The Plum Line

* A remarkable scoop from ABC News's Michael Mosk: A Kentucky millionaire who's handling cash for one of Karl Rove's groups, and has helped launch an ad onslaught attacking Jack Conway, owns a nursing home that's being prosecuted by Conway.

The story is a must-read that gets to the heart of what's wrong with the secret cash flooding our elections.

* Sharron Angle's closing ad: "They promised change. Now it's our turn."

Does "our" refer to the GOP or the Tea Party? Must be the latter, because the GOP ran Congress up until 2006.

* More polling that no one will care about: The new New York Times survey finds overwhelming public support for full donor disclosure.

* Anne Kornblut on how the White House is strategically employing Obama only in races where he can help close the enthusiasm gap.

* Read Matthew Yglesias on why Dems were right to pass health reform: "The point of winning elections is to pass laws."

* Robert Gibbs reiterates Obama's commitment to filibuster reform, and says it's operative even if the GOP takes Congress.

* A scorching editorial in a Kentucky paper about the stomping.

* Larry Sabato's final prediction: Republicans will net 55 House seats. This blog won't make any predictions, but will happily bring you those of everyone else.

* The conservative effort to dismantle campaign finance protections has been a very, very, very long war.

* Betsy Reed sheds light on yet another under the radar ad campaign against health reform that -- natch -- is packed with distortions.

* And Michele Bachmann has her own Tea Party base and doesn't need any GOP leadership: She may not even support Rep. John Boehner for Speaker.

What else is going on?

If Republicans take back the House next week, as expected, a war will erupt among Democrats over the wisdom of passing health care reform and over whether it helped doom the Dem majority. People like Doug Schoen, who got lots of attention by predicting health care would destroy Dems, will crow and chortle about the foolishness of liberal overreach.

Today Josh Kraushaar weighed in with a long piece arguing persuasively that Dems who voted for the bill are in the most trouble, while those who voted against it are breathing somewhat easier. There's also new polling out today showing a majority supports repeal in the 92 most competitive House districts.

There's no denying that health reform has proven more of a liability -- perhaps far more of one -- for Dems than many of us predicted. That said, this is a topic that deserves far more nuance than typical standard-issue "you're either a winner or a loser" Beltway analysis.

Here are some other arguments that should also be in the mix. First, as Ezra Klein notes, it's impossible to know whether Dems who voted for health reform would be in as much trouble if the economy were in better shape. Second, the House map isn't even that clear cut: As ABC News has noted, many Dems who voted against reform are also facing difficult races.

Third, it's impossible to know whether Dems would be in better shape now if they'd abruptly shelved reform at the last minute -- as people like Schoen were urging them to do -- after making it a campaign promise and spending months trying to get it done.

Recall that one key factor that turned the public against reform was disgust with the process at a time when some of the initiative's individual provisions remained popular. Who's to say that this disgust wouldn't have remained, had Dems wasted months on legislative wrangling, only to succumb to catastrophic process failure and walk away with nothing?

Republicans would have continued to attack Dems anyway, arguing that they heroically foiled Dems' scheme to jam an unpopular bill down the throats of the American people, bravely rescuing them from creeping socialism. Would things really be any different today for these individual Dems if that had happened? I don't know. But it's fair to suggest the answer may be: Not so much.

The Kentucky Democratic Party is putting the stomping incident on the air -- in Rand Paul's backyard.

Kentucky Dems will air a brutal new ad with violent footage of the stomping of MoveOn's Lauren Valle, but the spot will only air after 10 p.m. in order to avoid scaring kids, the party confirms to me:

Matt Erwin, a spokesperson for the Kentucky Dems, tells me that the party has decided to air the spot, but after an internal discussion they decided against running it during the day, because "it's scary."

Erwin confirms that the party has purchased airtime to run the spot in Lexington, where the melee took place, and in a puckish twist, in Bowling Green, where Rand Paul lives and practices medicine.

