New York Times: “Disparaging Congress is nothing new in today’s Republican Party, which has thrived on a hearty strain of antigovernment, anti-establishment intensity. But digs like these are notable, and not only for what they imply in the context of a presidential race with three Republican senators.”
“Some of the most unforgiving criticism actually comes from those senators, who are just as eager to dissociate themselves from their line of work as their opponents are to remind voters of it.”
President Obama “will mount his latest defense of a Pacific trade agreement with a visit Friday to the headquarters of a quintessential importer, Nike Inc., a move that scrambles the traditional political arguments for free trade,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“By traveling to the huge importer of shoes from Asia, the president will highlight the consumer benefits of a deal to lower tariffs. Presidents almost always tout potential domestic job gains in selling big trade deals.”
The exit polls in the United Kingdom find the Conservatives are set to be the largest party in the House of Commons but just short of a majority, the BBC reports.
“The survey taken at polling stations across the UK suggests the Tories will get 316 MPs to Labour’s 239 when all the results have been counted. It suggests the Lib Dems will get 10 MPs, the SNP 58, Plaid Cymru 4, UKIP 2 and the Greens two… The finishing line needed to form a majority is 326.”
The Guardian: “The numbers are in stark contract to pre-election polls. And based on these numbers the current Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government would have the numbers to continue in office.”
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Amy Walter: “After two unsuccessful marriages to guys named McCain and Romney, GOP primary voters are more interested in playing the field this year than in settling down. That’s the best explanation I can come up with for why polling shows a wide-open contest for the GOP nomination – despite a bevy of well-known names.”
Dylan Byers: “On Nov. 8, 2016, Clinton will start — start — with a minimum 247 of the 270 electoral votes she needs to win. If you give her Colorado and Virginia — which many political strategists would, given the Hispanic population in one and the rising influence of the northern-centered population in the other — she’ll start with 269. That means Clinton doesn’t need Ohio or Florida. She just needs one small state like Iowa, Nevada or New Hampshire to put her over the edge. And because she’s got a boatload of money and no viable primary challenger, she’ll have plenty of time and resources to lock up at least one of those states.”
“In order to shift the map, the Republican nominee would have to find a way to win Colorado and/or Virginia. That means winning over Hispanics, which will be a difficult task for a nominee who has spent a months-long primary trying to win over the conservative grass roots. It also means winning over enough members of Virginia’s white working class to counter the more populated liberal-urban centers in the north. Not impossible, of course, but hard.”
“When asked this week at an exclusive Manhattan gathering about who advises him on U.S.-Israel policy, Jeb Bush surprised many of the 50-plus attendees by naming his brother, former president George W. Bush, as his most influential counselor,” the Washington Post reports.
Said Bush: “If you want to know who I listen to for advice, it’s him.”
“The remark came as part of an answer to a question about Bush’s political advisers and their policy views. Bush was pressed for details about who he surrounds himself with and consults as he thinks through his positions, guests said.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) announced his 2016 presidential campaign had pulled in $3 million over the last four days, The Hill reports.
“Sanders’s campaign had received approximately 75,000 contributions at an average amount of $43… A campaign adviser also told the publication 99.4 percent of the donations were in the amounts of $250 or less.”
A new Marist poll finds New York City voters “are increasingly pessimistic about life in the Big Apple. When asked about the overall direction of the city, the electorate divides. 49% report things are going in the wrong direction, and 45% say they are moving in the right one.”
“To compound New Yorkers’ downbeat attitude about the city, fewer than one in five residents, 17%, believes the overall quality of life in the city has improved over the last year. A majority, 56%, reports it has either gotten worse, 33%, or has remained the same which, in their view, is a bad thing, 23%.”
A new WMUR poll in New Hampshire finds Jeb Bush leading the GOP presidential race with 15%, followed by Marco Rubio at 12%, Scott Walker at 11%, and Rand Paul at 10%.
