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Good Monday morning from Washington, where midterm elections are just over two weeks away, and Republicans currently have a 69 percent chance of gaining control of the Senate. President Obama is back home in Chicago and heading to the polls early to vote for some old friends, Hillary Rodham Clinton joins Steven Spielberg for a Los Angeles fund-raiser, and opponents of the voter ID law in Texas have vowed to fight on.

Ebola may be contained so far in America, but the political impact of the virus is spreading ​rapidly.

Democrats running in conservative states worry that the Obama administration’s stumbling response to Ebola’s arrival in the United States is generating anxiety among voters — and reinforcing the Republican message that the world is a frightening place and President Obama is not equipped to manage it.

​That is why ​we have seen Democratic candidates in ​recent days criticizing the administration’s approach and forcefully urging the president to impose a ban on those traveling to the United States from West Africa.

​Federal health officials ​continue to ​oppose the ban, saying it will do little to contain the disease​, but the public overwhelmingly favors it, polls show​.

With just two weeks to go before Election Day, ​some Democrats are ​growing frustrated with what they see as the ​administration’s mishandling of the crisis and ​want to express their independence from Mr. Obama, who is deeply unpopular in states with pivotal Senate contests.

“Arkansans have every right to be upset,” said Senator Mark Pryor, who is among the most vulnerable of the Democratic incumbents. “Mistakes have been made where mistakes cannot be made.” He appeared Friday with the head of Arkansas’ health department at a news conference. Mr. Pryor and Senator Kay Hagan of North Carolina called on Mr. Obama to institute the travel ban, as did Michelle Nunn, the Democratic Senate nominee in Georgia.

​It was especially striking on Sunday to see so few Democrats, with the exception of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, vigorously defending the president’s leadership on Ebola.​

David Axelrod, the former Obama adviser, ​vented on Twitter about the politicizing of the health crisis. “Caustic mix: Public health issue, falling news ratings and pols in the final weeks of election = unconscionable hype and demagoguery.”

— Jonathan Martin

One of the stranger theories about Ebola surfaced in the governor’s debate on Sunday between the incumbent, Nathan Deal, and the Democratic challenger, Jason Carter.

Mr. Deal faced ridicule for days last week in offering what seems like an easy cure, readily available in every home.

“Water kills the Ebola virus,” he said in an interview.

It was a remark that quickly evolved into a punch line and which on Sunday he blamed on the state’s public health commissioner.

Mr. Carter didn’t let him off the hook, saying it “was inappropriate last week for the governor to say that water cures Ebola.”

The Libertarian candidate in the debate, Andrew Hunt, a scientist and expert in nanotechnology, also did not spare his criticism of the governor. “We cannot have our leaders making such statements and then not retracting them ever,” he said. “That is bad.”

— Alan Blinder

There’s more on the line for Democrats in the Senate race in Colorado than the re-election of Senator Mark Udall.

A Udall victory is essential if the Democrats are going to keep control of the Senate map. But the party’s reputation is at stake, too: Its members want to prove that the voter turnout model pioneered in Senator Michael Bennet’s surprise victory in 2010 and in President Obama’s ability to carry the state two years later still works in their favor.

Mr. Udall is falling behind his Republican opponent, Representative Cory Gardner. Two polls from last week show the senator trailing: CNN (four percentage points) and Quinnipiac (six points).

There was no let-up over the weekend for both men, with even an upbeat Mr. Gardner acknowledging, “We have a lot of hard work ahead of us.”

At the same time, Mr. Bennet has been reminding voters that he, too, was down in the polls in 2010 but managed to eke out a victory that he said amounted to a difference of about one vote per precinct statewide.

Democrats, after being outspent on television in recent days, say they will also have a significantly larger presence on television than Republican groups for the last two weeks of the campaign.

— Carl Hulse

President Obama will take advantage of early voting and cast his ballot in Illinois before attending a Democratic National Committee event.

Hillary Rodham Clinton heads to Los Angeles for a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee fund-raiser with a guest list that includes Jeffrey Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw.

Secretary of State John Kerry is in Jakarta, Indonesia, for the inauguration of Joko Widodo, the president-elect.

Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez, a possible attorney general candidate, speaks about the economy at 1 p.m. at the National Press Club in Washington.

Gov. Chris Christie is on the trail, attending campaign events in New Jersey, Kansas and Colorado.

Bernard Sanders, the Vermont senator, is getting more national attention these days as he weighs a run for president.

But back at his old high school in Brooklyn, Mr. Sanders is not even the most famous political alumnus.

Or the second-most.​

O​ther graduates of James Madison High School include Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for whom the school’s mock courtroom is named and who graduated in 1950. New York’s senior senator, Charles E. Schumer, got his diploma there in 1967, a year after Norm Coleman, the former Minnesota senator.

In 2008, Madison High placed Mr. Sanders on its crowded Wall of Distinction, alongside four Nobel Prize winners, famed historians, the radio personality “Cousin Brucie,” and Judith Sheindlin, a.k.a. Judge Judy.

The socialist senator spent that day talking about his experience at Madison High and “how it enabled him to get where he is today,” said Jodie Cohen, the principal.

She called him a “gentleman” and “down-to-earth,” but didn’t recall thinking of him as a future presidential candidate. And even if he made it to the White House, Ms. Cohen didn’t foresee the school’s name being changed.

“But I believe,” she said, “that he would come back.”

— Jason Horowitz

The Hill reports that no matter how hard they campaign, Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton don’t seem to be helping the so-called Clinton Democrats facing re-election this year.

Hillary Rodham Clinton understands the issues at stake this year far better than the candidates on the ballot, The Nation says.

The diminishing number of Southern evangelical voters is affecting this year’s Senate races, The Atlantic reports.

The Texas Tribune provides the view from the ground after the Supreme Court’s voter ID decision. The Austin Chronicle offers its own take.

The Associated Press reports that a Connecticut state Senate hopeful is learning what its like to run against a Kennedy.