Obama Calls Indian Prime Minister
The Obama transition office has announced that Barack Obama called Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last night, offering his condolences for the people killed in the Mumbai terror attacks. The announcement is careful to note that Obama "told the Prime Minister that there is one president at a time, but that he would be monitoring the situation closely."

No Obama Or Biden Public Events Today
Neither Barack Obama nor Joe Biden have any public events scheduled for today.

NYT: James Jones Pick Shows Obama Seeking Moderation, Reaching Out To Military
The New York Times this morning profiles retired Marine General James Jones, who is expected to become Barack Obama's National Security Adviser, revealing a career military man who has worked positively with politicians on both sides of the aisle. "By bringing a military man to the White House," the Times says, "Mr. Obama may be trying to cement an early bond with military leaders who regard him with some uneasiness, particularly over his call for rapid troop reductions in Iraq."

WaPo: Minority Advocates Watching Obama's Appointments
The Washington Post reports that Barack Obama's cabinet picks are being closely watched by activists interested in racial and gender diversity. "There are huge expectations on him because he's the first black president, the first civil rights lawyer, the first president with an Arab middle name," said Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP, who later added, "So far, so good."

LAT: Liberal Groups Feel Welcome In Washington Again
The Los Angeles Times reports that liberal interest groups -- ranging from unions to environmentalists to gay-rights activists -- are looking forward to having some influence in government against after eight years in the wilderness, and with the strongest Democratic majorities in Congress since the 1970s. "It is this different feeling, that the door is not closed -- the door is opening," said Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

WaPo: Obama Cabinet Picks Leaving Dem-Held Seats Vulnerable
The Washington Post points out that Barack Obama's cabinet choices so far could be creating serious vulnerabilities or lost opportunities for the Democrats in the 2010 elections. Said former Edwards adviser Joe Trippi: "Obama has clearly decided that creating a series of political crises for Democrats is worth it if it means having the right people in government to help him deal with the series of crisis facing the nation."

GOP Gov. Sanford: Fix The GOP By Improving Conservative Message -- And Excluding Non-Conservatives
South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford (R) writes in a new op-ed piece in the Politico that the Republican Party needs to examine what it did wrong -- which in his opinion means improving the conservative message and fixing the violations of it that have happened over the past several years. "In this regard," writes Sanford, "the tent cannot be so big as to include political franchisees who don't act on the core tenets of conservatism -- and as a consequence harm the brand and undermine others' work on it."

Samantha Power, the Obama foreign-policy adviser who had to resign from the campaign after she called Hillary Clinton a "monster" who was "stooping to anything" in the primaries, and who also got in a bit of trouble for saying Obama wouldn't necessarily be sticking to his plan for a 16-month withdrawal from Iraq, is making her post-election comeback.

Power is now on board with Obama's transition team, as one of the advisers reviewing the State Department and preparing it for the new administration.

The interesting thing about Power's new role is that her work on the transition will necessarily involve some collaboration with the incoming Secretary of State -- who at this point appears to be none other than Hillary Clinton.

The Thanksgiving season isn't stopping the attack ads from running in the heated Georgia Senate runoff, in which we'll find out this Tuesday whether the Democrats can pick up another Senate seat from the GOP.

The NRSC is running this new ad, their second spot accusing Dem candidate Jim Martin of voting against crackdowns on crimes against children:

The catch here is that Martin's own daughter was abducted when she was eight years old -- fortunately, she was returned safely -- and he has defended his record on children's safety. The campaign says the votes cited in this ad are cases where Martin voted against particular versions of a bill to toughen penalties for crimes against children, then voted for final passage at the end of the legislative process.

"Another day, another smear from Saxby Chambliss and his allies," Martin spokesperson Matt Canter told Election Central via e-mail. "If Saxby Chambliss had spent more time fighting for Georgia families and less time fighting for corporate interests, maybe he wouldn't be forced to resort to these desperate attacks."

