Even the most casual sports watcher knows that winning sometimes comes down to which team wants it more. And by that measure, six weeks away from the elections in November, Republicans are dominating the midterm game.

A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Annenberg poll shows that 54 percent of Republicans say they’re highly interested in the upcoming elections, compared to 44 percent of Democrats who say the same.

Another way to look at the GOP intensity advantage: Democrats hold a four-point lead on the generic ballot, 46 percent to 42 percent. But among high-interest voters, Republicans have the edge, 51 percent to 43 percent.

This year, however, has been characterized by what Charlie Cook calls “head fakes.” Just 10 days ago, Democrats had been benefiting from a string of good polls in Colorado. Since then, the Democratic incumbent in Colorado, Sen. Mark Udall, has seen his situation worsen, with the past five polls showing a lead for Republican Cory Gardner instead…

In this case, however, there’s a credible hypothesis to explain the trend toward Gardner. Whereas a few weeks ago, Udall had a heavy advertising advantage in Colorado, more recent ad placements have been almost even, according to data from Echelon Insights, a Republican analytics and consulting firm. Advertising blasts can sometimes produce temporary bounces in the polls; perhaps Udall had one a few weeks ago.

The troublesome implication for Udall is that race may slightly favor Gardner when ad spending is even.

The problem is not that the attacks on Gardner haven’t worked, Democrats say — it’s that Udall is swimming against a far tougher tide than many had initially expected, even when the party was preparing for a tough cycle…

“There’s a little dissatisfaction with Obama that translates down the Democratic ticket,” admitted Mike Feeley, a former Democratic state Senate minority leader. “I think Udall is trying to overcome that.”

Colorado pollster Floyd Ciruli, who’s done work for both parties, said that “for a while, the national environment turned very negative against the Democrats” — and agreed that Udall’s “war on women” attacks may be growing stale.

“I do think there is a case to be made that it has run out of impact, that it’s gotten to its marginal utility,” said Ciruli. “And now, there may be a feedback loop making fun of it.”

It seems that the Democrats have been developing a third model of representation of late: Call it the “sneak it past the rubes” theory. Under this approach, you pre-sent yourself to your constituents as an independent voice, not in hock to the national Democratic party, so as to get elected. Then the national party allows you generally to vote with your constituents, on the understanding that when the chips are down you will vote with the liberal leadership. Then you hope that the “rubes” back home can be sufficiently distracted by the “war on women” or some other phony issue that they’ll return you to office. And if they choose not to, there will be a consolation prize: a cushy, well-connected job as a lobbyist (Blanche Lincoln) or law firm adviser (Byron Dorgan) or association CEO (Ben Nelson) or strategic adviser in PR (Kent Conrad) in Washington, where you are more at home anyway, or even a job out of town as an ambassador (Max Baucus)…

It is good that six of the eight pro-Obamacare Democrats did not return to the Senate—and maddening that two managed to do so, but McCaskill and Tester were able to get away with defying their constituents because Republicans ran inept campaigns against them in 2012. It is to be hoped that Republicans will defeat Begich, Pryor, and Landrieu in less than two months.

And not just because the GOP needs the seats to win a Senate majority, but also because “independent” red state Democrats need to be taught a lesson. They cannot be allowed to defy their constituents on such a high-profile issue and get away with it. Otherwise, they will only be emboldened to do it more often in the future. (Little wonder, incidentally, that McCaskill, who held on in 2012 in Missouri even as Romney trounced Obama there, was a key operator behind the scenes in getting Taylor off the Kansas ballot.)…

Winning in Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Kansas, then, is an imperative for the Republican party at least as important as taking the Senate majority. Regardless of how the rest of the races flush out on November 4, Democrats ought not be allowed to walk away from the upcoming midterms believing that “sneak it past the rubes” is a viable strategy.

From 2002 to 2012, candidates of the president’s party have tended to converge on the president’s job approval. It isn’t an absolute tendency, but it is nevertheless real.

The Democrats’ problem is that they seemingly find themselves in a position similar to that of Republicans in 2006: They are in tight races. But so far, they seem unable to move past where the fundamentals suggest they should be able to go: Recall again that their maximum showing has generally been bounded at 47 percent.

This is true even though Democrats have generally dominated the air wars recently. They’ve succeeded in driving down Republican numbers, or holding them in check. But they haven’t improved their own…

[S]ooner or later the undecided voters will begin to decide. And given that the Democrats are winning the votes of almost everyone who approves of the president’s job, they will have an uphill — though hardly insurmountable — battle with undecided voters.

[Joni] Ernst, a 44-year-old state senator, or Bruce Braley, a 56-year-old four-term Democratic congressman, will replace Sen. Tom Harkin, who is retiring after five terms. Of the five Senate contests in purple states — Iowa, Virginia, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Colorado — this is currently the closest: The Real Clear Politics average of polls shows a tie (Ernst ahead by 0.2 percentage points as of Friday).

