Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Monday, November 3. Polls open here in Virginia in under 23 hours. Do you know when and where you’re voting? Even better, bring a (Democratic) friend/family member or two along with you!

*Cruz eyes Senate as combative as GOP-led House (Want to avoid putting extremist nutjob Ted Cruz in charge? VOTE TOMORROW!)

*Democrats desperately try to get supporters to the polls (It’s really sad it takes this much effort; everyone should just vote as a matter of course, end of story.)

*The GOP plan: Be very afraid (“A closing argument of terrifying fantasies.”)

*Even Without Voter ID Laws, Minority Voters Face More Hurdles to Casting Ballots (“Heavily black and Latino precincts often have long lines and fewer voting machines on Election Day. Why?”)

*How Brittany Maynard may change the right-to-die debate after death (RIP. Now, everyone in America should have the same right to die with dignity!)

*Behind in the polls, Gillespie leads Warner on Facebook, Twitter (How the heck???)

*UMWA president rallies for Mark Warner

*​Mark Warner holds rally at U.Va. with McAuliffe, Herring, John Warner

*Homeless numbers take a big drop in Virginia

*5th District candidates trade jabs

*Voters will cast two ballots for 7th District seat (And neither one of them should be for Ayn Rand-worshipping Dave Brat!)

*Mueller: We must end political gerrymandering (Agreed.)

*Ethics on trial in Richmond (“With little more than 70 days until the 2015 General Assembly convenes, the newly created Commission to Ensure Integrity and Public Confidence in State Government faces a tight turnaround for crafting substantive proposals to achieve its eponymous mission.”)

*With clock ticking, Virginia candidates focus on turnout, push for votes

*Today’s Top Opinion: The arts contribute to a Dynamic Dominion

*Our view: A demographic warning for both Democrats and Republicans

*Exemption for military widows on ballot (Seems like a good idea to me; I’m voting YES on this one!)

*After Norfolk couple’s long court battle, life goes on (“Tony London, left, and Tim Bostic reflect on the ruling on their landmark suit that gave thousands of gay couples the right to wed.”)

*Arlington candidates campaign at farmers market (This could be one of the closest races in Virginia tomorrow.)

*Why Richmond, Why?!? Tired of Polluting the James River

*Mike Wise: For Washington, an uninspired loss with no shortage of distractions (“See, the problem with being this reviled, with people wanting you to lose at everything you do in ways that have nothing to do with football, is the transfer of negative energy toward your players, your fans, your quarterback, and everyone left to defend you while you despondently sit through another why-us loss in the owner’s box, much more interested in being right than ever being liked or happy.”)

*Turning milder through midweek, then rain and cold move in

The mid-Atlantic enjoyed one of the most delightful summers in memory this year, causing a lot of snickering to the effect that if climate change means moderate temperatures and low humidity, then bring it on, baby! Elsewhere on the planet, though, “bringing it on” translated into a whole lot of hot. For a good laugh at our own parochial mindset, check out the map of relative temperatures that accompanies this article about NOAA declaring 2014 on track to be the hottest year on record.

Oh, and don’t miss the note at the bottom about the November 6 event.

Virginia climate activists (and indeed all Virginians) should cheer Stephen Nash, whose Virginia Climate Fever (just published by The University of Virginia Press) lays out clearly the costs of our decades of inaction on global warming. The book’s subtitle nicely sums up the point: How Global Warming Will Transform Our Cities, Shorelines, and Forests.

Why a climate book focused on just one state?

One of many confounding challenges of global warming is how to get people (and politicians and businesses) to take action commensurate with the size of the problem. As the popular British social scientist Roman Krznaric asks, “how can we close the gap between knowledge and action on climate change?” Krznarik’s answer is to seek ways to increase our empathy for people who live in distant places, or will live in future times. Certainly that is needed. (The U.S. edition of Krznarik’s book on empathy comes out in November.)