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Chris Matthews is denying reports that he's recruiting staffers from the Obama campaign for a possible race for Senator from Pennsylvania in 2010.

"It is absolutely not true," Matthews said in a statement posted on FiveThirtyEight.com. Matthews appears to be denying that he's staffing up -- but not necessarily denying that he's in some way planning a campaign.

A Quinnipiac poll this week shows Matthews trailing GOP Sen. Arlen Specter by a 45%-33% margin. But oddly enough this is not because of any high negatives -- instead, 60% of Pennsylvania voters said they hadn't heard enough about Matthews to form an opinion of him. Outside of people like us who track politics incessantly, he might not actually be that big a name.

But if Matthews were to get in the race, Pennsylvania voters would be hearing an awful lot more about him -- both the positives and the negatives.

Obama transition chief John Podesta says in an interview this morning with Bloomberg Television that the Obama team is on track to have the top echelons of the Obama administration largely in place within the next month:

Podesta, a former chief of staff in the Clinton White House, also said Obama would complete "virtually the whole Cabinet" by Christmas, and the new president's team will reach beyond the Democratic Party.

There will be "multiple Republicans" in the administration," Podesta said. "You'll see them spread throughout the administration."

That's pretty significant: It appears that Obama will have assembled his cabinet faster than any of his recent predecessors, another sign of how responsive the Obama team has been to the perhaps unprecedented pressure the crisis has placed on them to be seen as acting well before taking office.

Also: Whatever grumbling there has been about Obama staffing up with Clintonites, it's pretty clear that choosing former Clinton White House chief of staff Podesta has enabled him to sidestep the mistakes that hobbled the previous Dem administration's transition into power.

Obama Briefed On Mumbai By Condoleezza Rice
President-elect Obama spoke by phone yesterday with Secretary Rice to get an update on the Mumbai situation, an Obama aide says. He also received an intelligence briefing on the attacks and is getting regular updates from the State Department Ops Center and the National Counter Terrorism Center.

No Public Events For Obama Today
Here's his Thanksgiving message:

Congressional Leaders Aiming To Have Big Initiatives Ready When Obama Takes Office
Dem leaders in Congress are vowing to have economic, spending and health care legislation waiting on Obama's desk when he enters the Oval Office for the first time as President. Top Obama economic adviser Jason Furman met with fiscally conservative Blue Dog Dems to persuade them that the Obama team views fiscal responsibility as a core goal, a hint that Obama advisers may recognize the potential for opposition from those Dems to their more ambitious and expensive economic rescue initiatives.

Gates And Obama Have Common Ground On Defense Issues
The New York Times reports that Barack Obama and his Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, have more common ground on defense questions than one might think: Gates has argued internally for the closing of Guantanamo Bay and is more inclined towards troop reductions than some of his colleagues. Indeed, he is already looking with senior commanders at how significant reductions can be achieved next year, the paper says.

GOP Incumbent Leads In Georgia Senate Race
A new Research 2000 poll shows GOP incumbent Senator Saxby Chambliss leading Dem challenger Jim Martin among likely voters, 52%-46%. As Taegan Goddard notes, the key finding of the poll is that "the likely-voter model for the runoff election will be substantially different from the turnout model for the November election" and that many black voters who supported Obama will "stay home for the runoff."

Chris Matthews' Run For Senate In Pennsylvania Inches Forward
This week he met with Democrats in the state to discuss his plan to try and knock off GOP Senator Arlen Specter, who is rated by The Cook Political Report as one of the four most vulnerable Senators up for re-election in 2010. If he runs, who would replace "thrill up my leg" Matthews as MSNBC's resident Obama hagiographer?

Paul Krugman -- a leading voice of worry during the Dem primary that Obama would eschew confrontation for mushy post-partisanship -- has an interesting new post that to some degree clears Obama of the charge that his economic appointments herald an inevitably centrist administration:

A thought I've had: there have been some complaints from movement progressives about the centrism/orthodoxy of Obama's economics appointments. To some extent this was unavoidable, I think: someone like the Treasury secretary has to be an experienced hand who can deal with Wall Street, and I haven't heard anyone proposing particular individuals with clearer progressive credentials to hold that position.

