A new Christopher Newport University poll shows a very tight race for Virginia governor with Terry McAuliffe (D) barely ahead of Ken Cuccinelli (R), 31% to 30%.

A three-way race is even tighter with McAuliffe and Cuccinelli tied at 27% and possible independent candidate Bill Bolling (I) way back at 9%.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) “will deliver a forceful denunciation of his party’s Washington-centric focus in a speech to the Republican National Committee on Thursday evening, arguing that the GOP is fighting the wrong fight as it seeks to rebuild from losses at the ballot box last November,” the Washington Post reports.

“Jindal’s speech — and his call to ‘recalibrate the compass of conservatism’ — is the latest shred of a growing amount of evidence that the Louisiana governor is positioning himself to not only run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 but do so in direct (or close to it) opposition to his party in the nation’s capital.”

“I wish you the best in your future endeavors…mostly.”

— Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH), at today’s hearings on Benghazi.

A new Quinnipiac poll finds Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D) crushing Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) in a hypothetical Democratic primary, 51% to 30%.

Meanwhile, a Merriman River poll shows Booker leading 48% to 21%.

New York Daily News:. “For 20 years, Clinton has been a fixture in Washington,
capturing the nation’s attention as First Lady, a U.S. senator from New
York and secretary of state… But next week, she will reclaim her
private life. After logging nearly 1 million miles and visiting 110
countries as the nation’s top diplomat, she will step down from the
State Department to relax and recharge… The big question now is
whether her departure from the Obama administration is her farewell to
public service — or if she’ll back in four years on the same stage for
her own inauguration as Madame President.”

Fox News: Will Clinton’s Benghazi testimony put questions to rest?

Nate Silver: “Mr. Obama ran for and won a second term, something only about half of the men to serve as president have done (the tally is 20 or 21 out of 43, depending on how you count Grover Cleveland). We can also note, however, that Mr. Obama’s re-election margin was relatively narrow. Do these simple facts provide any insight at all into how he might be regarded 20, 50 or 100 years from now?”

“Over all, there is a positive relationship between a president’s performance in the Electoral College when seeking a second term, and how the historians have ranked him. (The regression line in the chart below predicts that Mr. Obama will eventually come to be regarded as about the 17th-best president, somewhere on the boundary between good and average.) But it is an extremely rough guide — especially for the presidents who are successful in winning a second term, and who have an opportunity to enhance or undermine their reputations. Voters may judge a president’s first term, but history will judge his second.”

A new Public Policy Polling survey in Maine finds Gov. Paul LePage (R), with a 39% to 55% approval rating, is one of the most unpopular governors in the country.

But he could win re-election in 2014 anyway for the same reason that he won in the first place: He leads in all three-way races tested against a Democrat and an independent. But he loses handily in all two-way traditional match ups.