“We would never do something like that,” a spokeswoman for the 75th Ranger Regiment told BuzzFeed News.

WASHINGTON — Since early September, the Twitter account @75RRegiment has amassed more than 30,000 followers by sending out photos of soldiers posing with babies, challenging ISIS, and fist bumping over beer pong.

The only problem? It's a fake account.

"Holy cow," said a spokeswoman for the 75th Ranger Regiment, also known as the Army Rangers, when informed about the account by BuzzFeed News. She said they were unaware of the account until BuzzFeed News called to ask about it.

The Rangers are one of the most elite special operations units in the U.S. military.

The account borders on the absurd with tweets like "You can't outrun my bullets ISIS," but also tweets that sound similar to those run by real government accounts.

"Very very cool to hear @AdamBaldwin interview with the @75RRegiment we wish him luck in the new season of the @TheLastShipTNT this summer!" one tweet reads.

It's not unheard of for various government agencies to run these types of social media accounts. The State Department has a Facebook and Twitter account dedicated to trolling terrorists.

But the Rangers spokeswoman said the account was definitely a fake.

"We would never ever do something like that," she said. "Definitely not an official Twitter."

The spokeswoman said she would make some calls to see if they can get the account shut down.

The account gets hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of retweets for tweets such as these:

View Entire List ›

Groups including National Council of La Raza and League of United Latin American Citizens join the push to have Labor Secretary Tom Perez replace Eric Holder.

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

WASHINGTON — The biggest names in Latino advocacy stepped up their efforts Friday to persuade President Obama to nominate Labor Secretary Tom Perez to replace outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder.

In a letter set to be sent to Obama, leaders of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda — a group representing National Council of La Raza, the League of United Latin American Citizens, and 37 other Latino advocacy groups — cite Perez's history as the head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division under Holder as qualification enough to earn him the nomination.

NHLA first pushed for a Latino nominee in a letter putting forth several names last month. Now it's stepping up the pressure for that nominee to be Perez. A source familiar with the process behind the letter said Latino advocates consider Perez to be a front-runner for the attorney general job, but have not received any indication from the White House as to who the pick will be.

Perez's name was first mentioned in the hours after Holder announced his resignation last month. Organized labor has been pushing for Perez along with the Latino advocates. Last week, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus called on Obama to nominate Perez.

The White House has been tight-lipped about who the nominee will be, though Obama is operating on a tight timeline. The White House is expected to announce the nominee after next week's election and try and win Senate confirmation during the post-election lame-duck session.

Perez has also been quiet about the speculation. Asked by BuzzFeed News if he has been in conversations about the job with the White House on a unemployment conference call this month, Perez demurred.

"My conversations with the White House have been all about the long-term unemployed, all about the Department of Labor, all about the progress we're making as a nation and putting people back to work and the unfinished business that is left," Perez said, "and that's my singular focus and my job."

Update, 6:13 PM: The NHLA sent this letter to the president Friday afternoon.

The attorney general flagged the contractor. The city says the work was performed correctly, but says the situation is under review.

Sal Pane outside the building where Dr. Craig Spencer, who was infected with Ebola, lives on Oct. 24, 2014.

Brendan Mcdermid / Reuters

The public face of the cleanup of the home of a New York doctor infected with Ebola is a former mortgage scammer and convicted felon released from prison in 2011 whose company won the high-stakes city contract despite his well-known recent past.

Mayor Bill de Blasio's aides have known of Salvatore Pane's background since Monday, officials confirmed to BuzzFeed News, and City Hall quietly stopped working with his firm — but a City Hall official defended his work.

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman flagged the contract because his office — led at the time by now-Gov. Andrew Cuomo — won a judgment against Pane and his previous companies in 2010 for "engaging in fraudulent and illegal acts," officials said.

Pane's practice of extracting money from New Yorkers under the guise of helping them with crushing mortgages had a New York Times column devoted to it. Now he's a leading public face of New York City's emergency response. He was interviewed by Al Jazeera America, Fox News, and in the New York Times; Bloomberg News reported that Cuomo personally called Pane to put Bio-Recovery on the Ebola case.

But none of those reports have drawn the connection between the handsome cleanup technician — pictured in Reuters photos outside the doctor's Harlem apartment — and the mortgage cases, perhaps because Pane has changed the spelling of his last name to "Pain."

"Our attorneys became aware of this situation on Monday and we immediately notified the mayor's office and the governor's office," Damien LaVera, the communications director for Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, told BuzzFeed News Friday. "We will continue to monitor the situation, provide any assistance our state and city partners request, and take any actions we deem necessary to protect the public interest."

Pane, in an interview, rejected any connection between his past and his Ebola work, and confirmed his past criminal and civil legal issues as well as having changed his name.

"I hope I've done what I've had to do to rebuild my life," he said. "I'm not a bad guy."

A de Blasio aide said the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene verified that officials checked the cleanup of the apartment afterward, and found the work was successful and the job was performed correctly. There have been no allegations of subpar work by Bio-Recovery employees, according to the city.

"The city first became aware of this situation this week, and has been reviewing the facts," Phil Walzak, a spokesman for the mayor, told BuzzFeed News on Friday. "Bio-Recovery has not received any further work from the city as we review this situation."

Melissa DeRosa, the communications director for Gov. Andrew Cuomo, said that after being alerted of the claim that the governor had contacted Pane, state officials checked to see if the state had any contracts with Pane. DeRosa told BuzzFeed News that Pane has no contracts with New York state.

Alerted to a statement — unsourced in the Bloomberg News report — that Cuomo had sought out the man he sued in his capacity as New York attorney general just four years ago, DeRosa said, "This is completely false and ... deeply disturbing."

Asked about the reported call from Cuomo, Pane denied he'd ever claimed to have spoken to the governor. He told BuzzFeed News, "We were on call with every high-level government official, but I can't speak to if Gov. Cuomo was on the call." Cuomo's office said no high-level officials spoke to Pane.

A city aide confirmed that Bio-Recovery was on calls with health officials related to the apartment cleaning, but said no commissioners or top City Hall officials were on the call to their knowledge.

In addition to Dr. Craig Spencer's apartment, Bio-Recovery also cleaned Gutter, the Brooklyn bar and bowling alley where Spencer had gone earlier this month.

"We cleaned every square inch of the place — every hole in every bowling ball," Pane told the New York Post. "Every pin, every lane, every receiver, every sink, every toilet. We disposed of all paper goods, anything that was open — all toilet paper rolls. Because it's a bowling alley, we had to chemically strip the oil from the floors."

But just a few years before he was playing a key role in a global public health crisis, Pane was in a different business — one in which he also marketed himself effectively, and one which ended badly.

