Hillary Clinton and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will be the featured attractions at next month’s Clinton Global Initiative in Chicago, Politico reports.
“The focus of the gathering… is on speeding up the United States’ economic recovery and the nation’s long-term outlook… But the short-term political outlook will be equally interesting, given that Clinton and Christie top most 2016 polls in their respective parties.”
“The speaker is the captain of a mutinous ship.”
— Rep. Bill Keating (D-MA), quoted by the Martha’s Vineyard Times, on the divided House Republican caucus.
Kevin Drum: “As near as I can tell, the strategy the GOP’s brain trust came up with after the November election was twofold. First, try to expand its coalition by reining in its tea party excesses and tamping down a bit on its anti-gay, pro-gun, anti-immigrant wing. Second, if that didn’t work–and it was always a long shot–keep the economy in lousy shape so that at least Democrats couldn’t take advantage of their paralysis.”
“So far, it seems to be working. Strategy A, as expected, is on life support. But Strategy B is coming to the rescue. By ending the payroll tax holiday in January and seeing their sequester handiwork take effect in March, Republicans have kept the economy barely dog paddling along.”
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A new Red Racing Horses/PMI (R) poll in South Carolina’s 1st congressional district finds Mark Sanford (R) and Elizabdeth Colbert Busch (D) tied at 46% among likely voters with another 7% undecided.
The State notes Red Racing Horses says it is a “collaborative community of politics and
election enthusiasts run by six unnamed volunteers and that polls are
paid with reader donations.”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) “may have his eye on the White House, but it looks his sister may be gunning for the opposite team,” the New York Observer reports.
“Mr. Cuomo’s sister, film producer Maria Cuomo-Cole, took to Twitter Friday morning to publicly support an EMILY’s List campaign to put a woman in the White House-a campaign that isn’t shy about it’s support for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, widely considered Mr. Cuomo’s biggest barrier to the Democratic nomination.”
A new Public Policy Polling survey in Massachusetts finds the U.S. Senate special election is a surprisingly close race, with Rep. Ed Markey (D) leading Gabriel Gomez (R) by just four points, 44% to 40%.
Key findings: “Gomez is starting out as a pretty popular candidate, with 41% of voters rating him favorably to 27% with an unfavorable opinion. Beyond having good numbers with Republicans he’s at 42/24 with independents, and actually seen narrowly positively even by Democrats at 33/32. Voters meanwhile are more divided on Markey, with 44% holding a positive view of him to 41% with a negative one. He’s at 31/50 with independents.”
“The people that I’ve talked to seem to be doing well. In fact, when I got out in restaurants here in town, people come up to me. They want to see more sequestration, not less.”
— Rep. Billy Long (R-MO), quoted by KOLR-TV.
Charlie Cook: “President Obama carried the 18-to-29-year-old voting bloc by 34 points in 2008 and by 23 points last year. But a new national survey of millennial voters conducted by Harvard’s Institute of Politics suggests this emerging generation might not be as locked into the Democratic camp as conventional wisdom suggests, and that young voters exhibit some of the same stark partisan divides as older Americans.”
Also important: “The poll shows that young voters’ trust in their leaders and political institutions is low and dropping.”
“A Louisiana law that allows public school science teachers to use supplemental materials in their classrooms will remain on the books, despite criticism that it’s a back-door way to teach creationism,” the AP reports.
Byron York notes that Mitt Romney would have had to win an astonishing 73% of the Hispanic vote to prevail in the 2012 presidential election which “suggests that Romney, and Republicans, had bigger problems than Hispanic voters.”
“The most serious of those problems was that Romney was not able to connect with white voters who were so turned off by the campaign that they abandoned the GOP and in many cases stayed away from the polls altogether. Recent reports suggest as many as 5 million white voters simply stayed home on Election Day. If they had voted at the same rate they did in 2004, even with the demographic changes since then, Romney would have won.”
The U.S. economy added 165,000 jobs last month, more than the 148,000 gain expected by economists, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The unemployment rate fell to 7.5%, the lowest rate unemployment rate since December 2008.
Jon Favreau: “Much has been written over the last few weeks about the limits of presidential power. Some smart observers have pointed out that these limits are not new; that historically they have had less to do with the personalities of our leaders than the structure of our democracy. The founders, reluctant to entrust any executive with the kind of authority that was so abused by the king they revolted against, created a separation of powers between co-equal branches of government.”
“But how boring is that? The more exciting story to tell is how Lyndon Johnson charmed and strong-armed his way to massive legislative victories. Much less interesting is the fact that most of those victories occurred while his party held record majorities in Congress. By the end of his second term, following the loss of 47 House seats and three Senate seats, one aide joked that Johnson couldn’t even get a Mother’s Day resolution passed.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) “says a new immigration bill he helped write needs stronger border security provisions or it will fail in the House and may even have trouble getting through the Senate,” the AP reports.
Rubio also writes in the Wall Street Journal that he’s “been hearing concerns in recent days that more work is needed to boost the bill’s language on the border and he said he’s committed to trying to make those changes.”
White House confidant Valerie Jarrett and Commerce Secretary nominee Penny Pritzker “will have overlapping portfolios of outreach to corporate America” but BuzzFeed notes “there is no love lost between the two women, people who know both say: Indeed, Jarrett tried to torpedo the appointment… And their tense relationship could help define the Administration’s attempts to mend ties with the business world that frayed badly during the first term.”
Meanwhile, McClatchy reports Pritzker’s nomination may hit a snag over her role as a pioneer in the troubled mortgage-backed securities industry.
“I pray that Hillary Clinton decides to run for president of the United States.”
— House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), quoted by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.
The Washington Post notes that Vice President Joe Biden is weighing whether to run in 2016 but “several paradoxes are at work. He is beloved by grass-roots Democrats, but mainly as the avuncular No. 2 to Barack Obama.”
“Biden clearly has the experience and gravitas to ascend to the presidency, but many Democrats say he may have been in Washington too long (since 1973) to win an election. He is President Obama’s governing partner yet is rarely seen as Obama’s heir apparent. For that mantle, and for the nomination, he is likely to face stiff competition in the form of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former secretary of state and, according to most everyone, the 2016 front-runner.”
The Washington Post notes that “largely out of public view, the ‘political intelligence’ industry has doubled in size over the past decade, by some estimates. What was once primarily a side business for law firms and lobby shops has grown so lucrative that it has spawned dozens of stand-alone firms that cater to hedge funds and other powerful corporate clients.”
“The appetite for this information — and the willingness to pay handsomely for it — is based on the realization among traders that decisions in Washington move markets and can shape entire industries for years. Understanding how Washington works has become so important for investors that it is hard for hedge funds and banks to do their research without stumbling upon some political angle.”
“The Pentagon has redesigned its biggest ‘bunker buster’ bomb with more advanced features intended to enable it to destroy Iran’s most heavily fortified and defended nuclear site,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
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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