But since the day of increased empathy has yet to arrive, climate communications experts have focused on the need to get people to realize that climate change is happening here and now. It’s not just about our grandchildren, or even our children. It’s about us too. Now. And it’s not just about poor people living at sea level in Bangladesh, or the soon-to-disappear Maldives, or where melting glaciers threaten tens of millions of people’s water supply. Global warming is happening to us in America, and right here in Virginia. What’s more, it’s not limited to low-lying, frequently flooded parts of coastal Virginia, like Norfolk. Climate disruption is happening all across the commonwealth-from the shore to the tidal Potomac near Alexandria and Washington to the Piedmont to the mountains.

Climate communications experts agree that people are more likely to act (and demand that their leaders act) on global warming if they understand that it will have serious effects in their lives, and where they live.

Virginia Climate Fever does a superb job of bringing climate change home to Virginia. Nash, a journalist who writes with a deft touch, has taught at The University of Richmond since 1980, and he clearly knows Virginia well. He is is well versed in the science of climate disruption, and very good at explaining it. The book is filled with information gathered from interviews with scientists, including several at Virginia universities.

One leading climatologist featured prominently is Katharine Hayhoe, head of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. As the book explains, she also happens to be an evangelical Christian whose faith informs and inspires her work. At Nash’s request, Hayhoe and a colleague prepared color maps of Virginia for Virginia Climate Fever, showing stunningly how much hotter our summers and winters are likely to be in the coming decades under different levels of future carbon emissions. It’s hard for me (at age 61) to look at these and contemplate my own hotter future here, much less my children’s.

Most disturbing to my mind was Nash’s description of the future of what those maps mean for our forests. We often hear about sea-level rise and how it will combine with more-severe storms to harm Virginia, especially in the Hampton Roads area. And well we should-the situation in Virginia’s coastal areas is dire indeed. But Nash reveals that our inland and mountain forests are just as threatened. And so not surprisingly are many plant and animal species that live in or near them. Many species face the prospect of extinction this century. Nash quotes the bioclimatologist Ron Neilson as saying that large areas of Virginia forest could “go into drought stress and potentially burn up,” resulting in “some very rapid conversions from forest to savannah.” Nash asked Neilson if this could happen in the next twenty or thirty years. Neilson’s answer: “How about now?”

Virginia Climate Fever is not strictly speaking a book about energy or energy policy. Rather it’s about climate impacts from our past, present, and future energy choices. But for those on the more well-informed side of the current “I’m not a scientist, what do I know?” climate-science-denial catchphrase, Virginia’s current and future energy choices will come to mind on every page of the book.

Nash does include a chapter on possible prescriptions for our climate fever. He tellingly notes: “we don’t lack for examples among other states,” citing North Carolina and Maryland as two of many states considerably farther along in addressing changing climate. He cites with approval Maryland’s efficiency and conservation measures, and its mandatory renewable portfolio standard, noting that Virginia is one of only nineteen states with no mandatory renewable standard at all. He mentions Maryland’s participation in the multistate Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Again, “Virginia is not on the list.”

Nash asked Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality about climate change and got this written response: “The Virginia [DEQ] does not have the expertise to study climate change issues.” One could not find a better sentence to sum up the four lost years of the McDonell-Cuccinelli administration’s climate denialism.

Governor Terry McAuliffe and Senator Mark Warner enthuse about a mindless “all of the above” energy policy that includes fracking (and associated pipelines), offshore oil drilling, coal exports, and ever more reliance on fossil fuels. (To his credit, Senator Tim Kaine has said that “all of the above” is not a strategy-yet nevertheless supports offshore oil drilling.) Virginia Climate Fever is a wake-up call for them, and for the “I’m not a scientist” crowd, and for all Virginians.

But of course there have been other such calls in the past few decades. The question is, when will enough Virginians hear them clearly, and begin to act with a sense of urgency?

Seth Heald is vice chair of the Sierra Club Virginia Chapter. He is a student in the Master of Science in Energy Policy and Climate program at Johns Hopkins University.

