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There Are No "Missing Voters"

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Republican pollster Bill McInturff demolishes an early theory of how Obama won: Voters who didn't show up. In fact, some are still to be counted, and others were affected by Sandy — but swing state turnout was up!


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The World Reacts To The Presidential Election

Obama Cries As He Thanks His Campaign Staff

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An emotional thank you from the Commander-in-Chief to his campaign staff.

Source: youtube.com

Jarrett: Obama "So Absolutely Delighted" With Marriage Equality Votes

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Obama senior adviser spoke to the nation's leading LGBT political group, praising victories for marriage equality and the election of Tammy Baldwin to the Senate.

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 07: Valerie Jarrett speaks during the Oxfam Sisters on the Planet Summit keynote at The Double Tree by Hilton on March 7, 2012 in Washington, DC.

Image by Kris Connor / Getty Images

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Valerie Jarrett, one of President Obama's closest advisors Thursday evening hailed Tuesday's electoral victories for the LGBT community, telling a gathering of activists that Obama was "so absolutely delighted" by marriage equality wins in Maine, Maryland, Washington and Minnesota.

On a conference call with supporters of the Human Rights Campaign — the nation's largest LGBT political group — Jarrett said Obama believes voters in those states "all came down on the right side of history."

The remarks are the first public comments on the president's reaction to Tuesday's votes approving marriage equality in Maine, Maryland and Washington and rejecting a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex couples from marrying in Minnesota.

She also said, "We couldn't be more thrilled that Wisconsin is sending Tammy Baldwin to the Senate," noting that Baldwin, who will be the first out LGBT senator, will be joining several other women in the class of new senators this January.

Other officials speaking to the LGBT group's supporters on Thursday night included New Hampshire Governor-Elect Maggie Hassan; Sean Patrick Maloney, elected to the House of Representatives from New York; and NAACP president Benjamin Jealous, whose organization formally endorsed marriage equality earlier this year.

HRC Calls For Out LGBT Cabinet Member In Second Term

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Hoping for further advances, the influential LGBT group also is calling for Obama to issue new protections for employees of federal contractors.

Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin speaking against a constitutional amendment banning same-sex couples from marrying at a Minnesotans United for All Families campaign rally in Minneapolis on October 29, 2012. The amendment proposal failed on Tuesday.

Image by Genevieve Ross / AP

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Fresh off its best election night ever, the nation’s largest LGBT organization is pushing President Obama to take a series of even bolder steps to advance their cause, including signing an executive order banning federal contractors from discriminating against LGBT employees and appointing an out LGBT cabinet secretary.

Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin told BuzzFeed on Wednesday that while he and his organization are happy with the progress the LGBT community made Tuesday, they will be asking for — and expecting — more from Obama in his second term.

Noting that the “we don’t have the leadership in the House” to pass legislation against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would be nearly all private employers from discriminating against LGBT people, Griffin argued “this president could issue an executive order protecting federal contractors" now.

The proposed executive order, which Obama declined to sign in April, would ban federal contractors from discriminating against employees based on sexual orientation or gender identity. It is modeled after a previous executive order banning contractors from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

The White House said in April said Obama was declining to sign the order “at this time, but, following the election, Griffin argues that Obama needs to sign it “as soon as possible."

Griffin said he doesn't know if it will happen before the end of the year, but added that he is pushing for that, saying, "Since my first conversations there, it’s something I’ve pushed for, I’ve urged, privately and publicly. We will continue to do that."

On the appointment of an out LGBT cabinet member, Griffin was equally forceful.

"We made historic progress with president Obama in terms of our openly LGBT appointments across the board," he said. "We now have the opportunity, and I hope this president and this White House will seize the opportunity to have the first openly LGBT Cabinet secretary, the first openly LGBT G-8 ambassador, and across the board with administrative appointments and judges as well."

Groups like HRC, the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund and others, as well as LGBT activists more broadly, have long been pushing for an out LGBT cabinet member, and the urging is likely to continue in earnest as Obama's makes changes for his second-term cabinet.

Among those out gay people whose names are raised most often by advocates for possible appointments are John Berry, the head of the Office of Personnel Management; Fred Hochberg, the head of the Export-Import Bank; and Mary Kay Henry, the head of the Service Employees International Union.

Michael Steele Takes A Victory Lap

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The much-maligned former RNC chairman says he won races, forgiving him from running up $20 million in debt.

Nation's Top Republican Argues Onus Is On Obama To Lead On Fiscal Cliff, Immigration

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“The principles of our party are sound,” he says.

WASHINGTON, DC — Speaker John Boehner Friday sought to put responsibility for action on the fiscal cliff squarely on President Barack Obama’s shoulders, arguing, “This is an opportunity for the president to lead. This is his moment.”

Speaking to reporters in the Capitol, Boehner reiterated his long-standing opposition to any increases in taxes and his argument that Republicans will only accept new revenues as part of tax reform, but warned Obama must take charge of the situation.

“2013 should be the year we begin to solve our debt … It's finally the year that our government comes to grips with the problems that are facing it,” he said — so long as Obama takes the lead.

The notion that Obama needs to take the lead on the difficult issues facing the nation could become a familiar refrain from Republicans, who are regrouping following Tuesday’s electoral defeat.