For the leading progressive economic voice to be saying this is obviously good for Obama. But Krugman also has a challenge for the President-elect, pointing out that the new economics advisory board unveiled today offers him "a very good place to give progressive economists a voice."

"Let's see whether progressives do in fact get a seat at this particular table," Krugman says.

Indeed. Obama did say today at his presser that "labor" would be given a seat at this table. Here's the perfect opportunity for Obama to allay the concerns -- founded or not -- that some liberals have been giving voice to.

Although some are worried that Barack Obama is betraying liberals, he sounded some sharply populist tones in an interview set to air on ABC tonight, hitting auto executives as "tone deaf," calling on bank execs to forgo bonuses, and asserting that business leaders have a responsibility to the "community."

Obama also called for a return to an "ethic of responsibility." ABC sent out advance excerpts of the interview, and the exchange is worth quoting in full:

BARBARA WALTERS: How did you feel when you read about the three heads of the auto companies taking private planes to Washington?

BARACK OBAMA: Well, I thought maybe they're a little tone deaf to what's happening in America right now. And this has been a chronic problem, not just for the auto industry, I mean, we're sort of focused on them. But I think it's been a problem for the captains of industry, generally.

When people are pulling down hundred-million-dollar bonuses on Wall Street, and taking enormous risks with other people's money, that indicates a sense that you don't have any perspective on what's happening to ordinary Americans. When the auto makers are getting paid far more than their counterparts at Toyota, or at Honda, and yet, they're losing money a lot faster than Japanese auto makers are, that tells me that they're not seeing what's going on out there, and one of the things I hope my presidency helps to usher in is a, a return to an ethic of responsibility.

That if you're placed in a position of power, then you've got responsibilities to your workers. You've got a responsibility to your community. Your share holders. That if -- there's got to be a point where you say, 'You know what, I have enough, and now I'm in this position of responsibility, let me make sure that I'm doing right by people, and, and acting in a way that is responsible.' And that's true, by the way, for members of Congress, that's true for the president, that's true for Cabinet members, that's true for parents.

I want all of us to start thinking a little bit more, not just about what's good for me, but let's start thinking about what's good for our children, what's good for our country. The more we do that, the better off we're going to be.

WALTERS: Should bank executives -- it's almost Christmas time -- forgo their bonuses?

OBAMA: I think they should. That's an example of taking responsibility. I think that if you are already worth tens of millions of dollars, and you are having to lay off workers, the least you can do is say, "I'm willing to make some sacrifice as well, because I recognize that there are people who are a lot less well off, who are going through some pretty tough times."

Spoken like the true socialist that Obama is. Also note that he's putting the call for responsibility to the "community" in a patriotic context.

In all seriousness, while this is just rhetorical and the devil will be in the policy details, the tone Obama struck here is certainly encouraging. It's another sign of just how sharply the political landscape has shifted amid the crisis, as well as a reminder of how great an opportunity to prove the virtues of liberal ideas this moment really represents.

The Franken camp, faced with a big setback today, is regrouping for the moment but vowing to fight on -- and may even contest the election result in court or the United States Senate itself later on.

The Franken campaign just held a briefing with reporters to respond to the news that the state canvassing board turned down their request to re-examine absentee ballots that may have been wrongly thrown out, and they announced they're not appealing the decision for now.

"We are not going to appeal today's decision. We believe it is important, as I have said over and over again, that this process be permitted to play out in an orderly fashion," said lead Franken recount lawyer Marc Elias.

Elias did, however, add that the canvassing board members did express their concerns about the existence of votes that aren't being counted. "We are encouraged however that the board is going to continue to deliberate and consider this matter further," said Elias.

And Elias did not close the door on challenging the result -- far from it.

