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Rasmussen Explains What Went Wrong

November 12, 2012 at 9:30 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Rasmussen Reports, which had Mitt Romney leading President Obama on the final day of the presidential campaign and picked the winner in just three of nine swing states, explains:

“A preliminary review indicates that one reason for this is that we
underestimated the minority share of the electorate. In 2008, 26% of
voters were non-white. We expected that to remain relatively constant.
However, in 2012, 28% of voters were non-white. That was exactly the
share projected by the Obama campaign. It is not clear at the moment
whether minority turnout increased nationally, white turnout decreased,
or if it was a combination of both. The increase in minority turnout has
a significant impact on the final projections since Romney won nearly
60% of white votes while Obama won an even larger share of the minority
vote.”

“Another factor may be related to the generation gap. It is interesting
to note that the share of seniors who showed up to vote was down
slightly from 2008 while the number of young voters was up slightly.”

Bowles, Lew Rumored to Replace Geithner

November 12, 2012 at 8:14 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

NPR says that Erskine Bowles, who co-chaired up the president’s debt reduction commission, is a candidate to replace Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in President Obama’s second term.

But “a more likely choice might be Jack Lew, the current White House chief of staff and formerly the president’s budget director.”

Wonk Wire: Who should be the next Treasury Secretary?

Obama Will Hit the Road for Budget Deal

November 12, 2012 at 8:10 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

As President Obama begins budget talks to avoid the fiscal cliff, the New York Times notes he “will not simply hunker down there for weeks of closed-door negotiations as he did in mid-2011, when partisan brinkmanship over raising the nation’s debt limit damaged the economy and his political standing. He will travel beyond the Beltway at times to rally public support for a deficit-cutting accord that mixes tax increases on the wealthy with spending cuts.”

Wonk Wire: What is the fiscal cliff anyway?


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What Obama Wants Now

November 12, 2012 at 7:26 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

John Heilemann “This is a
president unusually focused in the present on what his legacy will be in
the future. With Obama’s reelection, one foundational element of that
legacy has been secured: the Affordable Care Act, which, had he been
defeated, would not only likely have been repealed but retrospectively
reduced to one of the causes of his loss. Now, with a second term ahead
of him, among Obama’s paramount goals, say his advisers, is to add
another glittering trophy to his mantle: at least one more
domestic-policy reform tantamount in importance to near-universal health
care.”

“The shiniest such prize would be the achievement of a grand bargain on
entitlements and tax reform: a bipartisan agreement that would put the
nation’s fiscal house in order for years, and maybe decades, to come.
The extent to which Obama pines for this was illustrated by his ardent
pursuit of such a megadeal in 2011, which ultimately fell apart when
House Speaker John Boehner proved unable to move the tea-party faction
in his caucus to accept new revenues.”

How Obama Won the Class War

November 12, 2012 at 7:10 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Jonathan Chait: “Like every president, Obama won for myriad reasons, important and petty. But his reelection was hardly small and hardly devoid of ideas. Indeed, it was entirely about a single idea. The campaign, from beginning to end, was an extended argument about economic class…”

“If there is a single plank in the Democratic platform on which Obama can claim to have won, it is taxing the rich. Obama ignored vast swaths of his agenda, barely mentioning climate change or education reform, but by God did he hammer home the fact that his winning would bring higher taxes on the rich. He raised it so relentlessly that at times it seemed out of proportion even to me, and I wrote a book on the topic. But polls consistently showed the public was on his side.”

“Obama’s goal was to prove to the GOP that their rigid defense of the richest one percent was political poison and to force them to bend. For now, at least, their same monomaniacal refusal to increase any taxes on the rich is leading Republicans to deny any connection between the tax issue and Obama’s victory.”

The Republican Media Cocoon

November 12, 2012 at 7:02 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Politico: “The tension between the profit- and ratings-driven right — call them entertainment-based conservatives — and conservatives focused on ideas (the thinkers) and winning (the operatives) has never been more evident.”

“The latter group worries that too many on the right are credulous about the former.”

“The egghead-hack coalition believes that the entertainment-based conservatives create an atmosphere which enables flawed down-ballot candidates, creates a cartoonish presidential primary, blocks needed policy reforms and generally leave an odor on the party which turns off swing voters.”