In the late 2000s, Pane ran two distressed mortgage companies, American Modification Agency and Amerimod, and appeared widely on television as an expert on how to help people with troubled mortgages fix their problems. In 2010, Pane and his company "engaged in fraudulent, deceptive, and illegal business practices that violated New York's consumer protection and real property laws," according to a pleading filed by then-state attorney general Andrew Cuomo. Justice Emily Jane Goodman of State Supreme Court in Manhattan filed a permanent injunction against the companies.

On unrelated charges, Pane spent nine months, from June 2010 to March 2011, in jail for operating a vehicle without a license — first-degree aggravated unlicensed operation of a vehicle, according to prison records, which is a felony.

In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Pane was adamant that Bio-Recovery is an upstanding company and separate from his past. He said he had begun doing cleanup work in 2001, working at his neighbor Vincent Santella's company. Pane said the two did work for, and were partners with, the late Ron Gospodarski, the first owner of Bio-Recovery, who died in April 2013. "We all worked here and then we started working together," he said.

"Let's not hurt a good company. If it does I'll resign," he said. Pane said he had changed his surname from Pane to Pain because of an incident with a stalker.

In television and radio interviews, Pane has said the firm has more than 20 years of experience in crime scene cleanup. During the anthrax scare of 2001, Bio-Recovery decontaminated ABC Studios in Manhattan; the firm was then owned by Gospodarski. Pane told BuzzFeed News that another Bio-Recovery employee, Vincent Santella, bought the firm from Gospodarski's estate, though public documents weren't immediately available to confirm the details of the transaction.

City documents say Bio-Recovery has been a contractor for city agencies for the last six years, but there is no standing contract, and Bio-Recovery is contracted on a case-by-case basis. The contracts are too small, a city official said, to require detailed disclosure in the city's Vendex program, which was created to screen out questionable contractors.

And the continuity between the company's old and new ownership is far from clear.

A former employee of Bio-Recovery, Manny Sosa, told BuzzFeed News on Thursday, "They are not the company we were. I have no idea who they are."

Pane said he knew Sosa, and charged that Sosa had been fired three years before Gospodarski's death.

When asked about Pane's comments on Friday, Sosa reiterated that he did not know Pane or Santella. He said he had worked for Gospodarski since 1999, and left on his own.

Today, Bio-Recovery is one of four crime scene cleanup entities connected with Pane: Bio-Recovery, All Island Bio-Recovery, Long Island Trauma, and the Crime Scene Cleanup Association.

EPA records list Pane as the operator of All Island Bio-Recovery and Santella as the regulatory contact.

When called, phone numbers on each of the websites go to the same business — Bio-Recovery. Additionally, many of the testimonials across the three sites — Bio-Recovery, All Island Bio-Recovery, and Crime Scene Cleanup — are identical. Two of the websites feature many of the same photos of cleanup sites.

Pane confirmed to BuzzFeed News that it is one business, and said the different sites are a "marketing" tactic.

Multiple calls to other Bio-Recovery employees by BuzzFeed News were not returned.

There is at least one questionable claim on Bio-Recovery's website.

On the about page of its website, Bio-Recovery claims to have an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau, "for its many years of excellent service." When the link is followed, Bio-Recovery's profile on the website says the business is not accredited with the organization.

When contacted by BuzzFeed News, a source at the Better Business Bureau said Bio-Recovery's use of the BBB seal on its website is against policy.

"They will be receiving a cease and desist letter" for using the BBB seal on the Bio-Recovery website, the source said. "It's trademark infringement."

Mike Hayes contributed reporting.

The Ready for Hillary strategy session this month will feature officials from Priorities USA, EMILY’s List, and longtime Clinton backers like James Carville.

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

Members of the Clintonworld enclave laying the groundwork for Hillary Clinton's possible presidential campaign will convene at a hotel in Midtown Manhattan later this month for a day-long strategy session hosted by Ready for Hillary.

A few hundred Democrats plan to meet at the Sheraton on Nov. 21 for the group's second-annual National Finance Council meeting. Like last year, the confab will feature speeches, panel discussions, and undoubtedly no small amount of behind-closed-doors gossip, traded among the operatives and donors who make up a coordinated network of super PACs and nonprofits backing a Clinton run.

Among the featured speakers are three operatives who are often mentioned as a possible Clinton campaign manager: Guy Cecil, the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee; Ace Smith, a prominent California strategist who worked for Clinton's last campaign; and Stephanie Schriock, the head of EMILY's List, a national group that supports pro-choice female candidates.

Another operative, Robby Mook, is mentioned as a leading contender for the top campaign job. In 2008, he ran three states for Clinton. And last year, he managed the race of her longtime friend, Terry McAuliffe, for Virginia governor.

Mook will not be attending the Ready for Hillary council meeting.

The outcome of the senate races next week may affect Cecil's fate in a campaign. But people close to Clinton have said midterms losses wouldn't dissuade the former secretary of state from selecting Cecil. Schriock is said to have less of a relationship with Clinton than the others. And Smith, who represents many of California's top Democrats, is seen by Clinton watchers as a dark horse choice.

The meeting will be Cecil and Schriock's first public event with Ready for Hillary.

Smith spoke at the same gathering last year. He has informally advised the PAC, serving as a "sounding board," according to one person familiar with the group.

Ready for Hillary, a super PAC based in northern Virginia, has worked since early last year to gather a long list of voters who would support Clinton if she decides to run for president a second time. That outcome seems increasingly likely.

Clinton has spent this month on the trail, stumping for other Democrats and sharpening a speech that could translate to her own campaign.

Other speakers at the council meeting include the following Clinton backers:

John Anzalone: pollster for Obama in 2008 and 2012

James Carville: top strategist on Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign and longtime adviser to the former president

David Brock: founder of Correct the Record, a group that aims to defend Clinton from Republican attacks

Mitch Stewart: senior Obama campaign operative who co-founded 270 Strategies, a consulting firm that counts Ready for Hillary as a client

Karen Finney: strategist who worked for Hillary Clinton in the White House

Buffy Wicks: Obama campaign aide who now serves as executive director of Priorities USA, the multimillion dollar super PAC that backed President Obama's reelection and is now positioned to support a Clinton bid

Jonathan Mantz: Clinton's finance director in 2008 and a senior adviser for finance to Priorities USA

Marc Morial: president of the National Urban League

Peter O'Keefe: former Clinton White House aide who worked under McAuliffe while he was head of the Democratic National Committee

Sen. Alex Padilla: state senator from California

Tracy Sefl: Ready for Hillary senior advisor

Joan Walsh: liberal pundit and editor at Salon

The invitation for this year's Ready for Hillary National Finance Council meeting

Off the heels of a colorful exchange in New Jersey, N.J. Gov. Chris Christie encounters measured optimism in central Wisconsin. On the road with potential 2016 candidates.

