Sources tell NBC News that the FBI had a mole inside al Qaeda who met with Osama bin Laden eight years prior to 9/11 and knew he planned to finance terror attacks, but the bureau declined to tell Congressional investigators or the 9/11 Commission.
The informant was a Los Angeles-based “driver and confidante” of the “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel-Rahman, now in prison for his role in planning the original 1993 terror attack on New York’s World Trade Center.
“There’s that group of people who say, ‘I’m only voting if someone drives me down after church on Sunday.’ … Really? Is that the person we need to cater to when we’re making public policy about elections? A lot of those people would have voted anyway, except they waited till Sunday because it’s convenient for them.”
— Ohio State Rep. Matt Huffman (R), quoted by the Cincinnati Enquirer, via the Election Law Blog.
First Read: “Outside of live sports, nearly 30% of voters didn’t watch live TV in the past week. Let that sink in for a moment: Almost 3 in 10 voters are no longer watching TV — and are fast-forwarding through TV ads. So if you’re a campaign or advertiser wanting to reach these folks, you have to do so through other means (social media, internet ads).”
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Wall Street Journal: “The centerpiece of the evolution in vote-targeting is a continuing effort to update the party’s vast database of how Americans vote and what issues and messages are most likely to move them. The voter file, arguably the committee’s most powerful asset, requires constant refreshing to help the party and its candidates find potential supporters.”
“The DNC is also looking to improve on some of the biggest innovations of 2012 by engineering new ways to sort that data, model expected outcomes and test the best methods and messages for persuading sympathetic voters. This can be as mundane as figuring out which font color prompts e-mail recipients to click on a link to more sophisticated modeling to predict election results.”
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) “is being hyped as a leading Republican presidential contender, but there is a more pressing concern for the first-term governor. Walker’s 2014 reelection is no guarantee, and faces a serious challenge from one of the Democrats’ stronger gubernatorial recruits this year,” National Journal reports.
“A Walker defeat wouldn’t be the first time a presidential contender lost an election right before their big opportunity. Republican Sen. George Allen of Virginia spent 2005 and part of 2006 getting eyed as presidential material–before his “macaca” moment and a Democratic wave turfed him out of elected office. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist was on some GOP presidential short lists in 2009, but he chose to run for Senate instead of reelection and ended up getting chased out of the Republican Party by Marco Rubio.”
Wall Street Journal: “Having enacted just 72 laws in all of 2013 – one of its least productive sessions ever – Congress is not just gridlocked. It is getting rusty at the art of legislating.”
“Lawmaking on a grand scale is something of a dying art on the Hill at a time when the two parties are miles apart on major issues and divided government keeps both in check. Many of the bills that are enacted are parochial or noncontroversial – such as a 2013 law “to specify the size of the precious-metal blanks that will be used in the production of the National Baseball Hall of Fame commemorative coins” – or written by a small band of party leaders. That means the rest of Congress is not getting much practice.”
New York State Sen. Tony Avella (D) “is set to announce that he’s joining a dissident group of four Democrats that runs the state chamber with the GOP in an unprecedented bipartisan arrangement,” the New York Daily News reports.
“The switch could be a serious blow to the effort by mainline Dems to reclaim control of the Senate in this year’s elections.”
A new Winthrop Poll in South Carolina finds Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) “holds a commanding lead in the GOP primary to keep his seat in June, though he fell short of capturing 50% support to avoid a runoff.”
Graham received 45% of likely Republican primary voters, followed by Lee Bright (R) at just 9%.
British Prime Minister David Cameron “is preparing to fight the next general election on a clear promise to the British people not to form a second coalition government even if he falls short of a Commons majority,” the Daily Telegraph reports.
“The Prime Minister wants to make a commitment in the Conservative Party election manifesto not to sign a second power-sharing deal with a smaller party in the event of a hung parliament next May… Instead, a Conservative party that won the most seats but lacked a Commons majority would attempt to rule as a minority government, a course that would almost certainly lead to its early collapse and a quick second election.”
A new New York Times/CBS News poll finds 82% of Democrats say they want Hillary Clinton to run for president in 2016, “showing a level of interest in her that no other potential candidates – Democrat or Republican – come close to matching among their party’s voters.”
“The potential candidates drawing the most interest after Clinton are Vice President Joe Biden, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). For each of them, about 40% of self-identified members of their party said they hoped the person would run.”
As for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) “more in his party say they do not want him to seek the presidency (41%) than say they do (31%).
David Hawkings: “If Debbie Dingell (D) wins the campaign she’s formally launching on Friday — a solid if not quite certain bet — she’ll make history in more than the obvious way. She would be keeping one House seat in the same family well into a ninth decade, but would also become the first person to ever come to Congress as the successor to a living spouse.”
Smart Politics: “Over the last 90+ years, nearly 50 women have won elections or been appointed to seats in the upper or lower legislative chambers that were once held by their husbands. The only women to immediately follow their husbands into office and take over their seats were widows — either by winning election to the U.S. House or receiving an appointment to the U.S. Senate after vacancies were created by the death of their spouses.”
A new Quinnipiac poll in Pennsylvania finds that voters say by a 55% to 34% margin that Gov. Tom Corbett (R) doesn’t deserve re-election.
In possible match ups, Tom Wolf (D) tops Corbett by 52% to 33%, while Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D) leads Corbett 44% to 38%.
Said pollster Tim Malloy: “Tom Wolf springs out of the pack to seize the lead from other Democrats snapping at the heels of Tom Corbett. We have eight months and change and we don’t know what kind of damage Democrats will inflict on each other in a primary campaign, but Wolf is the man of the hour.”
A new Franklin & Marshall College Poll shows Wolf topping Schwartz 36% to 9%.
“Republicans are banking on businessmen to help them retake the Senate in 2014,” The Hill reports.
“A half-dozen top GOP candidates boast records as wealthy businessmen and entrepreneurs. If voters decide they’re successful job creators on Election Day, Republicans could be on their way to the six seats they need to win the upper chamber.”
“But if Democrats can successfully tar the candidates as out-of-touch millionaires, as they’ve done in a number of past campaigns, their profiles could cost the GOP dearly.”
Rick Hasen, law professor and proprietor of the excellent Election Law Blog, joins us on the Political Wire podcast for a discussion on campaign finance, the voting wars and how an upcoming Supreme Court decision may soon shake the election world.
Listen here:
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“Hill Democrats and immigration reform advocates are almost certain they’ll have to resort to a rare procedural move to try to force a vote on an overhaul this year. The tricky part is deciding when to pull the trigger,” Politico reports.
“Though aides say no decision has been made, House Democratic leaders are strategizing on when to deploy what’s known as a discharge petition, which would have to garner a majority of lawmakers’ signatures to force immigration legislation onto the House floor for a vote.”
“A trove of Clinton White House records long processed for release remains hidden from public view at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock — even though the legal basis initially used to withhold them expired more than a year ago,” Politico reports.
“The papers contain confidential advice given to or sought by President Bill Clinton, including communications with then-first lady Hillary Clinton, and records about people considered for appointments to federal office.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) “delayed action on legislation raising the minimum wage, the centerpiece of the Democrats’ 2014 agenda,” The Hill reports.
“The Nevada Democrat made the surprising move amid escalating Democratic resistance in the wake of a Congressional Budget Office report released last week estimating that hiking the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour could cost the equivalent of 500,000 jobs by late 2016.”
“Reid has not yet unified his caucus on the issue, which is a constant in the Democrats’ election-year playbook. Of the 55 senators who caucus with the Democrats, only 32 have signed on as official co-sponsors of Sen. Tom Harkin’s (D-IA) bill.”
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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