Consider this an open thread... What's on your mind tonight?

Not sure how the Republicans are supposed to retake the House if the Democrats have more than five times more money in the bank than they do.

The DCCC, like its GOP counterpart, spent more than it took in during Oct., thanks to the expensive NY-23 special election. Still, it outraised the NRCC, as the Dem cmte took in $3.8M last month. It also outspent the NRCC, shelling out nearly $4M (about $1.1M of which aided now-Rep. Bill Owens' (D) winning campaign).

While the DCCC has more debt than the NRCC ($3.3M-$2M), it has a huge cash-on-hand edge. At the end of Oct., the DCCC had $14.5M in the bank, while the NRCC lagged with just $4.2M.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had a net $12.2 million in the bank as of the end of October; the National Republican Congressional Committee had a net $2.2 million in the bank at the time. This means that, as of the latest reading, the DCCC had more than 5.5 times more money on hand than did the NRCC.

When the Democrats sought to retake the House in 2006, cash management played no small role in their success. Indeed, by the summer before election day, the DCCC managed to stockpile more cash in the bank than the NRCC, a nearly unprecedented achievement to that point.

The NRCC is doing better than it was doing at this point in the 2008 cycle, when the committee was still running a net deficit. Nevertheless, until the GOP is able to make up this major disadvantage on the House side, undoing the Democrats' more than 5.5-to-1 lead in campaign cash, it's not at all clear to me how they are supposed to mount the type of effort that could possibly retake the House in 2010 (even leaving aside generic ballot numbers that show them continuing to trail nationwide).

The latest numbers from the Gallup three-day tracking poll are in, and at present Barack Obama's approval rating stands at 49 percent -- the first time he has slipped below 50 percent in the survey. Forty four percent now disapprove of the job he is doing.

For the past three and a half months, the President's approval rating had varied, though within a clear range, between 50 percent and 56 percent. Today's rating doesn't fall far outside of that range, and the change from the previous few days finding of 50 percent isn't significant. Moreover, more still approve of the President than disapprove of him. That said, this is a marker point, one that will garner more than a few pixels I would imagine.

FWIW.

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani has decided not to run for governor next - but will run for U.S. Senate instead, sources told the Daily News.

[...]

If elected, the source said, he would use that as a stepping stone to run for President in 2012 - and would not run for re-election to the Senate. A Giuliani spokeswoman downplayed the reports.

The polling on the race suggests that this could be a genuine possibility, with Rudy Giuliani leading Democratic incumbent Kirsten Gilibrand by a 51 percent to 40 percent margin in recent Marist polling and a 53 percent to 36 percent margin in recent Siena (.pdf) polling. What's more, considering that Giuliani isn't going to beat Andrew Cuomo, who many believe will end up being the Democrats' gubernatorial nominee, a decision to run for the Senate rather than for Governor makes sense on another level.

Then again, New Yorkers are going to vote for a Senator they know is going to immediately turn around and run for President, a Senator who would almost undoubtedly be an absentee legislator spending more time on the hustings in Iowa than in the halls of Congress? Hard to imagine.

To add... Do remember this: Giuliani hasn't found a big race he hasn't been willing to pull out of for some time. In 2008, Giuliani pulled out of Iowa. He then effectively pulled out of New Hampshire. Long before that he pulled out of the 2000 Senate campaign in New York against Hillary Clinton. Not exactly a track record of being able to withstand the rigor of a genuine campaign.

And Republicans continue to live in a world of unreality:

The Republican base is with him though. PPP's newest national survey finds that a 52% majority of GOP voters nationally think that ACORN stole the Presidential election for Barack Obama last year, with only 27% granting that he won it legitimately. Clearly the ACORN card really is an effective one to play with the voters who will decide whether Hoffman gets to be the Republican nominee in a possible repeat bid in 2010.

Belief in the ACORN conspiracy theory is even higher among GOP partisans than the birther one, which only 42% of Republicans expressed agreement with on our national survey in September.

Overall, the American people roundly reject the notion that ACORN somehow stuffed enough ballots -- at least 9,500,000 of them -- to somehow steal the election from John McCain and give it to Barack Obama. (This theory also compels the conclusion that ACORN somehow forged every single pre-election poll, including even those from Fox News (.pdf), the trend of which tracked almost exactly with the ultimate election results.) Indeed, Americans say no to this theory by a 62 percent to 26 percent margin -- including a 72 percent to 18 percent margin among Independents.

If the Republicans want to continue to live in their own world with their own "facts", they can certainly go ahead and do that. But it's not so easy to woo new voters to one's cause when those being wooed think those doing the wooing have only an attenuated relationship with reality.

Breaking now from MSNBC, the Senate healthcare reform bill comes in below the President's threshold of $900 billion over 10 years -- at $849 billion, to be precise -- and will reduce the deficit by $127 billion. The bill reportedly will cover 94 percent of Americans. More as we hear it...

Update [2009-11-18 17:17:35 by Jonathan Singer]: The Senate legislation will also reduce the deficit by a whopping $650 billion over the second decade of the bill, in total bringing deficit reduction to $777 billion over 20 years -- a number that will make it significantly more difficult for the Republicans to credibly claim that healthcare reform is in some way imprudent.

Democratic pollster Public Policy Polling surveys the Senate race in Missouri:

When PPP polled the Missouri Senate race in January Robin Carnahan led by one point. Fast forward ten months and nothing has changed. Carnahan leads Roy Blunt 43-42.

It's a good sign for Carnahan that her status hasn't worsened as things have gone sour in general for the Democratic Party over the course of 2009. That's a product of Carnahan and Blunt being more well known than your typical open seat candidates, particularly because of their family names, and probably also due to Blunt's being symbolic of a Congress that voters don't care for. You're definitely better off being a Jefferson City politician in 2010 than a Washington one.

As you can see, the numbers from PPP fit in quite well with the Pollster.com trend estimate on the race, which has shown Democrat Robin Carnahan leading -- narrowly, but consistently -- for the entire race.

The biggest factor in this race, at least at present, appears not to be the national environment (indeed, despite the supposedly bad environment for the Democrats, the presumptive Democratic nominee Carnahan continues to lead) but rather the unpopularity of the likely GOP nominee, Roy Blunt. At present, Blunt, the onetime House Majority Leader, has a net negative favorability rating, with just 30 percent viewing him positively and 38 percent viewing him negatively. (Carnahan's numbers are net positive, with 40 percent rating her favorably and 36 percent rating her unfavorably.) As long as Blunt's numbers remain this tepid, it's hard to see how he wins this race (even as it will assuredly be close, as are many contested races in the state).

Today marks my fourth year as an editor here at MyDD. It has been a fun and educational four years for me. I have written about 3,000 posts (2,990 by my count since coming on as the weekend editor, then full-time editor at the site, plus close to another 1,000 tweets @jonathanhsinger). I don't have anything particularly profound to note on this blogiversary, but upon realizing that today was the day, I thought it worth putting up a post.