For instance, Boehner made an almost identical argument on immigration Friday, arguing for a “step-by-step approach, to secure our borders, allow us to enforce our laws, and fix a broken immigration system. But again, on an issue like this, the president has got to lead.

Meanwhile, Boehner also said his party’s collapse at the polls Tuesday was a matter of messaging — putting him at odds with many in his party who believe the GOP needs to change policy positions on immigration and women’s issues to broaden its appeal.

“There’s a Republican majority here in the House,” he noted, arguing that while it's “clear we’ve got some work to do … the principles of our party are sound.”

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The Obama Campaign Won't Go Away

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The president looks to put his digital arm to use in his second term and beyond.

Image by Chris Ritter/Buzzfeed

WASHINGTON, DC — Don't believe the cheesy good-bye e-mails from aides and the super-triple-final requests for donations: The Obama campaign and its giant e-mail list are here to stay.

The pace may have slowed, but the campaign is still tweeting, still e-mailing, still posting to Tumblr and Facebook. And on a conference call with reporters Thursday, campaign manager Jim Messina hinted at a much larger role.

"We're going to go through a process with our supporters and have a conversation about what they want to do next," he said, on what his deputy, Stephanie Cutter, billed as the "last conference call for the OFA campaign."

The future of this massive online organization, and of the enormous data operation that backs and interacts with it, is perhaps the most important and most-asked organizational question left by the 2012 elections. The conference call offered several clues on what shape the organization will take, but one thing is clear: This digital empire is likely to be important both to President Barack Obama's last term and to whatever follows it.

"It could be his Clinton Global Initiative, targeted at home," suggested one Democrat close to the campaign.

And Obama's lieutenants have suggested that they will keep a tight hold on the most powerful techncial tool in American politics.

"You just can't transfer this, right," David Plouffe told reporters, ruling out handing it over to the Democratic National Committee or a 2016 candidate. "I mean, people are not going to spend hours away from their families and their jobs, contributing financially when it's hard for them to do it, unless they believe in the candidate."

In the nearer term, it appears aides are hoping the organization provides the president with assistance as he prepares to tackle the "fiscal cliff" — the massive spending and tax decisions that need to be made in the coming weeks and months.

They may also reverse what many see as an error in 2008: keeping "Organizing for America," as the successor to that first campaign was known, on the sidelines. After their historic victory, Obama aides recognized that they had amassed a heap of political capital in the form of millions of e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers of marginal or swing voters, as well as an army of loyal volunteers and staffers. At one point in 2009, the group mobilized hundreds of thousands of calls to Congress to pass health care reform, inundating the switchboard.

But the White House quickly sidelined the organization at the request of congressional leaders, who resented the president's early attempts to apply pressure on them inside their own districts. And Obama campaign aides also privately acknowledged that supporters weren't as engaged as they would have liked in the group "because of the Jesus effect": the belief that Obama's election would magically solve all problems.

"It's not that people didn't want to work for him, or for his legislative agenda — it's that they were tired," said one aide.

That was the challenge facing the Obama campaign over the last 18 months, and it occupied a vast portion of its resources. Hundreds of field staff in states by the end of the campaign helped, but the statistic masked the efforts of the dozens who hadn't left since 2008 and had been organizing supporters for the president nonstop since April 2011.

But even so, it all came down to the connection between the president and his supporters.

"We have remarkable staff, and the campaign that Jim put together, you know, is the best in history, but the reason those people got involved was because they believed in Barack Obama," Plouffe said, offering the key for any future iteration of OFA. "It was a relationship between them and our candidate."

The Obama campaign now has a second chance to turn its digital prowess toward governance, and they're unlikely to defer to anyone this time.


Barbour: Republicans Should Stay Conservative

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A “very, very close presidential election.” And down ballot, “some shitty candidates.”

Image by Rogelio V. Solis, File / AP

WASHINGTON, DC — Former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, a Republican Party elder and former chairman, cautioned fellow Republicans today against overreacting to their defeat in the presidential election by moving to the center.

"What Republicans do wrong, the media says, is they're conservatives," Barbour told BuzzFeed, dismissing the notion. "It was a very, very close election. Obama won by two points. Fewer people voted than last time."

"We do have to do some things to fix this," he said, noting that his own presidential trial balloon had included a call for "comprehensive immigration reform consistent with good economic policy."

"The politics will follow," he said in an impromptu interview at Reagan National Airport, wiping mustard off his fingers to greet a reporter.

Barbour's voice is important because in the Republican panic that followed Obama's 2008 election, as figures like Utah Governor Jon Huntsman emerged to call for a move to the center, Barbour was the leading voice of calm. He had lived through other electoral defeats, and he argued that conservative features of American politics would reemerge in the midterms, as they did.

This cycle, Barbour noted, Republicans won more House seats than they ever did when he chaired the party in the 1980s. And the Senate defeat, he said, was a fluke result of bad candidates.

"We had some shitty candidates," Barbour said. "We pissed away two seats."

14 Lessons From 2012

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Obama will get better. Politics keeps getting worse.

Image by Jerome Delay / AP

Being president of the United States is a difficult job. Hard decisions land on your desk. Some of them are choices between terrible and dreadful. This is especially true in matters of national security and foreign policy.

