“We would rather lose with you than win with anyone else.”
— Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades, quoted by ABC News, talking to Mitt and Ann Romney several days after the election.
“We would rather lose with you than win with anyone else.”
— Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades, quoted by ABC News, talking to Mitt and Ann Romney several days after the election.
Nate Silver finds that some of the most accurate polling firms this election cycle were those that conducted their polls online.
“The final poll conducted by Google Consumer Surveys had Mr. Obama ahead in the national popular vote by 2.3 percentage points – very close to his actual margin, which was 2.6 percentage points based on ballots counted through Saturday morning. Ipsos, which conducted online polls for Reuters, came close to the actual results in most places that it surveyed, as did the Canadian online polling firm Angus Reid. Another online polling firm, YouGov, got reasonably good results.”
“Perhaps it won’t be long before Google, not Gallup, is the most trusted name in polling.”
Politico: “Democrats had argued for months before the election that Republican polling was screening out voters who would ultimately turn up to support Obama. In fact, Obama advisers said, if you applied a tighter likely voter screen to Democratic polling — counting only the very likeliest voters as part of the electorate — you could come up with results similar to what the GOP was looking at.”
“By assuming that only the most enthusiastic voters would actually show up, Republicans greatly overestimated their national position. Operatives and activists rejected public polling data that showed substantially more voters identifying themselves as Democrats in states like Ohio and Virginia, giving Republicans an unwarranted sense of confidence that crumbled last Tuesday.”
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House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) told his GOP members on a conference call that their party lost the elections, badly, “and while Republicans would still control the House and would continue to staunchly oppose tax rate increases as Congress grapples with the impending fiscal battle, they had to avoid the nasty showdowns that marked so much of the last two years,” the New York Times reports.
“Members on the call, subdued and dark, murmured words of support — even a few who had been a thorn in the speaker’s side for much of this Congress.”
Despite a terrible showing on Election Day, Karl Rove believes that American Crossroads and its more secretive issue-advocacy arm, Crossroads GPS — which allows donors to remain anonymous — are here to stay, the Washington Post reports.
“Rove is pondering new missions for Crossroads to address weaknesses laid bare by the GOP’s back-to-back failures to win the White House and the fact that the party fell short when expected to win back the Senate.”
“Where until now it battled only in general elections and against Democrats, Crossroads is considering whether to start picking sides in Republican primaries. The idea would be to boost the candidate it deems most electable and avoid nominating the kind of flawed and extreme ones who cost the party what should otherwise have been easy Senate wins in Florida, Missouri and Indiana.”
Sasha Issenberg: “It is no coincidence that in both 2004 and 2012 the engines of radical innovation were the campaigns of incumbent presidents. We tend to underappreciate how radically different a presidential re-election is from any other enterprise in American political life. It is the rare chance for candidates to disrupt the cycle of short-term, election-year priorities and invest in their own research agendas instead of being forced to follow a consultant-driven marketplace.”
White House officials suggest Jon Huntsman (R), the former Utah governor, Obama’s ambassador to China and Republican presidential candidate, might be a candidate for Secretary of State, the AP reports.
“Huntsman is still widely respected by the administration even if he’d hoped to unseat Obama. Choosing Huntsman would allow the president to claim bipartisanship while putting an Asia expert in the job at a time when the U.S. is focusing more attention on the world’s most populous continent.”
KSL-TV: “The speculation caught many political observers off guard. Some told us
that taking another job in the Obama administration might make it hard,
if not impossible, for him to run as a Republican again for the White
House.”
“I would like to see whether I can get untired.”
— Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in an interview with Gail Collins, on what she’ll do next year.
California has entered “a period of Democratic political control so far-reaching that the dwindling number of Republicans in the Legislature are in danger of becoming mere spectators at the statehouse,” the AP reports.
“Democrats hold the governorship and every other statewide office. They gained even more ground in Tuesday’s elections, picking up at least three congressional seats while votes continue to be counted in two other tight races… The party also secured a supermajority in one, and possibly both, chambers in the Legislature.”
Said GOP strategist Steve Schmidt: “Republican leaders should look at California and shudder. The two-party system has collapsed.”
Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) bid to become Secretary of State may be in jeopardy, ironically, because of Kerry himself, BuzzFeed reports.
When Kerry ran for president in 2004, state Democrats “changed the law to for replacing retiring members, stripping then Gov. Mitt Romney of his ability to appoint a new members and putting in a place a special election process. Kerry obviously never needed a replacement, and perhaps fittingly, following the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy the new law resulted in the state electing Sen. Scott Brown, a Republican.”
“And with Brown on his way out thanks to Elizabeth Warren, he is considered an odds-on favorite to take a special election against the current crop of Democratic contenders.”
One option: Democrats could change the law back to allow the governor to appoint a successor.
Rep. Allen West (R-FL) refused to concede after the state concluded that challenger Patrick Murphy (D) held a lead beyond the margin needed for an automatic recount, the AP reports.
West was elected in 2010 on a wave of tea party support and has since had a constant string of headline-grabbing statements, from calling congressional Democrats communists to saying President Obama, Rep. Nancy Pelosi and others should “get the hell out of the United States.”
Paul Begala: “Our goal was to take Romney’s greatest strength–his business record–and make it a weakness. We were given a road map by none other than the late, great Ted Kennedy. As the 2008 election was approaching, I paid the senator a visit. I thought Romney might be the GOP nominee, and Kennedy gave me a tutorial on how to beat him. Don’t underestimate Romney, Kennedy said. He’s smart and resourceful and will say anything, take any position. Kennedy recounted how his campaign team tracked down employees of companies that had been shut down after being bought by Bain Capital. Shamelessly copying Kennedy’s plan, we interviewed dozens of laid-off middle-class working people. Their stories were emblematic of the collapse of the middle class: factories closed, health benefits canceled, lives ruined.”
“My old friend, former Georgia governor and senator Zell Miller, taught me that ‘a hit dog barks,’ but Romney remained silent. I am still amazed that Romney did not respond. He allowed our little, underfunded super PAC to define him as Gordon Gekko. Without his business record, Romney was left with nothing but his charm.”
Soon after Mitt Romney conceded the presidential election, more than
55,025 Facebook users have “unliked” Romney, at a rate of about
847 an hour, according to Mashable.
President Obama has been declared the winner of Florida in the presidential election, the Associated Press reports.
The final Electoral College tally is Obama 332, Romney 206.
The latest nationwide popular vote tally is Obama 50.6%, Romney 47.9%.
The Week lists seven things he should have done differently.
The Economist: “Arguing whether Mr Obama has a mandate is like debating whether somebody has mojo, or whether basketball star LeBron James is ‘in the zone’ on a given night: there’s a discussion to be had, but no way to come to a definite conclusion.”
Rick Hasen: “Think of all the problems in Florida: the on, again off again in-person absentee balloting in Miami Dade, put in place by local election officials against the wishes of the mayor to get around the cutbacks on early voting by the governor and legislature; the multiple ballot snafus in Palm Beach County; long lines in cites throughout the state; major problems in handling some absentee ballots; election officials in one county telling people that they could vote through the end of the day Wednesday.”
“Let’s declare Florida an election disaster area and bring in the feds.”
Out next week: Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham.
New York Times: “Meacham is one of several journalists turned historians who belong to what might be called the Flawed Giant School… Books in this mode usually present their subjects as figures of heroic grandeur despite all-too-human shortcomings — and so, again, speak directly to the current moment, with its diminished faith in government and in the nation’s elected leaders. Few are better suited to this uplifting task than Meacham.”
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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