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General election flashback! The National Republican Trust PAC -- the conservative group that sank real money into a national ad campaign hitting Obama over Reverend Wright -- has just launched a new ad in the Georgia Senate race attacking Obama as a dangerous "radical" who is on the verge of "total control."

"Barack Obama's just one Senate vote away from total control," the ad says, attacking Obama by claiming he'll pay to give illegal aliens citizenship with "crushing new taxes." (Actually, Dems are two votes away from the magic number of 60 in the Senate, but who's counting?)

The ad -- a sign of the conservatism of Georgia's electorate if there ever was one -- also assails Obama over his "spread the wealth" comment and claims that a vote for Dem Jim Martin is a vote for "Obama's radical agenda." It implores that voters "stop Barack Obama."

Rick Wilson, a consultant for the National Republican trust, says that the group will have spent close to a million airing that and another earlier spot by runoff day next week.

In a setback for Al Franken's chances in the Minnesota recount, the state canvassing board has just rejected the Franken camp's request that the board review the thousands of rejected absentee ballots and potentially re-admit ballots that might have been excluded because of clerical errors -- keeping any such ballots out of the count for now.

The Franken campaign has argued that most rejected ballots were most likely kept out for good reasons, but also said the board had the authority to undo rejections in cases where the Franken camp says they've documented valid ballots being kept out over administrative errors. But the board ended up agreeing with the Coleman campaign's lawyers, who said the board doesn't have that authority.

That said, the board members were not ruling on the merits of the ballots themselves -- only on whether they themselves were the right people to be ruling on it -- and they also said they expect the question to be litigated in court.

The Franken camp is probably not done with this issue yet, but this decision would definitely make things a lot harder for him to win the Senate race if the recount ended up certifying a Coleman victory sans rejected ballots.

A very interesting moment at Obama's presser on the economy today: He made a strong "buck stops here" statement, and offered perhaps his most extensive response yet to concerns in some quarters that his hiring of people with Washington and Clinton administration experience undercuts his administration's promise of change.

His remarks at the presser -- which was held to announce the appointment of Paul Volcker as chair of a new President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board -- came in response to a question about his hiring of Washington insiders.

Obama said that the American people would be "deeply troubled" if he didn't hire people with governing experience at a moment of such crisis, said they were merely tasked with implementing his vision, and placed the responsibility for creating that vision squarely on his own shoulders.

"That's my job," Obama said, adding that it "is to provide a vision where we are going and to make sure that my team is implementing it."

Obama added that his administration would "combine experience with fresh thinking."

In an apparent reference to criticism of Obama for appointing so many Clintonites, he rejected the notion that if you've served in previous Democratic administrations that "you're somehow barred from serving again."

Apologies for repeating this yet again, but it's something of a fool's errand to try to try to conclude too much in advance about the ideological cast of this presidency merely by looking at his appointments. It makes a heck of a lot more sense to let his actual policies do the talking.

A new wrinkle in the Obama-to-Georgia saga: A high-profile adviser to Dem candidate Jim Martin now says that Barack Obama shouldn't come to the state to campaign for Martin in the high-stakes Senate runoff against GOP incumbent Saxby Chambliss.

Here's what the adviser, Donna Brazile, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

"No. I think President-elect Obama is doing what he must do and what he needs to do -- it's to focus on his transition. He has 56 days. He has many challenges.

"While I know and understand and appreciate the desire to see President-elect Obama down in Georgia, I think strategically, he should focus on the transition."

As noted here the other day, Martin advisers say Obama's team privately assures them that he hasn't made a final decision on whether to come to the state or not. This from Brazile, however, suggests that the Martin team may realize it's probably not gonna happen.

So it turns out that during internal deliberations about whether to keep Robert Gates as Defense Secretary, even some of Barack Obama's own advisers expressed the worry that we hit on yesterday: That keeping him risks sending the message that Democrats can't be trusted to run the military.