President Obama had no experience in executive governance or matters of national security when he took office in 2009. It showed. Since then, he’s been through a hundred bad/worse choices and found people throughout the government whose advice is invaluable and necessary when such choices have to be made (see Mark Bowden’s book for more on this).

President Obama will be better at the job in these next four years, as presidents George W. Bush and William Clinton and Ronald Reagan were better at the job in their second terms. One hopes he cleans house and actually manages the federal government as well.

He wrote the best piece of campaign journalism of the year. He correctly identified the election’s hinge (wavering white voters generally and working-class whites specifically). The Obama campaign’s concern, obviously, was to keep them from defenestrating the president.

Edsall described how Team Obama would address this problem: They would make Romney unacceptable. Some of the wavering whites might then vote for Obama as the lesser of two evils. But the higher purpose was to have working-class whites say to hell with it and not vote at all.

Combined with the Obama campaign’s much vaunted GOTV operation (which did indeed do a good job of getting its voters out), the “make Mitt unacceptable” strategy was the key to President Obama’s victory.

A significant slice stayed home. The aptly named Sean Trende has a good piece on this today at Real Clear Politics. Turnouts were basically flat among black, Hispanic and Asian (and other non-white) voters. Altogether, they comprised 28% of the electorate.

Seventy-two percent of the electorate was white, which was down from 2008 by 2% (exactly as demographics would predict). But in study after study, the pre-election polling seemed to suggest that the white electorate would be 75% of the total (Gallup had it as high as 78% at one point).

In order to win, Romney needed the electorate to be 75% white and he needed to get at least 60% of that vote (which would give him 45% to begin with; add a fifth of the other vote and he gets 50%). In the event, the electorate was 72% white and Romney got 59% of that, which left him short of a popular vote majority and thus doomed his chances in the Electoral College vote.

Part of the reason for the falloff in white vote, I suppose, can be attributed to the fact that in 36 states (at least), the winner is more or less known well in advance of the election. My vote for Romney in New York was irrelevant because Obama was going to win New York even if I voted 100 times. My daughter’s vote in Austin was likewise irrelevant; Romney was going to win Texas regardless (I don’t know who she voted for). And Superstorm Sandy obviously depressed turnout generally in the Northeast.

But the other part of the reason is that the Obama campaign was successful in convincing wavering and working-class whites that Romney was not, as they say, “on their side.” And the Romney campaign’s failure to combat this argument left some of these wavering white voters with the idea that Romney wasn’t a particularly attractive alternative. So why bother? The Obama campaign’s white vote “suppression” effort was successful.


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Obama Claims Tax Policy Mandate

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“I just want to point out, this was a central point in this election,” he said, discussing raising taxes for the wealthy. “So let's get to work.”

U.S. President Barack Obama (right) delivers a statement on the U.S. "fiscal cliff" in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., Nov. 9, 2012, as Vice President Joe Biden looks on.

Image by Jason Reed / Reuters

WASHINGTON, DC — President Barack Obama claimed a mandate on tax policy Friday, in his first official comments since election night.

Speaking from the East Room, the president once again called for a "balanced" approach to cutting the deficit and solving the nation's fiscal issues in the coming months — laying out a requirement for wealthy Americans to pay more in taxes in any compromise with congressional Republicans.

“I’m open to compromise. I’m open to new ideas. I’m committed to solving our fiscal challenges, but I refuse to accept any approach that isn’t balanced,” he said before a crowd of supporters, whose cheers obscured shouted questions from the White House press corps.

Obama finds himself in much the same place with congressional Republicans today as they were a year ago. Both open to compromise, but stuck on the issue of raising taxes on the wealthy. Obama is now trying to leverage his victory to break the gridlock.

Laying out his plan to keep taxes stable for middle-income Americans while raising them for the rich, Obama noted it was a "central point" in the debate between himself and Mitt Romney. “On Tuesday night, we found out that the majority of Americans agree with my approach,” Obama added.

"I was encouraged to hear Speaker Boehner agree that tax revenue has to be part of this equation," Obama said, though didn't comment on Boehner's opposition to any plan that raises rates on higher-income Americans.

Obama called on Congress to send him a bill to extend middle class tax cuts immediately — because it's something where there is bipartisan agreement.

"I've got the pen, ready to sign the bill, right away. I'm ready to do it," Obama said, pulling a pen from his suit coat.

To kick-start negotiations, Obama has invited Republican and Democratic leaders to the White House next week to start plotting a course to avoiding a potential economic catastrophe.

Obama Ends Tradition Of Post-Reelection Press Conferences

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No questions, please.

(Getty)

President Obama delivered a statement today, his first to the White House press corps since winning reelection, calling for a balanced approach to fix the deficit that included cuts and revenue increases.

The president, however, did not take questions, the first time a reelected president has done so since before Ronald Reagan's reelection in 1984.

Reagan gave a press conference in Los Angeles the Wednesday after the 1984 election in which he said he would push for more arms control and meetings with the Soviet Union.

After winning reelection in 1996, on the Friday after the election, Bill Clinton gave a press conference in which he announced the resignation of Leon Panetta and his appointment of Erskine Bowles as chief of staff. Clinton also discussed campaign finance reform and the federal budget.

In 2004, when President Bush won reelection, Bush gave a press conference on the day after the election, when he said he would continue the War on Terror, reform the tax code, and reform Social Security.

