Voting in Pepper Pike, Ohio on Tuesday. Photo by Amy Sancetta/AP

It's Election Day, and although none of the contests has a real national impact, political strategists will be analyzing every minute detail for clues on national trends. As the results come trickling in, here are five things to watch for.

1. In Virginia, things look pretty dour for Creigh Deeds. Although Obama won the state last year, Deeds has few of the traits that excited Democrats to vote for Obama in droves. But Republicans will quickly celebrate a poor showing by Deeds as proof that the president's star power is waning. Watch for the White House to subtly distance itself from the Deeds campaign, likely in the form of blind quotes on Politico or in tomorrow's Washington Post.

D.C. loves nothing more than insider intrigue about closed-door meetings. Exhibit A: TPM's Brian Beutler is stirring the pot with his reporting that last week's White House health-care meeting between the president and Senators Reid and Schumer was more acrimonious than we've been led to believe. Days after the meeting Reid announced the inclusion of a public option in his health-care bill, amid speculation that the White House still favored a trigger option. Beutler writes that in the days leading up to the meeting, relations between Reid and the administration inched toward the breaking point. His sources describe "the back and forth between Senate health-care principals and the White House as a "sort of stare-down where the two sides were saying, 'you be the face of pulling it out.' Reid wants Obama to do it to give cover to his caucus. Obama wants Reid to do it so he's not the bad guy on the public option and can still walk away with a win with reform, with bipartisanship, and with a card for everybody running for reelection." He also reports that Schumer was the one tasked with pitching Reid's opt-out-option strategy to the president. When he did, Beutler's source says,"Obama was less than responsive and asked questions that suggested he preferred an option that could get the trigger and bipartisan support." 

In true D.C. fashion, however, my sources paint a different picture. Senior Democratic sources close to the discussions tell me that the White House meeting was all about Olympia Snowe and how to secure her vote. It's no secret that the president is eager to call reform a bipartisan effort, and Snowe holds the one last candle of hope. But by the time Reid and Schumer entered the White House, Snowe was no longer the topic du jour for them. They were operating on a different calculus.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled her long-awaited health-care bill today. There aren't any real surprises. Most of the newsy provisions have been well known for weeks now. The bill will likely extend coverage to 36 million Americans, and it will prevent insurers from dropping or denying coverage. It also won't add to the deficit, thus satisfying one of the president's primary objectives. The CBO estimates the cost at under $900 billion. Here are a few of the key points you need to know about the bill:

• The change that will perhaps have the most impact on Americans is the expansion of Medicaid. Under Pelosi's bill, anyone earning up to 150 percent of the poverty line will be eligible for Medicaid. This is an increase on previous iterations─and the Senate bill─which only covered people up to 133 percent of the poverty line.
  
• The bill includes a public option but not the so-called robust plan. Hospitals and providers will be able to negotiate their rates with the government insurer.
• A surtax will be leveled on wealthy Americans─those earning over $500,000 for individuals or $1 million for families─to help offset costs. This differs from the Senate bill which relies on a tax on "Cadillac," or expensive, insurance plans. Medical-devices companies will also be subject to a new tax.
  
• The bill removes the health-insurance industry's exemption from antitrust laws, which will no doubt upset insurers.
• Like her Senate colleagues, Pelosi won't be offering a "doc's fix," that is, she won't offer a long-term solution to a problematic Medicare formula that causes reimbursement rates for physicians treating Medicare patients to decrease.
• Medicare expenditures will be cut by approximately 1.3 percent, with the pharmaceutical industry bearing the brunt.

The bill currently has no Republican support. Abortion remains a sticking point for some Democrats, like Bart Stupak of Michigan, who want to see the language tightened to prohibit any federal funds being used to fund abortions, meaning that government subsidies can't be put toward plans that cover abortion.

Politico reports that Pelosi has reneged on a deal she made with Anthony Weiner of New York to allow a vote on a single-payer system on the floor. The vote would have failed by a large margin, but its symbolism was important to liberals who feel that they've already compromised enormously in backing a public option over single payer.

Michelle Obama can add one more thing to her list of "firsts": next month she will be the first First Lady to grace the cover of Glamor Magazine. It's part of the fashion mag's annual "Women of the Year" edition, and Obama is being honored for her with a Special Recognition award for her work in mentoring younger women. Of course, no self-respecting women's mag would run a cover story without some mention of the central issue: boys. So what does the President's wife have to say on the matter? Good looks won't cut it.

A few months ago I wrote a short piece about the startling practice of using open-air burn pits to incinerate waste on U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. The toxic fumes from these pits have been linked to a host of debilitating illnesses in troops and contractors who worked near them. Here's an excerpt from my original piece:

Josh Eller, a military contractor stationed in Iraq in 2006, was driving through Balad Air Base when he spotted the wild dog. He wasn't sure what was in its mouth—but when Eller saw two bones, he knew he was looking at a human arm. The dog had pulled the limb from an open-air "burn pit" on the base used to incinerate waste. Eller says it's "one of the worst things I have seen."