Note: Northern Virginians will have an opportunity on November 6 to meet Stephen Nash in Alexandria at an author talk and book signing. Details and RSVP form are here.

One of the articles that most resonated with me in reading this morning’s papers was Democrats only have themselves to blame for upcoming losses by Steven Pearlstein in the Washington Post. Not because I would state it so definitively by using the word “only,” as I believe there are many factors at work in this mid-term election. For instance, it’s just a fact that the party holding the White House in the sixth year loses 48 seats in the House and seven (7) seats in the Senate. Actually, Democrats are likely to lose just a few seats in the House, and at WORST 7 seats in the Senate, so this will actually be better than the historical norm since World War II.

With all that having been said, however, I basically think that Pearlstein nails it when he writes: “What we have here is a failure of brand management – in this case, the Democratic brand.” If building a strong brand is about “telling a clear, credible and compelling story about what you’ve done and what you are going to do…come hell or high water, this is what we are going to be about” (that’s Pearlstein quoting  David Srere, “chief strategy officer at Siegel + Gale, another leading brand consultancy”), then it’s extremely hard these days to figure out what the Democratic “brand” is all about.

Is this the party that fights for the poor? working people? the middle class? the environment? civil liberties? economic fairness and social justice (to quote one of Jim Webb’s favorite phrases)? universal health care? If so, you’d barely know it the past couple decades, particularly starting in 1994, when Dick Morris, the “third way,” “triangulation,” and “the era of big government is over” became staples of the Clinton White House following the Gingrich/”Contract with America” landslide in 1994.

You’d certainly be hard-pressed to know what the Democratic “brand” was all about (let alone be inspired by it) in the 2014 election cycle. Instead, I’ve heard a lot more rhetoric from Democratic candidates in which they distance themselves not just from President Obama – wrong on substantive grounds, as well as self defeating politically – but also use Republican framing. For instance, Democratic candidates frequently repeat the unholy (and untrue) list of falsehoods, such as that: somehow it’s “Washington” or “Congress,” not the Tea Party Republicans, responsible for political “dysfunction”; that it’s actually Democrats who need to “reach across the aisle,” when of course President Obama tried that over and over and over and over again, only to have his hand rudely slapped away by Boehner, McConnell, etc. I’d also note that Democrats actually adopted Republican and conservative policy proposals, like the employer and individual mandates for health care reform and “cap and trade” for energy/environmental policy, but were viciously attacked regardless.

I further agree with Pearlstein that it’s harmful (I’d add the adjective “brain dead”) for Democratic candidates not to tout their major successes of 2009-2010 (when they controlled both Houses of Congress and the White House), such as saving the economy from Great Depression Part II, passing historic health care reform that expands coverage to tens of millions and does a bunch of other great stuff, encouraging rapid growth in clean energy, slashing the deficit, etc.

Then there’s the failure of Democratic candidates to clearly, powerfully call out Republicans for going off the right-wing deep end into John Birch Society, extremist la-la land. The fact is, it’s Republicans like Joni Ernst seriously talking about resorting to armed insurrection against the government (last I checked, that was known as “treason”); pushing insane theories about Africans infected with Ebola coming into the U.S. from Mexico, possibly with ISIS militants along for the ride; suppressing the right to vote; proposing economic policies that would be utterly ruinous; denying climate science (even as upwards of 99% of climate scientists agree that a) it’s happening; b) man’s causing it; and c) we’d better act immediately and forcefully to get off fossil fuels or we are screwed). So where’s the outrage from Democratic candidates, warning of the tremendous damage these know-nothings and extremists are doing and will do to our country? (Cue the sound of crickets quietly chirping)

And yes, wayyyy too much of Democratic campaign strategy is based on a “misunderstanding and misuse of public opinion polls, which as Pearlstein correctly argues is a huge mistake. The quote of the article, and of the day so far, comes from David Srere:

To say that there is an over-reliance on research is a gross understatement,” laments Srere at Siegel + Gale. “It’s asking people to tell you things they can’t possibly tell you. As Henry Ford put it, if he had asked people what they wanted, they would have told him they wanted a faster horse.”

