John Edwards “is returning to his roots and opening a new law practice” with his former partner and daughter, the New York Times reports.
Said Edwards: “The reason we formed this firm is because we all believe in the same thing — in standing up for the disenfranchised and those who need an equal chance. That’s why we exist.”
A new ABC News-Washington Post poll finds Mitt Romney would win a presidential election if it were held today, 49% to 45%.
A new Public Policy Polling survey in Mississippi finds Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) in trouble if he decides to run for re-election.
Cochran leads Chris McDaniel (R) in a head-to-head Republican primary match up by just six points, 44% to 38%.
Key finding: When asked if they want to vote for Cochran or “someone more conservative,” 55% of GOP primary voters chose the generic more conservative option.
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“I urinated in a parking lot… what does that have to do with anything?”
— Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, quoted by the Toronto Star.
“Despite the disastrous rollout of the federal government’s healthcare website, enrollment is surging in many states as tens of thousands of consumers sign up for insurance plans made available by President Obama’s health law,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“A number of states that use their own systems, including California, are on track to hit enrollment targets for 2014 because of a sharp increase in November… The growing enrollment in those states is a rare bit of good news for backers of the Affordable Care Act and suggests that the serious problems with the law’s rollout may not be fatal, despite critics’ renewed calls for repeal.”
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds President Obama’s approval rate is now at the lowest point of his presidency, 42% to 55%, “with dwindling faith in his competence and in many of the personal attributes that have buoyed him in the past.”
“For the first time in Obama’s presidency, a bare majority of Americans, 52%, say they have an unfavorable impression of him, with 46 percent saying they view him favorably. Those ratings have declined from a net positive of 23 points at the time of his inauguration in January.”
The Obama administration “brought in a private consulting team to independently assess how the federal online health insurance enrollment system was developing, according to a newly disclosed document, and in late March received a clear warning that its Oct. 1 launch was fraught with risks,” the Washington Post reports.
“The analysis by McKinsey & Co. foreshadowed many of the problems that have dogged HealthCare.gov since its rollout, including the facts that the call-in centers would not work properly if the online system was malfunctioning and that insufficient testing would make it difficult to fix problems after the launch.”
Jeff Greenfield, one of the wisest political analysts around, is our guest on the Political Wire podcast.
The back and forth and ups and downs of the last few weeks in Washington, D.C. make for terrific political theater but Greenfield warns that predicting how it’s going to play out in 2014 or 2016 is not that easy.
It’s a great conversation. Listen here:
Subscribe via iTunes or RSS to get the latest episodes automatically downloaded om your phone.
President Obama “will be huddling — electronically, at least — with his former campaign supporters Monday night to shore up support after two months of troubles with his signature health law have left him bruised and put the brakes on his domestic agenda,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Senate Republicans “denied President Obama his third nominee in recent weeks to the nation’s most powerful and prestigious appeals court and insisted they would not back down, inflaming a bitter debate over a president’s right to shape the judiciary,” the New York Times reports.
“Unlike previous fights over judicial nominees, this one is not driven by ideology or divisive social issues like abortion. Republicans have raised few objections to any of the candidates’ qualifications or political leanings. Rather, Republicans are trying to prevent Mr. Obama from filling any slots on the court, fearing that he will alter its conservative tilt.”
“The avalanche of cash that made Washington rich in the last decade has transformed the culture of a once staid capital and created a new wave of well-heeled insiders,” the Washington Post reports.
“The winners in the new Washington are not just the former senators, party consiglieri and four-star generals who have always profited from their connections. Now they are also the former bureaucrats, accountants and staff officers for whom unimagined riches are suddenly possible. They are the entrepreneurs attracted to the capital by its aura of prosperity and its super-educated workforce. They are the lawyers, lobbyists and executives who work for companies that barely had a presence in Washington before the boom.”
The White House “denied reports of a staff shake-up in the aftermath of the botched Obamacare rollout,” The Hill reports.
“Press secretary Jay Carney insisted that the president’s team was singularly focused on making improvements to the enrollment figures, not examining what went wrong behind the scenes and who was responsible.”
“An unprecedented council meeting descended temporarily into chaos on Monday, when Mayor Rob Ford and Councillor Doug Ford got into a screaming match with spectators,” the Toronto Star reports.
A remarkable video shows Ford knocking over Councillor Pam McConnell but catching her before she fell.
Just released for the iPhone: The Day That Launched The Kennedy Half Century.
It’s a companion app for Larry Sabato’s The Kennedy Half Century.
Coming next year: Big Money: Big Egos, Bigger Stakes, and the Biggest New Game in Politics by Kenneth P. Vogel.
“A Supreme Court decision, combined with regulatory gridlock and legal tricks, have fundamentally changed the role of money in politics in recent years, upending traditional bases of political power. Campaign decisions once made by party officials are now in the hands of super-rich benefactors and the consultants competing for their attention–and for increasingly lucrative commissions and fees. It’s as if, instead of a football coach on the sidelines calling the plays, every player and his agent decided what was best.”
Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne said that they are “pained’ by the public dispute over gay marriage between their daughters but that Liz Cheney’s “many kindnesses shouldn’t be used to distort her position” on the issue, NBC News reports.
Said Cheney: “This is an issue we have dealt with privately for many years, and we are pained to see it become public. Since it has, one thing should be clear. Liz has always believed in the traditional definition of marriage. She has also always treated her sister and her sister’s family with love and respect, exactly as she should have done.”
The latest Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll finds the bottom has fallen out for everyone in the nation’s political leadership.
“Just 38% of those polled said they approved of Obama’s job performance, with 55% disapproving. That’s the lowest approval, and highest disapproval, the Heartland Monitor poll has recorded for Obama in the 19 times it has measured his standing since April 2009.”
“Americans are even more dubious about Congress. Just 9% of those polled (down from 21% last November) approved of its performance. Fully 84% disapproved. Almost nine-in-10 of those who disapproved of Obama’s performance also gave Congress a thumbs-down; 56% of those who disapproved of Congress also flunked Obama.”
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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