Officials Knew of Petraeus Affair Last Summer

November 12, 2012 at 5:30 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

High-level officials at the FBI and the Justice Department were notified in the late summer that agents had uncovered what appeared to be an extramarital affair involving CIA director David Petraeus, the New York Times reports.

“But law enforcement officials did not notify anyone outside the F.B.I. or the Justice Department until last week because the investigation was incomplete and initial concerns about possible security breaches, which would demand more immediate action, did not appear to be justified.”

Building Up Petraeus

November 11, 2012 at 7:04 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Michael Hastings: “Until this weekend, Petraeus had been incredibly successful in making the public think he was a man of great integrity and honor, among other things. Most of the stories written about him fall under what we hacks in the media like to call ‘a blowjob.’ Vanity Fair. The New Yorker. The New York Times. The Washington Post. Time. Newsweek. In total, all the profiles, stage-managed and controlled by the Pentagon’s multi-million dollar public relations apparatus, built up an unrealistic and superhuman myth around the general that in the end did not do Petraeus or the public any favors. Ironically, despite all the media fellating, our esteemed and sex-obsessed press somehow missed the actual blowjob.”

Bonus Quote of the Day

November 11, 2012 at 7:03 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“If another Republican man says anything about rape other than it is a
horrific, violent crime, I want to personally cut out his tongue. The
college-age daughters of many of my friends voted for Obama because they
were completely turned off by Neanderthal comments like the suggestion
of ‘legitimate rape.'”

— Former Bush adviser Karen Hughes, quoted by Politico.

Kristol Urges Republicans to Break Tax Pledge

November 11, 2012 at 6:59 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol urged the Republican Party to accept new ideas, “including the much-criticized suggestion by Democrats that taxes be allowed to go up on the wealthy,” the Huffington Post reports.

Said Kristol: “It won’t kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires. It really won’t, I don’t think. I don’t really understand why Republicans don’t take Obama’s offer.”

He added: “Really? The Republican Party is going to fall on its sword to defend a bunch of millionaires, half of whom voted Democratic and half of whom live in Hollywood and are hostile?”

Jackson May Face Jail Time

November 11, 2012 at 6:55 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) might step down before the end of the year as part of a plea deal with federal prosecutors investigating possible misuse of campaign funds, CBS 2 reports.

“Under terms of the deal, Jackson would resign for health reasons, plead guilty to misusing campaign funds and possibly do jail time. He’d have to repay any campaign funds that were converted for personal use, and serve at least some jail time.”

The Decline of the Christian Right

November 11, 2012 at 12:28 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

New York Times: “Christian conservatives, for more than two decades a pivotal force in American politics, are grappling with Election Day results that repudiated their influence and suggested that the cultural tide — especially on gay issues — has shifted against them. They are reeling not only from the loss of the presidency, but from what many of them see as a rejection of their agenda. They lost fights against same-sex marriage in all four states where it was on the ballot, and saw anti-abortion-rights Senate candidates defeated and two states vote to legalize marijuana for recreational use.”

“The election results are just one indication of larger trends in American religion that Christian conservatives are still digesting… Americans who have no religious affiliation — pollsters call them the ‘nones’ — are now about one-fifth of the population over all… The younger generation is even less religious: about one-third of Americans ages 18 to 22 say they are either atheists, agnostics or nothing in particular. Americans who are secular are far more likely to vote for liberal candidates and for same-sex marriage. Seventy percent of those who said they had no religion voted for Mr. Obama…”

Quote of the Day

November 11, 2012 at 8:25 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“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.

Online Polls Fared Very Well

November 11, 2012 at 8:09 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

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.”

Why Republicans Didn’t See It Coming

November 11, 2012 at 8:00 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

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.”

Boehner Urges Republicans to Fall in Line

November 11, 2012 at 7:50 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

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.”

Karl Rove and His Super PAC Press On

November 11, 2012 at 7:46 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

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.”

Campaign Innovation from the Incumbents

November 11, 2012 at 6:15 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

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.”

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Muckety Muck: The term “muckety muck” refers to individuals who hold significant power, influence, or high rank within politics.

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About Political Wire

goddard-bw-snapshotTaegan 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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