Charlie Cook: “At just about every step, Obama has pushed ahead on health care
reform, even when it would have been more practical to put it aside,
waiting perhaps until the economy stabilized or until the public was
more accepting of the law. He most recently chose to plow ahead when the
apparatus to implement the ACA had huge problems. Warnings inside the
administration were ignored. If perseverance were the only virtue, the
president and congressional Democrats would be the most virtuous people
around and assured a place in heaven. But sometimes balance and reality
should intervene. They certainly did not here.”
Governing vs. Not Governing
First Read: “You can boil down the past three weeks in Washington to this one theme: The Obama White House and Democrats have a political problem when it comes to governing (see the Obamacare website), while Republicans have a political problem because they don’t want to govern (see the shutdown). And both sides have used the other party’s problems to mask their own.”
“Basically, the best thing both parties have going for each other right now is each other. That said, the public clearly wants competence and does like governing, see, well, every recent poll.”
McAuliffe Outspending Cuccinelli
Terry McAuliffe (D) has been outspending Ken Cuccinelli (R) by 3-to-1 in the
last three weeks of the Virginia gubernatorial race, maintaining a $1 million a week pace while
Cuccinelli’s spending has been declining, First Read reports.
Politicians Need to Pay More Attention to the Polls
Walter Shapiro: “If only the politicians would listen to the polls. Yes, you read that right. What is happening in Washington symbolizes a dangerous disconnect between the priorities of the voters and those of their elected leaders.”
The Next Political Wedge Issue
Nate Cohn: “We’ve reached the point where there should be no surprise if a major national politician embraces marijuana legalization. Without any large-scale campaign on its behalf, surveys show that approximately half of Americans now support marijuana legalization, including 58 percent in a recent, but potentially outlying, Gallup poll. Regardless of the exact support today, marijuana is all but assured to emerge as an issue in national elections–it’s only a question of how and when.”
House Plans No Immigration Vote This Year
House Republican leadership “has no plans to vote on any immigration reform legislation before the end the year,” Politico reports.
“The House has just 19 days in session before the end of 2013, and there are a number of reasons why immigration reform is stalled this year.”
Soros is Ready for Hillary
Billionaire investor George Soros has signed on to be a co-chairman of the national finance council for Ready for Hillary, a super PAC mobilizing support for a possible White House bid by Hillary Clinton, the Washington Post reports.
Bush Donates to Graham’s Senate Bid
Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) announced it had received a $5,000 campaign contribution from former President George W. Bush, the Columbia State reports.
“Graham raised $1.2 million from July to September and has nearly $7 million in cash to spend on his 2014 race. Graham’s three announced challengers in June’s GOP primary… have less than $500,000 to spend combined.”
Cruz Takes Post-Shutdown Tour to Iowa
“Never mind that he lost… Sen. Ted Cruz took nothing short of a victory lap in his state of Texas this week, appearing before wildly supportive crowds that overlooked the fact that the Republican who led the charge to kill money for President Barack Obama’s health care law had failed,” the AP reports.
“Now he’s coming to Iowa, where Republicans who will have the first say in the next presidential race are certain to view him more skeptically than GOP loyalists do back home.”
David Frum: How Ted Cruz can win in 2016
The Implosion of the GOP Brand
Greg Sargent digs through the latest poll numbers and finds “a massive collapse in 2013 of the GOP brand among core constituencies important in midterm elections: Independents, women, and seniors.”
Both Parties Ignore What Their Voters Want
Ron Brownstein: “One reason a serious budget negotiation seems unlikely this fall is that any meaningful assault on the federal deficit would require each party to confront the contradictions between its fiscal agenda and its electoral coalition.”
“Two long-term trends are creating this tension. One is an electoral reshuffling: Republicans increasingly depend on support from older whites, even as Democrats rely more on the youthful-tilting minority population. The second is the federal budget’s shift in focus from children (almost half of whom are now nonwhite) to seniors (about four-fifths of whom remain white). The intersection of these dynamics has left each party advancing budget blueprints that collide with the self-interest of their core supporters.”
“Heading into budget negotiations, the top priority for many Republicans remains limiting Medicare, Medicaid, and maybe Social Security, the Big Three senior entitlements. The contradiction they face is that the people benefiting from those programs now comprise the core of their electoral coalition… That leaves Democrats confronting their own contradiction: They are now favoring programs that benefit predominantly white seniors who lopsidedly vote against them over policies that benefit the heavily diverse young people who strongly support them.”
Obama Kicks Off Intensive Fundraising Drive
President Obama “is setting off on a national fundraising tear to collect money for the three Democratic Party committees, scrambling to pack in events that had been delayed by the government shutdown and a series of foreign policy crises earlier this year,” the Washington Post reports.
“Obama is cramming at least nine fundraisers into a one-month period to benefit the Democratic National Committee and the two congressional campaign committees.”
White House Pitched Rosy View of Health Care Site
“Just days before HealthCare.gov went live with disastrous results, top White House officials were excitedly briefing lawmakers, reporters, Capitol Hill staff members and Washington pundits on their expectations for the government’s new health care Web site,” the New York Times reports.
However, the Wall Street Journal notes no one in the government “made sure the many complex parts of the health
website worked together properly, and testing didn’t take place until
two weeks before its launch.”
Booker Will Be Sworn In Next Week
Sen.-elect Cory Booker (D-NJ) is set to become the most junior senator on Halloween, Roll Call reports.
He will be sworn in by Vice President Joseph Biden at noon on Oct. 31.
GOP Roots for Failure
Juliet Lapidos: “In theory, lawmakers should hope that government programs work well, and if they don’t, work to fix them. Elected representatives should hope that government agencies carry out their missions smoothly, and if something goes wrong, try to figure out what happened to avoid making the same mistake in the future.”
“Obviously that’s not how things work in the United States, where one of the two parties doesn’t actually believe in government. Republicans want to shrink government until it’s small enough to drown in a bathtub! They think there’s nothing scarier than the prospect of a government employee trying to help! With beliefs like those, it’s perhaps not surprising that — with disturbing frequency — they root for failure in order to score points.”
Reid Says No Grand Bargain
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said that he expected little more from the formal House-Senate budget conference than some relief from automatic spending cuts under sequestration, Roll Call reports.
He added that the suggestion of a “grand bargain” including an overhaul of entitlement programs was nothing more than “happy talk.”
Said Reid: “I hope that we can do some stuff to get rid of sequestration and go on to do some sensible budgets — budgeteering. I’ve got a wonderful leader of my Budget Committee, Patty Murray from the state of Washington, and I feel pretty comfortable that she’ll do a good job for us, but … I hope there would be a grand bargain, but I don’t see that happening.”
Gansler Says He Made Mistake Not Breaking Up Teen Party
Under scrutiny for his presence at a party where teens said there was underage drinking, Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler (D) said that in retrospect, he should have done more to intervene, the Baltimore Sun reports.
Said Gansler: “Perhaps I should have assumed there was drinking in the home, and I got that wrong.”
But he said firmly he will remain a candidate in the Democratic race for governor: “We’re in it. We’re going to win it.”
Obama Pushes for Immigration Reform
I was on MSNBC this morning talking about the politics around President Obama’s push for immigration reform.