Since hearing Eller's story, lawyer Elizabeth Burke has signed on 190 additional clients with complaints about burn pits at 18 military sites in Iraq and Afghanistan. By now, she says, all pits should have been replaced by pollution-controlled incinerators. She's filed suits in 17 states against KBR, the company contracted to provide waste-disposal services at these bases, accusing it of negligence and harm. Burke was shocked to learn what her clients saw incinerated: Humvees, batteries, unexploded ordnance, gas cans, mattresses, rocket pods, and plastic and medical waste (including body parts, which may explain the arm). Fumes containing carcinogenic dioxins, heavy metals, and particulates, according to an Army–Air Force risk assessment, waft freely across bases.

Over at the Plum Line, Greg Sargent notes something I've been thinking, and meaning to blog about for weeks, namely that the Virginia governor's race is not a referendum on the president. As much as pundits want to draw national conclusions for an off-cycle race like this one—political reporters, myself included, can't resist the allure of "what does it all mean?" analysis—the Virginia race doesn't tell us all that much about the presidency. Sargent looks closely at the numbers from a recent Washington Post poll, and finds the following:

• Seventy percent of likely voters say Obama is “not a factor” in their choice. Only 15% say opposition to Obama is a factor, while 14% say support for him is a factor.
• Seventy-one percent say it makes “no difference” if the governor is from the same political party as the president. More people say it’s good to have a governor from the same party, 16%-13%.
• Obama’s approval rating in Virginia is 54%, in line with many national polls.

Official White House photo by Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz has been spending a lot of time at the White House lately, and now we know why. The famed photographer, in the headlines lately for drama over her personal finances, shot the official Obama family portrait, which was posted on the White House’s Flickr account this morning. Leibovitz has been trailing Obama for months. In January, she shot a major portfolio for Vanity Fair of Obama and his staff. She’s been spotted sporadically at the White House ever since, including earlier this month when she was accidentally body-checked by another press pool photographer while shooting Obama at a Democratic fundraising event. (Yes, covering the White House can be a lot like hockey.) No word on how much the portrait cost, though Leibovitz's rates reportedly exceed $100,000 a day. We're guessing the White House got a decent discount.

Republicans are rubbing their hands in glee—and Democrats wringing theirs—at the struggles of Democratic gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia. Both of these governor's seats carry great power and would be impressive coups for the GOP, but from a national level, they're really most important for citizens of New Jersey and Virginia. The race the nation should be watching is a special election in upstate New York. 

On the gubernatorial level, Republican Bob McDonnell looks to have the upper hand in Virginia, while incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine may eke out a win in New Jersey but will only do so after embarrassing 11th-hour revelations about opponent Chris Christie, attacks on Christie's weight, and help from an independent, third-party challenger. But regardless of who wins, these races aren't really referendums on Barack Obama—they're referendums on the corruption-racked Garden State and the economic future of the Old Dominion. The New York race, however, will provide some hints as to whether Democrats can hold on to voters who went for Obama in 2008 and show what path the right wing might choose to regain relevance.

Gallup released new polling data this morning showing that Hillary Clinton has higher favorability ratings (62%) than President Obama (56%). Like Obama, her numbers have declined since January, but in her case it is only by 3 percentage points. Since Gallup started tracking the former first lady in the early 1990s, the only other time Clinton's favorability ratings have been higher was in the middle of the Lewinsky scandal in December 1998, when she benefited from an outpouring of support over her husband's lewd misadventures.

Her only marginal decline in polls this year can be perhaps be explained by her relative absence from the spotlight. While Obama has been on our TV screens approximately every 7.5 seconds since taking office—mostly talking about dramatic interventions that make Independents nervous, such as bailing out auto companies—Clinton's appearances before the cameras have been more sporadic. She hasn't yet been faced with unpopular choices or had to defend publicly her decisions in such matters.

USA Today presents some interesting, if perhaps not groundbreaking, numbers on socioeconomic representation in Congress today. According to the report, which is based on analysis of census data,

Democratic members of the House of Representatives now represent most of the nation's wealthiest people, a sharp turnaround from the long-standing dominance that Republicans have held over affluent districts ... Democrats now represent 57% of the 4.8 million households that had incomes of $200,000 or more in 2008. In 2005, Republicans represented 55% of those affluent households.

The change in distribution of seats in the House is roughly the same size as the shift the article describes—although USA Today's data doesn't connect any dots between the two. Still, it goes without saying that some of the shift is a natural product of Democrats' electoral gains in the 2008 elections, in which they picked up 21 seats.