I’m not sure that this is the most hilarious advertisement of the 2012 election cycle, but it comes close: A conservative super PAC called the Empower Citizens Network asks African American voters to abandon President Obama—who, obviously, has failed them—and choose Mitt Romney. Why? Because Mitt Romney belongs to the same party as the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln.

The economy gained 171,000 jobs in October, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The previous two months’ job gains were also revised upward, with the BLS now estimating that an additional 50,000 jobs were created in August and 34,000 in September. With the revisions, we finally have more jobs than in early 2009, when the economy was in full collapse and President Obama took office.

Job growth is important, but what might be even more exciting news is that the unemployment rate went from 7.8 percent to 7.9 percent. Wait—isn’t unemployment the number we want to go down immediately?

This is the eighth in the Prospect's series on the 174 measures on state ballots this year.

It’s been a bad year for California unions. Republicans have never been fans of the labor movement, and now state Democratic support is waning. In September, Democratic Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a pension reform plan that will force union members to work longer for fewer benefits, and vetoed the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, an AFL-CIO-backed bill that would have given labor rights to domestic workers. And earlier this month, Brown vetoed a bill that would have allowed child care workers to unionize. In cities like San Jose and Los Angeles—both Democrat-leaning cities with Democratic mayors—unions are fighting more losing battles against pension reform.

In this election, state unions were forced to open a new front—at the ballot box. California ballot Proposition 32 puts labor in even deeper trouble, and could leave the movement effectively silenced. And even if labor kills the measure, it will still come with huge costs to other campaigns in the state.

One of the casualties of Hurricane Sandy is the premise that America’s biggest economic problem is deficit reduction. That’s because the United States just became a much larger version of the Netherlands.

Once we get through the election, official Washington may be willing to talk about this. President Obama’s leadership in helping flooded communities cope with the damage nicely positions him to lead an effort to prevent future super-storm damage.

Both Candidates Back on the Campaign Trail

After an awkward pause due to Hurricane Sandy, both President Obama and Mitt Romney are back where they belong--at each others' throats. Obama campaigned in Wisconsin and Romney was in Virginia yesterday, In the final 100 hours, Obama is planning to visit three states a day from now on. In practice, that means he'll spend almost the entire day in the air on the phone. Romney has said he will make a push to win Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania, but the proof of the pudding will be in seeing how much time he spends visiting those states.

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Although some may find it crass to speculate on the political impact of The Storm, I'm going to go ahead and do it, for two reasons. First, I've earned the right, and second, because complaints that things are "politicized" are almost always misconceived. Politics is important. It concerns choices that affect all our lives. And campaigns ought to be connected to the actual business of governing, so when an event occurs that implicates our government, it should be perfectly fine to talk about it. Problems sometimes arise not from the fact that something is politicized, but the way it's politicized. For instance, when in the 2002 election, Republicans charged that Democrats were on the side of al Qaeda because those Democrats favored a different bill establishing the Department of Homeland Security than the bill Republicans favored, it was despicable not because September 11 had been "politicized," but because of the manner in which it was politicized.

Anyhow, back to the storm. This morning, an editor at the Prospect suggested to me that if Romney loses, Republicans will say bitterly for some time to come that had it not been for the storm, his momentum would have carried him to victory. I don't doubt they will say that (although I think that will be what the sober Republicans will say; the others will find voting conspiracies to convince them that he didn't legitimately win). But the question is, even if they were right, what's wrong with that?

Quick—who's your state legislator? If you're like most people, you have no idea. (If you do know, well la-dee-da!)

State legislative races don't usually get much attention, and in a big presidential year, they're lucky to get any. But who runs the legislature is crucial in setting policy. Two years ago, when Tea Party fervor swept across the nation, Republicans knocked Democrats out of power in 21 state House and Senate chambers. Twenty states had Republicans in charge of the Senate, House, and governor's mansion concurrently. The impact was swift. These new majorities slashed social programs and weakened reproductive rights. They passed new voter-ID laws and anti-union measures.