of 450 IA-04 residents identified 375 likely voters, among whom 46 percent support King and 43 percent Mowrer, with 11 percent undecided. I wish there were more independent polling of Iowa’s Congressional races.

Any comments about the IA-04 race are welcome in this thread. For what it’s worth, I thought the video of King and his wife reading “mean tweets” about him was kind of funny. Here’s the thing, though: nasty comments about King on Twitter don’t harm anyone, other than perhaps hurting his feelings. In contrast, King’s mean-spirited policy stands hurt lots of people, particularly Americans on food assistance, those earning the minimum wage, and DREAMers who are denied opportunities because King and his allies have blocked a House vote on immigration reform.  

UPDATE: Jennifer Jacobs reports that Donald Trump will headline a fundraiser for King in a West Des Moines gated community on October 18. It will be Trump’s first appearance in Iowa since the August 2013 Family Leadership Summit.

SECOND UPDATE: The DCCC has cancelled air time it had reserved in Sioux City for the two weeks leading up to November 4.