During a meeting in the West Wing of the White House this month, President Barack Obama’s aides posed an unusual question to business leaders across the table: How can the administration help House Speaker John Boehner? Obama’s interest in helping Boehner is part of a broader White House effort to enlist executives to support Republicans who are willing to deal with the administration. It’s also aimed at exposing divisions within the opposition party. The White House session sought to coordinate efforts to pass immigration legislation, an achievement that would boost the electoral chances of some of Boehner’s Republicans even as it sparks opposition from Tea Party lawmakers. As corporate America grows frustrated with Tea Party influence over Republican leaders, the president, who in his first term once derided “fat-cat bankers on Wall Street,” is now reaching out to chief executive officers for help on issues from the budget to immigration laws. “The White House and Democratic leadership are certainly appealing to the business community’s disenchantment with the GOP,” said Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City, an association of leaders of companies, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc.and JPMorgan Chase & Co. One result could be the isolation of the Tea Party from businesspeople, donors and the Republican Party itself. Five Meetings After years of a fractured relationship and fitful efforts to mend ties, Obama has had no fewer than five meetings and a conference call with CEOs since the start of October, according to an administration official. He spoke to a […]

Call it a test case for the 2014 congressional elections. Tomorrow’s contest for Virginia’s next governor is drawing attention as a national harbinger, and it’s giving Republicans plenty to worry about. Polls show Democrat Terry McAuliffe, the former national party chairman and fundraiser, ahead of Republican rival, state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. If that’s the outcome of the race, it would make McAuliffe the first candidate of a sitting president’s party in almost four decades to win election in the Old Dominion, a state that voted twice for both former President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama. “As Republicans, we have to ask, is there a business model issue here?” said former Virginia Republican Representative Thomas M. Davis III, director of federal affairs for Deloitte Consulting LP. “We have a Republican who’s opted to go theTea Party route, and it’s absolutely clear it’s a losing strategy — that’s going to be the message of this” election. The contest has taken on national significance in its closing days, with each candidate working to portray his opponent as a poster boy for all that is wrong with his party. McAuliffe, 56, who campaigned with Obama yesterday and appears with Vice President Joe Biden today, is painting Cuccinelli as an ally of the small-government Tea Party movement that orchestrated last month’s 16-day federal government shutdown. “Ken Cuccinelli has spent his career creating gridlock from the political fringe,” McAuliffe said during his appearance with the president in Arlington. “The question in this election is simple: Will the mainstream, bipartisan majority in […]

  The White House’s one-month sprint to fix the Obamacare website… The finger pointing begins… Flashback to 2005: The Medicare Part D rollout was equally rocky… September jobs report: 148,000 jobs added, unemployment rate drops to 7.2%… Arkansas — a fascinating state to watch in 2014… De Blasio is leading NYC mayoral contest by 44 points (!!!)… And RIP, Lee Bandy. By Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Jessica Taylor *** The White House’s one-month sprint: By now, we all know that the initial rollout of the federal Obamacare website has been a disaster. Here’s some of the rough coverage, per NBC’s Sarah Blackwill: “The Health Site’s Chaotic Debut,” says a New York Times editorial; “In Obamacare speech, Obama makes a desperate sales pitch,” writes the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank;  and Jon Stewart dished more stinging jokes about the site. The real question, of course, is how long it will take to fix the problems. And here’s the answer: The Obama White House has about a month — so until Thanksgiving — to find a solution before the system is negatively impacted. Why Thanksgiving? Well, Dec. 15 is the last day people can enroll to have insurance start on Jan. 1, and the administration had always assumed that the young, healthy, uninsured Americans would begin purchasing insurance around Dec. 1. But if the site isn’t ready by then — or if the website is viewed as unworkable — then there are going to real concerns whether enough young people will sign up to make […]

As the government shutdown enters its second week and Congress hurtles toward a deadline to raise the debt ceiling, Republicans are coalescing around a message that they appear to believe will sway public opinion in their favor: President Obama refuses to negotiate. Never mind that earlier this year House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) made a big deal about foregoing any budget negotiations with the president. This week, he accused Obama and the Democrats of “risking default by not having a conversation” about a variety of Republican demands, including defunding or delaying ObamaCare and broader cuts to the budget. The stakes in this fight are high. Not only are 800,000 federal employees out of work, but the U.S. government is expected to hit its borrowing limit in less than 10 days. If the the United States defaults on its debts, economists say the country would likely be plunged into another recession — one that the Treasury Department warned could be even worse than the last one. But Democrats show few signs of compromising, even as Republicans fight among themselves over whether or not to strike a potential deal. Here are four reasons Obama and the Democratic Party are standing firm. 1. They feel they have already compromisedRemember the sequester? The Democrats do. They weren’t too happy about it back in March, when they were forced to swallow $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts because the two parties couldn’t agree on a long-term budget. Still, on September 27, the Democratic-controlled Senate passed a continuing resolution that kept […]

Most Americans don’t care about the debt-ceiling fight or defunding Obamacare—which means this week’s drama won’t affect 2014 or 2016. But Republicans are missing an opportunity, says Stuart Stevens. In a week that will be dominated by the debt ceiling and Republican efforts to defund Obamacare, there will be an irresistible desire to view the outcome as having real political consequences for 2014 and the next presidential race. Let me offer a different view: nothing that happens this week will have much impact come Election Day next year or beyond. Why? Little of this week’s melodrama is likely to affect the quality of life of most Americans. As Sen. Rand Paul observed, Obamacare is overwhelmingly likely to continue. The debt ceiling will be raised. Some politicians will have a good week and some a bad one, but most Americans just don’t care. The real line of scrimmage in American politics is the economy. More than any single factor, the voter’s view of his or her own economic situation determines the vote. In November 2011, when Nate Silver famously predicted that President Obama had a 17 percent chance of winning reelection, the Republican Party had an approval rating of 35 percent, a terrible number that is about what it is today. But the more dominating number was the lowly 43 percent of voters who approved of Obama’s handling of the economy. On Election Day 2012, exit polls showed a significant gain for Obama, with his overall job approval up to 53 percent. Among voters […]