In other news about the stomp, conservatives are circulating new video of the incident that seems to show the victim, Lauren Valle, approaching Paul's car and trying to stick a sign in his window before she was wrestled to the ground and stomped on.

Is this is at odds with her claim to Keith Olbermann (and to me) that she was blockaded and targeted by Paul supporters before doing anything to provoke an attack? By my reading, it's unclear. You can't tell from the new video that the supporters hadn't identified her before she approached the car. And it's also unclear whether her action was all that provocative or threatening to begin with, though I suppose it could have been perceived that way.

And even if you alllow that she rushed Paul's car, the wrestling and stomping is obviously vicious and violent and an absurdly disproportionate response in any case.

UPDATE, 2:47 p.m.: In reference to the ad's claim about a "Rand Paul STOMP," I should have pointed out that Paul has clearly and unequivocally condemned the incident.

One other really interesting moment in Obama's chat with liberal bloggers yesterday. He was asked directly the question that many of us have asked: Is there any point at which he is willing to give up on the idea that bipartisan cooperation is a realistic goal?

His answer is worth quoting in full:

I'm a pretty stubborn guy when it comes to, on the one hand, trying to get cooperation. I don't give up just because I didn't get cooperation on this issue; I'll try the next issue. If the Republicans don't agree with me on fiscal policy, maybe they'll agree with me on infrastructure. If they don't agree with me on infrastructure, I'll try to see if they agree with me on education.

So I'm just going to keep on trying to see where they want to move the country forward.

In that sense, there's not a breaking point for me. There are some core principles that I think are important for not just me to stick with but for the country to stick with. So if the Republicans say we need to cut our investments in education, at a time when we know that our success as a nation is largely going to depend on how well trained our workforce is, I'm going to say no. And there are going to be areas where, after working very hard, we just can't find compromise and I'm going to be standing my ground, then essentially we debate it before the American people.

But I don't go into the next two years assuming that there's just going to be gridlock. We're going to keep on working to make sure that we can get as much done as possible because folks are hurting out there. What they're looking for is help on jobs, help on keeping their homes, help on sending their kids to college. And if I can find ways for us to work with Republicans to advance those issues, then that's going to be my priority.

If Republicans win back one or both houses of Congress, the one silver lining could be that Obama may be able to use GOP opposition to his policies as a foil more effectively than in the past. Republicans could previously oppose Obama's agenda with abandon, and when Dems shrieked about GOP obstructionism, Republicans could rightly respond: "Stop whining, you guys run the place." The Dem Congressional majorities, in a sense, acted as a bit of a buffer, making it easier for Republicans to oppose legislation without bearing the brunt of the blame for Congressional dysfunction.

But if Republicans are in the majority in at least one chamber, it sets the stage for more direct confrontations between them and the President, in which Obama will try to use the bully pulpit to pin the blame for gridlock squarely on the GOP. The new New York Times poll finds that 72 percent think Obama will work Republicans to get things done, versus only 46 percent who think that about the GOP, meaning Obama may head into next year with a bit of the moral high ground. Judging by the above quotes, he intends to milk it for all he can.

In a post yesterday about Mitch McConnell's stated desire to ensure that Obama is a "one term president," I noted that there's no evidence to speak of that the Dem strategy of pillorying GOP partisanship and obstructionism has paid any dividends.

The internals of today's New York Times poll seem to confirm this. They suggest that the public just isn't prepared to believe that Republicans are any more partisan or obstructionist than Dems are. From the poll:

In general, when Republicans in Congress oppose legislation, is it mostly because of an honest disagreement about policy or is it mostly for political reasons?

Honest disagreement 16

Political reasons 75

The same question was asked about Democrats:

In general, when Democrats in Congress oppose legislation, is it mostly because of an honest disagreement about policy or is it mostly for political reasons?

Honest disagreement 17

Political reasons 72

No meaningful difference. This, even though Dems have been relentlessly hammering Republicans as obstructionist, nakedly political and fully committed to nothing more than destroying the Obama presidency for over a year now. This suggests that voters quite properly view both political parties as political -- in other words, people expect them to try to do what it takes to win. Efforts to claim the moral high ground on who's truly bipartisan and who isn't come across as so much Beltway white noise.