As for Chris Christie, he “dropped from 9% in February to 3%, even after rolling out an entitlement reform plan that received positive reviews for its candor.”
“A federal appeals court ruled the National Security Agency’s controversial collection of millions of Americans’ phone records isn’t authorized by the Patriot Act, as the Bush and Obama administrations have long maintained,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The ruling by the three-judge panel in New York comes at a delicate point in the national debate over government surveillance, as Section 215 of the Patriot Act is due to expire next month and lawmakers are haggling about whether to renew it, modify it, or let it die.”
While a grand jury investigating former Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL), a friend tells the Chicago Sun Times he was in Chicago — and looking for a job.
Said the friend: “He’s thinking about the next chapter of his life. He’s not underground. He’s not in hiding. He’s not in disguise running around Antarctica.”
“When there’s cronies involved and getting a special deal, and when other countries are cheating, and Americans lose jobs, I’d like to think the U.S. government would stand up for the U.S. workers rather than let them take it in the backside.”
— Mike Huckabee, in an interview on MSNBC, arguing against the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.
Wonk Wire: New study finds 17 million Americans have gained health insurance coverage.
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) “will not run for president in 2016, according to two sources familiar with his planning,” Politico reports.
“Snyder, a Republican who was first elected in 2010, has been traveling across the country in recent weeks but has decided against a White House bid. One source close Snyder said he’d expressed concern about the time commitment needed for a national campaign.”
Mike Huckabee told ABC News that his opponents in the race for the White House who are senators should either resign or drop out of the contest.
Said Huckabee: “If a person has a job that the taxpayers are paying for, shouldn’t that person do that job?”
He added: “I just believe it’s a matter of integrity to say, ‘I don’t want this job that I just got elected to, I think I want another job.’ OK, then resign the job … you have, and go out there and seek the one you want.”
Matt Lewis: “As the latest wave of presidential candidates enters what will likely be a huge Republican field, something occurs to me: It has almost become conventional wisdom that running for president is a ‘win-win’ proposition—that, at the very least, you increase your visibility by virtue running. At least, that seems to be how modern candidates view it. And there certainly are examples where this is true. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, for example, was able to parlay a surprisingly strong 2008 run into larger celebrity (and his own Fox News show!).”
“Let’s consider the 2012 GOP field, which included Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, and of course Mitt Romney… You tell me—are they better off now than they were four years ago?”
Justin Wolfers: “British voters are heading to the polls Thursday, and it looks as if it’s going to be a nail-biter. Political prediction markets suggest that it’s basically a 50-50 bet as to whether the Conservative prime minister, David Cameron, will serve another term or be ousted by Labour’s leader, Ed Miliband. I can recall very few elections where the bookies couldn’t pick a favorite by election eve.”
“The traditional two-party system is breaking down in Britain, which makes the outcome more uncertain because it renders traditional approaches to predicting the outcome less useful. Multiparty elections bring a type of complexity that traditional polling — and computer models based on polling — are ill-equipped to deal with.”
Washington Post: “After a bitter, bruising and unusually fragmented six-week election campaign, British voters began to vote Thursday knowing just one thing with near certainty: Nobody is going to win.”
The final pre-election Guardian/ICM poll shows Labour witha a one point lead.
Hillary Clinton “will begin personally courting donors for a ‘super PAC’ supporting her candidacy, the first time a Democratic presidential candidate has fully embraced these independent groups that can accept unlimited checks from big donors and are already playing a major role in the 2016 race,” the New York Times reports.
“Her decision is another escalation in what is expected to be the most expensive presidential race in history, and it has the potential to transform the balance of power in presidential campaigning, where Republican outside groups have tended to outspend their Democratic counterparts.”
Los Angeles Times: “Clinton, who has emphasized campaign finance reform in the early stage of her latest White House bid, has apparently already decided the modest approach alone won’t be enough. She is going after much bigger checks, much sooner, and in a much more aggressive way than her campaign had revealed.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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