“I think it was easy to think that maybe 2008 was the anomaly, and I think 2012 was an indication that, no, this is not an anomaly.”
— President Obama, in an interview with Time, on his re-election being a more satisfying victory than four years ago.
The Washington Post reports that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson is being investigated for using a less-than-obvious personal email identity — “Richard Windsor” — that combines the name of her dog and her hometown, East Windsor, New Jersey.
“Top donors to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s reelection campaign are telling supporters they hope to raise $2 million by the end of the year,” Politico reports, “a glaringly large figure in the few short weeks since he announced he’s seeking reelection.”
“Sources familiar with the approach by some Christie rainmakers said donors solicited in the past two weeks were told the campaign wants to bring in that sum by Dec. 31. If they can pull it off, it would exacerbate the already daunting challenge facing any Democrats considering a run against Christie, whose popularity has soared in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.”
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Time magazine names Barack Obama as its Person of the Year.
“Two years ago, Republicans liked to say that the only hard thing Obama ever did right was beating Hillary Clinton in the primary, and in electoral terms, there was some truth to that. In 2012 the GOP hoped to cast him as an inspiring guy who was not up to the job. But now we know the difference between the wish and the thing, the hype and the man in the office.”
“He stands somewhat shorter, having won 4 million fewer votes and two fewer states than in 2008. But his 5 million-vote margin of victory out of 129 million ballots cast shocked experts in both parties, and it probably would have been higher had so much of New York and New Jersey not stayed home after Hurricane Sandy. He won many of the toughest battlegrounds walking away: Virginia by 4 points, Colorado by 5 and the lily white states of Iowa and New Hampshire by 6. He untied Ohio’s knotty heartland politics, picked the Republican lock on Florida Cubans and won Paul Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wis. (Those last two data points especially caught the President’s interest.) He will take the oath on Jan. 20 as the first Democrat in more than 75 years to get a majority of the popular vote twice. Only five other Presidents have done that in all of U.S. history.”
A new Quinnipiac poll in Florida finds Gov. Rick Scott (R) with an upside down approval rating at 36% to 45% and a majority saying he doesn’t deserve a second term.
Key finding: 53% of Republicans would like another candidate for governor in 2014.
Said pollster Peter Brown: “The rejection of Scott appears to be driven more by policy than personality: Voters like Scott as a person 36 – 32 percent, but they dislike his policies 52 – 32 percent. One bright spot – a total of 49 percent of voters are very or somewhat satisfied with the way things are going in Florida, higher than it’s been so far during Scott’s term.”
In a press release, BuzzFeed notes House Speaker John Boehner’s office said his “plan B” to extend most tax cuts would “not raise taxes. It is a net tax cut that prevents a $4.6 trillion tax hike on Jan. 1.”
However, taxes would actually stay the same for most people under the proposal, and go up on people earning more than $1 million.
“The leaders of an independent panel that blamed systematic State Department management and leadership failures for gross security lapses in the deadly Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya will explain their findings to Congress on Wednesday,” the AP reports.
In a letter that accompanied the transmission of the report to Capitol Hill, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “thanked the board for its ‘clear-eyed, serious look at serious systemic challenges’ and said she accepted all of its 29 recommendations to improve security at high-threat embassies and consulates.”
Clinton was supposed to testify on Benghazi today, but will not appear due to a concussion suffered after fainting from a stomach
flu over the weekend. Charles Krauthammer says Clinton instead “seems to have a severe Benghazi allergy.”
Harper Polling launches this week with the goal of putting the Republican party “on parity with Democrats in the field of IVR polling – a term that stands for interactive voice response polling, commonly known as ‘robo-polling,'” Politico reports.
“For several cycles now, Democrats have benefited from a high-volume, relatively inexpensive flow of survey data from the company Public Policy Polling, which takes hundreds of polls in any given cycle checking up on individual races and national issue debates. Some of those surveys are released to the public, while others are conducted for private purposes by Democratic campaigns and interest groups.”
The National Rifle Association, breaking days of silence, issued a statement saying it is “shocked, saddened and heartbroken” by the elementary-school shootings in Connecticut and is ready to offer “meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
The group will hold a news conference in Washington, D.C. on Friday
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) vetoed legislation that would have allowed gun owners with extra training to carry concealed weapons in public schools, the Detroit News reports.
“The bill sought to eliminate gun-free zones for concealed pistol license holders by requiring more training and prohibiting them from open-carrying weapons inside schools, stadiums, churches and hospitals.”
Todd Purdum: “I can’t help wondering if the bullets of Sandy Hook Elementary will be
for Obama what the snarling dogs and high-pressure fire hoses of
Birmingham, Alabama, were for John F. Kennedy in 1963: the human tragedy
that will force him to take a political risk, simply because it is
right.”
President Obama “would actively support an impending proposal next year to reinstate a ban on assault weapons as part of the wide-ranging effort the president promised to initiate in response to mass shooting incidents this year,” NBC News reports.
White House press secretary Jay Carney also said that Obama “was additionally willing to consider limiting the capacity of ammunition magazines and closing a loophole allowing individuals to purchase firearms at gun shows without a background check.”
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) told Greg Sargent that Democrats would also consider “including other ideas like limiting high
capacity magazine clips, beefing up background checks, expanding mental
health services, and looking at violence in movies and video games.”
Marc Ambinder: Guns need good. Starve them.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told NBC News she wants Hillary Clinton to make another bid for the White House in 2016.
Said Pelosi: “Wouldn’t that be exciting? I hope she goes. Why wouldn’t she? She would be president of the United States, and she would be great. And if she decided to run, and I think she would win, she would go into the White House as well prepared or better prepared than almost anybody who has served in that office in a very long time.”
The Justice Department “has decided not to charge David Petraeus’ mistress, Paula Broadwell, with cyberstalking as part of its investigation into an email scandal that led to the resignation of the CIA director and storied general,” the Washington Post reports.
A new Public Policy Polling survey in Michigan finds Gov. Rick Snyder (R) is one of the most unpopular governors in the country. Only 38% of voters approve of him, while 56% disapprove.
Key finding: Snyder has dropped a net 28 points from the weekend before the election, when his approval rate was 47% to 37%.
“There’s not much doubt that it’s the right to work law and his embrace of other actions by the Republican legislature that are driving this precipitous drop in Snyder’s popularity. Only 41% of voters in the state support the right to work legislation, while 51% are opposed to it. If voters got to decide the issue directly only 40% of them say they would vote to keep the law enacted, while 49% would vote to overturn it.”
Joe Trippi: “All these changes in democratic politics will be profound, although not all the consequences will be good. New technologies can manipulate, empower, or do both. There will be plenty of actors in both politics and business who will use the innovations of the Obama 2012 campaign as tools to manipulate people. But for me, right now, it feels as if technology has empowered people and given politics back its soul.”
Smart Politics finds that Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI), who died yesterday, served alongside a total of 412 men and women in the U.S. Senate over his career of nearly 50 years. Among those were 218 Democrats, 189 Republicans, three independents, one Conservative, and one from the Independence Party.
“Included among these 412 Senators were 14 from Minnesota, 13 each from Illinois and Tennessee, 12 from Colorado, Florida, and North Carolina, 11 from California, Georgia, New Hampshire, and Virginia, and 10 each from Missouri, New York, and Ohio.”
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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