Two incumbent Republican congressman are headed to a Dec. 8 runoff in the LA-3. Rep. Charles Boustany lead 45-30 over Rep. Jeff Landry, a tea party fave, in yesterday’s primary but fell short of the majority needed to avoid a runoff.
Heidi Heitkamp pulls out another of the improbable Senate wins for Democrats as Republican Rick Berg conceded Wednesday afternoon.
Hearing from little bird that President’s pollsters final battleground polling was 1/10th of one percentage point off from the final aggregated battleground results.
So there’s a pollster in Obamaland with a Duracell battery on his shoulder, daring Nate Silver to knock it off … Read More
One line in particular jumped out from Obama victory speech last night. Yes, there were the implicit suggestions that immigration and climate change would be the big agenda items of Obama’s second term. But this one: “I want to thank every American who participated in this election … whether you voted for the very first time or waited in line for a very long time. By the way, we have to fix that.”
Off the cuff? A throwaway line? Maybe. But the way he said it and, not to be precious about it … but, the look on his face, suggested we’ll be returning to this. As we should. The mechanics of the U.S. election system are a mess. The last effort to reform it, following the 2000 Florida debacle, was piecemeal and not fundamental. It’s going to take national leadership to get it done.
More on this in the future.
No rest for the weary. Speaker Boehner and Leader Reid holding dueling press appearances this afternoon on Capitol Hill. Thus begins the next big national political story: the fiscal cliff and all the interwoven fiscal, economic and political issues that go with it. You might think of it as turning to all the unfinished business that four years of GOP stonewalling has left undone — although that might be a tad too optimistic by implication about how much is going to get done now. Stay tuned.
Numerous studies show that unresolved schadenfreude can lead to major medical problems later in life. Read this article to feel it, express it, get it out of your system.
So there’s two vantage points from which to measure how big a shocker Democrats’ performance in Senate races was. If you go back 12-18 months ago, this outcome — a net gain of two seats — was unthinkable. You would have been laughed out of town. Just not a possible outcome.
But even a week ago, a pickup of two seats was still the sort of pie in the sky dreaming that even Democrats would barely let themselves consider for fear of jinxing the whole thing.
Brian Beutler on how Republicans blew it so badly.
If the presidential race had come down to Florida, we’d still be waiting for a result.
Sinclair Broadcasting anchor on company’s anti-Obama programming: “I had no choice.”