Darren Sands

WAUSAU, Wisconsin – "Sit down and shut up!" the woman giggled to herself, asking to take a picture with the man whose words to a heckler during a speech 1,100 miles away were replayed over and over on television. She was talking to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Christie began to turn red.

"Listen," he told her, starting to crack a smile, "my mother taught me, you give what you get."

For a man loathe to apologize for his actions, Christie looked a little embarrassed; garnering national headlines for handling Ebola quarantines is one thing — people reciting back to you your own shout to a heckler is a little different.

Especially side-by-side with a potential rival.

Christie was in Wisconsin to help Gov. Scott Walker in the final days of an incredibly tight re-election bid, days after Walker criticized the organization Christie heads, the Republican Governors Association, for not delivering more money to his campaign.

On Friday, the pair was a study in the politics of presidential aspiration – and also in first impressions.

Walker, whose aides say he makes it a point to show his knowledge of even the most remote parts of the state, began by rattling off town after town in this part of the state. He spoke of personally signing metal beams made in Wisconsin for the rival Minnesota Vikings' new stadium.

He held his ringless right fist out for a line he likes to deliver — it goes over well.

"You know what this is: That's the Vikings showing off their Super Bowl rings."

"It's great to be back in north central Wisconsin," he continued with his voice rising, "because we've got a great story to tell!" Walker then fell into his pitch, a now rapt crowd behind him.

Christie, who will travel to four states on behalf of governors on Saturday, might have done well to poke some fun at himself. Instead, his address here at a home-building supplies distributor largely fell flat. "One of the things that I've learned over the last five years that I wanted to share with all of you is there are lots of things that are going to happen when you are governor that you can't predict," Christie said, alluding to Hurricane Sandy.

"I can tell you, they don't teach out how to deal with that stuff in new governor's school," he said to some laughter. "Elections are not a referendum. They are a choice."

About 100 people gathered at Wausau Supply Company for Walker's campaign stop Friday. Christie, whose wont is to sometimes check his phone with the cameras rolling, appeared to be in admiration of Walker's political style.

He wasn't alone.

"I think it's clear that he stands for businesses like ours, which is nice to see," Terry Lake said of Walker after the rally. "He was fired up. He wasn't, like, relaxed up there. He had it going."

Dave Schilling agreed. "The things he was saying were genuine like he himself believes it," he added. "I just like the way he carried himself. He didn't seem like a politician."

Walker's oratorical style – he is the son of a Baptist preacher – gave him an unmistakable preacher's cadence Friday. While Christie wore dress pants, a collared shirt and a fleece with his name on it, Walker was more Wisconsin everyman than a big-time Madison pol in a red plaid shirt with blue jeans and boots. At his second campaign stop with Christie, he donned the jacket of the company (Ponsse North America) and shook hands and hugged in frigid temperatures.

"We know the facts about him," said Josh Werner, 39, who added that he was unbothered by the negative ads that play all the time on local television. "We see what's actually happening since he's been in office. Property taxes went down. He's definitely added jobs and reduced the state deficit. And so I take pride in voting for someone that tells the truth."

Werner said he wasn't aware of whispers that Walker himself could be interested in running for president in 2016. He did know, however, that Christie could be a name that emerges next year. "I like the fact that he implemented the quarantine," Werner said, speaking of Christie's Ebola response. "I think it was the right thing to do. Our country is in a state of turmoil and someone who can make a decision like that I think is ready to be president.

"He and Scott Walker are people do what they say they're going to do."

But when the event was over, there were two people on the minds those who left: the surrogate and the candidate.

Asked which governor seemed more presidential, Lake and Schilling, both agreed it was the guy who they'll vote for on Nov. 4.

Stumping for Grimes, Clinton’s pitch to voters is a “referendum on the future.” Clinton, who has been in national politics almost as long as McConnell’s been in office, looks ahead to a “fresh start” in Washington.

Alison Lundergan Grimes, right, appears on stage with Hillary Rodham Clinton, center, and Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear at a campaign rally on Saturday.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP Photo

LEXINGTON, Ky. — In three weeks on the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton has hit 16 states to campaign and fundraise for Democrats facing elections on Tuesday.

But here in Kentucky, Clinton has held more campaign rallies for one candidate, Alison Lundergan Grimes, than any other single Democrat on the ballot this month.

Clinton returned to the state on Saturday to cast Grimes — the 35-year-old secretary of state running against a U.S. senator whose tenure on Capitol Hill is almost as long — as an emblem of "new thinking" and a coming "fresh start" in Washington.

Polls don't show Grimes winning on election day against Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader running for a sixth term. But she has made his long tenure in Washington the crux of her campaign, while framing herself as the face of a new generation in politics, fed up with the last. (Her speeches focus relentlessly on McConnell, and her merchandise features slogans like "Ditch Mitch" and "I Challenge Mitch.")

Clinton singled out that quality on Saturday in two speeches, both held on college campuses. The "entire country is watching" the Grimes-McConnell race, Clinton said, because of the way her new voice would shift the politics in D.C.

"Maybe more than any other place in these midterm elections, the voters of Kentucky have the chance not just to send a message, but to alter the course of politics and government," Clinton said at her first event of the day, a rally inside a large and dimly lit arena in Highland Heights, a town near the Ohio border.

Clinton's pair of speeches had a pronounced forward-looking quality that hung in part on the generation dynamics at play between Grimes and McConnell, who is 72.

She did not name McConnell directly in her remarks at the first rally or the second, which was held at Transylvania University in Lexington. But Clinton repeatedly depicted her former Senate colleague as a "permanent Washington fixture."

"Are you ready for a fresh start with a fresh voice and a fresh leader?" Clinton asked.

Speaking after Grimes at both rallies, she argued there is a "need to change course" and called upon attendees to "vote for the future." The Grimes-McConnell race, Clinton said, is "not just a contest between a permanent Washington fixture and a fresh face — it's a contest between old thinking and new thinking."

"It is a referendum on the future," Clinton said at both rallies.

Clinton herself has been involved in national politics — on her husband's campaigns; in the White House and the U.S. Senate; as a candidate for president; and as the last secretary of state — for nearly as long as McConnell has been in office.

But on the campaign trail this month, Clinton has developed a speech that is aspirational and focused on the future, describing Democrats she stumps for as change-making. In Pennsylvania, at a rally for Tom Wolf, the businessman running for governor, she called on his campaign slogan, "A Fresh Start," in her speech.

And last week, at an event with Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney in New York's Hudson Valley, Clinton said the young congressman was "part of a new political mission to make our government work again for the people of the country we love."

If she runs for president, Clinton will face the challenge of leading that "new political mission," offering a distinct path forward from the Obama administration, and convincing voters she is closer to a Grimes "fresh face" than a McConnell "fixture."

Clinton spent much of her speeches on Saturday decrying parts of the political system. She described Washington as a place where people use money to "muddy the waters" and "drown" out voters, and where troubling "patterns" develop among public officials. Some, Clinton said, "don't seem to care as much or work as hard to give everyone the same chance that Alison had and made the most of."

