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Which party has had the greatest power in Washington for the past four years?

Next question:  Do voters actually understand which party has "held power," politically?

Final question:  If voters want change, why are they shown, in the polls, to be leaning towards extending the power of those who are responsible for the politics of the past four years?

Wait! The polls are wrong?

Kind of looks that way.  In an analysis at the New York Times, polls are shown to skew Republican.

... The reasons to think that today’s polls underestimate Democrats are not based on just the last few years of results. They are also based on a fairly diverse set of methodological arguments, supported by extensive research, suggesting that many of today’s polls struggle to reach Democratic-leaning groups.

Supporters of Senator Harry Reid of Nevada shortly before the 2010 election, which he won by six points despite a series of polls showing him behind. Nevada is a particularly difficult place for pollsters. Credit Isaac Brekken for The New York Times

“The problems that we’re having with getting representative samples tend to lead us toward people who tend not to be Democrats,” said Scott Keeter, the director of survey research at the Pew Research Center. The most highly regarded pollsters, like those at Pew, have made many adjustments to compensate. But other polls, including many of those informing polling averages and Senate forecasting models, are not nearly as high in quality. Another highly regarded pollster, who requested anonymity, put it more bluntly, calling the new challenges “scary.” Many pollsters are reluctant to say things on the record that might undermine confidence in their own polling; others are unwilling to say anything at all, even to offer basic methodological information. ...NYT

I admit I slam down the phone when the caller mentions the word "poll."

How much do we care about the election outcome?

Not a whole helluva lot, if you believe the reports at Daily Intel.

Here's a weird fact about America in 2014: While many people aren't following the midterm elections because they seem too long and dull, a sizable portion of the electorate is willing to read a seven-book series to find out who'll wind up on the Iron Throne of Westeros. ...DailyIntel

How much? Four what? ....OMG!

$4 billion spent "so far" during the run-up to the midterms on Tuesday.  So far.

Although dark money is only 5 percent of the more than $4 billion in election spending this record-breaking cycle, according to estimates by Sunlight, it’s a disproportionate chunk of the donations for swing races that will determine whether Republicans take control of the Senate.

The top three sources of dark money are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Crossroads GPS and the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, which together have spent tens of millions supporting Republicans and attacking Democrats. ...AlJazeera

The remedy, of course, must come from Congress.

Novak [Viveca Novak of OpenSecrets] said there is not much hope for a constitutional amendment tackling unrestrained campaign financing that flopped around the Senate Judiciary Committee in January. One of the biggest proponents of looser regulations is Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who could soon become majority leader. Of the $10 million in dark money spent in his race, 82 percent was to oppose Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic challenger. ...AlJazeera

If we need just one good reason to put McConnell under the sod on Tuesday, that should be sufficient.

Guillotine already under construction on Mall

With just one week to go until the midterm elections, a new poll indicates that billionaires are likely to retain control of the United States government.

The poll, conducted by the University of Minnesota’s Opinion Research Institute, shows that the proxy candidates of billionaires are likely to win ninety-eight per cent of next Tuesday’s races, with the remaining two per cent leaning billionaire.

Although the poll indicates that some races are still “too close to call,” the fact that billionaires funded candidates on both sides puts the races safely in their column. ...Borowitz,NewYorker

So what else is new?  Nothing.  We only have to turn to the late 18th century for a prediction.

Calling the billionaires’ upcoming electoral romp “historic,” Logsdon said, “We have not seen the super-rich maintain such a vise-like grip on the government since the days immediately preceding the French Revolution.” ...Borowitz,NewYorker

Your friendly town police force is no longer your friendly town police force. They've been federalized.

It's a not-so-subtle change from a life in which you "knew pretty much everyone" in your town council.  A friendly warning at a stop sign is no longer a friendly warning.  The feds are on patrol.  They already know the color of your underpants and may be expected to comment on the artistry of your tats. 

The FBI has invested considerable energy in recent months in marketing a massive new biometric database to local cops, whom the agency will rely on to help feed it billions of fingerprints, palm prints, mug shots, iris scans and images of scars, tattoos and other identifiers. ...

... It took senior FBI consultant Peter Fagan just nine words this week to capture the ambitious scope of the agency’s aims with the new system, which is gradually replacing traditional fingerprint identification with facial recognition and other biometric identifier technology.

“What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas anymore,” Fagan told a roomful of police executives at the annual International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference in Orlando on Tuesday.

He said that reaching the FBI’s goal of better tracking criminal suspects from town to town depends on local cops’ ability to adopt increasingly sophisticated new technologies and to share their data with federal law enforcement. He urged police to begin to “pack the record[s]” by collecting as many high-quality biometric identifiers from arrested criminal suspects as possible.

“We’re not only talking mug shots,” he said. “We’re talking scars, marks, tattoos and other descriptors. You can take up to 25 images [per arrest]. It used to be 10, but now you can take up to 25,” he said. “The upside is that every mug shot you collect is going to be searched against an unsolved crime.” ...AlJazeera

Congratulations!  You're on candid... You're in the FBI's biometric database.  You are a potential perp already.  Guilty until exonerated by that tiny "Howdy!" tattoed on your thigh.

And the guy running the FBI is beginning to sound like a sicko nutcase.

Even as outgoing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced a broad new Department of Justice review of policing tactics, training and techniques at the conference on Monday and urged cops not to let racial tensions be “swept under the rug” in places like Ferguson, Missouri — where the fatal August shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer sparked weeks of protests — FBI Director James Comey vividly defended law enforcement on another hot-button policing issue that re-emerged from the long Missouri summer: the militarization of local police.

“I know that this debate and some of the bumper-stickering of it has discouraged many of you, because you know in your gut the dangers that your folks face when they put on the uniform and the badge to go out and do their job each day,” he said.

“We tell a lie to our children … that monsters aren’t real,” Comey said. “Monsters are real. Monsters are barricaded inside apartments waiting for law enforcement to respond so they can fire rounds that will pierce ballistic vests. Monsters are real, and they are equipped with equipment designed to harm innocent people.” ...Al Jazeera

Whew!