This evening’s White House budget meeting among the President, Speaker and Senate Majority Leader was pushed back an hour. It was originally scheduled for 7 p.m. ET. TPM’s Susan Crabtree is at the White House and will report on any developments through the evening. This is the third high level White House negotiation session in the last 24 hours. Here’s our coverage of the budget impasse over the course of today.

The discovery of more than 14,000 uncounted votes in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race swings the lead dramatically to incumbent David Prosser.

A very fluid situation in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election where, for the moment, challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg has retaken the lead. But — and it’s a big but — Waukesha County is holding a press conference at 6:30 p.m. ET at which it will reportedly be announced that an entire city went uncounted on election night. It’s in a heavily Republican area, which should give incumbent Justice David Prosser a substantial number of additional votes, perhaps as many as 7,000.

Incumbent Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice pops back into narrow lead.

Just a quick observation on the budget talks. There’s a difference between being a negotiator and having the authority to negotiate, and I’m starting to wonder if Speaker Boehner has full negotiating authority from the House GOP conference. It’s a big difference, and it can affect how negotiations proceed.

A negotiator with limited negotiating authority can present his side’s case and listen to the other side’s. He can dicker some and argue back and forth. But when push comes to shove, that kind of negotiator is basically a messenger, not a principal — and that makes it difficult to do get a deal done. Read More

Our annual survey is now closed. And I want to thank you, really thank you for taking the time to fill out the survey. It’s a great testimony to our audience and their engagement and involvement with the site and at some level loyalty to it. I hesitate to say ‘loyalty’. Because I know we have to earn it every day. And it’s nothing we ever want to take for granted. But whatever you call it, we want to thank you for it. Because this is a great help for us.

This was a 30+ question questionnaire. And over a 24 hour run we got over 26,000 completed surveys. That’s just off the charts in terms of a response.

We’ll bring you some details and highlights of the survey shortly. Read More

Politicians, at the end of the day, follow their voters. And the new WSJ/NBC poll tells the tale: a majority of Republicans prefer a government shutdown to a budget compromise.

The majority of Democrats and Independents prefer compromise over a shutdown.

That’s the dynamic. I buy that John Boehner doesn’t want a shutdown because if nothing else I think he thinks it will be damaging for his caucus and his party. But Republicans around the country want a shutdown before they want any compromise. And it’s pretty clear that applies to most of his caucus — which shouldn’t surprise us since those are their voters. So one side wants to compromise and the other doesn’t. And the side that’s ready to compromise doesn’t want to be dictated to. So there’s an impasse. I’m not sure there’s a lot of talking that will get you around that. In negotiating terms, it’s a feature, not a bug.

Was just listening to commentary on one of the cable channels about who gets furloughed in a government shutdown, who has to show up for work and doesn’t get paid, etc. And then at the end of the segment the news reader said, “And in case you think this helps the economy …” Then she described a study by some accounting firm explaining how it takes X amount of GDP out of the economy. Read More

Harry Reid tells reporters on Capitol Hill: I’m beginning to doubt that Boehner wants to avoid a government shutdown.

Yesterday we received a package from former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA), partly in response to a letter from TPM reporter Ryan Reilly. It included a letter answering various of Ryan’s questions along with a new testimonial entitled “The Untold Story of Duke Cunningham”, which he also sent to other press organizations. Here’s our report. You’ll want to read it.