The poll does contain one bright spot for Dems on this question. It finds that far more people think Obama will work with Republicans to get things done (72 percent) than think Republicans will work with Obama and Dems (46 percent). In other words, Obama is perceived to have risen above Congress in terms of who is acting in good faith and who isn't. This could give Obama leverage in the coming skirmishes with the likely GOP House majority. and hints at a possible route for Obama to reelection.

But on the question of who's operating in good faith and who isn't, Congressional Dems have been swallowed up in the public's negative views of Congress. In the context of this election, at least, it's hard to see what the Dems' strategy of yelling about GOP obstructionism has actually produced for them.

Adam Serwer is a staff writer for The American Prospect, where he writes his own blog.

TV Columnist Alessandra Stanley pans Jon Stewart's handling of his interview with President Barack Obama last night, asking whether as a "political satirist" he "loses credibility when hobnobbing with a sitting president":

Mr. Stewart, after all, built his popularity and stature by wittily skewering politicians and journalists of all stripes, without fear, favor or deference. And despite all the adulation and numbingly solemn accolades (New York magazine recently anointed the past 10 years "The Jon Stewart Decade" ) Mr. Stewart has managed to maintain his mock anchorman's seditious mien. Though he can sometimes turn righteous on other people's shows (as he did on "Crossfire" in 2004), on his own Mr. Stewart is playful, self-mocking and merciless.

Well, no, not really. Stewart built his audience by being funny, but his humor reflects very clear liberal values and priorities. He's not afraid of criticizing Democrats or liberals, but he's never pretended to hold himself to the conventions of traditional journalist objectivity, quite the opposite.

Stewart is not a journalist -- alongside Stephen Colbert, he's the nation's most popular media critic. The reason people watch Stewart, other than the fact that he's funny, is because he lays bare the mores of political journalism that actively interfere with journalists telling their audiences the truth in a straightforward manner; he lampoons the way journalists are manipulated out of a commitment to the truth by habit, circumstance and influence. He does this through aggregation, not reportage, and as a result he's not bound the same way a media reporter might be by having to adhere to journalistic conventions and maintain existing relationships with sources -- he can be as harsh and mocking as possible. He informs his audience, he is a talented interviewer, but he's not a journalist, and there are times, such as his interview with John Yoo, where that distinction is made clear.

To the extent he irritates journalists, it's both because the criticisms Stewart makes ring true, but also because some consumers of media can't actually tell the difference between reporting and aggregation. That's all well and good, but holding him to a standard he isn't actually trying to meet so he can be seen as falling short isn't very honest. It's actually sort of passive aggressive -- the ultimate point is to remind the audience that Stewart is not a journalist by pretending he is or is trying to be.

The sad fact is that the reason people make that mistake is the same reason Stewart is popular -- his interview with Obama was more adversarial and critical than just about any exchange you would have seen between someone at Fox News and a member of the Bush administration, even towards the end, when Bush's popularity had hit rock bottom. Even so, the president's appearance was meant for his base -- those disillusioned liberals who flocked to Stewart during the Bush years for confirmation that they were not alone in believing something was very wrong in America.

That base finds itself, after the euphoria of victory in 2008, wondering what went wrong. Stewart, at the expense of discussing issues like the war in Afghanistan, the ongoing existence of Gitmo or the expanding national security state, was focused on this question, with the president making his case for why their present disillusionment is misplaced.

Stanley's critique, though, reveals a bit too much. "It was actually more disconcerting," she writes, "to watch Mr. Stewart apply the standard liberal critique to Mr. Obama than it was to see the president of the United States bandy words with the host of a late night comedy show." I'm not sure how often she watches the show, but "applying liberal criticism" to current affairs is...what the show does.

Still, not taking the substantive concerns of liberals seriously is another one of those rules political journalists aren't supposed to break, which is why so many of them would rather get their news from a comedian.

