It was a state dinner at the home of President Shimon Peres of Israel.

The guest of honor was President Barack Obama, who received Israel’s Presidential Medal of Distinction.

The host served a Mediterranean sea plate of seared tuna, ceviche, tomato-based tower in Galilee olive oil, fillet of beef and lamb chop duet on a potato tart, zucchini flower with mushroom medley and beetroot foam and peppedio pepper with cracked wheat.

And did we mention the Fresh Israeli Salad?

Obama’s toast, delivered in Hebrew, translated as: “Until you’re 120 years old.”

Peres will turn 90 in August.

But guess who else came to dinner from the U.S. — a couple of congressmen, including Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, who chairs the Democratic National Committee.

As she returned to the King David Hotel after dinner, Wasserman Schultz said: “It was really good.  Peres is the most inspiring speaker. And when I’m sitting there at dinner I felt like I was sitting with my grandfather.”

Original post is State Dinner in Jerusalem: Mediterranean Diet by Political Capital.

Photograph by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

A same-sex couple during a sit-in protest after same-sex couples were denied marriage licenses from the San Francisco county clerk on Feb. 14, 2013.

So far, President Barack Obama has gone little further than voicing his own personal support for same-sex marriage, although the platform he gave it in his second inaugural address was significant.

Impending arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court over the federal Defense of Marriage Act and the ban against gay marriage incorporated in California’s Proposition 8 offer the Obama administration an opportunity to take real stands. The White House has spoken on DOMA, arguing in a court filing that it “violates the fundamental constitutional guarantee of equal protection.” The question is how much further the administration will go with Prop 8.

The president’s supporters are rallying the base, as a Thursday deadline looms for filing an argument in the Prop 8 case. The California amendment will be argued on March 26, DOMA on March 27, with rulings likely by the end of June.

We have a President who’s fighting for the right of all people to marry, no matter who they love. Get his back: j.mp/15eomYm

— D Wasserman Schultz (@DWStweets) February 25, 2013

 

The betting is that the Obama administration will weigh in on Prop 8.

AP says Obama’s debating whether to weigh in on marriage @ SCOTUS. But @ninatotenberg says they decided weeks ago: n.pr/WzEEcj

— Ari Shapiro (@arishapiro) February 21, 2013

And the administration basically has four options if it does — ranging from small-ball to major league play:

It could argue that the sponsors of Prop 8 lacked “standing” to appeal. This would reinstate the district judge’s ruling favoring gay marriage — and return the case to the lower court level to sort out exactly what it means.

It could contend that California can’t take away same-sex marriage rights once they had been granted. This is basically what the 9th Circuit said, and it would apply only to California.

Or it could argue that California can’t give gay couples all the rights and responsibilities of marriage yet withhold the word “marriage” from them. This would apply to California, plus seven other states.

Lastly, it could argue that the Constitution requires same-sex marriage nationwide.

Greg Stohr contributed to this report.

Original post is Democratic Chair to Supporters: Get Obama’s ‘Back’ on Gay Marriage by Political Capital.

At 8:21am EST today, Joe Biden was sworn in for a second term as vice president in a private ceremony at the Naval Ceremony attended by about 120 people, including family, congressmen and women and former members.

At  8:46 a.m., President Barack Obama’s motorcade rolled from the White House, joined by Biden, for the laying of a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery on a cold and sunny Sunday morning, the prelude to his own private swearing-in back at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue at noon.

Former Senator Chuck Hagel, Obama’s nominee for secretary of Defense, was among the guests at Biden’s swearing-in. So was House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Attorney General Eric Holder, Democratic National Committee chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Obama political adviser David Axelrod, Chicago’s Bill Daley, a former Obama chief of staff, AFL-CIO leader Richard Trumka and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor led Biden in the oath of office, the third female justice to do so: Justice Sandra Day O’Connor swore-in Vice President Dan Quayle in 1989, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg swore-in Vice President Al Gore in 1997.

He used the Biden Family Bible, five inches thick with a Celtic cross on the cover, in the Biden family since 1893. He has used it every time he was sworn in as a senator and when he was sworn in as vice president in 2009.

Original post is Biden’s Swearing-In for a Second Term by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Charles “Charlie” Crist, governor of Florida, waits for President Barack Obama to speak in Washington.

Updated at 3:45 pm EST

Florida’s Republican Gov. Rick Scott, a former chief executive officer at HCA Holdings, could lose his 2014 re-election bid to several hypothetical opponents, including former Gov. Charlie Crist, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Tea Party supporter Allen West, according to poll results today from Public Policy Polling.

The survey showed Crist leading Scott by the largest margin: 53 percent to 39 percent.