Exactly. Last but not least, Pearlstein comes back to the Democrats’ failure to articulate a strong, positive, inspirational message that resonates with voters — working class, middle class, white, black, Latino, male, female, you name it. Pearlstein’s suggestion for a Democratic core message/mission statement is as good a place as any to begin:

“I’m a Democrat. In economic terms, that means I believe we need an active, competent government to ensure that prosperity is broadly shared by protecting ordinary people from the occasional excesses of markets and the undue power of businesses. That’s why Democrats are for raising the minimum wage, closing down corporate tax scams, putting tighter regulation on Wall Street and providing adequate funding for a world-class public education system from pre-K through college. And it’s why we are proud to have passed legislation to ensure that all Americans finally have a basic health insurance plan regardless of income or health or which company they work for. With oil and gas prices falling, it means I’m even willing to raise energy taxes by a few pennies per gallon so we can reinvest in the infrastructure – highways, ports, airports, subway systems, the electric grid, the Internet – on which all of us and the economy depend. Republicans are uninterested in, or unwilling to do, any of these things or in making any of these investments. Are you with them, or are you with us Democrats?“

That about sums it up. But when was the last time you actually heard a Democratic candidate (not including those in super-blue districts, like Virginia’s 3rd CD) talk like that? Uhhhh.

Finally, I’m going to borrow Karen “Anonymous is a Woman” Duncan’s comments on this one, as she sums up my feelings as well.

Excellent thought provoking article. In a nutshell, when Democrats fully embrace our core values and run as proud Democrats, we win. When we avoid those issues, run only on attacking our opponents but never say what we will do to improve voters’ lives, we lose.

Yes, we should defend ourselves from attack ads, but we need to do much more. We need to give voters a real reason to vote for us and we need to run proud on our accomplishments, not run scared of baseless attacks.

So why aren’t we doing this? And more to the point, why are the political consultants who advise our candidates NOT to do this still employed?

This piece ran in two Virginia newspapers this past week.

How many Americans fit this profile?

1) They are inclined to view politics in moral terms, and it is important to them to be one of the good people and not one of the bad people.

2) Their understanding of the workings of the larger systems in their world – e.g. the US government, and the American and world economies – is limited.

3) Having neither the time, interest, nor background to develop a complex picture of American politics, they welcome a simple way to exercise their duties as citizens. Finding a single issue that can define their political choices serves this purpose.

Millions, I would guess.

To lock in the support of such people, the issue of abortion is perfect.

Protecting the defenseless unborn can easily be cast as a high moral purpose. The issue arises on the human scale, no complex systems involved. It concerns family relationships, and also involves the consequences of sexual behavior, on which cultural traditions have had much to say.  

The abortion issue creates the opportunity for a savvy political force to capture and hold those millions of single-issue voters. The Republican Party has seized that opportunity for decades, convincing those millions that they are the moral party and their opponents are immoral.

While Americans as a whole are not comfortable about abortion, it is only a minority who think it should be illegal in all circumstances.  The Democratic Party has inevitably settled into representing the feelings of the American majority that does not want abortion banned outright.

Although the position the Democrats take on abortion -“safe, legal, and rare” — reflects the majority opinion in America, very few in that majority vote on that single issue. But, by targeting voters who meet the above profile, the Republican Party has been able over the decades to cultivate an important block of single-issue anti-abortion voting.

That’s why the abortion issue has been a gold-mine for the Republicans. That’s why as soon as the Republicans captured state governments in the 2010 elections, even though the nation was still in a deep economic recession, and the people were clamoring for programs to create jobs, in state after state the Republicans diverted attention away from the urgent economic issues and re-kindled the political battles over abortion.

The Republicans have encouraged those single-issue millions to see abortion as defining political morality — a pure case of good vs. evil, with no moral ambiguities. With the Democrats locked into a non-absolutist position – regrettable but not prohibited – the idea can be established in people’s minds, as I have heard on the campaign trail, that “one cannot be both a Christian and a Democrat.”