* Women drifting to the GOP? Given the huge amount of effort Dems have put into wooing the female vote, the most amazing number in today's New York Times poll has to be that women support Republicans by four points -- a sharp reversal from last month, when Dems led by seven.

The larger trend is also worth noting: Republicans have wiped out Dems' 2008 gains among other key demographics, too: Roman Catholics, the less affluent, and independents, who now prefer the GOP by 15 points.

* It's the economy, you bleedin' idiot: Some other numbers from the Times poll: Only 26 percent say their vote will be about putting Republicans in, and only 27 percent say it will be about kicking Dems out. Meanwhile, a far larger group, 45 percent, say it will be about something else.

Also: Only 24 percent say their vote will be for Obama, and only 29 percent say it will be against him. Far more, 42 percent, say he's "not a factor."

* Obama asks bloggers to keep holding him -- and mainstream media -- accountable: The President tells the libs:

We benefit from the constructive feedback and criticism that we get, and it helps hold us accountable. But you guys obviously have also done a great job holding the mainstream press accountable, and that's really important to us.

Get ready for a lot of knowing snickers about this one.

* Obama also endorsed filibuster reform: He also told the bloggers:

I will say that as just an observer of our political process that if we do not fix how the filibuster is used in the Senate, then it is going to be very difficult for us over the long term to compete in a very fast moving global environment.

* There's no denying health reform is liability for Dems: The Wall Street Journal finds that in the 92 most competitive House districts, 55 percent support the candidate who want repeal. That $100 million in ads against reform since passage had nothing whatsoever to do with this, of course.

* But it was still the right thing to do: When the inevitable recriminations begin about whether passing health reform helped destroy the Dem majority, let's all keep in mind this graph brought to you by Ezra Klein.

* Labor abandons Blue Dog Dems: While it's true that labor's threats to primary moderates who opposed health reform never materialized, the other side of the story is that labor has largely abandoned them, leaving them defenseless against the ad onslaught of the right.

* Senate GOP is determined to learn from history: Paul Krugman says the Mitch McConnell "one term president" quote means Senate GOPers realize they erred in not trying to quickly destroy Bill Clinton after 1994
and are determined not to make that mistake again.

* DNC: We're winning, at least for now: The DNC puts out a memo making a detailed case that the GOP "wave" isn't materializing in 11 key early vote states, where more Dems have voted than Republicans.

* Sobering statistic of the day: By CNN's estimate, the number of Dem-held House seats in play is more than ten times higher than the number of GOP-held ones in play.

* She's a rock star!!! It's going to be fun to watch commentators discuss the 'Cuda's influence if Lisa Murkowski manages to prevail over Sarah Palin/Tea Party rock-star Joe Miller.

* And the Tea Party is very reassuring to the rest of the world: Foreign Policy rounds up a bunch of international coverage of the Tea Party and finds the movement isn't exactly doing wonders for our global image, though in fairness the international views of the "movement" seem to be mostly just enhancing previously-held views of America. Interesting stuff.

What else is happening?

* Another turn in the stomping incident. The Louisville Courier Journal reported today that the Rand Paul campaign says it won't be returning nearly $2000 in campaign contributions chipped in by Tim Profitt, the former Bourbon County coordinator who admitted to stomping MoveOn's Lauren Valle.

But last night, less than 24 hours ago, the Paul campaign told Fox News that they would be returning the money, according to video the Jack Conway campaign sent my way:

The Fox anchor noted last night that the Paul campaign said they were disassociating themselves from the stomper, and added: "That disassociation includes returning any campaign donations he made." Seems that's no longer operative. Honestly, should this one really be a tough call?

Paul's campaign has already taken heat from Conway for not initially saying whether it would return campaign contributions from three white separatists or from a donor who ran an adult website.

* Meanwhile, Kentucky cops are considering charges against two more Paul supporters.

* Smoking gun of the day: Conservative bloggers unearth video proof that Lauren Valle got stomped after...protesting. Wow, what a great scoop!