"We cannot in our country continue to reward the dividers," said Clinton. "We need to reward the uniters — the people who care about everybody."

Artists use the holiday to highlight national ills. John Stanton reports from Mexico City for BuzzFeed News.

A Mexican artist erected a massive Dia De Los Muertos altar in the city's central Zocalo square on Saturday dedicated to 43 missing college students from the state of Guerrero.

The students disappeared more than a month ago. Authorities say local officials and corrupt police are to blame.

John Stanton / Via Buzzfeed

Although Dia De Los Muertos altars are typically erected to family members or friends, Mexican artists have long used the tradition to highlight social and political causes.

John Stanton / Via BuzzFeed

Artist Octavio Marquez Orozco originally conceived of the two statues — which depict a bound man with a black hood on his head and a mourning mother — as a symbol of the epidemic of disappearances in the country, the outrage over the missing college students prompted him to add a dedication to them.

The altar is "to support the disappeared, and [is] a social critique of the state," Marquez told BuzzFeed News. "The mask represents the part of the country that has been kidnapped, and [the woman] is the motherland. She is crying out for her children."

John Stanton / Via BuzzFeed

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“I don’t care if she’s as good looking as Taylor Swift…”

AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Retiring Democratic Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin says that Iowa voters shouldn't be fooled because Joni Ernst is "really attractive" and "sounds nice."

"In this Senate race, I've been watching some of these ads," Harkin said at the Story County Democrats' annual fall barbecue last week honoring the retiring senator. "And there's sort of this sense that, 'Well, I hear so much about Joni Ernst. She is really attractive, and she sounds nice.'"

"Well I gotta to thinking about that. I don't care if she's as good looking as Taylor Swift or as nice as Mr. Rogers, but if she votes like Michele Bachmann, she's wrong for the state of Iowa."

Here is the video:

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He’s actually kind of normal and awkward. Why that works for him.

Gary Cameron / Reuters

WASHINGTON — News outlets have a favorite descriptor for Sen. Rand Paul these days: "The Most Interesting Man in Politics."

Time magazine, Politico, and the Washington Post have all applied the epithet to Paul, who is a likely 2016 presidential candidate and whose views on foreign policy and criminal justice issues have put him at odds with his party's establishment and garnered him plenty of headlines.

But the man himself is a different story. Paul, unlike most politicians, is a mediocre schmoozer. He can be awkward at carrying on conversations, and rarely sports the kind of wide grins commonly found on the faces of politicians on the campaign trail. In other words, Paul is a normal guy. And he travels like one, too; while other potential 2016 candidates are surrounded by entourages — even professional photographers — as they campaign for midterm candidates, Paul is usually accompanied by a single staffer, and has also been traveling by himself.

On a flight from Des Moines to New York last week, Paul read the Wall Street Journal, typed on his iPad, napped, and ordered a cranberry juice mixed with seltzer. He flew coach like the rest of us. His staff was nowhere to be found. Though he eventually agreed to be interviewed while the plane was taxiing, attempts at conversation during the flight were unsuccessful. At the end of the flight, he made small talk with fellow passenger Arthur Neis, a Des Moines, Iowa resident, who told him "Please bring the Republican Party back to the center. If not, I'm trapped."

The next day, Paul flew by himself to Georgia to campaign for Republican senatorial candidate David Perdue.

Onstage, Paul can seem dour. At a rally with Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts and Gov. Sam Brownback this week in Wichita, Paul stood stonefaced on stage next to Brownback, who smiled broadly throughout the event. When he spoke after Brownback, the governor put a Kansas City Royals cap — this was before they lost the World Series — on Paul's head, and it seemed to struggle to go over his curls.

When he's speaking, though, he loosens up — like possible future rival Ted Cruz, Paul steps out from behind the podium and stands near it, though he doesn't roam as far and wide around the stage as Cruz does.

Paul acknowledges that his mannerisms differ from most down-home, backslapping Republican politicians with presidential ambitions. But for him, it's to his advantage.

"I think people are who they are and I think authenticity's a really important trait to have," Paul said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. "And I think we have a lot of people who are effusing unctuousness and dripping hypocrisy."

"I think it's kind of refreshing if someone is somewhat honest and forthright," Paul said. "That's the most common comment I get from people, is that I'm not preaching to them or talking down to them, I'm just talking to them like a neighbor."

Paul could find, though, that voters on the campaign trail, especially in early primary states like Iowa and New Hampshire where a candidate will meet countless voters face to face, expect a certain level of charm from their politicians. He might also have to say goodbye to solo flights and traveling with just an aide — presidential candidates tend to form a protective bubble early on.

Voters BuzzFeed News spoke with on Paul's campaign swing this past week seemed to like his low-key style, though.

"I'm really turned off by people who want to be your friend just to get a vote from you," said Jeremy Wheeler, 35, of Wichita, an office assistant at a pro-life ministry. "Rand Paul, he has done a better job than any politician I've seen of reaching out to everyone."

"If the Republicans are stupid enough to nominate somebody else for president, I'll be voting third party for the third election in a row," Wheeler, who had a Chihuahua named Mandy on his shoulders and a homemade "Rand Paul 2016" sign, said.

For some, charisma is overrated.

"I think we have enough people that are extroverts and very charismatic that I think there's room for a more temperate kind of voice," said Sally Foley, a retired lawyer from Bloomfield, Michigan, at a Republican dinner outside of Detroit last week. "Because making a lot of speeches without follow-through doesn't really solve our problems."

"If he's on a program with eight people debating, his tone is going to be perhaps a bit different from the other eight," Foley said. "I always think speaking with your own voice is effective. The fact that he has an unusual political voice cuts through all the rah-rah noise."

What happens when you combine establishment credentials with a true believer.

Gary Cameron / Reuters

The next week will involve a lot of talking about the "wide open" contest for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, about the strong field, about whether the strong field is irretrievably damaged, about how there isn't a clear frontrunner.

This isn't true. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz — the true outsider, the tribune of the grassroots, the ruthless lawyer — is the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination.

This is not trolling. This is serious. Conservatives vote in Republican primaries. And Cruz is really good at talking to conservatives.

Even his enemies will concede Cruz is smart. And his resume is strong — Princeton and Harvard Law School; success at the highest level of American law; serious jobs in federal and state government; and an underdog Senate victory in 2012. The strikes against Cruz as a Republican candidate usually run something like this: He doesn't poll well; the shutdown freaked people out; he can be grim; he's not well-regarded among Senate Republicans. Cruz, who quickly replaced Jim DeMint as the most hated man on Capitol Hill, has been underestimated for what is basically a credential: Even Republicans in Washington hate him.

Let's work through the rest of this like a geometric proof.