But what makes this single-issue voting block a gold mine for Republicans also makes it a danger to the country.

When a political party can get millions of voters, who care about moral values, locked into seeing it as the defender of morality, it frees itself to engage in immoral conduct of all sorts without fear of losing those voters’ support. And that is what has happened.

In America today, a great many immoral and unjust acts that have nothing to do with abortion are being carried out in our political arena – the preponderance of them by the same political force that has gained the permanent support of one-issue anti-abortion voters.

Abortion has the special appeal for today’s Republican Party, that it is wholly disconnected from the quest for money and power that are the Party’s real purposes.

Those millions of single-issue pro-life voters are satisfied that they are supporting morality even though they vote for a political party that has been relentlessly transferring wealth and power from average Americans to the richest and mightiest few. With its right hand pointing to abortion, the Republican Party distracts attention from the large-scale acts of immorality being carried out by its left hand.

In the Bible, while relatively little is said about the status of the unborn, the passages are many in which the prophets call for protecting  “widows and orphans” and for giving justice to the weak.

In a nation where the task of aligning power with the good and against the evil is far from simple, the simplification of the tasks of citizenship into a single test can play directly into the hands of the kind of evil power the prophets railed against.

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Sunday, November 2.

*Climate panel: Some impacts ‘irreversible’ (“A U.N. panel of scientists warned that only an unprecedented global effort to slash emissions will prevent temperatures from crossing a threshold that could trigger dangerous disruptions worldwide.” For those who don’t get it, THIS is why climate change is by far and away the most important threat facing humanity right now.)

*The Pitiful Whimper of 2014 (There’s a lot of truth to this, for instance with regard to climate change. Given that threat – and opportunity – where are the candidates speaking with clarity and vision about a rapid transition to a clean energy economy? How many more times do we need to hear “all-of-the-above” nonsense?)

*Good for you, Kaci Hickox (Agreed. This is unscientific nonsense, hysteria, fearmongering, etc.)

*The final sprint (Under 48 hours until polls open.)

*Senate Update: Polls Point Increasingly To Republican Senate Win (Let’s hope not. Just…ugh.)

*Our view: Your choices on Tuesday (“Gillespie is a thoroughly predictable Republican vote, having shown no signs of any original thinking or creative problem-solving. If you’re an ideological conservative, of course, that’s just fine and dandy…”)

*In 2nd District, Rigell, Patrick debate dysfunction (Suzanne Patrick is right “that Rigell’s support for GOP leadership stands on the budget is part of what gridlocks Congress.”)

*Uninspiring ballot, election fatigue among reasons for low voter turnout (No matter how “exciting” or whatever, it’s important to vote.)

*Incumbent Warner pulls out all the stops as Va. Senate race tightens (Remember, in 2012, Tim Kaine beat George Allen by just 6 points, 53%-47%. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Mark Warner beat Ed Gillespie by something like that, in a tougher year politically for Democrats than 2012 and against a stronger candidate than Allen in many ways.)

*Schapiro: For Warner, there’s little reason to smile (“Warner is strong where votes are abundant, the Northern Virginia-to-Virginia Beach crescent. It’s no surprise he’s ahead with women. Unusual for a Democrat, Warner is preferred by most men. And he has a reservoir of Republican support. At least 1 in 10 Republicans say they’re voting for Warner. Maybe that will put a smile on the face of the unhappy warrior.”)

*Scott unopposed in 3rd District (Bobby Scott is great, and I strongly support his reelection, but this is an example of how gerrymandered, incumbent-protection districts hurt democracy. It’s also an example of “packing,” which a court recently ruled needs to be rectified.)

*Two challenge Wittman in 1st District (Again, thanks to gerrymandering, this is a “safe” seat. Time to go to non-partisan redistricting in Virginia and across the country.)