Crist hasn’t denied rumors that he’s interested in winning back the seat he gave up in 2010, when he ran for U.S. Senate and became the first Florida governor to decline a chance for a second term. Crist, who ran for Senate as an independent after polling predicted him losing a Republican primary to now-Senator Marco Rubio, signed paperwork at a White House Christmas party last month to register as a Democrat.  He spoke at the Democratic National Convention that nominated President Barack Obama for re-election. (Obama carried Florida last year, as he did in 2008.) Crist had  served as governor, attorney general, education commissioner and a state legislator as a Republican.

The poll also showed Crist leading a primary field of potential Democratic candidates. He drew 52 percent support among Democratic voters. The next closest contender was the party’s 2010 nominee, former state Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, with 18 percent support.

Wasserman-Schultz, a five-term congresswoman from South Florida, wasn’t included in a hypothetical primary. Her spokesman, Jonathan Beeton, has said she has no intention of running for governor.

Sink hasn’t announced her plans for next year.

West, a Republican who lost his re-election to the U.S. House in November, led Scott by 38 to 37 percent among primary voters in the survey. West announced yesterday that he’ll host a co-host a new Web show called Next Generation.

Today, West said he has no plans to challenge Scott.

“That’s one of the most asinine things I’ve ever heard,” West said.

Scott, who has acknowledged that the yellow Labrador he adopted during his 2010 race was returned to the rescue shelter after the campaign, has a 33 percent approval rating, according to the poll. He’s struggled with low approval ratings since taking office.

Still, the poll suggests Scott would win re-election against two potential Democrats: state Senator Nan Rich, who has announced a campaign for the seat, and Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, who hasn’t said he’ll run.

PPP conducted automated telephone interviews with 501 Florida voters, including an over-sample of 401 usual Democratic primary voters and 436 Republican primary voters, from Jan. 11-13. The margin of error for the overall sample is 4.4 percent, 4.9 percent for the Democratic portion and 4.7 for the Republican portion.

Original post is Florida’s Scott Hears Footsteps — Loudest Coming from Charlie Crist by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif., right, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 1, 2013, to a Democratic caucus meeting with Vice President Joe Biden.

Updated at 12:50 pm EST

It could be a long afternoon.

About 150 Democrats will support the Senate-passed fiscal cliff bill, assuming “we’ll have enough Republicans to pass this thing,” Rep. Norm Dicks, a Washington Democrat says. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a South Florida Democrat and chairman of the national party, says the bill will pass with an “overwhelming majority of Democratic

Rep. Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican, calls it “a very good deal,” and says the House should take it.

That’s the word from morning appearances on MSNBC.

This is the early word from the House floor: Where Rep. Mo Brooks of Arkansas says he will vote no if the House leadership takes that bill to the floor today.

The House’s Republicans will confer at 1 pm.

Peter Cook, Nick Johnston and Roger Runningen contributed. 

Original post is House Cliff Vote: 3-1 and Counting — Most Democrats Ready to Go by Political Capital.

Photograph by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Florida, bangs the gavel to begin the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Charlotte.

Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz will get a full four-year term to run the Democratic National Committee, serving at the pleasure of the president she helped re-elect.

President Barack Obama will ask the DNC to keep Wasserman Schultz as the party’s chairwoman when members meet in January, according to a Democratic Party official. Wasserman Schlutz took the party’s helm in 2011.

One of the party’s most prolific fundraisers, Wasserman Schultz will keep her seat in the House, as Democrats seek to reclaim the majority in the lower chamber in the 014 mid-term elections.

It will be a daunting task.

The party that controls the presidency typically suffers in Congress in the sixth year of a president’s tenure. Republicans lost six seats in the Senate and 30 in the House in 2006, six years into George W. Bush’s presidency. Ronald Reagan lost five House seats and eight in the Senate.

Wasserman Schultz has proved a formidable campaigner for her party, helping the president with — among other things — winning her home swing-state of Florida for a second time by a margin of less than 1 percent.

Original post is Wasserman Schultz to Remain DNC Chairwoman by Political Capital.

Photograph by Scott Olson/Getty Images

Mitt Romney and Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock (R-IN), right, greet supporters at a campaign event at Stepto's Bar B Q Shack on Aug. 4, 2012 in Evansville, Indiana.

Updated at 11:50 am EDT

President Barack Obama, in a bid for women’s votes in critical states,  is trying to make Richard Mourdock’s problem Mitt Romney’s problem.

Mourdock, an Indiana Republican, began a Senate candidate debate last night with a goal of tying Democratic opponent Joe Donnelly to Obama in a state likely to vote Republican on Nov. 6.