What The 2012 Election Would Have Looked Like Without Universal Suffrage

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These five maps look at how the 2012 election would have played out before everyone could vote.

President Barack Obama has been elected twice by a coalition that reflects the diversity of America. Republicans have struggled to win with ever-higher percentages of the shrinking share of the population that is white men — "a Mad Men party in a Modern Family world," in the words of one strategist.

But at America's founding, only white men could vote, and the franchise has only slowly expanded to include people of color, women, and — during the Vietnam War — people under 21. These maps show how American politics would have looked in that undemocratic past.

Map 1: 1850

Map 1: 1850

Before 1870, only white men could vote. Here's how the election would have looked before the 15th Amendment.

Map 2: 1870

Map 2: 1870

From 1870 to 1920, only men could vote. Under that scenario, the electoral map would have looked something like this.

Map 3: 1920

Map 3: 1920

While women's suffrage passed in 1920, there were still huge impediments to minorities to vote during that period, for instance in the form of poll taxes (only finally outlawed by the 24th Amendment in 1964). So here's a version of the map that shows only white voters, men and women.


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David Petraeus Resigns Over Affair

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Famed general quits administration after infidelity.

Image by Spencer Platt / Getty Images

WASHINGTON, D.C. — CIA Director David Petraeus resigned from his post on Friday over an extramarital affair.

Petraeus was appointed to the post just last year, and was confirmed by the Senate by a 94-0 margin. His resignation marked a shocking fall from grace by the former general, who led the "surge" of U.S. forces in Iraq and was later commander of all U.S. and international troops in Afghanistan.

White House press secretary Jay Carney did not immediately comment on the news, which broke as he was briefing reporters.

"By any measure, through his lifetime of service David Petraeus has made our country safer and stronger," President Barack Obama said in a statement 30 minutes after the first reports of his resignation surfaced.

A broad array of legislators released statements thanking Petraeus for his career of service.

"I wish President Obama had not accepted this resignation, but I understand and respect the decision," said Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA).

Rep. Pete Kind (R-NY) said, “I hold General Petraeus in the highest regard, regret his resignation, and wish him and his family the very best.”

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper confirmed the news in a statement.

Today, CIA Director David Petraeus submitted his letter of resignation to the President. Dave’s decision to step down represents the loss of one of our nation’s most respected public servants. From his long, illustrious Army career to his leadership at the helm of CIA, Dave has redefined what it means to serve and sacrifice for one’s country.

Since he took over as Director in September of last year, he and I have worked together to tackle some of the most challenging issues faced by the Intelligence Community in more than a decade. Under his leadership, the CIA remained instrumental in providing our policy makers decision advantage through the best possible intelligence. I’m particularly thankful for Dave’s unwavering support and personal commitment to my efforts to lead the Intelligence Community and integrate our intelligence enterprise.

Whether he was in uniform leading our nation’s troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, or at CIA headquarters leading the effort to generate intelligence used to keep our nation safe, Dave inspired people who had the privilege of working with him.

I have spent more than five decades serving our country–in uniform and out–and of all the exceptional men and women I have worked with over the years, I can honestly say that Dave Petraeus stands out as one of our nation’s great patriots.

On behalf of the entire Intelligence Community, I thank Dave for his service, his support and his continued friendship.

President Barack Obama followed the news with a statement thanking Gen. Petraeus for his service.

David Petraeus has provided extraordinary service to the United States for decades. By any measure, he was one of the outstanding General officers of his generation, helping our military adapt to new challenges, and leading our men and women in uniform through a remarkable period of service in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he helped our nation put those wars on a path to a responsible end. As Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, he has continued to serve with characteristic intellectual rigor, dedication, and patriotism. By any measure, through his lifetime of service David Petraeus has made our country safer and stronger.

Today, I accepted his resignation as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. I am completely confident that the CIA will continue to thrive and carry out its essential mission, and I have the utmost confidence in Acting Director Michael Morell and the men and women of the CIA who work every day to keep our nation safe. Going forward, my thoughts and prayers are with Dave and Holly Petraeus, who has done so much to help military families through her own work. I wish them the very best at this difficult time.

Yesterday afternoon, I went to the White House and asked the President to be allowed, for personal reasons, to resign from my position as D/CIA. After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair. Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours. This afternoon, the President graciously accepted my resignation.

As I depart Langley, I want you to know that it has been the greatest of privileges to have served with you, the officers of our Nation’s Silent Service, a work force that is truly exceptional in every regard. Indeed, you did extraordinary work on a host of critical missions during my time as director, and I am deeply grateful to you for that.

Teddy Roosevelt once observed that life’s greatest gift is the opportunity to work hard at work worth doing. I will always treasure my opportunity to have done that with you and I will always regret the circumstances that brought that work with you to an end.

Thank you for your extraordinary service to our country, and best wishes for continued success in the important endeavors that lie ahead for our country and our Agency.

With admiration and appreciation,

David H. Petraeus

[via CNN]

Source: security.blogs.cnn.com

Watch NBC's Andrea Mitchell break the news:


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The Original Tea Party Activist Says It's Not Their Fault

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Keli Carender says it's time to copy the Obama campaign.