*Competition and fairness (“Not to take anything away from Rep. Scott, a dedicated public servant, but absence of a competitive campaign hurts residents of the 3rd District. They would be served by a spirited debate of ideas among candidates eager to win their vote.” Bingo.)

*Virginia will have at least three new members of Congress (The 7th, 8th, and 10th CDs.)

*Better choices on Tuesday’s ballot (Classic example of what I was talking about yesterday regarding newspaper endorsements. This one’s got some – the endorsement of Mark Warner, the slam of Randy Forbes as a total zero – where the reasoning makes sense, one – using the word “bipartisan” in conjunction with Scott Rigell – that completely doesn’t, etc. Total mishmash.)

*Who is best for the Seventh District? (This editorial is ridiculous – they lean towards a true right-wing extremist, Dave Brat, but seriously believe Jack Trammell could pull an upset in this safe Republican district? Alrighty…)

*An Endorsement: Mark Warner and a Record of Moderation, Centrism (Yes, vote for Mark Warner, but the “both sides,” false equivalency bull**** here is off the charts!)

*Opinion/Editorial: Too many candidates play it safe (Another mostly ridiculous editorial.)

*A father’s scars: For Va.’s Creigh Deeds, tragedy brings unending question

*D.C. area forecast: Cold winds whip today; warming up for the work week

I encourage everyone to sign this. NPR has truly disgraced itself by taking this action; it needs to reverse course ASAP.

Sign the petition to NPR: “One part-time reporter covering climate and the environment is not enough! Reverse your decision to radically reduce your coverage of climate change and the environment.” Add your name:

Dear Lowell, National Public Radio just made the baffling decision to drastically reduce its staff dedicated to covering climate change and the environment, leaving just one part-time reporter on the beat.1 It’s unacceptable for one of our major sources of journalism in the public interest to essentially abandon it’s coverage of climate and the environment by reducing the staff covering it from four full-time journalists to one part-time reporter. Tell NPR: One part-time reporter is not enough. Reverse the decision to slash your team of reporters covering climate change and the environment. Click here to sign the petition. NPR pays attention to its critics, and is sensitive to criticism that it is failing to meet its duty to inform the public on the most pressing issues of our generation. Americans need more coverage of climate change and other environmental issues, not less. Due in large part to deliberately misleading coverage from conservative outlets like Fox News, and corporate media that insists on presenting “two sides” of the debate even if one side is blatantly lying, the American public is actively misinformed about climate change. As a result, public understanding of the crisis is heading in the wrong direction. In 2013, the percentage of Americans who don’t believe in climate change actually went up 7%. Only 47% of the American people believe that climate change is caused by human activities.2 Tell NPR: One part-time reporter is not enough. Reverse the decision to slash your team of reporters covering climate change and the environment. Click here to sign the petition. NPR’s decision is part of a disturbing anti-science trend within the news media. According to a study released last year, the number of newspapers that included a weekly science sections has shrunk from 85 to just 19 in the past 25 years.3 That’s why it is so crucial for NPR to provide meaningful coverage of climate change that is honest with the American people about the scope of the problem and what must be done to address it. NPR was created by an act of Congress in order to be an alternate news service that would address issues of national concern.4 NPR should devote more resources to covering climate change and other environmental topics, not less. Tell NPR: Don’t reduce your coverage of climate change and other environmental issues. Click the link below to sign the petition: http://act.credoaction.com/sign/NPR_Dont_Abandon_Environment/?t=6&akid=12120.4095727.kwQbGv Thanks for fighting climate change. Josh Nelson, Campaign Manager CREDO Action from Working Assets Add your name:   “NPR Reduces its Environmental Team to One Reporter,” Inside Climate News, October 24, 2014. “Misinformation Is Winning – Doubt In Climate Change Climbing,” DeSmogBlog.com, February 1, 2014. “NPR Slashes Number of Environmental Reporters,” Huffington Post, October 24, 2014. “NPR Guts its Environment and Climate Reporting Team, Becomes 'Part of the Problem,” ThinkProgress, October 24, 2014.