Yes, in the first big Iowa poll last month, Cruz trailed some other Republican contenders.

But more than a year before the Iowa caucuses, presidential polls are just tests of name recognition. And so they tell us one thing: The Democratic field is very closed; the Republican field is very open. That's it. Mitt Romney polls very well for that reason — high name recognition in a field of parity.

There's actually a much more important poll number out of Iowa, one that's much more telling about the voters there, and bodes better for Cruz than anyone else considering a run for president.

Check out, from this weekend's big Des Moines Register poll, the top reason voters say Joni Ernst is worth voting for:

Des Moines Register / Via scribd.com

No single issue has united Republicans more for five years now. No one — not Rand Paul, not Marco Rubio, certainly not Chris Christie, who expanded Medicaid under Obamacare — has fought Obamacare's implementation in a more demonstrated way than Cruz. Clearly, he shut down the government in a ridiculous, nonstarter effort to "defund" the law. On Sunday, Cruz told the Washington Post that Republicans should "pursue every means possible to repeal Obamacare." Merits of the shutdown past and reconciliation future aside, dismantling Obamacare has been the core issue of Cruz's political career — he ran on it in his Senate bid. This was his pitch in 2012: "I'm not running as a lawyer. I'm running as a fighter."

The portfolio has to go beyond Obamacare, though. And based on the speeches Cruz has been giving lately, here's the kind of pitch Cruz is probably going to make to conservatives: I will lower taxes, I will protect religious liberty, I will enforce immigration laws strictly, I will defend Israel, I will restore America's robust presence in the world.

Stumping for Republican Senate candidate David Perdue in October, he emphasized the Hobby Lobby case, the threat of ISIS, and immigration. He has a small library of failed legislative efforts to back these up. In print and on stage this year, he's gone hard defending Israel.

It all sounds like a lot of the conservative priorities right now. And presumably, these are not random choices.

"As Sun Tzu said, every battle is won before it is fought," he told Texas Monthly's Erica Grieder, who's written the best profiles of the senator. He was speaking of his litigation career, but he could have been talking politics. "It is won by choosing the terrain on which the battle is fought."

Then there's this, perhaps the most important thing, and something that may surprise reporters who find him stiff and distant: If you put Cruz on a stage and then on the ground in the middle of a bunch of Republican families, he is warm, funny, and sincere.

Cruz's dour image might actually play to his advantage a little, insofar as it dramatically manages your expectations. I was in Georgia last month, outside Savannah, watching Cruz campaign for Perdue. Here's what he opened with:

"You've seen the news about people jumping the fence at the White House — the guy who jumped over the eight-foot fence in front of the White House earlier this year. The Secret Service tries to run him down. They finally catch him, and they turn to him and say, 'I'm sorry, Mr. President, you've got two more years!'

This week, somebody again jumped over the fence. The Secret Service catches this one, too, and this time they say, 'I'm sorry, Hillary, not yet!'"

The laughter cut through the crowd — mostly families and older couples at a farm — and then turned to loud applause at the real punch line: "And not ever!"

It's, like, not a bad joke. He had others. He delivers them well. Ted Cruz can be funny.

The biggest applause of the afternoon, though, may have been for Cruz's bill to strip Americans who join ISIS of their U.S. citizenship.

"You want to know how radical and extreme the Democrats are? The Democrats stood up on the Senate floor and blocked that legislation," Cruz then said to a small gasp of a reaction.

"Jesus," one man said. Cruz left out the full details of the bill's outcome: He asked for the bill to be passed by unanimous consent, despite the complex legal issue of stripping citizenship. One senator, Mazie Hirono, objected on reasonable procedural grounds — the bill hadn't been considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

It sounded good in Georgia, though. And Cruz is good in this kind of setting.

He thanked person after person for coming to the event, intent and serious, posing for photos and talking to little kids like they were adults. And while Cruz kind of talks to reporters like a character in a 19th century novel — performative and clipped — his rapport with supporters is far more natural.

"I just wanted to shake the next president's hand!" one woman told Cruz after the event; a number of others offered similar sentiments.

Cruz radiated sincerity in Georgia, and complex mental gymnastics aren't involved to imagine it working in Sioux City, Iowa, or Spartanburg, South Carolina. He can fluidly shift from an emotional appeal to a one-liner and back. And if he exaggerates, if he leaves out critical details, if he turns the somewhat reasonable into the outrageous — well, Ted Cruz isn't running as a lawyer, he's running as a fighter. You can trust him to always fight for conservative principles. And conservatives are the ones voting in Republican primaries.

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“You gave me my voice back.”

Hillary Clinton greets volunteers as she campaigns with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (far left) at the Farm Bar and Grill in Dover, New Hampshire.

Jim Cole / AP Photo

NASHUA, New Hampshire — Hillary Clinton was almost out of the Puritan Backroom, the Manchester bar where she came to meet voters with a Senate candidate here in New Hampshire, when one man's remark seemed to stop her short.

"I've got a life-sized picture of you," the patron told Clinton.

Clinton shook his hand and smiled, searching for a response.

"Well, say hello to me!"

"You scare me sometimes," the man replied.

Clinton laughed, but kept moving.

The exchange was one of many with voters here on Sunday afternoon in New Hampshire. Some were awkward. Others, with those she recognized from her last campaign, were more intimate. Most were pleasant. Almost all were quick.

But during her four-stop swing through the state, Clinton got a feel for what it'd be like to be a candidate again. Here more than any other place she's visited on the trail this year, she prioritized events that would put her in contact with voters in the state that carried her through the "darkest days" of the primary six years ago.

The visit was a fitting coda to the 45 events in 20 states she has held this fall on behalf of candidates on the ballot. She now appears closer than ever to launching her own campaign — and shifting back into candidate mode.

This was Clinton's first time back to New Hampshire since the 2008 election, when she won the state after briefly and uncharacteristically losing emotional control, and finding that voters could finally connect with her raw emotion. This year, she returned to the state, which historically holds the first primary of each presidential election, to stump for Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and Gov. Maggie Hassan.

The former Secretary of State started with a rally in Nashua, then coursed up Route 3 to Manchester for a stop at the Puritan Backroom, the popular bar in the state's largest city. After that, she was over in Dover at another restaurant, meeting with volunteers. And before the day was over, she headlined an intimate fundraiser in Portsmouth for Hassan, who is poised to win a second term with ease.

The fundraiser, confirmed by a Clinton aide, was held at a private residence — her staff wouldn't say whose, or whether the people who attended had also supported Clinton in 2008. Asked why she needed a fundraiser with only two days left in the election, Hassan said, "It's a good way to build support, and I'm very appreciative that she's here. We're just continuing to get my message out."

At the rally with Hassan and Shaheen, during a brief aside about her 2008 campaign, Clinton suggested that New Hampshire was as much a memory of her victory as it was a reminder of the "grit" she had to call on after a loss.

