Midterms bump Ebola from spotlight

The looming midterm elections bumped Ebola from the spotlight on Sunday’s political talk shows as pundits and party leaders gave their best predictions for which party will win control of the Senate on Tuesday.

In what may have been their final public dispute before the election, the heads of the Republican and Democratic parties sparred over which side has the best chance at winning the Senate.

“I think we’re going to hold the Senate,” said Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz on ABC’s “This Week.” “We have a ground game that I know [the GOP] would take over theirs any day of the week.”

Her counterpart, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, dismissed this remark, saying the GOP ground game is “whipping” the Democrats’ in key states.

“We’re going to have a great night” on Tuesday, he said.

In a dramatic shift, electoral politics dominated each show with the U.S. response to Ebola winning only scant mention in interviews.

Ebola has receded from national headlines after a wave of good results for U.S. patients and a quieting of the debate over state-mandated quarantines.

Only one person in the United States is known to have Ebola and is currently receiving treatment. Seven others have recovered, and only one patient has died.

Administration officials are also touting signs of progress against Ebola in West Africa.

United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that safe burials in Liberia and Sierra Leone are rising thanks to the U.S. intervention.

The spate of good news has alleviated some partisan pressure on the Obama administration. Most Republicans on the Sunday shows mentioned Ebola only in passing as an issue relevant to the elections.

The one exception was Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who said he was “torn” on mandatory quarantines ordered for healthcare workers returning from West Africa in New York, New Jersey and Illinois. Paul spoke about the issue during an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union.”

The administration opposes the measures, saying they will hamper the fight against Ebola in West Africa by discouraging medical workers from volunteering.

The other main mention of Ebola came during an interview with Kaci Hickox, the nurse whose protest of her mandatory quarantine in New Jersey drew national attention.

Interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Hickox said New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R ) had unnecessarily politicized her isolation.

“It was really an abundance of politics,” Hickox said. “I think the scientific and medical and public health community agrees with me on that statement.”

The absence of a wider policy debate left ample time for strategists, lawmakers and party officials to speculate about what will happen in Tuesday’s midterms.

Top analysts and strategists seemed to agree Sunday that Republicans will win the six seats necessary to gain a majority in the Senate.

Polling whiz Nate Silver, founder of ESPN’s FiveThirtyEight blog, said the GOP will “probably” pull out a victory and that signs look “fairly poor” for Democrats.

At the same time, Silver and others noted that control of the upper chamber might not be decided until December or January, since Senate races in Louisiana and Georgia appear poised for run-off elections.

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey found that voters are deadlocked on which party should control Congress, with 46 percent saying Republicans and 45 percent saying Democrats.

Ahead of the GOP’s 2010 wave, Republicans held a 6-point advantage on the question, a sign that the battle is not over yet.