Keli Carender, the Seattle activist credited with being the first tea partier, knows that something went wrong this year. Marquee Tea Party candidates lost big. Voters, in re-electing President Obama, seemed to reject the Tea Party values of repealing Obamacare and slashing taxes on job creators.

But Carender doesn't believe any of this means that the Tea Party failed, or that it abetted the failure of the Republican Party in elections this year. Instead, she's setting her sights on the future, which will involve teaching tea party activists to act like the Obama campaign.

"The right got completely out-hustled and out-organized by the Obama get-out-the-vote machine," Carender said in a phone interview from her native Seattle. She now works for the Tea Party Patriots group. "You’ve got to hand it to them for their community organizing capabilities. We can learn from them."

This election cycle, the Republican establishment spending machine focused on carpet-bombing states with television ads and robocalls, while the more populist Tea Party apparatus — represented by groups like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity — handled the tasks of canvassing voters and organizing them. But they fell far short of what they could achieve during the Republican wave of 2010.

"I think they weren’t as effective because they were just completely overwhelmed by twhat he left put into their ground game," Carender said. "We need to register more voters who are likely to side with the tea party."

She rejected the notion that more voters sided with Obama's policies than not.

"To me that doesn’t show any sort of giant ideological shift, it’s a superior ground game," she said.

But she admitted that the Tea Party hadn't looked ahead to 2012.

"We were focused on fighting Obamacare," Carender said. "We hadn’t thought ahead to elections."

And for Carender, the fact that candidates like Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin failed had nothing to do with the tea party.

"What got those two guys in the doghouse were their comments on social issues," she said. "Those are not tea party issues. We’re a fiscal movement."

She named other failed Senate candidates like Connie Mack and George Allen as symptomatic of a deeper problem, since they were "establishment picks."

"I think it’s very clever of the establishment to pick out the two failed so-called tea party candidates," she said. "And two of the bright spots were Ted Cruz and Deb Fischer. The quality of the candidate is the most important thing."

"This election made it incredibly clear why at Tea Party Patriots we do not endorse candidates," Carender said. "Candidates fail and candidates make mistakes."


Messina: Obama Won On The Small Stuff

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Romney aide admits: “We thought the game would be one thing, and it ended up being another.”

Image by John Gress / Reuters

Barack Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, said Friday that the president’s reelection was won “on the micro stuff.”

"Politics too much is about analogies and not about whether or not things work," Messina told BuzzFeed. "You have to test every single thing, to challenge every assumption, and to make sure that everything we do is provable."

"That's why I love numbers," Messina said. "Because you know good or bad whether what you're doing is working."

Messina spoke to BuzzFeed Friday after sharing a panel stage with Romney aide Brian Jones at a conference for the International Association of Political Consultants at the Hilton New York. There, Messina and Jones evoked a contrast between one campaign that had the advantage on macro-messaging, and another that invested millions in analytics and metrics.

"We had to win this on the micro stuff," Messina said.

Jones, by contrast, said the Romney campaign had been characterized by a basic mistake about the electorate itself.

"Neil Newhouse, our pollster, had always said, 'Guys, if we can win independents in Ohio, we can win this race.' But we won independents by seven, and we lost," Jones said. "We thought the game would be one thing, and it ended up being another.”

Obama for America made what Messina called an "unparalleled" $100 million investment in technology. The reelect, said Messina, would be different than 2008 — at time when the iPhone was in its first iteration, when Facebook was one-tenth of its current size, and when the Obama campaign sent just one tweet on all of Election Day ("We thought it was a stupid technology that would never go anywhere," said Messina).

For Messina — metrics-obsessed — the campaign that voters once thought of as defined by ideals and hope and change, became all about the data.

"We were going to demand data on everything, we were going to measure everything," he said during the panel. "We were going to put an analytics team inside of us to study us the entire time to make sure we were being smart about things."

Every night, Obama's analytics team would run the campaign 66,000 times on a computer simulation. "And every morning we would come in and spend our money based on those simulations," said Messina.

Their models ultimately predicted Florida results within 0.2%, and 0.4% in Ohio. The only state they got wrong, noted Messina, was Colorado, "where we got one more point than we thought we would."

The Obama campaign was able to do that, he said, because they turned away from mainstream polling from shops like Gallup, which he called "wrong the entire election," in their prediction that fewer minorities and fewer young people would turn out to vote.

"We spent a whole bunch of time figuring out that American polling is broken," said Messina. "We never did a national poll. We only did local and state polls."

Jones, for his part, offered a glimpse at what went wrong with “Orca,” the failed Election Day turnout tracking system, pitched by the GOP as "the Republican Party’s newest, unprecedented and most technologically advanced plan to win the 2012 presidential election"; Jones said the project was essentially a version of what "every campaign" has done in years past.

"There were a couple of glitches throughout the day, but it largely worked as intended," said Jones. "But ultimately it didn't really matter."

The software, meant to offer quantitative voter turnout data over the course of Election Day, proved dysfunctional and ultimately crashed by 4 p.m.

(Messina said the Obama campaign tried the same thing in 2008: "Ours crashed too." They named the project Houdini, but this year called it Gordon. "I said, 'Why is this thing called Gordon?' They said, 'Don't you know Gordon is the name of the person who killed Houdini?'")

Jones argued that despite the Orca crash — and clear wins by President Obama on issues like health care and the middle class — Romney "won on the vision for the future, on being a strong leader, on the deficit," he said.

