President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. have been doing a fair bit of campaigning in this midterm campaign — and on Friday, they get to do it together.
Both Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden are scheduled to appear at an event for Chris Coons, the Democrat running against Christine O’Donnell in Delaware for the vice president’s old Senate seat.
And that’s not all the campaigning on Mr. Biden’s schedule for Friday: He also heads to Wisconsin for an event for a pair of Democrats running for the House, Representative Steve Kagen and Julie Lassa.
Midterm Madness: So, just how many Tea Party favorites will the voters send to Washington? With more than two weeks to go, The Times’s Kate Zernike finds that eight Tea Party-backed candidates running for the Senate and 33 seeking a House seat are in races that are tossups or tilted toward Republicans.
Elsewhere, The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker reports that voters’ apparent desire for change is “upending the once-inviolable notion that seniority – that most valuable of Washington commodities – is always to be treasured.”
Senate Showdowns: Neither Senator Harry Reid nor Sharron Angle, his Republican challenger, committed a massive slip-up in Thursday’s only scheduled debate between them, The Times’s Adam Nagourney reports. The two also showed off their contrasting philosophies on health care and job creation, among other topics.
Up in Alaska, meanwhile, The Associated Press reports that Senator Lisa Murkowski, currently staging a write-in campaign as an independent to keep her seat, plans to tun advertisements that former Senator Ted Stevens shot for her before he died in August. Ms. Murkowski had decided not to use the spots before Alaska’s Republican primary, which she lost to Joe Miller.
How About the House? The Times takes a look at a pair of Democratic House incumbents looking to fight off spirited challenges. Representative John Salazar — whose brother Ken is a former senator and the current interior secretary — is finding that connection to the Obama administration may not be all that helpful in his rural Colorado district. And in California, Representative Loretta Sanchez, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, is facing a Vietnamese-born Republican, Van Tran, in a district with a substantial immigrant population.
The Times’s Jennifer Steinhauer and Carl Hulse profile Representative John A. Boehner, the likely speaker should Republicans win the House — and find that his upbringing at the southern tip of Ohio helped shape his political viewpoints and his passions.
On the Trail: Another day, another Democratic mention of Karl Rove, the former aide to President George W. Bush. As Politics Daily’s Suzi Parker reports, former President Bill Clinton told a crowd in his home state, Arkansas, that Mr. Rove was a “genius” who wanted voters to “stop thinking” this campaign season.
They’re in the Money: The Republican Governors Association raked in $31 million from July through September — a three-month period in which they not only swamped the fund-raising of their competitors at the Democratic Governors Association but, as The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza notes, raised as much as they did for all of the 2006 election.
Bernanke Speaks: Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said on Friday that the Fed was ready to take further measures to grapple with high unemployment and low inflation, The Times’s Sewell Chan reports.
Benefits Update: According to The Associated Press, the federal government said on Friday that Social Security benefits would not increase in 2011 for the second consecutive year. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has stated that the House will vote next month on a measure to give Social Security recipients a $250 bonus.
Administration Daybook: After his return from Delaware, the president is scheduled to meet with Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state, in the Oval Office. Ms. Rice is also expected to speak at a Friday luncheon at the National Press Club.
Vote Easy: Project Vote Smart’s Vote Easy is aimed at helping voters figure out which candidates best line up with their own thinking. But, as Project Vote Smart tells it, the candidates themselves weren’t always so willing to help out the project.