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Republican Joni Ernst and Democrat Bruce Braley locked horns in their final Iowa Senate debate last night. Katie already posted video of Ernst's terrific rejoinder to Braley's lecturing on Iraq, and Conn is keeping tabs on auspicious-looking early voting trends. Two more clips for you. The first features Ernst pushing back against Braley's revisionism on Obamacare, which he's now claiming is flawed and in need of fixing. The Republican reminded her  opponent -- to whom Nancy Pelosi assigned the task of delivering one of the 'closing arguments' for the law -- that he's boasted in the recent past of having read every last word of...

Republican candidate Joni Ernst defended her opposition to abortion rights during Thursday’s final debate between her and Iowa Democrat Bruce Braley in their neck-and-neck race for a U.S. Senate seat, but she said for the first time that she might support a legal exception to save the life of the mother. The issue has come to define the final weeks of their campaigns to succeed retiring Democrat Sen. Tom Harkin. Polls show more women support Braley, a congressman from northeast Iowa, and more men back Ernst, a state senator from southwest Iowa. Braley and allied groups are pressing the abortion...

Yes, seriously. Not one, not two, but three prominent media figures are floating the idea that Michelle Obama (and Bill Clinton, apparently) intentionally butchered Iowa Senate candidate Bruce Braley’s name seven times last Friday. Let’s begin with the third hour of NBC’s “Today.” NewsBusters reports that during a discussion of Michelle’s name flub, co-host Willie Geist noted that Michelle would have had a teleprompter with Braley’s name on it. “But now he’s getting a lot of name recognition,” he pointed out. “Maybe it was like evil genius move, who knows?” Meanwhile, Politico’s Hadas Gold independently reached the same conclusion on...

Rep. Bruce Braley sought to humanize his appeal to Iowa voters, while Republican Joni Ernst framed the race as a debate between Iowa values and Washington dysfunction in the candidates' second debate. The two met at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa, just hours after a new Bloomberg/Des Moines Register, offered good news for Democrats, showing Braley closing the lead Ernst had opened up over the past few months of the race, now down to just one point. That lead made Iowa one of the most closely-watched and top-targeted Senate races in the nation, as Republicans seek the six seats...

What’s in a name? For Michelle Obama, a whole lot of confusion. While campaigning in Des Moines, Iowa Friday for Democratic Senate candidate Bruce Braley, she referred to him multiple times as “Bailey” before she was corrected by someone shouting from the audience. The flub came despite a huge array of signs in the hall where she was speaking, all spelling Braley’s name correctly

It's been a rough campaign for Rep. Bruce Braley (D), who is running for the U.S. Senate in Iowa. It got a bit worse Friday when first lady Michelle Obama campaigned for him. First, she called him "Bruce Bailey." [seven times] (Bill Clinton also recently made the same mistake.) Then she said he was a Marine Corps veteran. (He's not.)The Des Moines Register posted video of the event:... Somebody quickly pounced the Braley/Bailey flub. The Web site votebrucebailey.com redirects to the campaign Web site of Republican nominee Joni Ernst.

Full disclosure: I feel awful today. Vaguely half-nauseous, having what we will gently call ‘digestive issues,’ generally logy and possibly congested: it seemed like an excellent time to take it easy. It would take a definite electoral disaster to pierce this fog of illness, in short. And Michelle Obama delivered. Jimmy @JimmyPrinceton Bruce Braley never even served. How does FLOTUS think he's a USMC vet? 4:18 PM - 10 Oct 2014 8 Retweets 4 favorites Here’s the video of the event: it autoplays and I can’t turn it off, so skip ahead to 3:28 – where, indeed, the First Lady...

Should election campaigns and the candidates themselves - be it in Iowa with Bruce Braley (D) saying his rival Joni Ernst (R) is tied to the hip of the Koch Brothers or be it Tom Cotton in Arkansas (R) saying his rival Mark Pryor (D) is tied to the hip of Obama - eschew such tactics? In summation... Should both sides (be it the candidates and PACs on the Republican and Democrat side) eschew this political tactic, or should both sides continue to employ this tactic - and how is the MSM figuring into the dissemination of this political tactic?

Republican Joni Ernst raised about $1.7 million more in the third quarter than her Democratic opponent Bruce Braley in the closely contested Iowa Senate race, the Des Moines Register reports: Ernst, a Republican state senator, will report raising over $4.5 million in the quarter, her campaign aides told the Register on Tuesday. That haul more than doubles her second-quarter number. A surge in money can signal that donors nationwide sense a victory and are willing to pump in money to tip a candidate over the edge. Braley, a Democratic congressman, will report raising $2.8 million, his best quarter to date....

Republican Iowa state Sen. Joni Ernst has pulled ahead of Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley in a race for the U.S. Senate that had been considered virtually deadlocked for months, a new poll released Saturday by The Des Moines Register shows. Ernst leads 44 percent to 38 percent in the race that is considered pivotal to the GOP's effort to retake the Senate on Nov. 4, the Register reports. Twelve percent of the 546 likely voters surveyed Sept. 21-24 said they were undecided. !