From today's New York Times report on the Gates pick:

But it also stirred a debate inside Mr. Obama's circles, where some advisers worried that the decision to turn to a Republican appointee -- something President Bill Clinton did in naming William S. Cohen to the defense post in 1997 -- would reinforce the notion that Democrats could not manage the military. "It makes them look like they're too wimpy to be trusted to run the building," said one adviser who asked not to be named.

As noted here yesterday, the meltdown makes it politically easier for Obama to keep Gates despite these drawbacks. It makes it possible to argue that temporary continuity at Defense is necessary to allow the new President to focus his full attention on the economy. It also helps that the choice looks to be temporary.

This Morning: Another Obama Press Conference
Barack Obama is holding a press conference today at 10:45 a.m. ET -- his third presser in three days -- centered around the economy. As we posited yesterday, Obama appears to be trying to quasi-assume the presidency early, in order to provide the image of competent national leadership and calm down the uncertainty of the financial markets during the interregnum.

Report: Obama Taps Volcker For New Economic Board
Barack Obama will reportedly appoint former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to head up a new President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, which will give economic briefings to the president and serve as a means for Obama to get advice outside of the usual federal agencies. Volcker is widely credited with bringing the inflationary spiral of the 70s and early 80s to an end during his tenure as Fed chairman, so this appointment might go a long way in reassuring the markets.

Minnesota Sec. of State To Candidates: Stop The Frivolous Challenges
Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie (D) says he is concerned about the huge number of ballot challenges in the Senate recount -- over 3,600 of them so far -- and has called on both campaigns to crack down on it. "The more challenges there are, the more work that the local officials has to do, our office has to do and the candidate representatives have to do to withdraw or back away from those challenges, so this is a cause for concern," Ritchie told Minnesota Public Radio.

Obama Trying To Keep BlackBerry
Barack Obama said during an interview with Barbara Walters that he is trying to keep his BlackBerry, and is negotiating with his staff on how he can stay connected while also satisfying the need to stay secure and keep detailed records. "Because, one of the worst things I think that could happen to a president is losing touch with what people are going through day to day," said Obama -- a stark contrast with George W. Bush's well-known habit of not reading newspapers or seeking outside information.

NYT: No Portfolio Yet For Biden, But Instead The Role Of Adviser
The New York Times reports that the Obama transition is still working out an exact role for Joe Biden in the administration. "I'm sure that there will be discrete assignments over time," said David Axelrod. "But I think his fundamental role is as a trusted counselor. I think that when Obama selected him, he selected him to be a counselor and an adviser on a broad range of issues."

Lieberman: Obama's Cabinet Picks And Other Decisions "Just About Perfect"
Barack Obama's post-election decisions are getting a thumbs-up from none other than Joe Lieberman. "Everything that President-elect Obama has done since election night has been just about perfect, both in terms of a tone and also in terms of the strength of the names that have either been announced or are being discussed to fill his administration," Lieberman said yesterday during a visit back home to Connecticut.

And speaking of the question of whether Robert Gates will remain as Obama's Sec Def, it looks like he's staying:

Sources tell ABC News that Defense Secretary Robert Gates will be staying on in the top Pentagon job, for at least the first year of the Obama administration. "It is a done deal," a source close to the process tells ABC News.

The Politico also reports the same thing.

The Obama transition team isn't confirming the reports, but isn't denying them, either. A Pentagon spokesperson I just reached declined to comment.

Ironically, in one sense the economic meltdown made this key decision easier. Just as it did during the campaign, the relentless focus on the economic crisis has to some degree reduced the intensity of attention being paid to the critical national security decisions that lie ahead.

And so, whatever the substantive merits or demerits of the Gates pick, the meltdown allows for the argument that it makes sense to preserve temporary continuity at the Pentagon in order to enable the incoming President to devote his full attention to the fixing the economy.

Barack Obama has been eerily silent on the question of whether he'll campaign in the high-stakes Georgia runoff, even as pressure is mounting on him to publicly declare whether he plans to stump for Democratic candidate Jim Martin.

