Thomas Schaller: “Turnout rates historically move in tandem, with higher turnouts in both presidential and midterm cycles during the 1960s steadily declining before ticking up slightly during the past decade. So it’s instructive to pair midterm turnouts with either the preceding or subsequent presidential cycle. And in which recent midterms was drop-off greatest compared to the preceding presidential cycle? The 2010 and 1994 cycles — the most successful cycles for Republicans in the past six decades. The GOP captured both chambers of Congress in 1994, and in 2010 flipped the House and made key Senate gains that might have been still greater had Republican primary voters not nominated far-right candidates in Colorado, Delaware and Nevada.”

“It’s no mystery why Democrats generally perform better in presidential years while Republicans tend to excel in midterm cycles: Lower midterm turnouts tend to skew the electorate toward older, white and/or more affluent voters. Given the growing cleavage in recent decades between partisan preferences of white and non-white voters, cyclic differences in racial composition are particularly important.”

A new Fairleigh Dickinson poll in New Jersey finds Cory Booker (D) leading Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) in a Democratic U.S. Senate primary, 42% to 20%.

Booker’s favorable rating also beats Lautenberg, 66% to 45%.

Said pollster Krista Jenkins: “These numbers suggest that some difficult days may lie ahead for the incumbent senator should he seek reelection. Senator Lautenberg’s unfavorables, coupled with voter preferences for Booker as the Democratic standard bearer in the general election, complicate the landscape for this living legend amongst New Jersey politicians.”

Rev.  Louie Giglio, who had been announced as the pastor to give the invocation at the presidential inauguration, has now pulled himself out of the ceremony, after criticism of his previous anti-gay comments and actions, sources confirmed to ABC News.

Former Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) told Lawrence O’Donnell that the only difference between him and the others who would like to be appointed interim senator in Massachusetts is that “I have said so publicly and the rest are being coy.”

He added “it’s junior high school stuff” for people to criticize him for volunteering himself for that role.

Noam Scheiber says President Obama made a mistake sending Joe Biden to haggle with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) once McConnell’s talks with his Democratic counterpart, Harry Reid, had broken down.

“From my after-the-fact discussions with Democratic aides in the House and Senate leadership, it’s clear that Reid had a plan for resolving the cliff and considered the breakdown of his talks with McConnell very much a part of it. By involving Biden, Obama undercut Reid and signaled that he wanted a deal so badly he was unwilling to leave anything to chance, even when the odds overwhelmingly favored him. It suggested that even if Obama plays his cards exceedingly well in the run-up to the debt-limit showdown, he could still come away with a worse deal than he deserves because of his willingness to make concessions in the closing moments.”

Ezra Klein: “In the continuing drama that is the Obama presidency, Biden often appears as comic relief… Yet just a few days before he was giving dating advice on C-SPAN2, Biden again proved himself perhaps the most effective member of the Obama administration. He reprised his role as the White House closer, the guy who can cut a deal with the Republicans after everyone else has failed. In the end, Biden got Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to strike a deal that the White House was happy with. That’s something neither Obama nor Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner had achieved. And it wasn’t the first time. Biden also helped close the 2011 deal that lifted the debt ceiling and the 2010 deal that extended the Bush tax cuts in return for fresh stimulus.”

“Biden’s skills as a campaigner are also considerable. According to Nielsen, his speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention won better television ratings than the addresses of either Bill Clinton or Obama (or Republicans Mitt Romney and Representative Paul Ryan, for that matter). His debate performance against Ryan bucked up anxious Democrats and arguably stanched the bleeding from Obama’s hapless initial appearance against Romney.”

“Republicans say Jack Lew will have to answer for what they view as the president’s bare-knuckle tactics when Lew undergoes the Senate confirmation process for Treasury secretary,” The Hill reports.

“It is not often that members of the minority party get to grill the chief of staff of a sitting president and there is little love lost between Senate Republicans and President Obama.”