It ended with Mourdock on the defensive following controversial comments about abortion and rape that may threaten his bid to win a Senate seat that should have been an easy retention for Republicans. A Republican win in Indiana is critical in the party’s national effort to win a majority of Senate seats.

Mourdock said near the end of the debate:

“I believe that life begins at conception. The only exception I have to have an abortion is in that case of the life of the mother. I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God, and I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

Democrats pounced.

“Richard Mourdock’s rape comments are outrageous and demeaning to women,” Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said in a statement.

The Obama campaign joined in this morning, noting that Romney appears in a campaign ad endorsing Mourdock.

“The president felt those comments were outrageous and demeaning to women,” said Jen Psaki, the Obama campaign’s traveling press secretary, as Air Force One headed out this morning for a day of Obama stump speeches. “This is a reminder that a Republican Congress working with a Republican President Mitt Romney would feel that women should not be able to make choices about their own health care and this is an issue where Mitt Romney is starring in an ad for this senator.”

Romney and fellow Republicans “have very extreme positions on issues that women care deeply about in this country,” Psaki told reporters. “If they have the opportunity to be partners int he White House and in the Senate, that’s something that women should have and will have concern about as they’re going to the voting booth.”

“Gov. Romney disagrees with Richard Mourdock’s comments, and they do not reflect his views,” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in an e-mail. (No response about the Mourdock ad in which Romney appears.)

Mourdock called a news conference today to apologize if anyone misinterpreted his words.

“I made a comment… from the deepest roots and belief of my faith…. that life is precious,” Mourdock said.

“I abhor violence… I abhor rape… and I am absolutely confident, as I stand here, that the God that I worship abhors violence.,” he said. “God doesn’t want evil, but occasionally it happens, sadly it happens.”

“Humility,” he said, also is a part of his faith, and if, because of “the lack of clarity” in his words, people misunderstood him, “I truly regret it…. I certainly have been humbled.””

“I spoke from my heart. I spoke from my principal. I spoke with my faith,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that people are trying to use my words against me.”

He added of the attacks: “ That’s what’s wrong with Washington today. Let’s win at any cost.”

Democrats will paint Mourdock’s comments are part of a pattern of Republican extremism on abortion. Republican U.S. Rep. Todd Akin, seeking a Senate seat in Missouri, was shunned by national party organizations and leaders — and Romney as well — after he said in August that “legitimate rape” rarely leads to abortion.

Obama’s re-election campaign has aired ads saying Romney would overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Romney’s campaign, which wants to keep the focus on the sluggish economy, is running an ad in some Virginia markets featuring a woman who says Romney “doesn’t oppose contraception at all” and “thinks abortion should be an option in cases of rape, incest or to save a mother’s life.”

In Indiana meanwhile, Mourdock is working on his own damage control.

“God creates life, and that was my point,” Mourdock said in a statement. “God does not want rape, and by no means was I suggesting that he does. Rape is a horrible thing, and for anyone to twist my words otherwise is absurd and sick.”

This is the Democratic National Committee’s take on Romney’s only Senate endorsement ad appearance:

Julianna Goldman contributed to this report. 

Original post is Obama: Romney’s Mourdock Ad Reminder of Threat to Women by Political Capital.

So did Mitt Romney — the way the cover cartoon of The New Yorker magazine next week portrays the first of the season’s presidential debates in Denver this week.

Barry Blitt, the cartoonist who drew “One on One” for a magazine whose editorial stance aligns much closer with Obama than Romney, explains at The New Yorker Web-site: “This image seemed like a proper response to the first Presidential debate, but I’m not sure I realized how hard it is to caricature furniture.”

As hard-hitting as the cover may be, editor David Remnick goes on to largely defend the professorial stance the president took in a debate for which he has been widely panned, while explaining a certain opportunity missed in the first of three televised debates this month.

Obama was never much of a debater at Harvard Law School, he writes, quoting Laurence H. Tribe, a leading constitutional-law scholar and Obama’s mentor at Harvard, who said after Wednesday’s debate: “Although I would have been happier with a more aggressive debate performance by the president, I’ve had to remind myself that Barack Obama’s instincts and talents have never included going for an opponent’s jugular. That’s just not who he is or ever has been.”

He quotes Christopher Edley Jr., dean of Berkeley Law School at the University of California and a teacher of Obama’s at Harvard: “I usually don’t treat being professorial as a problem. It’s usually great in my book, but he played in that particular comfort zone of his and it was a mismatch for the occasion. I’ve been in too many debate-prep sessions to count with presidential candidates—I worked with Dukakis, Gore, Dean, and Obama, in 2008—and there are some basics that the president just didn’t check off…

“I admire him for caring more about the substance than the tactics even if it makes me grimace when I watch him,” Edley tells Remnick. “Why does he do it? Look, we all do things in the short term that are not consistent with a long-term goal, whether it’s failing to save for retirement or watching TV instead of doing your homework. It’s called being human rather than being the ideal client of your handlers. It makes it harder to achieve his goal, which is to get reëlected. But if you wanted authenticity you got it [on Wednesday] night.”

