“No Democrat is gearing up to challenge Nancy Pelosi in public, but behind the scenes some Democrats are saying it’s time for new blood at the leadership table ahead of 2016,” Politico reports.
“Senior aides said they hope the party’s big losses Tuesday would encourage the minority leader to expand her network of allies and advisers to include a broader set of voices for crafting election messaging and congressional agendas.”
“In the coming weeks, Hillary Rodham Clinton will stop delivering paid speeches. She will embark on an unofficial listening tour to gather ideas from the business community, union leaders and others. And she will seek advice from such far-flung advisers as an ad man in Austin, Tex., behind the iconic ‘Don’t Mess With Texas’ campaign and a leading strategist at a Boston-based public affairs consulting firm with ties to the Kennedys,” the New York Times reports.
“The Democratic debacle in Tuesday’s midterm elections has put new urgency on Mrs. Clinton’s efforts to create a blueprint for a 2016 presidential candidacy, including exploring White Plains as a possible national headquarters and digesting exit polls to determine what the midterm results could mean for the presidential electoral map.”
“A number of advisers saw only upside for Mrs. Clinton in the party’s midterm defeats. Before then, opinions had been mixed about when she should form an exploratory committee, the first step toward declaring a presidential candidacy, with some urging her to delay it until late spring. But over the past few days, a consensus formed among those close to Mrs. Clinton that it is time to accelerate her schedule: She faces pressure to resurrect the Democratic Party, and she is already being scrutinized as the party’s presumptive nominee, so advisers see little reason to delay.”
“President Obama looked almost relieved after Tuesday’s election blowout. A man who has been perhaps the least political president in modern U.S. history doesn’t have to worry about elections anymore,” David Ignatius reports.
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Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) bashed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) in an interview with The Hill and called the last four years “the most pathetic, pitiful way I’ve seen the Senate run in all my 38 years — and I’ve seen some pretty pathetic, pitiful times.”
Said Hatch: “Reid is one of my friends, but he’s been a pathetic majority leader as far as I’m concerned. He thought he was doing right by protecting his side, but I think the American people resented him because he got nothing done.”
“Before ceding full control of Congress to the GOP in January, Senate Democrats are planning to rush a host of critical measures to President Obama’s desk, including bills to revive dozens of expired tax breaks and avoid a government shutdown for another year,” the Washington Post reports.
“Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is also aiming to chip away at a backlog of presidential nominations to the federal bench and the State Department over the next month, although Democratic aides say they will be unable to process all of the hundreds of pending appointments before turning the chamber over to Republicans.”
“In the last days before the midterm elections, Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmentalist who spent at least $57 million of his own money to influence Tuesday’s outcome — more than any other single donor — set off on a frenetic get-out-the-vote tour to Colorado, Iowa and finally New Hampshire… After all that, Mr. Steyer appears to have largely wasted his time and money,” the New York Times reports.
“Most of his candidates lost, even though Mr. Steyer, his advocacy organization NextGen Climate, and other environmental groups spent a total of about $85 million — a magnitude greater than they had ever spent in any election year.”
“No. God, no. I’ve already been there 16 years. I don’t want to be a career guy. Even though I’ve been there a long time, where you could already say that… It’s just, I don’t want to spend my adult life in Congress.”
— Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), quoted by National Journal, on being in Congress another ten years.
“The same-sex marriage movement lost its first major case in a federal appeals court Thursday after a lengthy string of victories, creating a split among the nation’s circuit courts that virtually guarantees Supreme Court review,” USA Today reports.
“The ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit reversed district court rulings that had struck down gay marriage bans in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. More important, it gives Supreme Court justices an appellate ruling that runs counter to four others from the 4th, 7th, 9th and 10th circuits. Those rulings struck down same-sex marriage bans in Virginia, Indiana, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Utah, Idaho and Nevada and led to similar action in neighboring states.”
Time has a new interactive tool that places 2,700 common brands on a political spectrum based on the percentage of their brick-and-mortar stores that are located in Democratic or Republican districts – determined by the 2014 midterm elections.
For example: Of the 139 American Apparel stores, 83% are in blue districts, whereas only 12% of Belk stores are in Democratic districts and Chipotle falls right in the middle, with an equal 50% split of locations in Democratic and Republican districts. Another example would be Tim Horton’s is 63% Republican, Starbucks 49%, and Dunkin’ Donuts is 36% Republican.