"Ultimately, though, it just didn't matter," Jones added. "These guys just ran an incredibly proficient and strong and well-organized campaign. We had a little bit of the edge on the macro-messaging, but it just didn't matter."

Correction: OFA ran the campaign on a computer simulation 66,000 times each night, not 666,000.

Leading LGBT Group Works To Keep Momentum After Victories

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Following this week's electoral successes, the Human Rights Campaign looks ahead — to the Supreme Court, in the administration, to the Hill, and to the states. Also in the works, an HRC ranking of cities for LGBT equality measures.

Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin, left, speaks with Kelly Tavenner, who gathered with supporters of Catholics for Marriage Equality outside St. James Cathedral in Seattle on October 28, 2012. The marriage equality law in the state was approved in a referendum vote on Tuesday.

Image by Kevin P. Casey / AP

WASHINGTON — It is less than 16 hours since President Obama finished his victory speech in Chicago, and Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin is working on a few hours sleep, but still going strong — in fact, he’s already preparing for his third conference call of the day to discuss the impact of the election on LGBT Americans and, more importantly, the next steps in the fight.

Sitting in a conference room in HRC’s building on 17th Street, Griffin takes a pause from his breakneck pace, telling BuzzFeed that what confronts his community now is the question, as he put the question himself:

"What can our next victories be, and where can our next achievements be?"

Griffin, along with legislative director Allison Herwitt, vice president for communications Fred Sainz and spokesman Michael Cole-Schwartz talked with BuzzFeed at length about the preparations they were making for the next phase of their fight — made more difficult by the continued House Republican leadership, which opposed initiatives like the Employment Non-Discrimination Act to ban LGBT discrimination in the workplace.

Griffin, nonetheless, was energized talking about the path ahead. After the election of a record number of out LGBT members of Congress, the approval of marriage equality in three states and rejection of a ban on same-sex couples' marriage rights in another, he said, "When we’ve got the momentum like we have it, we can’t slow down, we’ve got to double down.

"We can celebrate for a few hours, then we’ve got to get to work," said Griffin. Although young, the veteran politico has won the begrudging respect of his adversaries, like the National Organization for Marriage's Brian Brown, who told BuzzFeed this past week, "Even though I disagree with much of what HRC does, you have to call a spade a spade: He’s good at what he does. Chad knows politics, and he knows how to win elections."

Griffin, however, acknowledges that a win today can quickly be turned into a loss, particularly when facing off against equally hard-nosed opponents like Brown, and he said he won’t dwell on his victories.

"We’ve got the Supreme Court around the corner," he said, pointing to cases challenging California's Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act. The justices are set to discuss on Nov. 20 which of those cases they will be taking this year. Looking to the states, Griffin said, "We’ve got legislative opportunities — by the way, not just on marriage — on bullying, on workplace protections, on marriage where it might be achievable, on civil unions where it might be the next step in a state or more.

"And, then we’ve got Congress and the administration."

At the top of their list for the executive branch, detailed on Thursday at BuzzFeed, are an out cabinet member and an executive order protecting LGBT employees of federal contractors from discrimination.

But their list is much longer.

Other asks for the administration will include getting the administration to extend benefits to same-sex military spouses — an area where the Pentagon has been slow to act — and to back further efforts to address healthcare inequities for LGBT people.

On the congressional front, Griffin said that passing a "domestic partnership tax fix is at the top of that" agenda, referring to legislation that would address the fact that same-sex couples who receive health insurance benefits for their domestic partners are taxed by the federal government as income — unlike such benefits provided to opposite-sex married couples.

More broadly, Herwitt said that the next steps already are in the planning.

Of the group's engagement on the Hill, she said they're "talking, again, and beginning conversations that I’ve already kind of begun, with [Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick] Leahy’s people and with [Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Tom] Harkin’s people about what bills we can move through committee, just to keep the momentum, keep the conversation, keep the education going — especially on ENDA."

Of the Senate, she said, "We’ve never had a real vibrant conversation around gender identity. We have in the House," but noting that "now, there’s a lot of different members from the ’07 debate." But, in the Senate, she said, "We haven’t had a committee mark-up on ENDA since 2002."

The continued Republican leadership in the House, which has opposed advancing LGBT rights, likely will continue to be a roadblock to passage of legislation like ENDA.

"In the House, it’s going to be continuing educating and getting co-sponsors. And, we will probably have to do defensive work, depending upon what amendments." She added, however, a note of possibility, saying, "They may completely decide that they don’t want to do social issues, although I find it hard to believe they won’t go after abortion, but, maybe they’ve learned something."

Griffin said, however, "Let’s not give up on moving the leadership on this issue. Perhaps they will have seen the results of last night, and perhaps it will open their hearts and minds to workplace protections."

Following a less-than-hopeful look from his legislative director, Griffin said simply — and politically: "I always remain optimistic."

Herwitt and Cole-Schwartz also noted that HRC plans to engage its members about the impact for LGBT Americans of the "fiscal cliff" discussions in the lame-duck session of Congress.

HRC’s plans for the next phase of their fight isn’t just limited to the national level. After all, they make clear, Obama could hind himself stymied in some ways on the federal level. Griffin, though, also pointed toward a third front: the local level.