She won the primary here after her crippling third-place finish in Iowa to Barack Obama and John Edwards.

"In 2008, during the darkest days of my campaign, you lifted my up," Clinton said. You gave me my voice back. You taught me so much about grit and determination."

"I will never forget that… I want to thank the people of New Hampshire."

The audience greeted her with equal enthusiasm. Shaheen, in a tight race for reelection this year, started off her speech with a call to the crowd.

"Are we excited to have Hillary back in New Hampshire," Shaheen shouted.

"Are we ready for Hillary," she said even louder.

Clinton, standing to Shaheen's left, smiled as cheers filled the college gymnasium. But when a chant broke out — "Hill-a-ry! Hill-a-ry!" — Clinton tried to quiet the crowd down, looking unsure of how to handle the moment with Shaheen at the lectern.

Clinton held up her hands, palms open, and mouthed, "Thank you."

Via Jim Cole / AP Photo

Later, at her first retail stop at the Puritan Backroom, locals, state politicians, and reporters gathered near the entrance of the bar, waiting for Clinton.

Near the middle of the room was Raymond Buckley, the state party chair; Lou D'Allesandro, the oft-quoted New Hampshire senator; and Kathy Sullivan, a mainstay in state politics here. Farther back were a group of teamsters and small business owners. In a booth, a local Ready for Hillary staffer sat eating lunch. And near the bar, unassuming customers waited for the Patriots game on TVs overhead.

But by the time Clinton rolled in, everyone in the restaurant knew who was coming.

She was surrounded. Shaheen and Hassan trailed close behind, but occasionally got lost in the crush of people. Reporters tossed out questions and fans offered presents and pictures for autographs. Even D'Allesandro thrust a gift in her direction. Inside the used Lord & Taylor shopping bag he handed her way was a knitted blanket for Clinton's granddaughter. (One of his staffers made it, he said.)

As Clinton snaked her way around the Puritan, she shook hands, she hugged, and she rounded out her quick conversations by arranging for many, many pictures.

At one point, a table full of fans asked for a selfie. Clinton advised the group that a selfie "won't work" with that many people. She knelt near the table while an aide snapped a picture instead.

During her other retail stop — a meet-and-greet in Dover with about 20 Shaheen volunteers just back from knocking on doors — there were more photos.

"I thought maybe we could do a group picture of several group pictures," Clinton asked the group when she first arrived. "How does that sound? Does that sound good? Maybe we could sort of organize… organize in whatever natural way…"

"Organize!" one of the volunteers cut in, prompting cheers.

"That's right," Clinton said. "And mobilize! And then Jeanne and I can go around, and I can say thank you for everything you're doing for her."

"OK, so whatever groups you want to put yourself in..."

When Clinton made her way around the room, snapping a picture with each volunteer, she fell into a more natural rhythm with the Shaheen crew.

"Thank you for working so hard for Jeanne," she told the volunteers.

But when one man wanted to talk politics, Clinton didn't engage.

George Fleming, a 57-year-old retired Marine from Barrington, New Hampshire, approached Clinton to tell her he was fed up with that Bush family.

"We can't have another one," Fleming said. "I mean, Jeb..."

Clinton laughed but said nothing. Then an aide swept in for another picture.

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“I think it’s unfortunate that he and many of their party believe you can’t be a real woman if you’re conservative and you’re female.”

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Republican Iowa Senate candidate Joni Ernst said Monday she was "greatly offended" by comments retiring Democratic Senator Tom Harkin said last week comparing her looks to that of Taylor Swift.

"I was very offended that Sen. Harkin would say that. I think it's unfortunate that he and many of their party believe you can't be a real woman if you're conservative and you're female," Ernst said on Fox News Monday morning. "Again, I am greatly offended by that."

"I believe if my name had been John Ernst attached to my resume, Sen. Harkin would not have said those things," Ernst added.

BuzzFeed News reported Sunday evening Harkin said last week at an event honoring him that Iowa voters shouldn't be fooled because Joni Ernst is "really attractive" and "sounds nice."

"In this Senate race, I've been watching some of these ads," Harkin said. "And there's sort of this sense that, 'Well, I hear so much about Joni Ernst. She is really attractive, and she sounds nice.'"

"Well I got to thinking about that. I don't care if she's as good looking as Taylor Swift or as nice as Mr. Rogers, but if she votes like Michele Bachmann, she's wrong for the state of Iowa."

White House guards were sent to the home of an employee in a spat with a neighbor, but for less time than was initially reported.

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

WASHINGTON — An October report from an independent Inspector General investigating an incident where Secret Service agents were taken off duty at the White House perimeter to guard a colleague's home found that the problem was less prevalent than reported, though still "problematic."

In the summer of 2011, a rotating two-agent squad of plainclothes agents from the Secret Service's "Prowler" unit were pulled from duty near the White House to monitor the home of a Secret Service employee about an hour's drive away in Maryland. The agents, in sophisticated vehicles, "respond to suspicious persons and situations in and around the White House and the National Capital Region," according to the report, which was released by Department Of Homeland Security IG John Roth on Oct. 17.

Details of the scheme were first reported by the Washington Post in May.

The Post reported Prowler agents were used to monitor the employee's house as well as her neighbor's house for "at least two months," based on sourcing. Other sources told the paper the the operation "continued through the summer months," finally petering out to an end "by early fall."

A spokesperson for the Secret Service denied at the time that the Moonlight operation went on for months, telling the paper that "agency records indicate that the assignment took place for only a few days over the Fourth of July weekend."

The Secret Service declined to provide records of the operation, according to the Post.

The IG report found that "Operation Moonlight" — or "Moonshine," as it was also known — actually only lasted a period of days, from rather than two months. The operation went from July 1 to 5, 2011 and was discontinued on July 7. While some recollections from agents varied about the timeframe, the IG found "no evidence" the operation went past July 5.

The operation was launched after a staffer in the director's office at Secret Service headquarters in Washington had what the IG reported was "an altercation" with a neighbor at her home in Maryland on June 30, 2011. The staffer sought a restraining order from a judge, which she obtained on July 5. In the interim, Prowler units were ordered to monitor the staffer's home and background checks were run on her neighbors.

"The duration of these visits could not accurately be determined," the IG report reads. "Some agents told us that they remained there between 15 minutes and 2 hours, to include drive time."

On two of the days Prowler agents were monitoring the staffer's home, President Obama was in Washington and the "Moonlight" operation meant Prowler units "would have been unable to respond to exigencies at the White House," according to the IG. The IG report concludes the entire operation was "problematic" and "created the appearance" of agents being dispatched based on the staffer's friendship with top Secret Service leaders and not a legitimate threat worthy of federal resources.