Open Secrets: “In every midterm election since 1990 (as well as in every presidential), the total number of individual donors has increased along with the total cost. This time, CRP has projected the total cost of election will rise, but, for the first time in 24 years, the total number of reported donors will likely decline.”
House Speaker John Boehner “struck a combative tone Thursday in his first postelection comments, vowing the House would again vote to repeal the federal health-care law and warning the White House from ‘poisoning the well’ on immigration,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Emboldened by electoral victories that allowed Republicans to take control of the Senate, Mr. Boehner put the onus on President Barack Obama to work with Republicans now that they will control both the House and Senate in the new year… Mr. Boehner specifically warned Mr. Obama from taking executive action to address problems with the immigration system. Such a move could ruin any chances of lawmakers taking on a broad overhaul of a system the Ohio Republican said is not working.”
John Boehner and Mitch McConnell “have never been best friends,” Roll Call reports.
“But they aren’t enemies, either. Far from it, say staffers and sources who know both lawmakers. The speaker and the Senate’s presumptive new majority leader have built, over the years, a solid professional relationship based on a sturdy sense of mutual respect. That relationship is in the spotlight now more than ever, with Republicans emboldened in the wake of Tuesday’s wave election that saw the GOP pick up at least eight seats in the Senate and more than a dozen in the House.”
First Read: “Over the past few cycles, we’ve talked so much about the Latino vote, African Americans, female voters. But the decisive force on Election Night 2014 turned out to be … white men. They made up 37% of the electorate (up from 34% in 2012), and they broke for Republicans 64%-33% (compared with Romney’s 62%-35% margin in ’12). The question for Democrats is if this is simply a midterm phenomenon, or if it’s a longer-term challenge for the Democratic Party — being able to talk to white male voters.”
The breadth of the Republican win was surprising, but the Wall Street Journal highlights six other surprises:
Are there others? Let us know in the comments.
“America has again embraced our long history of electoral overreaction. While it’s true that Republicans won a major victory at the polls, the results tell us far less about future elections than some commentary has suggested,” Brendan Nyhan writes.
“Historically, midterm results, which are typically unfavorable to the president’s party, tell us relatively little about the coming presidential election… The record shows that the president’s party can rebound from major losses to win at the polls in two years. Bill Clinton, for instance, bounced back from the 1994 Republican landslide to easily win re-election in 1996. Similarly, President Obama, whose party suffered major losses in 2010, went on to defeat Mitt Romney in 2012, and George Bush won the 1988 election after Republicans suffered major losses in 1986, President Reagan’s sixth year in office.”
“After securing control of the Senate Tuesday, Republicans are already staring down a daunting map for 2016,” Roll Call reports.
“The majority of the Senate battleground in the next election cycle will be fought on Republican turf, with the GOP defending 24 seats to the Democrats’ 10. There is more trouble for the party beneath those raw numbers; only two Democratic seats are in competitive states, while more than half a dozen Republican incumbents face re-election in states President Barack Obama carried at least once.”
Huffington Post: Here’s the Democratic route back to Senate control
Joe Klein: “I watched Clinton speak three times during the campaign, and she limited herself to women’s issues too, but she did it cleverly. The emphasis was on economics rather than reproductive rights. She was especially good on the economic impact of pay equity: working women would have more money to spend, and they would spend it on consumer goods, which would create jobs–the opposite of trickle-down economics. She told specific personal stories about her difficulties as a working mom. She spoke slowly, softly, far more confidently than she had in past campaigns.”
“There was a two-tiered rationale for her message: she was spot-on the Democrats’ national pitch, a good soldier selling the blue brand, but the emphasis on women’s rights also redressed a failing from her 2008 campaign. She had run on ‘experience’ then and downplayed the fact that she was a piece of history: the first plausible woman to run for President. She doesn’t have to worry about experience now; everyone knows she has it. The question is, how does she play to her strengths as a woman if she chooses to run? (And I assume she will.) And how does she convince voters that she’s not the same old, same old?”
Libby Nelson: “One Republican victory in the midterm elections has been mostly overlooked. Yes, Republicans took control of the Senate and a surprising number of governorships. But they also won a record number of state legislature seats.”
“Republicans now control state government outright in at least 24 states, one more than they did before the election. They control at least 66 of 99 state legislative chambers nationwide. And they cut the number of states with total Democratic control from 14 to seven — the lowest number since the Civil War.”
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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