Newark Mayor Cory Booker said his decision on whether to run for New Jersey governor has been pushed back by Hurricane Sandy but vowed not to keep Democrats waiting too much longer, the Newark Star Ledger reports.
Said Booker: “The reality is Sandy has pushed my timeline back.”
The mayor originally said he would make his decision by early December.
The Huffington Post has the outlines of a Democratic proposal to weaken the filibuster in the U.S. Senate.
“The critical component, though, is a mechanism that would force senators to physically take the floor and speak in order to maintain opposition to legislation. The effort to end a filibuster is called a cloture motion. Under the proposed rules, if a cloture vote failed to win a simple majority, the bill would be killed and the Senate would move to new business. But if it won a majority — though less than a supermajority of 60 — the bill would remain on the floor for any senator who wished to opine on it. If at some point no senator rose to speak, after given several chances to do so, a new vote would be called — and only a simple majority would be needed to pass it.”
Meghan McCain: “Times are changing. The face of America is changing and we as Republicans stand at a crossroads. Are we going to accept the changing face of America and change with it? Or are we going to continue to become more isolated and irrelevant? It’s possible to maintain the core values of this party and evolve when it comes to social issues. Quite frankly, I don’t see any other path to success.”
“I’ve spent most of my adult life fighting for change from inside the Republican Party… And if we don’t move forward, adapt, and become relevant again, the Republican Party isn’t going to survive. It will just continue to alienate more moderate voters like myself. If I don’t see some changes in the next four years, I’m going to consider registering as an Independent in 2016.”
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Daily Beast: “Republicans are searching for an explanation as to why voters rejected their vision of America. The answer may be on their television screens, where an ever-expanding, bluer definition of family values makes their nostalgic idea of family values feel like a foreign world.”
President Obama “is kicking off budget dealings with congressional leaders with new leverage from last week’s big win, but he confronts a decidedly tricky path to avoiding a market-rattling ‘fiscal cliff’ that could imperil a still-fragile economy,” USA Today reports.
“Obama’s GOP rivals promise greater flexibility on new tax revenues, but Democrats face pressure from liberal interest groups urging the president to take a hard line and avoid cutting big benefit programs like Medicare and food stamps. It’s up to Obama to navigate the course toward an agreement.”
New York Times: “After years of wrangling, members of the bipartisan group of senators known as the Gang of Eight are ratcheting back expectations for a deficit reduction breakthrough and now say the best they can probably do is offer ideas for the one fiscal negotiation that will truly matter: talks between President Obama and Speaker John A. Boehner that begin in earnest on Friday.”
Wonk Wire: Another U.S. credit downgrade looms.
“Some Republican governors are softening on the party’s hard-line toward tax increases for the wealthy, suggesting that GOP congressmen at least be open to rate hikes in exchange for a comprehensive fiscal agreement on taxes and entitlements,” Politico reports.
Said Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R): “The people have spoken, I think we’re going to have to be [flexible] now. Elections do have consequences. The president campaigned on that.”
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) “does not agree with nine Republican state lawmakers who say they would support arresting federal officials who try to implement President Barack Obama’s health care law in Wisconsin,” the Madison Capital Times reports.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) skipped a classified Senate briefing on the Benghazi consulate attack to hold a press conference about the lack of information on the same attack. When CNN asked him about it, he exploded.
“Two weeks after their presidential election defeat, Republican Party leaders are falling into roughly two camps as they struggle to explain what happened and devise ways to broaden the party’s base,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Some top GOP officials worry their message is wrong for a rapidly diversifying population, and that fundamental shifts in policy may be required. But the more dominant voice, and the one gaining currency within the center of the party, says such drama isn’t necessary.”
“It asserts that Mitt Romney’s loss to President Barack Obama was primarily a tactical failure, a combination of poor articulation of GOP positions and a weak effort to register voters and move them to the polls. Better execution on both, they say, would have swung the few hundred thousand votes in a few states that would have tipped the presidential election the other way.”
“In chess you have fixed rules and unpredictable results. In [Russian politics] it’s the opposite.”
— Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, quoted by the Daily Beast, on why he’s not running for political office.
As Republican governors gathered for their national meeting, the New York Times reports “the party is moving forward without a clear national leader. But Republicans have a deep reservoir of strength in their roster of 30 governors, several of whom are planting seeds for a potential presidential bid.”
“It is far too early for a shortlist of prospective candidates in the 2016 campaign — the election, after all, is 1,454 days away — but the early aspirations were on display here.”
Washington Post: “Some of them are considered to be among the Republicans’ brightest prospects for the 2016 presidential election — a topic that was much discussed outside the formal sessions of the meeting.”
President Obama’s re-election campaign raised $690 million digitally in 2012, up from about $500 million in 2008. The total number of donors increased to 4.4 million individuals, up from 3.95 million four years ago, Time reports.
“But when the final numbers are counted, Obama’s aides now expect more than $1 billion dollars to have been raised by the 2012 campaign and its affiliated party committees, breaking the 10-figure milestone for the first time in history. The reason is simple: the campaign brought in more small-dollar fundraising through email, social media, mobile and its website during the final months of the race than initially projected.”
Maine GOP chair Charlie Webster defended himself to TPM on charges that he was racist suggesting black people committed voter fraud in rural counties in his state.
Said Webster: “There’s nothing about me that would be discriminatory. I know black people. I play basketball every Sunday with a black guy. He’s a great friend of mine. Nobody would ever accuse me of suggesting anything.”
A new Pew Research survey finds a third of the country followed the election returns last week online. And most of them were actually “second screeners,” who used both the TV and the Internet to keep up.
Documents obtained by the Chattanooga Times Free Press finds that Tennessee physician and Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN) supported his ex-wife’s decision to get two abortions before their marriage.
The Tennessee lawmaker has described himself as “a consistent supporter of pro-life values.”
The couple’s 2001 trial transcript “also confirms DesJarlais had sexual relationships with at least two patients, three coworkers and a drug representative… During one affair with a female patient, DesJarlais prescribed her drugs, gave her an $875 watch and bought her a plane ticket to Las Vegas, records show.”
Gawker: “Last month, the watchdog group Better Georgia managed to record nearly a full hour of a four-hour closed door meeting of Republican state senators which was convened by Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers (R) to discuss President Obama’s efforts to brainwash Americans on behalf of the United Nations.”
Part of the session was caught on video before the infiltrators were escorted out.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that several lawmakers claimed their per diem rate for attending the session.
Jonathan Chait: “There is no such thing as a permanent change in American politics. What we’re talking about here is the landscape for a quarter-century or so — anything beyond that is too distant to project. In the long run, interracial marriage and cultural assimilation will make the descendants of today’s Latino voters identify much more closely with the white mainstream, which will make them more amenable to conservatism. But that long run is pretty far off. For the foreseeable future, the decline of the white population is occurring much more rapidly than the weakening identity of the nonwhite population. The Democrats have a party identity that is well suited to this environment; it is the Republicans who will have to adapt.”
“Mitt Romney had what I scientifically call a butt-ugly primary,.”
— Karl Rove, quoted by the Erie Times-News, offering another excuse for Mitt Romney’s loss in the presidential election.
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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