Herb Jackson: “It could be election fatigue, or maybe everyone is waiting for Governor Christie to anoint someone. But no New Jersey Republican has jumped into the race for U.S. Senate next year, despite all the talk in October about how Democrat Cory Booker will be vulnerable because he “only” won by 11 percentage points, instead of the 20 points some polls showed.”
Court Upholds Ban on Political Ads on Public Broadcasting
“An appeals court has upheld a ban on political advertising on public broadcasting — reversing an earlier ruling by members of the same court,” the Washington Post reports.
Republicans Will Not Link Funding to Obamacare Repeal
“If the U.S. government shuts down again in mid-January, it won’t be because House Republicans are demanding the repeal of the president’s health care law, in a repeat of the standoff that occurred earlier this fall,” the Huffington Post reports.
Said a senior House GOP aide: “There are no plans to tie a repeal vote to a government funding bill.”
Obama and Lawmakers to Sign Up for Obamacare
President Obama will sign up for health insurance through an Affordable Care Act exchange, Politico reports.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports some members of Congress “are about to get their own kind of sticker shock when they head to the new insurance exchanges. A few will get a price cut… a provision in the health law requires lawmakers to get their benefits alongside small-business employees for the first time, and that means lawmakers’ premiums will suddenly be tied to their age.”
The Vetting of Christie Begins
Firedoglake obtained documents under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act which detail New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) career as a registered lobbyist.
The Obamacare Fight is Not About Health Care
Jonathan Chait: “So what are we fighting about? How smoothly the law operates, and how many customers it manages to enroll by the end of Obama’s term, are open questions. Likewise up for debate is whether Obama’s approval ratings will recover. But these are not fundamentally questions about the life or death of Obamacare. They’re about how much political pain Democrats in Congress must endure. We’re not fighting over health care policy. We’re fighting about the midterm elections.”
Will Clinton and Obama Stay United?
Politico: “Barack
Obama and Hillary Clinton’s political marriage is about to be put to
the test. For five years their unlikely alliance has gone, by and large,
smoothly. He has benefited from a widely admired secretary of state
whose presence in his administration helped unite the party after their
2008 combat. She has burnished her foreign policy CV and taken a break
from the political grind as she mulls a second run at the White
House. But Obama’s own recent difficulties, combined with the swirl of
attention around Clinton and her intentions in 2016, is threatening to
alter those dynamics — in ways that aren’t helpful to either of them.”
Why Scott Walker is the Real GOP Frontrunner
Nate Cohn: “Scott Walker, the battle-hardened governor of Wisconsin, is the candidate that the factional candidates should fear. Not only does he seem poised to run — he released a book last week — but he possesses the tools and positions necessary to unite the traditional Republican coalition and marginalize its discontents.”
“Walker has the irreproachable conservative credentials necessary to appease the Tea Party, and he speaks the language of the religious right. But he has the tone, temperament, and record of a capable and responsible establishment figure. That, combined with Walker’s record as a reformist union-buster, will appeal to the party’s donor base and appease the influential business wing. Walker’s experience as an effective but conservative blue state governor makes him a credible presidential candidate, not just a vessel for the conservative message. Equally important, his history of having faced down organized labor and beaten back a liberal recall effort is much more consistent with the sentiment of the modern Republican Party than Jeb Bush’s compassionate conservatism. Altogether, Walker has the assets to build the broad establishment support necessary for the fundraising, media attention, and organization to win the nomination. He could be a voter or a donor’s first choice, not just a compromise candidate.”
Democrats Bet on Women in 2014
National Journal: “The
Democratic Party is hoping 2014 will be a Year of the Woman–again. As
party operatives prepare for the 2014 midterm elections, Democratic
women are being cast in starring roles, on the ballot and at the ballot
box, as the party tries to take back politically important governor’s
mansions and keep its fragile majority in the Senate.”
How to Tell if the Obamacare Website is Working
First Read: “The Obama administration’s Nov. 30 deadline to have a better-functioning federal website for the ‘vast majority’ of consumers has come and gone, and here’s what we know: The website is significantly better than what it was back in October (of course, that was a very low bar). Yet two months after its initial rollout, it’s still far from a perfect product, especially the information insurance companies are receiving on the backend. Beyond that, however, what you’re likely to see over the next several days are mostly anecdotes and spin. Democrats will point to examples of Americans having success with the website (and there are more and more of those). And Republicans will point to examples of continued problems (and those still exist).”