Since the debate, Obama has focused on addressing the issues which, by his account, Romney got wrong. Since the debate, the president also has gotten the boost of a far more substantive nature: The nation’s unemployment rate slipping to under 8 percent for the first time in three and a half years — 7.8 percent, in the second to last report of the employment picture before Election Day, one month from today, Nov. 6.

Yet the cartoon on the Oct. 15 cover of The New Yorker dramatizes what a lot of even the president’s own supporters said of the debate: He didn’t show up.

On Oct. 16, in a town-hall styled debate with Romney, the president will get a second chance.

The president will “come out strong, and we’ll see a spirited discussion,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, head of the Democratic National Committee, says in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing this weekend. “You can give Mitt Romney points for style, but, really, I think you have to take a lot of points off for how untruthful he was during the entire debate,” Wasserman Schultz says. “I mean, from beginning to end, he lied about his own proposals.”

The fact-checkers were hard on Romney’s performance. The polls were hard on Obama’s.

The New Yorker cover is brutal. Articulate in a way that the actor and director Eastwood was not at the Republican National Convention in Tampa with his one-man improv next to an empty chair on the stage before Romney arrived to accept his party’s presidential nomination. (It’s worth remembering that Eastwood was as big a highlight of the convention as Romney was, according to those unforgiving polls.)

Romney already is in practice for the next debate, sparring with Senator Rob Portman of Ohio this morning in Orlando, Florida, the start of a weekend tour of the biggest of all swing states, the one whose polling places will settle the debates for good.

“There are, of course, more debates to come, and incumbents almost always lose the opening round,” Remnick wrote in another posting. “But there is no guarantee that Obama will improve markedly. He has myriad skills as a thinker, as a speaker, and as a president. But this episodic unwillingness to connect, to show up, while entirely human, puts him in peril.”

Original post is Obama’s Empty Chair: NYer Cartoon by Political Capital.

Photograph by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

DNC chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz introducing Vice President Joe Biden during a campaign event in Boca Raton, Florida.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, is willing to give Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney some style points for his performance against President Barack Obama in their first debate.

But she wants to deduct even more points for the falsehoods which she heard during the entire 90-minute confrontation.

“I think you can give Mitt Romney points for style, but, really, I think you have to take a lot of points off for how untruthful he was during the entire debate,” Wasserman Schultz said in an interview on “ Political Capital with Al Hunt” airing this weekend on Bloomberg Television. “I mean, from beginning to end, he lied about his own proposals.”

Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman, speaking in a separate interview for “Political Capital,” said that Romney won in Denver, though “it’s not good enough to just have one great night, and it was a great night.”

In their next debate on in Hempstead, New York, on Oct. 16, “you’re going to see the same Mitt Romney,” Priebus said. “He’s passionate. He’s got a command of issues.”

Obama, his party chair told Hunt, will “come out strong, and we’ll see a spirited discussion” in the next debate Oct. 16.

Wasserman Schultz singled out Romney’s insistence that he did not propose a $5 trillion tax cut. “I don’t have a $5 trillion tax cut,” Romney said during the debate. “I don’t have a tax cut of a scale that you’re talking about.”

“We’re not going to let Mitt Romney get away with lying about his tax plan,” Wasserman Schultz said. She said fact-checkers “specifically said he has a $5 trillion tax plan skewed towards the wealthy.”

Romney’s tax plan would reduce income tax rates across the board, costing the U.S., Treasury $480 billion a year starting in 2015, according to a March study by the Tax Policy Center. That amounts to $4.8 trillion over 10 years, or close to $5 trillion.

The Republican candidate has said he will cover the cost of lowering the tax rates by closing unspecified tax loopholes, particularly for high-earners. He has refused to identify which tax breaks he would give up.

Original post is Wasserman Schultz: Romney Scored With Style Points, Not Facts by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords stands on stage during the final day of the Democratic National Convention

The crowd inside the Time Warner Cable arena erupted when former Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, severely wounded in a Jan. 8, 2011, shooting, came out at about 8 p.m. to lead the pledge of allegiance at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte.

Giffords, waving to the cheering crowd, was escorted by U.S. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman and Giffords’ friend. She joined her in the singing.

Delegates started chanting, “Gabby, Gabby,” and then “Fired up, ready to go” as Giffords left the stage.

Original post is Gabby Giffords Gets Rock Star Reception for Pledge by Political Capital.