The Washington Post reported Sunday that the armed CDC guard on an elevator with the president was not a convicted felon as first reported.

Read the Inspector General's report

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Locations chosen based on department’s “independent and nonpartisan consideration and expertise,” Attorney General Eric Holder says.

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

WASHINGTON — One of the key issues liberals flag as a highlight of Attorney General Eric Holder's tenure is his work on voting issues — a legacy he aims to continue on Tuesday when the Justice Department stations election monitors in 18 states across the country.

Holder, in a statement Monday, said of the effort, "Over the last few months, leaders from the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division have received information from a wide variety of citizens and groups. Based upon our independent and non-partisan consideration and expertise, we have dispatched federal monitors to polling places around the country — just as we do during every election season."

The Justice Department has regularly taken such action since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the department noted in an accompanying release.

On the monitors' actions, Holder said in the statement, "These officials will gather information on numerous aspects of local election procedures, including whether voters are treated differently depending on their race or color; whether jurisdictions are adequately serving individuals with disabilities; whether jurisdictions are complying with the provisional ballot requirements of the Help America Vote Act; and whether jurisdictions are complying with the Voting Rights Act's requirement to provide bilingual election materials and assistance in areas of need."

- Maricopa County, Arizona;
- Alameda County, California;
- Napa County, California;
- Duval County, Florida;
- Hillsborough County, Florida;
- Lee County, Florida;
- Orange County, Florida;
- Fulton County, Georgia;
- Gwinnett County, Georgia;
- Chicago, Illinois;
- Finney County, Kansas;
- Robeson County, North Carolina;
- Colfax County, Nebraska;
- Douglas County, Nebraska;
- Bergen County, New Jersey;
- Cibola County, New Mexico;
- Orange County, New York;
- Cuyahoga County, Ohio;
- Hamilton County, Ohio;
- Lorain County, Ohio;
- Lehigh County, Pennsylvania;
- Richland County, South Carolina;
- Charles Mix County, South Dakota;
- Shannon County; South Dakota;
- Shelby County, Tennessee;
- Harris County, Texas;
- Waller County, Texas; and
- Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Srsly.

Some people are saying that Rand Paul is not the most interesting person in politics..

Getty Images / Jessica McGowan

BUT THAT'S NOT TRUE AT ALL.

Getty Images / Richard Ellis

Just look at him. If you saw Rand in a Denny's, you'd be all, "Who's that guy? He looks super-interesting."

Getty Images / Scott Olson

And you'd be right, cos he is.

Getty Images for Vanity Fair / Michael Kovac

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“I also want to pass some stuff.”

Paul and McConnell campaigning in Lexington on Monday

Rosie Gray/BuzzFeed

BOWLING GREEN, Kentucky — A potential Republican-controlled Senate should focus more on legislation it will be able to pass instead of throwing all its energy into a wholesale repeal of Obamacare, both Sens. Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell agreed on Monday.

Sen. Ted Cruz — a likely 2016 presidential candidate like Paul, and the ringleader of the aggressive House Republican caucus from his perch in the Senate — told the Washington Post on Sunday that if the Republicans win the Senate this Election Day, they should "pursue every means possible to repeal Obamacare," including exploiting various parliamentary procedures to avoid a Democratic filibuster.

"We ought to concentrate just on winning" the election, Paul said when asked about Cruz's comments on Monday after a stop on the campaign trail with McConnell in Kentucky. "There are a lot of things I want to do, and everybody has their own sort of agenda."

"I think one of the most important things we can do that has bipartisan support is to lower the tax on American money overseas and try to invite it home," Paul said. "Barbara Boxer supports it, I support it."

"It's gonna have to be things we can agree to," Paul said. "I'm not saying we don't have a vote on repealing Obamacare; we should have a vote. I'm not sure how far that goes but we should have a vote on it. But I also want to pass some stuff and one of the things I think would help the country would be to bring all that American profit home and create jobs."

Speaking after his campaign stop in Bowling Green, McConnell echoed Paul, saying that there is little chance that the president would sign a repeal bill, though his conference will try to take apart the Affordable Care Act piece by piece.

A GOP-led Senate "would certainly be voting on things like repealing the medical device tax, restoring the 40-hour work week, discontinuing the individual mandate," McConnell told reporters. "With the president in the position that he's in, I can't imagine he would sign a full repeal, but there's various parts of it that are very unpopular and we will be voting on them."

In his Washington Post interview, Cruz also declined to promise to back McConnell for Republican leader in the Senate.

Asked if this concerned him, McConnell said, "No."

"I don't think there's any question who's gonna be the leader of the Republicans in the Senate," McConnell said. "The only question is whether we'll be in the majority or not."

"In our conference we have everybody from Susan Collins to Ted Cruz, we have lots of different opinions, and we'll all sit down together and figure out the way forward," McConnell said.

Asked about Cruz's stance on McConnell as leader, Paul declined to comment but said that he would support McConnell for leader. Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky, campaigned for McConnell all day on Monday, and the two lavished praise on each other on the trail.

Republicans are hoping to oust Democrats from the majority. Several gubernatorial races will also come down to the wire.

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“[T]he Court concludes that Kansas’ same-sex marriage ban violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.” No marriages immediately, as ruling is on hold until Nov. 11. [Update: Kansas attorney general will appeal the ruling.]

WASHINGTON — As voters in Kansas went to the polls to vote whether to re-elect their statewide officials, as well as Sen. Pat Roberts, a federal judge threw another issue into the middle of the day with a ruling that the states' ban on same-sex couples' marriages is unconstitutional.

Weddings didn't start on Election Day, though, as U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Crabtree issued a temporary stay, putting the ruling on hold until 5 p.m. CT Nov. 11 — or at such time as the state and county officials inform the court that they will not be appealing the ruling.

The ruling in Kansas follows the Supreme Court's decision in October to let a lower court ruling stand from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals that found Utah's similar ban to be unconstitutional. Because appeals from federal courts in Kansas are heard by the 10th Circuit, that ruling binds federal judges in Kansas.

"Because Kansas' constitution and statutes indeed do what Kitchen forbids," Crabtree wrote, "the Court concludes that Kansas' same-sex marriage ban violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution."

Read the ruling:

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“Isn’t this the same statement PCCC sends out every couple weeks? I mean what’s new there?”

Larry Downing / Reuters

WASHINGTON — Hours before any polls closed Tuesday, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee dropped the midterm hammer on President Obama.

"The White House failed to define any agenda for voters in 2014," the firebrand progressive group wrote in an "organizational statement" about the midterms. "Progressives will remold the Democratic Party in Elizabeth Warren's image."