“But to gauge if the website is truly better, there are two things to watch for in the next two weeks. One, are the insurance companies and government beginning to air their multi-million TV ad campaigns? … Two, are skittish Democratic politicians — especially those from red states — a little less skittish than they were last month? Or more skittish? That will be another tell.”
Wonk Wire: November Obamacare sign ups approach 100,000.
Republicans Move to Expand the Senate Map
Politico:
“In 2012, Democrats snagged Senate seats from Republicans in states
where the GOP should have prevailed with relative ease. In 2014,
Republicans want to show they can play that game, too. The GOP could
conceivably capture the Senate by winning in seven states currently
represented by Democrats but that Mitt Romney carried. But running the
table in those states is a very tall task, party strategists freely
acknowledge, so they’re working to expand the map of competitive races
to states like Iowa, Michigan, Colorado and several others.”
Countdown to Another Fiscal Fight
National Journal: “Lawmakers
in both parties could face a dangerous political dilemma after they
return to Washington: Either endorse a second round of damaging
sequester cuts or prepare for another government shutdown. The situation
is that stark, and it’s coming on fast.”
A Very Bad Year
First Read: “Now that we’re into the final month of the year, it’s worth recapping
how rough 2013 has been for President Obama. The struggles with the
federal website (more on that below) have dominated the last two months,
and have sent his approval ratings to new lows. But before that, it was
the damaging NSA/Snowden leaks. Before that, it was the
IRS-Benghazi-leak stories (which have definitely lost their punch since
the summer). And before that, it was the failure to get gun-control
through the U.S. Senate.”
Dan Balz:
“This is hardly what Obama could have envisioned as he looked toward
his second term in the weeks after his reelection. He took his 51
percent popular vote… as a mandate to press forward with a progressive
agenda (although some around him warned not to over-interpret the
voters’ message). With much to accomplish, he sounded a note of
impatience in his inaugural address as he sketched out his ambitions.”
How Backing Gun Control Helped in Virginia
Kevin O’Holleran, who managed Mark Herring’s (D) campaign for Virginia attorney general, writes in the Washington Post that gun control was the key to his narrow win.
“Political conventional wisdom has it that in a purple state, such as Virginia, support for gun-safety legislation is best played down. As manager of Mark Herring’s campaign for attorney general, I got a lot of advice. One of the things I heard most frequently was that we should soft-pedal his strong record and advocacy for sensible gun legislation. It would hurt us outside of Northern Virginia and wasn’t a voting issue within the Beltway, I was told. Like much conventional wisdom, this was wrong — and we not only ignored this advice but did the opposite.”
Effort to Repeal Obamacare is Nearly Dead
Brian Beutler notes that upon launch of the Obamacare health care exchanges, “but really after January 1, a vote to repeal the law would transform from an abstraction into an attempt to snatch health insurance away from as many as several million people.”
“That’s a bad vote to take… And if Healthcare.gov holds up today and through the end of the year, it’ll be dead.”
Democrats Say Obama Needs Stronger Team
Former administration officials and Democratic operatives tell The Hill that President Obama “is ill-served by his current White House staff and must reboot his second term team following the disastrous Obamacare rollout.”
“First-term insiders argue the White House’s weakness was defined by a lack of preparedness, messaging blunders and failure to keep the president informed. They say Obama’s team lacks depth after the departures of longtime advisers David Axelrod, David Plouffe, Robert Gibbs and Patrick Gaspard, and suggest new people must be brought on.”
A Better Obamacare for Lawmakers
“Trying to align lawmakers with the people they represent, Congress three years ago decided that when the new healthcare plan took effect, members would give up their platinum health benefits and enroll in the online marketplaces created for millions of other Americans,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“While many members of Congress are indeed signing up for health coverage through the District of Columbia exchange — which was designated as the provider for all members — their experiences have been significantly better than those of average consumers in several respects, including more generous benefits packages, VIP customer service from insurers and the same government-subsidized premiums they’ve always enjoyed.”
Record Year of Congressional Inaction
“The good news for Congress as it heads into the final workdays of the year is that, for the first time in five years, there are no edge-of-the-cliff December crises threatening to bring the country to its knees,” the Washington Post reports.
“The bad news is that whatever gets done in December will still be part of a year with record-low congressional accomplishment. From the confirmation of a new Federal Reserve chairman to the expiration of dairy pricing rules, House and Senate leaders head into the final month of 2013 with a checklist that is short but critical. But even a final burst of activity would do little to change the historic arc of this calendar year under the Capitol dome.”
