Several commentators have speculated that the good economic news of late is too late to save the Democrats from defeat in the midterm elections next month. While this may be the case in US House and Senate races, it may not be true of two very competitive New England Governor's races. Connecticut governor Dan Malloy and Massachusetts Democratic gubernatorial nominee Martha Coakley are nursing very small leads in the latest polls and are ramping up their "get out the base" operations for the final push. 

Good national economic news doesn't just buoy the spirits of New England Democratic voters, it raises the utility of national Democratic surrogates in the campaign's final weeks. Thanks to a very positive jobs report among other things, President Obama, who is scheduled to campaign for Governor Malloy this week, can not only rally the base for Malloy and Coakley, he can also deflect criticism and return fire with confidence on the campaign trail.

Last week a Connecticut reporter called me for comment on why Governor Malloy would not be attending a high dollar fundraiser in Connecticut being attended by President Obama. Part of the story appeared to be the possibility that Malloy didn't want to be associated with the president. We now know that Malloy was merely avoiding what would have been an easy talking point for his rival about the governor being a hypocrite for attending a high dollar fundraiser while constantly attacking his Republican opponent's exploitation of wealthy donors. Malloy could afford to do this because he knew what the media outlets reporting on the fundraiser did not know; that the president would soon be back in Connecticut campaigning for the him in the crucial final weeks of the campaign. 

Martha Coakley has been and will be getting more than a little help from her friends down the stretch. Her use of surrogates continues unabated despite efforts by her Republican rival (and some of his media allies) to spin her use of surrogates as a sign of weakness. As we enter the home stretch the dynamic of the race appears to be pretty much what we expected it to be. Coakley is exploiting her huge structural advantages over Baker (which can't be fully accounted for by polls), while hammering away on the idea that the race is about issues that resonate with traditional Democratic constituencies, and trying to mitigate Baker's personal likability advantage by tying him and his SuperPAC to the wildly unpopular Washington Republicans.

Dan Malloy is definitely "embattled" and Martha Coakley is certainly in a nail biter, but given the fact that both of these Democrats enjoy significant structural advantages that do not fully register in polling, I would rather be playing their hands than those of their Republican opponents at this point.

For both Malloy and Coakley, a dead heat in the polls actually translates into a win on Election Day. The utter collapse of Republican attacks on Obamacare and improving national economic indicators will help Coakley and Malloy by increasing the value of big name national surrogates in the voter mobilization/GOTV stage of the contest. The good news may have come too late for Democratic House and Senate hopes, but just in time to save two New England governorships that could have gone to Republicans this year.