-SNIP_Of the five Senate contests in purple states — Iowa, Virginia, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Colorado — this is currently the closest: The Real Clear Politics average of polls shows a tie (Ernst ahead by 0.2 percentage points as of Friday). Which should make Republicans anxious as they try to take control of the Senate and as they contemplate the 2016 presidential landscape. Although Iowa has voted Democratic in six of the last seven presidential elections, the Ernst-Braley contest should not be this close. Only 38 percent of Iowans approve of Barack Obama’s performance. Braley, a past president of an...

Neutralizing the traditional Democratic lead among women voters, Republican State Sen. Joni Ernst leads U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, the Democrat, 50 - 44 percent among likely voters in the race to replace U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin in Iowa, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Ernst leads among men 56 - 39 percent, while Braley leads among women by a smaller 50 - 44 percent margin, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds. This survey of likely voters can not be compared with earlier surveys of registered voters. The Republican also leads 50 - 43 percent among a key...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)TRANSCRIPT JUDY WOODRUFF: A quick look at the calendar reminds us that today is just seven weeks away from this year’s midterm elections, when voters across the country will be deciding ballot issues and choosing state and local officeholders and members of Congress. With control of the U.S. Senate up for grabs, I headed to Iowa this past weekend, the site of one of the closest contests in the nation. If you love college football, the place to be in Iowa this past weekend was Iowa City, the home of the University of Iowa Hawkeyes, as they hosted the Iowa...

Only one percentage points separates Democrat Bruce Braley and Republican Joni Ernst in the race to represent Iowa in the U.S. Senate. If the election were held today, 49% of likely Iowa voters say they would vote for Braley and 48% say they would support Ernst, according to a new CNN/ORC poll. That means the contentious race is within the survey's overall sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. The electorate is far from solidified. Twenty percent of likely voters polled in Iowa said they could change their mind before Election Day in November. The Braley-Ernst race has...

Iowa Democrat continues to support plan despite years of congressional opposition.Rep. Bruce Braley (D., Iowa) continued to vote in favor of transferring terrorist prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a U.S. facility even after the plan collapsed due to congressional opposition, according to government records. Republicans have blasted Braley this week for supporting an initial proposal in 2009 to move the detainees to an Illinois correctional center near the Iowa border. The criticism comes as polls show that an overwhelming majority of Americans view the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), the al Qaeda offshoot that...

Jim Geragthy, acclaimed author and National Review’s chief campaign analyst, has been grousing about the lack of quality polling in key Senate races this year. His frustration is well-founded. So yesterday must have felt like Christmas in September for Jim and political junkies everywhere, as two pollsters released a deluge of surveys covering the most contested races in the country. In light of the results, I’d expect that national Republicans are kicking off the week with an extra spring in their step, as well. We were leaked an advance copy of last week’s much-anticipated Politico/GWU Battleground poll, which was packed...

How did Iowa state senator Joni Ernst become a threat to Harry Reid’s Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate? “The Democrats have thrown everything but the kitchen sink at Ms. Ernst, and at the best this race is a tie, it’s still a pure toss-up in what should be a marginally Democrat environment in Iowa,” a GOP pollster told NRO. This race was not supposed to challenge Democrats or drain their resources. “I was confident Rep. Braley would win the day he announced,” state Democratic-party chairman Tyler Olsen said in February, “and I’m only getting more confident every day.” What...

First lady Michelle Obama will head to Iowa in October to campaign for Rep. Bruce Braley (D) in the hotly contested race for U.S. Senate there, a campaign aide confirmed Wednesday. Details have yet to be finalized. The news was first reported by the Des Moines Register. Braley is in a close race against state Sen. Joni Ernst (R), polls show. The campaign has emerged as a key battleground in the fight for the Senate majority. Sen. Tom Harkin (D) is retiring, creating a vacancy. Campaigning with the first lady may be the best way for Democratic candidates to bring...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)There are 65 prominent people who might run for president in 2016. The Democratic and Republican fields contrast sharply. Hillary Clinton is the clear front-runner, while there is no front-runner on the Republican side. Twenty-three Democrats have been mentioned as a candidate or are eyeing a bid, according to an analysis by The Hill. The GOP side has 42. Most of the people on this list won’t run, and some have adamantly claimed that they’re not interested. But many politicians have changed their minds on seeking the White House. Before mounting his 2008 bid, then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said he...

Following two cycles where it was GOP missteps and subpar candidates who cost them winnable races, the tables have turned and it’s now Democrats who are scrambling to right Rep. Bruce Braley’s flagging campaign before it’s too late. Recent polls find a coin-flip race between Braley and Iowa state Sen. Joni Ernst(R), and but the national party increasingly worries it could be the tipping point for Senate control. “If the Democrats lose Iowa, of course it becomes much harder to keep the majority,” said one national Democratic strategist. “The race could very much go either way. We feel like the...