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Wall Street Journal: “Republican leaders are telling the party’s House members that persistent criticism of the federal health-care law is the best path to victory this fall regardless of how the law’s implementation evolves ahead of the November elections.”
Wonk Wire: Where’s the Obamacare death spiral?
Vice President Biden “really did get ahead of” President Obama “on accepting gay marriage in 2012 — and the White House really wasn’t happy about it, despite the two leaders’ many attempts to claim otherwise. That’s the story laid out in Jo Becker’s new book, Forcing the Spring, which documents the past few years of successful efforts to expand the legalization of gay marriage,” Politico reports.
However, Andrew Sullivan is not impressed with the book saying the it “descends into more jaw-dropping distortion.”
A new University of Massachusetts at Amherst poll in Massachusetts finds Martha Coakley (D) leading the Democratic race for governor with 39%, followed by Steve Grossman at 9%, Don Berwick at 3% and Juliette Kayyern at 3%.
A new Pan Atlantic SMS poll in Maine shows Gov. Paul LePage (R) leading his re-election race with 39%, followed by Michael Michaud (D) at 37% and Eliot Cutler (I) at 20%.
A new Survey USA poll in Florida finds Charlie Crist (D) leading Gov. Rick Scott (R) in the race for governor, 46% to 41%.
Former CIA Director Leon Panetta told the New York Times that President Obama had a “mixed record” on making difficult national security decisions and suggested that Hillary Clinton would be better.
Said Panetta: “The president has made some tough decisions. But it’s been a mixed record, and the concern is, the president defining what America’s role in the world is in the 21st century hasn’t happened. Hopefully, he’ll do it and certainly, she would.”
Geoffrey Skelley: “So far, 50 members of the 113th Congress have either left office or signaled their intentions to leave at the end of this cycle… Despite all that, the degree of turnover in the House this cycle is not unusually high. Over the last 40 years, an average of 70.4 members has exited the House for one reason or another each two-year cycle. That’s about one-sixth of the total House membership every cycle. At 50 exits so far, this Congress still has a ways to go in order to produce even an average level of turnover.”
Former Rep. Bob Beauprez (R-CO) “has made the GOP ballot for governor, but thousands of signatures he turned in were declared invalid by the secretary of state’s office,” the Denver Post reports.
“Considering the amount of money Beauprez spent collecting the signatures, failure to make the ballot likely would have resulted in plenty of embarrassment and a court challenge.”
Leah Gordon, the staff member of Rep. Vance McAllister (R-LA) who is accused of leaking the video of the congressman’s scandalous kiss, has resigned as his district office manager, the Monroe News Star reports.
Charles and David Koch “added $1.3 billion to their collective fortune yesterday on reports that U.S. industrial production gained more than forecast. The surge elevated their net worth to more than $100 billion,” according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
“The Koch’s ascent comes as Freedom Partners, one of their fundraising networks, last week aired its first batch of television ads targeted at this year’s U.S. Senate races, including commercials knocking Democratic Senator Mark Udall of Colorado and Representative Bruce Braley of Iowa for supporting President Barack Obama’s health-care law.”
A new Pew Research poll finds that 52% of Americans don’t see President Obama as black but instead consider him mixed-race.
Hillary Clinton “played an energetic role in virtually every foreign policy issue of President Obama’s first term, advocating generally hawkish views internally while using her celebrity to try to restore America’s global standing after the hit it took during the George W. Bush administration,” the New York Times reports.
“But her halting answer suggests a problem that Mrs. Clinton could confront as she recounts her record in Mr. Obama’s cabinet before a possible run for president in 2016: Much of what she labored over so conscientiously is either unfinished business or has gone awry in his second term.”
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) told the Washington Post that President Obama would use executive action on immigration if Congress does not come up with a proposal by the August recess.
Said Diaz-Balart: “I’m convinced that if we don’t get it done by the August break, the president, who is feeling a lot of pressure from having not done anything on immigration reform, will feel that he has to act through executive action.”
However, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) “made it clear Wednesday that the legislation is as dead as ever in the House,” the Huffington Post reports.
John Edwards “has returned to the courtroom to help represent a 4-year-old Virginia boy in a medical malpractice case,” the AP reports.
“In 2012, Edwards faced six felony charges in a case involving nearly $1 million provided by two wealthy political donors to help hide his pregnant mistress Rielle Hunter as he sought the White House in 2008. A jury acquitted Edwards on one count of accepting illegal campaign contributions and deadlocked on the remaining five.”
Al Hunt: “If you want to wager on who the 2016 Republican nominee will be and have only one choice, the best bet may be former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. However, the odds overwhelmingly suggest the former governor won’t win the nomination — assuming he even runs.”
“This underscores, more than any other time in memory, how unformed the contest for the Republican nomination is… The lack of any clear consensus in the party emerges after talking to several political wise men — none of them have committed to any of the potential 2016 candidates.”
Norm Ornstein: “Thanks to McCutcheon, only quid pro quo corruption is sufficient to trigger any restrictions on campaign contributions–meaning, direct bribery of the Abscam or American Hustle variety, presumably captured on videotape for the world to see. The appearance of corruption? Forget about it. Restrictions on elected officials soliciting big money? Forget about them, too.”
“To anyone who has actually been around the lawmaking process or the political process more generally, this is mind-boggling. It makes legal what has for generations been illegal or at least immoral. It returns lawmaking to the kind of favor-trading bazaar that was common in the Gilded Age.”
Skip Rutherford, dean of the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock, joins us on the Political Wire podcast for a fascinating discussion of Arkansas politics.
Listen here:
Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or RSS to get episodes automatically downloaded.
Special thanks to Harry’s for sponsoring the show. They’re disrupting the shaving industry and highly recommended. Check them out and use promo code POLITICALWIRE for $5 off your first order.
The Boston Globe got an advance copy of A Fighting Chance by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and notes “the campaign-style book undoubtedly will stoke more calls for the Democratic Massachusetts senator, who won her Senate seat in 2012, to mount a 2016 presidential campaign. Warren has insisted she will not run for president in the next election, but even so the book and her heavy promotional tour will keep her in the national spotlight.”
“Unlike the former Harvard law professor’s previous books, which focused heavily on policy prescriptions and economic studies, this one is penned in a folksy style and contains extensive biographical sections and family photos, along with colorful stories from her battles over financial regulations in Washington.”
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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