Obama: ‘16 presidential race not as important right now as midterms

Reuters: President Barack Obama gently chided Democratic donors on Wednesday for paying too much attention to the next presidential race in 2016 and not enough attention to the upcoming midterm elections in 2014.

Reminding Democrats at a fundraiser in Boston that “we got whalloped” in the 2010 midterms, when Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives, Obama warned that “it could happen again if we don’t fight on behalf of the things we care about in this election.”

“No one could be more invested than me in having a Democrat succeed me,” Obama told about 70 supporters at a dinner where tickets cost $5,000 to $20,000. But he stressed to Democrats they need to invest time, money and energy on the November midterms.

“In the midterms, Democrats too often don’t vote. Too often, when there’s not a presidential election, we don’t think it’s sexy, we don’t think it’s interesting, people tune out,” Obama said.

Of course, he’s right. Democrats’ biggest problem is turnout. The way things go right now, if there’s a Winter Olympics that year, Republicans do well; if there’s Summer Olympics, Democrats do well. For some reason, Democratic voters are much more likely to show up for the “big game” on leap year than at any other time.

If Democrats could convince voters that every game is the big game, Republicans would be wrecked in election after election. Republicans turn out much more consistently than Democrats; meaning that off-year elections go to Republicans by default, not by effort. Americans haven’t elected (as opposed to reelected) a Republican President since Bush senior (Bush junior lost the 2000 popular vote) — and even then, Bush the Elder was a quasi-incumbent as Reagan’s Vice President. Without the power of incumbency, Republicans are screwed in Presidential election years, because America as a whole is a blue state — that is, when the voters that make it a blue state bother to show up.

Democrats and liberals would be a lot better off letting 2016 take care of itself — they’re all but guaranteed a win, anyway — and take all that energy and put it into 2014. If Democrats could figure out how to replicate presidential year voting turn out, eventually there would be no Republican Party to speak of. They’d be a permanent minority in both houses of congress, in much the same way that they’re currently all but shut out of the White House.

Christie desperate, flailing, golden brown and crispy

Politico: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, after a low-key initial response to Friday’s explosive allegations about his involvement in a bridge-closing scandal, mounted an aggressive defense late Saturday afternoon, attacking The New York Times and a former political ally in an email to friends and allies obtained by POLITICO.

“Bottom line — David Wildstein will do and say anything to save David Wildstein,” the email from the governor’s office says, referring to the former appointee who reignited the controversy.

A letter from Wildstein’s lawyer, Alan L. Zegas of Chatham, N.J., asserted Friday that “evidence exists … tying Mr. Christie to having knowledge of the lane closures, during the period when the lanes were closed, contrary to what the Governor stated publicly in a two-hour press conference.”

The subject line of the 700-word email from the governor’s office is: “5 Things You Should Know About The Bombshell That’s Not A Bombshell.” It offers a harshly negative portrayal of Wildstein’s character and judgment.

The problem here is that the “5 things you should know” (did Christie get Buzzfeed to write that email, BTW?) is that they’re 5 very stupid and irrelevant things. The groundbreaking revelations are that Wildstein sued the school board when he was a student, that he was “publicly accused by his high school social studies teacher of deceptive behavior,” that he was once a not very popular or particularly good mayor, that he was once a blogger (an “anonymous” blogger, so I guess that’s scary), and that he had a “strange habit” of registering websites under other people’s names — a common enough practice in modern politics. You try to snatch up all the memorable URLs, leaving your opponent with choices like www.2014IsForCandidatesNameToWinBig.com.

He may or may not have done something questionable in high school? Really? That’s not even an actual accusation, it’s the illusion of an accusation.

"One person said we should see the release of this email as a message to funders," writes Josh Marshall. “If so, the message seems to be ‘I’m desperate and losing my mind.’”

But the message everyone else should take away from this is “I got nuthin’.” Christie is responding to very serious charges by a until-very-recently top Team Christie player — and the only thing he can manage are unserious charges about crap from high school. If the governor had anything that would stick — anything at all — he’d throw it. Instead, we get the political equivalent of “he smells and his mom dresses him funny.”

At this point, there’s pretty much no one who will argue that Chris Christie is not completely done for as a 2016 candidate — or possibly even as a governor. At least, no one with the exception of Rudy Giuliani, who for some unfathomable reason seems absolutely committed to hitching his wagon to Chris Christie’s star — even as that star sinks under the horizon.

Christie is finished. If he wasn’t, he’d have some sort of defense, instead of this ridiculous high school grievance smokescreen.

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]