"If Omaha, Nebraska, can have an inclusive ENDA, so too can the rest of the country," he said. "So, it’s my hope that we can have advancements at the local and state level to give us further momentum here in Washington."

The states, of course, also remain key in the marriage fight, and Griffin already has pointed to Colorado and Minnesota as places where movement on marriage, or at least civil unions, is possible following Tuesday's elections. New Jersey advocates are looking to override Gov. Chris Christie's veto of a marriage equality bill there. Additionally, lawsuits seeking marriage equality are ongoing in Illinois, Nevada and New Jersey.

A fourth option for advancement on workplace protections is through the Equal Opportunity Opportunity Commission, which found earlier this year that the prohibition against sex discrimination in employment in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act includes discrimination on the basis of gender identity — which includes discrimination against transgender people. One of the EEOC's commissioners, Chai Feldblum, has suggested that ruling potentially could be expanded to include sexual orientation protections.

Herwitt was less optimistic than Feldblum, saying, "I think we’re on much firmer ground when it come to gender identity and sex in Title VII. I think it is a little bit more of a legal stretch to include sexual orientation in the definition of ‘sex’ under Title VII."

The EEOC decision applies to all federal agencies and is to serve as persuasive — though not binding — reasoning on courts. That, Herwitt noted, is the drawback of the EEOC decision, in comparison to explicit legislation like ENDA, saying, "I think that it’s fabulous that we have the EEOC decision and it is the force of law, but it will have to be litigated and cases will have to be brought. Calling the EEOC decision "helpful and important, historic," she said, "but I don’t think it’s enough. And that’s why it’s important to have a federal law."

Outside of their government-based plans, which are broad, Griffin did note one other plan that HRC — working through its educational foundation — has in the works.

"We’re going to be launching something called the Municipal Equality Index, where we’re going to start out by rating 130-some cities and towns, big and small — and medium — on their city-wide and municipal policies, as it relates to LGBT equality, protections, inclusiveness and so forth in all 50 states," he said.

Noting that it is modeled after the group's widely praised Corporate Equality Index, which rates companies for their LGBT policies, Griffin was rather direct about the group's aims with the city rankings, due to be launched in December.

"I think’s going to provide some healthy competition amongst many of these cities and these mayors when the scores start coming out," he said with a smile.

Moments later, Griffin and Sainz headed out, ready for Griffin's next call, another step in a day of victory laps — and planning sessions.


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Conservative Republican Rejects Boehner Compromise Offer In Leadership Bid

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Boehner attempts to ready his caucus for dealmaking. But Rep. Tom Price, a leader of the House Republicans' conservatives, wants a seat at the leadership table.

Image by Win McNamee / Getty Images

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Rep. Tom Price, a key conservative in the House and favorite of outside conservative activists, rejected an offer from Speaker John Boehner under which Price would drop his bid for elected leadership in return for a ceremonial spot at the table — so long as he swore fealty to Boehner’s speakership.

According to multiple sources familiar with the situation, Boehner approached the Georgia Republican with the offer hoping to circumvent an ugly fight between Price and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers over chairmanship of the House Republican Conference.

McMorris Rodgers, a key surrogate for Mitt Romney’s failed presidential bid, is favored by leadership. But Price has the backing of conservatives both within the conference and the broader movement, and his bid has threatened to turn the race ugly.

According to these sources, Boehner offered to make Price chairman of the Elected Leadership Council, the group of GOP leaders that runs the party in the House. The chairmanship carries prestige, but is not elected and is largely ceremonial since Boehner is in charge of the party.

But Boehner’s proposal came with a catch — Price would have to swear loyalty to leadership and promise not to break with them over the next two years.

Under normal circumstances, that might not have been not be a bridge too far: House Republicans are generally a conservative group and leadership has typically deferred to their more rightward leanings when they can.

But with the fiscal cliff, a debt ceiling fight and a more fundamental identity crisis going on in the wake of Tuesday’s election — and with Democrats in control of the White House and the Senate — Boehner appears to be preparing to to marshal his troops behind some painful compromises in the coming months.

According to the sources familiar with the situation, Price asked Boehner for time to think about the offer, which Boehner agreed to. The next day, Price rejected the offer.

Shortly thereafter, Reps. Mike Pence and Jeb Hensarling, two of the most influential conservatives in the House, penned a “Dear Colleague” letter to Republicans endorsing Price’s bid for conference chair in an effort to demonstrate his influence.

Boehner has at times struggled to keep his conservative wing in line during his two year speakership. For instance, during 2011’s debt ceiling fight, he stiff opposition from Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, and rank and file members ultimately sought to oust Jordan’s top staffer as a result of the fight.

A spokesman for Price declined to comment, as did a Boehner spokesman.

How White People Made It Big By Getting Government Handouts

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Bill O'Reilly's forebears knew a thing or two about turning to the government when the free market wasn't cutting it.

O'Reilly with one Obama voter who definitely doesn't need help getting "stuff."

Image by Jemal Countess / Getty Images

“The demographics are changing. It's not a traditional America anymore,” a glum Bill O'Reilly said during Fox News' Election Day coverage. “And the voters, many of them, feel that this economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff... People feel that they are entitled to things. And which candidate, between the two, is going to give them things?”