* More enthusiasm gap madness: A new New York Times poll finds that fewer than four in 10 Dems still aren't paying a lot of attention to the elections, versus more than half of Republicans who are. Hey, what's the rush?

* Nice take by Steve Benen on the larger meaning of the $100 million in attack ads foes of health reform have run since it passed.

* New batch of CNN Senate polls: Sharron Angle leads Harry Reid, 49-45. Rand Paul leads Jack Conway, 50-43. And Colorado remains deadlocked.

* With Senate dysfunction likely to get far worse, Terry McAuliffe says the future of energy reform may lie with the states.

* Silver lining of the day: Nate Silver explains why the Dem loss of the House is "not inevitable."

* With spending on this election on track to top $4 billion, Dan Eggen notes an important trend:

Donations from Wall Street, medical and insurance firms, energy conglomerates and other corporations have shifted decisively toward Republicans over the past year in the wake of congressional battles over health-care reform, financial regulations and other issues.

* Obama held his first sit-down with activist-type liberal bloggers today, and Sam Stein notes it seems like an effort to script in advance the online narrative about the election fallout.

* Joe Sudbay, who was there, reports that Obama told the bloggers that he likes constructive criticism. Clip and save for future reference!

* And Oliver Willis, who was also there, says Obama told him he's a progressive, too.

What else is happening?

Why are Democrats on the defensive over health reform? This statistic, buried in today's big New York Times piece on that very topic, is striking and deserves some more attention:

Opponents of the legislation, including independent groups, have spent $108 million since March to advertise against it, according to Evan L. Tracey, president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks advertising.

That is six times more than supporters have spent, including $5.1 million by the Department of Health and Human Services to promote the new law, Mr. Tracey said.

So $100 million in ads tarring health reform have run since Obama signed the bill into law in March. And many ads on health care contain multiple falsehoods and distortions. Is this entirely to blame for making health reform a political liability for many Dems? No, of course not. Though majorities have steadily said they like individual provisions, the overall law was unpopular in the lead-up to passage. Dems have not done what they needed to do to change the public's mind at the rate they had hoped to.

But even if the massive post-passage ad campaign against the law is only part of the story, it's nonetheless significant. Clearly, those heavily invested in returning the majority to the GOP recognized that a concerted campaign to tar this major Dem achievement -- after it had been enshrined into law -- had to be a central feature of their strategy. It seems likely that this massive ad onslaught may have been one key factor in preventing public opinion from turning around quickly enough.

If the GOP takes back the House, as expected, a huge argument will erupt among Dems over the wisdom of passing reform and over whether the "liberal overreach" it embodied helped sink the Dem majority. I hope folks will remember that the enormous amount of money spent to twist and misrepresent the law in the public mind might have also played a role in what happened.

The problem for Charlie Crist as an indy has always been that his Republican past -- and his long string of public statements in favor of GOP positions and politicians -- have made it impossible for him to marshall the most effective arguments against Marco Rubio without Crist looking like a flip-flopper and an opportunist.

Case in point: Crist's closing ad. In a clear effort to make some noise, he takes a shot at Sarah Palin, claiming a vote for Rubio is a vote for the 'Cuda and the Tea Party.

The problem is that Crist is already on record saying two years ago that Palin would make a great President.

Here's Crist's new ad, which warns against "extremism" and claims it's "the road Sarah Palin, the Tea Party and Marco Rubio want to take us down":

Which would be a fine message if Crist hadn't claimed in October of 2008 that Palin is "ready" to be president if something were to happen to John McCain, and would even "do a great job" because she's the "only executive that's running":

This is more than just a gotcha. Dems warned that Crist wouldn't be able to make the transition to indy for precisely this reason -- and that only a real Dem would be able to make an effective case against Rubio. Of course, Crist and Kendrick Meek are splitting the Dem vote, which means we may be saying hello to Senator-elect Marco Rubio in less than a week.

Have we just witnessed Charlie Crist's final flip flop?