Newsweek has a new poll out tonight showing the president’s approval rating sharply higher and the enthusiasm gap closing. Newsweek’s poll does tend to have a Dem lean to it. But the trajectory is in the right direction for the Dems.

A report surfaced today that Bill Clinton is frustrated as heck that the Dems can’t manage to get a coherent or persuasive message together for the midterms. And he’s even doing what he can to get together good talking points for candidates and stump in all the right places to help save the Democratic majorities even if the current leaders can’t manage it themselves. Read More

Definitely take a moment to read our just-posted piece on early voting across the country. The story varies from state to state. But a pattern is emerging. Republicans are doing better than in 2008. But in a lot of cases not as well as the current wave election narrative would lead you to expect. Nevada is a good example of the pattern.

That could mean that the polls aren’t giving us a clear view of the electorate this year. It could also mean that Democrats built up such an effective early voting infrastructure in 2006 and 2008 that they’re still turning people out early in disproportionate numbers even if the total number of Democratic votes on election night are much smaller than those for the GOP. And of course we don’t know how people are voting. We just know the party registration of those who are voting. If a lot of these are people who registered as Democrats in 2006 and 2008 only to vote Republican 2010, then it wouldn’t necessarily mean anything. Still, in the last couple weeks of the campaign we’re inundated with hype and chatter with almost no real data to go on. And this is real data. These are votes, not predictions. So it’s a fascinating snapshot into an election that isn’t ten days away but has actually already started.

Definitely give it a read.

This is a little like hearing someone died but you’d already figured they’d been dead for a while. Sony has announced it’s ceasing production of the Sony Walkman, the once revolutionary cassette music player that debuted in 1979. There will still be MP3 ‘Walkman’ and the CD version. But for the original, real thing, the cassette player, that’s it, though a Chinese company has licensed the name to sell a similar product in Asia and the Middle East. Sony says they’ve sold over 200 million of the things over 31 years.

For those of you who weren’t around or weren’t old enough in 1979, it must be difficult to imagine what an amazing product this was since — let’s be honest — today it looks like kind of a joke. It wasn’t just that the device was small, though it was — not that much bigger than the size of a cassette itself. It was that the headphones were so small and managed to provide — right up against your ear — a surprising degree of audio fidelity. Remember, holding a boombox up on your shoulder wasn’t just an affectation. It was the only real way to listen to music on the go.

For the first time, opposition has tracked ahead of support in the TPM Poll Average of Prop 19, the California ballot proposition to legalize pot.

But supporters of Prop 19 are insisting that there’s a ‘reverse Bradley effect’ playing into what appears to be declining support or at least making support for the proposition look softer than it is. The idea is that people feel uncomfortable saying they’re for legalization. And in fact there’s at least some evidence suggesting that they’re right. Read More

According to Nate Silver’s calculations, Democrats are ever so slightly (1%) more likely to control the House after the election than the Republicans are to control the Senate.

And to be clear, he’s got it at about a 1 in 5 chance of each outcome.

From the ADN …

A judge ruled today that the Fairbanks North Star Borough must release personnel records of Senate candidate Joe Miller.

In an unusual Saturday hearing, retired Superior Court Judge Winston Burbank ruled that the public’s right to know about candidates outweighed Miller’s right to privacy.

“I hold that although Mr. Miller has a legitimate expectation of privacy in those documents, Mr. Miller’s right to privacy is indeed outweighed by the public’s significant interest in the background of a public figure who is running for the U.S. Senate,” the judge said. He noted that U.S. senator is among the highest elected offices in the nation.

This morning’s Morning Call/Muhlenberg tracking poll has the Sestak/Toomey race still very tight but with Toomey with a 3 point edge. Toomey 46%, Sestak 43%. The margin is the same as Saturday’s number but with each candidate picking up a point of support our of the undecided column.

Here’s one number that sort of threw me. As of Saturday, from the first 5 days of polling: “Most polled were 40 years old or older. Only 13 percent were 18 years old to 39 years old.”

That sounds like a pretty age skewed sample. It’s not clear to me from the write up whether that’s pre- or post-weighted numbers. Seems hard to imagine that only 13% of the electorate will be under 40.

The Tea Party Express paid its controversial former chairman Mark Williams $5,000 in September, weeks after he resigned under pressure for his race-baiting emails.

The county clerk in Chicago, a Democrat, tells TPM: Voter fraud fears “totally blown out of whack.”