First thoughts: Obama meets advisers
Posted: Friday, November 07, 2008 9:35 AM by Domenico Montanaro
Filed Under:
First Thoughts
From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Carrie Dann
*** Obama meets advisers and the press: President-elect Obama gets down to business today by meeting his transition economic advisory board and then holding his first press conference since his victory Tuesday night. For his economic meeting, Obama is trotting out some big guns, including former Clinton Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin, former Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Warren Buffett (via speakerphone), former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, former Clinton Commerce Secretary William Daley, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich, Google CEO and Chairman Eric Schmidt, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, and L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Are we supposed to read into anything that some potential Obama Treasury secretaries are participating in the meeting (Summers, Buffett, Volcker) and others are not (Tim Geithner of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon)? Appearing on TODAY, Summers sidestepped questions about whether he’s Obama’s top choice for the Treasury job. As for today’s presser, Obama will have lots of questions to answer today regarding the economy with the backdrop of a cratering stock market, awful job numbers (240,000 lost last month), and depressing retail sales figures. Specific answers he gives to his position on a stimulus package and where is he on bailing out the auto industry could have the potential of dominating the headlines.
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VIDEO: Obama will meet with his economic advisers and hold his first press conference as president-elect. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.
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Rahm’s absence from -- and message to -- Capitol Hill: With Rahm Emanuel becoming White House chief of staff, it’s worth pointing out how this takes away a HUGE player in the House Democratic caucus. Not only was Rahm in leadership; he was the unofficial political adviser to many of the newly elected members of the Congress from both the last cycle and this one. Many of them will be missing his counsel. In addition, the Emanuel hire removes the most likely person who was going to be playing the role of "Obama's go-to guy in Congress." Then again, with Rahm on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue, he'll likely be able to identify whom the Administration will need in the House. Perhaps the most underreported aspect about the Rahm pick is how it’s a subtle message to Pelosi and Reid that Obama isn’t going to rolled over in dealing with Congress.
VIDEO: NBC's Mark Murray gives his first read on Obama's selection of Rep. Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff and looks at the blame game going on within the losing McCain campaign. ***
Mr. Axelrod goes to Washington? We’ve also learned that David Axelrod, Obama’s chief political strategist, is likely to work in the White House as an adviser to President-elect Obama. But, perception-wise, is this potentially problematic? Remember that Karl Rove followed Bush to DC, and many thought that move overly politicized the White House, especially after Rove became deputy chief of staff after Bush won re-election in 2004. Can Ax successfully not look political when he's dealing with a key policy issue? That was always the problem Rove had. Still, having Ax in the White House probably means that the organizational and message discipline the campaign was known for will continue. And no doubt that Axelrod will study the errors Rove made.
*** Palin-tology: Once again, it’s Palin -- and not McCain -- who continues to dominate the post-mortem McCain-Palin headlines. Apparently, there's a race going on inside the McCain-Palin campaign to frame exactly what Palin did or didn't do for the ticket. Palin is trying to tamp things down herself. In a word, it's a "mess." NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell reports that Steve Biegun, a top campaign official who served as a foreign policy adviser to both McCain and Palin, defended Palin's knowledge of foreign affairs and basic geography. He said her knowledge was "the base level of international experience was what you'd expect a governor to have." On the specific reports that Palin was confused about whether Africa was a country or continent, Biegun said that while he was not present for the reported exchange, he defended her by saying he could understand "somebody being tested or quizzed could easily stumble country and continent." Overall, Biegun acknowledged the limits of Palin's knowledge about world affairs saying, "Certainly, there were gaps in what she … knew and there were things we had to go through in greater detail. The kind of preparation I did with her was the exact same kind of preparation I would do for the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when I worked for him." By the way, on TODAY this morning, McCain adviser Nicolle Wallace was asked about a few of the latest controversies, including whether the RNC had sent someone to Alaska to retrieve any clothes. Wallace both defended Palin but didn't deny the RNC had possibly sent someone.
*** The “What if…” game: We’ve devoted a lot of attention the three-legged stool of support that Obama received from African Americans, Hispanics, and voters 18 to 29. NBC’s Ana Maria Arumi projects what would have happened if you had removed one of those legs. When Arumi re-ran the numbers to eliminate all voters under 30, the only states that switched into the McCain column were the narrowly won states of Indiana and North Carolina. If there were no Latinos voting, both New Mexico and Indiana would have switched into the McCain column. However, in the make-believe world where African Americans wouldn't have voted, Obama would have still won most of the states that he won -- but McCain would have taken the swing states of Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Those 107 electoral votes would have then been enough to flip the race. The most important thing to take away from this little experiment: Obama's coalition was much broader than the conventional wisdom suggests. (Never mind the cynics among us who may now send all these "young voters did it" press releases into their junk email folder.)
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VIDEO: NBC's Chuck Todd maps out the results of Tuesday's election. ***
What’s left, House edition: Three days after Election Day, Americans now know which leaders their communities have chosen to represent them in Washington DC. That is, unless they live in OH-15, MD-01, CA-04, or VA-05. In Ohio’s 15th CD, Republican Steve Stivers leads Mary Jo Kilroy by just 146 votes. If victorious, Stivers, a pro-choice moderate, will fit the model of the centrist Republicans who escaped defeat in a political environment hostile to the GOP; if Kilroy wins, the sometimes uncharismatic candidate may have Barack Obama’s Ohio coattails to thank. In Maryland’s 1st Congressional District, the race to replace Rep. Wayne Gilcrest is separated by 1900 votes. Gilcrest, an Iraq War opponent, lost the Republican primary. In California’s 4th District, fewer than 400 votes separate Republican Tom McClintock and Democrat Charlie Brown. The winner will replace scandal-ridden John Doolittle, who chose to retire after his ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff promised to throw a wrench in a reelection bid in this heavily GOP district. And in Virginia, according to the State Board of Elections, Democrat Tom Perriello leads conservative Republican Virgil Goode by 648 votes.
[<--UPDATED] (First Read noted last weekend that Republicans must have smelled trouble in this usually solid GOP district. The NRCC sent out a press release slamming Perriello as an out-of-touch New York City elite.)
*** Poized for success? California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner (R) is making a bid to be California governor in 2010 -- and consequently perhaps the most important Republican in the country. Yesterday, he passed around an op-ed he wrote about the GOP’s current woes: “Republicans proudly proclaim our core governing principles to be individual freedom, smaller government, lower taxes and economic policies that promote investment and job creation. Voters who closely examine what happened in Washington D.C. over the past eight years, however, certainly didn’t see this. What they saw was a Republican track record of runaway spending, skyrocketing deficits and shameful ethical lapses. On Tuesday, it is clear Republicans were judged on their actions, not their words. For this we can only blame ourselves.”
Countdown to Electoral Vote Count: 62 days
Countdown to Inauguration Day 2009: 74 days
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