"The White House failed to define any agenda for voters in 2014," the firebrand progressive group wrote in an "organizational statement" about the midterms. "Progressives will remold the Democratic Party in Elizabeth Warren's image."
PCCC said. Warren embodied a "clear economic-populist message of reforming Wall Street, reducing student debt, and expanding Social Security benefits is popular everywhere. Red, purple, and blue states." Next year, Obama "will face major public backlash if it puts bipartisanship in Washington above the ideas that Elizabeth Warren has proven to have broad bipartisan support."

Democrats and progressives were still pulling voters out to the polls when the PCCC election post-mortem hit reporters' inboxes. It sparked a small-scale debate among progressive leaders across the country, many of whom disagreed with the group's "it's all Obama's fault" stance.

Democrats and progressives were still pulling voters out to the polls when the PCCC election post-mortem hit reporters' inboxes. It sparked a small-scale debate among progressive leaders across the country, many of whom disagreed with the group's "it's all Obama's fault" stance.

"I think it's overstated to blame this on the White House," one national progressive organizer wrote in an email. "Sure the White House didn't frame it, but DC consultants failed too often followed the same tired playbook and either ran too little or too late on big populist progressive issues."

In relatively small community of organized progressive politics, groups often work together to pool resources and grassroots lists. PCCC is divisive in the progressive community, and their scorched-earth take on the White House and the elections didn't sit well with some. But generally progressives, like many ostensible political allies, don't like to go on the record speaking ill of each other.

But that didn't mean there weren't eye-rolls and outright outrage at PCCC's midday missive.

"Isn't this the same statement PCCC sends out every couple weeks?" one longtime veteran of progressive politics wrote in an email exchange with BuzzFeed News. "I mean what's new there?"

PCCC focused on economic security in its statement, in keeping with the group's general focus on being the most vocal part of the "Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party." The prominent progressive said the PCCC's pure focus on economic issues omitted the role women's issues has played in 2014.

"The thing Warren gets that is omitted from this memo is that there's no way to separate economic security from reproductive freedom for women in this country, and also increasingly true for middle class families since so many are dependent on two pay checks to get by," the veteran wrote. "I've heard Warren (and others including Hillary) start to thread those together quite authentically."

Others were upset that PCCC used Warren to make their attack on Obama and the Democratic strategy.

"If you're going to be this bad at being progressives, don't do it under Elizabeth Warren's banner," said a top official at a Democratic group. "It's just disrespectful."

Progressives have said since the outset of the 2014 cycle that shift to the left on economics was the key to victory for any Democrat on the ballot. But that strategy faced the same uphill climb the Democratic party did in an election cycle where the map and nature of the election strongly favored Republicans.

But some top progressives said that even if PCCC is an imperfect messenger, the group's leaders are capturing an essential feeling on the left as polls close on what is expected to be a rough night for Democrats: Obama and his party should have run to the left on economic issues and stayed there, they say.

"Few groups are as blunt as PCCC, but yeah this is fairly common sentiment," said another national progressive organizer connected to a number of prominent left-wing causes. "I think most progressives believe that an economics oriented populist message around issues such as student loans, expanding [Social Security], and taking on big corporate interests like Wall St and Big Oil would be more popular, both in motivating the Democratic base and appealing to working class swing voters, than the bland 'on the one hand, on the other hand' message a lot of establishment Democrats including the President send out."

Other progressive groups painted Democratic failures this cycle with a broader brush. Democracy For America, the left-wing organizing group founded out of Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign, also shouted out Elizabeth Warren and said they wanted more campaigns in her image this cycle. (Warren has been a top surrogate for all manner of Democratic Senate campaigns this cycle, including those in deep red states.) DFA didn't go hard after the White House like PCCC did.

Democrats who stuck to the progressive script are winning, DFA executive director Charles Chamberlain said in a statement, and those that didn't, aren't.

"The polls are still open and surprises will happen, but there's a reason why Al Franken and Jeff Merkley are expected to post big wins while Mark Pryor is thinking about career options," Chamberlain said. "Democrats win when they run as populist progressives, not when they hem-and-haw about raising the minimum wage or only mention protecting Social Security as a last-ditch Hail Mary."

For its part, the White House dismissed any notion that Obama is responsible for Democrats' expected midterm losses.

"Is today's election a referendum on the president?" White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest was asked Tuesday.

"It's not," he replied.

A former White House official shook off the progressive attacks.

"The notion that Obama hasn't defined a clear and progressive agenda is laughable. Minimum wage. Climate change. Immigration. Equal pay. Obama is the one putting those in the national conversation," the former official told BuzzFeed News. "Ask red state Dems if Obama has been too conservative."

The PCCC doesn't have the entre into the White House other progressive groups focused on specific policy areas like criminal justice or LGBT rights do, the former official said. But the group does command a powerful bullhorn, and one that other progressive groups sometimes resent.

Progressives and their allies expect to have a healthy post-mortem after the final midterm results are tabulated, but they're not willing to get on board with PCCC's anti-Obama take quite yet.

"I'm sure you'll see some people blaming the White House because it's easy. They're not 100% wrong, but [PCCC co-founder] Adam [Green] and his crew like little more than bashing the president at every turn," said one labor official. "As far as I'm concerned, WH did try to set the terms of the debate, and then a bunch of red state senators said, 'oh, we can't do that,' and 'oh, please wait on this.' In the end, all of them except Hagan and maybe Begich are gonna lose anyway."

Voters in Colorado and North Dakota rejected proposed “personhood” laws. In Tennessee, voters passed a amendment that gives lawmakers more power to regulate abortions.

Election judges process incoming ballots at the Denver Election Headquarters in Denver on Tuesday.

RJ Sangosti/Denver Post via Getty Images

Colorado's Amendment 67 would have redefined the words "person" and "child" to include "unborn human beings." The amendment stems from the experience of Heather Surovik, who was hit by a drunk driver when she was eight months pregnant. Surovik lost the baby and subsequently discovered that Colorado criminal code did not consider the unborn child a person or the death a homicide.

Some proponents of Amendment 67 later went on to argue that it wasn't about abortion, but rather was about "preventing violence against pregnant mothers and their unborn children." Opponents, however, disagreed, saying it would "ban all abortions in Colorado, including in cases of rape, incest and when the health of the mother is in danger." Opponents also criticized the law for being vague, and a legislative analysis mentioned that the "measure does not specify how its provisions will apply to health care providers or medical procedures."

The amendment was defeated 64% to 36%. It was the third time a "personhood" law was rejected by Colorado voters.

Jim Dalrymple II

North Dakota's Measure 1 was similar to the proposed amendment in Colorado; it would have added language to the state's constitution that gave "the inalienable right to life" to "every human being at any stage of development."

The measure appeared headed for defeat Tuesday night, with 64% of the votes against it and most of the precincts reporting.

The sole victory for personhood proponents came in Tennessee Tuesday, where voters passed Amendment 1, which gives lawmakers more power to regulate abortions. The legislation gives "state representatives and state senators to enact, amend, or repeal statutes regarding abortion."

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