Which should make Republicans anxious as they try to take control of the Senate and as they contemplate the 2016 presidential landscape. Although Iowa has voted Democratic in six of the last seven presidential elections, the Ernst-Braley contest should not be this close.

Only 38 percent of Iowans approve of Barack Obama’s performance. Braley, a past president of an Iowa trial lawyers association, is as awkward as Ernst is ebullient when campaigning. And the Democratic Party’s single idea — the trope that Republicans live to wage a “war on women” — leaves Ernst bemused: “I am a woman, and I have been to war and this is not war.” A 5-foot-2 grandmother, she is a National Guard lieutenant colonel who served in Iraq.

A restless electorate and a target-rich map have the GOP on the cusp of winning the Senate majority. But with fewer than 40 days until November, Republican campaigns are suddenly confronting a problem that undermines high hopes of victory: a sudden and serious lack of cash.

GOP campaigns, political committees, and—above all—the party’s outside groups are scrambling to raise money, worried that Democrats and their allied groups are poised to heavily outspend them on TV ads in the final weeks before Election Day. Concerns run deepest about October, when Democratic groups are on track to pour millions of dollars into a handful of races that will determine which party controls the Senate. In some of those same races, Republicans have reserved little or no airtime…

Why outside groups are turning off the spigot now is a mystery to GOP strategists. Some say donors were unhappy with the performance of outside groups in 2012, have viewed the NRSC skeptically for back-to-back cycles, or are afraid of receiving the same treatment that befell Charles and David Koch at the hands of Majority Leader Harry Reid, who relentlessly and publicly maligned the brothers this year…

Exacerbating the problem for the GOP is that in most races, an incumbent-heavy field of Democrats with vast fundraising networks has raised significantly more cash than GOP hopefuls, some of whom had to invest heavily in a primary before even reaching the general election.

Particularly among members of the conservative Republican Study Committee, the unwillingness to act more boldly this year on health care—which, they have frequently pointed out, comprises one-sixth of the U.S. economy—is symptomatic of a broader failure to offer a specific agenda that contrasts against the Democrats’ and tells voters what Republicans would do if given more power to govern.

“I fear we’re not going to take the Senate back because we haven’t done anything this past year to show the American people why we are different than the Democrats. We have a lot of speeches, but we really haven’t taken a lot of votes,” Rep. Raul Labrador, an outspoken conservative who launched a failed bid for Cantor’s leadership post, said Thursday at a forum sponsored by the Heritage Foundation…

Complaints about the agenda within the House GOP are nothing new—and their substance extends well beyond health care. Throughout the 113th Congress, rank-and-file Republicans have pushed their leadership for hearings and votes on four major policy proposals: tax reform, health care, welfare reform, and privacy. With little progress achieved during the first session, members returned in January this year hungry for action. The week prior to their annual conference retreat, scores of members huddled at a series of Republican Study Committee meetings and planned to prod their leadership into attack mode in 2014.

Adding a dozen House seats in this environment might be considered a gimme. Yet the latest betting is that Republicans will get only three to eight seats. Meaning, a blowout night for the GOP still lands it with a smaller majority than it had in 2010…

Nancy Pelosi won the House in 2006 on a small yet concrete set of promises—raising the minimum wage, cheaper student loans, etc. House Republicans aren’t exactly lacking in topics for which they could have laid out an agenda of reasonable policy changes—on ObamaCare, energy, regulations. Instead the party rolled out its candidates with nada, and has been left to claim it is good that their people are running on “local” issues. It is—for Democrats.

Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are thrilled for their incumbents to talk local, since it allows them to avoid talking about their Washington failures. It also allows Democrats to make campaigns about personality, which always favor the incumbent, and which has led to smear attacks that have been deadly for many Republican challengers.

The result is at least a dozen races—potentially more—in which Republican incumbents or challengers should be winning or at least competitive, but who are instead struggling or have been written off. While many of these seats are in “tough” states, many are in districts that Republicans have won in the past—and ought to be winnable in this climate.

Republican inertia was outlined to me this spring, ironically, by a GOP congressman:

The 2010 election, he explained, was about winning the House, don’t rock the boat. Twenty twelve was all about the presidential—again don’t rock the boat, don’t mess things up with anything controversial, win the presidency to effect change. In 2014, he said, it’s all about the Senate—win it, hold the House. Then in 2016 it’s going to be all about the presidential and holding the Senate. In 2018, he said, it will be all about holding Congress for a Republican president or against a Democratic one. Then in 2020 it will be all about the presidential…

Republican political professionals need to get the meaning of things back. Otherwise, if Republicans do take the Senate, their new majority will arrive not having won on the basis of something shared. They will not be able to claim any mandate for anything. That will encourage them to become self-driven freelancers in a very pleasant and distinguished freelancer’s club, which is sort of what the Senate is.

It’s good to win, but winning without a declared governing purpose is a ticket to nowhere.