What O'Reilly — and other members of what the Fox host called the "white establishment" who are blaming Obama's re-election on minority-group moochers — aren't mentioning is that white Americans have their own long tradition of using voting power to get an economic leg up. O'Reilly's own Irish-Catholic cohort is now seen as just another group that makes up the “traditional” establishment. But when the Irish were chased to America by famine and British repression during the 19th century, they faced violent attacks from nativist groups, political cartoons caricaturing them as apes, “Help Wanted — No Irish Need Apply” signs, and a butcher knife–wielding, one-eyed Daniel Day Lewis. Desperately poor, uneducated, and barred from even menial jobs, the one tool the Irish had at their disposal was their sheer numbers — according to Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Nathan Glazer's book Beyond the Melting Pot, by 1855, 28% of New Yorkers were Irish-born, with cities like Boston experiencing a similar surge. The Irish turned out in droves to support urban Democratic political machines, and in return collected the Christmas turkeys and government jobs that came with their newfound power.

“When you were elected mayor of a big city,” says historian David Nasaw, author of an epic Joseph Kennedy biography called The Patriarch due out next week, “you had fire department jobs, police jobs, you had teaching jobs, all kinds of jobs at all kinds of levels you could hire [Irish voters] for. The only way the Irish were going to climb their way into the middle class was through what we now call these civil service jobs. No one else was going to look after them.”

And it wasn't always just the ballot box, but also the bullet, that the Irish sometimes used to balance the scales of power. In 1863, New York City underwent three days of bloody draft riots that forced Abraham Lincoln to send troops from Gettysburg to Gotham. Poor Irish-Americans were enraged that they were being drafted and sent to die when wealthier citizens were able to pay their way out of service. The riots were put down and some of the organizers hung, but under the leadership of William “Boss” Tweed, New York's Tammany Hall political machine funneled jobs and money for schools, housing, and health care to the Irish in return for their peace and electoral support.

They weren't the only underclass group to benefit from government. “The Irish,” says Nasaw, “were competed with and replaced by Italians in Boston and East Boston and New York. Jews in Brooklyn. Greeks in other cities.”

There was a pause in the pattern when Congress heavily curtailed immigration in the 1920s. That left the Irish, Italian, and Jewish political machines in charge for longer than their natural life cycle, turning groups once considered dangerous usurpers of traditional Protestant power into traditional, respectable groups in their own right. Ethnic voting patterns shifted again after World War II, when large numbers of Southern blacks and Puerto Ricans migrated to Northern cities and America's only Irish-Catholic president, JFK, liberalized immigration laws.

The modern "handout" system, though, is more roundabout than it used to be. Political patronage in the late 19th century was so brazen that a man who'd campaigned for James Garfield in 1880 shot and killed the new president simply because an expected job never materialized. In the 20th century, good government reformers created hiring guidelines that thinned the number of jobs a politician could hand out to supporters. Politicians adjusted by steering more social services like public housing, health care, and anti-poverty programs to voters rather than giving them jobs outright, and their campaigns became less centered around mobilizing the proletariat and more centered on campaign contributions from companies and wealthy individuals (who, of course, were looking for their own forms of patronage via tax breaks, government contracts, and tariffs).

The old budgetary dictum says that “my program is a hand-up, yours is a hand-out." And just as the old-line WASPs of Boston and New York and Philadelphia claimed the Democrats were buying Irish and Italian and Jewish votes with jobs, an upper-class Irishman like O'Reilly can now say that Democrats are buying votes with all of the “stuff” that Obama voters supposedly expect from the president.

Just because that "stuff" comes in a different form now, though, doesn't mean patronage jobs are gone entirely. “In New York, I went to vote,” says historian Nasaw, "and it seemed like they just never got things figured out at the polling stations. Even Mayor Bloomberg said that it was a disaster. I was speaking to a friend who's in city politics and asked him, 'Where do they get these people working at the polls? Half of them are snarling and nasty, even the nice ones aren't very professional.' And he told me, 'It's the last piece of patronage left for the machine.'"

Anonymous May Have Hacked Petraeus Mistress

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Broadwell's personal email appears on a list of compromised accounts of the commercial intelligence firm Stratfor.

Image by The Charlotte Observer, T. Ortega Gaines / AP

A Yahoo email account belonging to former CIA Director David Petraeus' mistress may have been compromised by the group Anonymous.

The personal email account, which other sources confirmed belongs to the writer and veteran at the heart of this week's Washington scandal, was revealed in the decentralized online group's publication of millions of email accounts of customers of the commercial intelligence company STRATFOR.

The email appears on a listing of accounts obtained by the group after they hacked and stole credit cards from the company. Anonymous also obtained email logins to STRATFOR's website — which potentially could have been used by Paula Broadwell for email or other secure sites — as well as correspondence.

It is not clear what, if any, information belonging to Broadwell may have been obtained by the Internet-based group, whose members style themselves "hacktivists" but whom authorities have pursued on a variety of charges.

Broadwell was reportedly under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for allegedly trying to obtain access to the retired general's classified emails.

Broadwell's account, a derivation of her name, was also tweeted by the author and has been posted alongside a posting advertising that she was looking to interview high ranking women in the military. A Washington, D.C. political operative also confirmed that he had corresponded with Broadwell on that account.

Source: dazzlepod.com

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