Got questions? I’ll be doing a TPMPrime Live Chat this morning at 9 am eastern. Get your questions in now. And I’ll see you there at 9.

Much like with Mitt Romney, it seems that Benjamin Netanyahu had no idea of the electoral drubbing headed his way, despite the fact that independent pollsters very much did see it coming. Yes, you guessed it: Netanyahu’s pollsters were apparently skewing his poll data. Read More

So what do you make of the filibuster deal? We’re talking about it in this thread at TPMPrime and I give my thoughts. Join us.

Got questions? I’ll be doing a special morning Live Chat at TPMPrime tomorrow at 9 AM eastern. Note, that 9 am tomorrow morning, not 4 pm when we normally do these. Get your questions in now and join me tomorrow.

A week ago I noted a new Republican push to gerrymander the electoral college to make it almost impossible for Democrats to win the presidency in 2016 and 2020, even if they match or exceed Barack Obama’s vote margin in 2012. Is something like that really possible? Yes, very possible. Read More

Promoter postpones big annual hunting, fishing and outdoors show in Pennsylvania after the outcry over its decision to ban the exhibition of assault weapons at this year’s show.

The big news today is that Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell have agreed to a very modest set of Senate rules reforms (I can’t call them filibuster reforms, because they don’t reform the modern filibuster at all). It should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been following the story for the past few weeks. When the majority’s big stick is threatening to use the nuclear option to impose very modest reforms because the party can’t reach internal consensus on anything meaningful — well, it mean things aren’t going very well.

But the filibuster remains a huge impediment to the majority doing what it wants to do, and thus distorts the public’s sense of who’s at fault for governing failures. It’s been a huge, and historically unprecedented problem for Democrats for four years. So why didn’t they take unilateral action for stronger reforms? Read More

More thoughtful reader reactions to the filibuster rule change and the email we posted earlier from a Senate staffer defending the modest reforms: Read More

“If you want to keep people away in an earthquake, buy some shotgun shells.“

Senate Democrats emerged a short time ago from a caucus meeting on the Hill and, for the most part, rallied around the filibuster reform deal Harry Reid struck with Mitch McConnell.