And the oddity of Obama's silence is only being exacerbated by the fact that -- whether he likes it or not -- he's the star of the race in a lot of ads, like this latest one from the Martin campaign:

"In the Senate, I'll help Barack Obama pass a middle-class tax cut. Saxby's against it," Martin says. "I approve this message because we need a Senator who's ready to go to work on the economy, not stand in the way."

The GOP has been telling Georgia voters that they should re-elect GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss in order to check Obama's power on Capitol Hill, while Martin is turning that issue right around to say he should be elected so that he'll support the popular president-elect.

A key difference, though, is that Chambliss has big names like John McCain and now Sarah Palin coming into the state to fire up the base for next week's low-turnout runoff. But Obama, who is the real center of attention and could help Martin boost his own message, hasn't shown up.

A couple of quick additional points on the question du jour: Whether Barack Obama's bipartisan gestures and staff picks suggest a betrayal of progressives.

First, it's worth distinguishing between two different approaches to "bipartisanship." It's one thing for Obama to put Republicans in key posts simply for the sake of making GOP party leaders and hidebound bipartisanship-worshiping D.C. opinion-makers happy. That's a non-starter: No amount of sops will stop the GOP from trying to stymie Obama's initiatives.

But if Obama's "bipartisanship" consists of trying to bring in rank and file Republicans and independents and mobilizing them behind big initiatives, that's another matter entirely. Ed Kilgore calls this bipartisanship "from the ground up," an effort to use the "aggressive, direct stimulation of public opinion to push members of the opposing party, especially those from states or districts where the President is popular, to come across the line."

Obama is already signaling the latter approach. As noted below, at his presser today, Obama claimed the election has delivered him a "mandate" while simultaneously promising to govern for Republicans, too. This, basically, is shaping up as "bipartisanship from the ground up." Obama is preparing to define his initiatives as the reflection of a bipartisan mandate by rallying bipartisan voter support behind them.

In other words, Obama is preparing to redefine the "center" as supportive of withdrawal from Iraq, a major health care overhaul, real energy reform, etc. The Devil will obviously be in the policy details, but that's where he seems to be headed.

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Yet another Obama press conference on the economy?

The Obama transition team just announced that tomorrow morning Barack Obama will be holding his third press conferences in three days. Yesterday's press conference dealt with Obama rolling out key members of his economic team, today's was a general-purpose event that heavily dealt with the economy in practice, and tomorrow's is specifically billed as being an economic announcement.

This looks like a sign that the Obama team has recognized the seriousness of the problem posed to financial markets by the lame-duck period, with the country's resulting lack of true political leadership. Obama seems to be stepping in to provide at the very least the image of competent national leadership by quasi-assuming the presidency itself, as opposed to the ham-fisted efforts of George W. Bush and Henry Paulson.

A key new development in Minnesota: The Franken campaign is now giving an actual figure for what they think their true current deficit against Norm Coleman is -- an estimated statistic that has proven elusive in this drawn-out process.

"The differential between the two candidates is 84 votes," lead Franken recount lawyer Marc Elias just told a press briefing. "That obviously is down from the starting point of 215."

The public numbers from the Star Tribune currently show Coleman ahead by 210 votes, with 77% of the total ballots recounted. But the Franken campaign points to an obvious flaw in those numbers: All challenged ballots, regardless of the merits of the challenges, are taken out of the count for now until the state canvassing board can make a final ruling.

The Franken camp, however, says its observers have taken down what the opinions were of the on-site election judges, and get their number by assuming that the local officials' calls will ultimately be upheld.

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An interesting moment at Barack Obama's presser on the economy today: He declared in more direct terms than I've heard before that his "decisive" win has unquestionably given him a "mandate."

"We had, I think, a decisive win, because of the extraordinary desire for change on the part of the American people," he said in response to a reporter's question. "And so I don't think there is any question that we have a mandate to move the country in a new direction, and not continue the same old practices that have gotten us into the fix that we're in."

But Obama also tempered his claim to a mandate by acknowledging that he needs Republican help to succeed.

"I won 53 percent of the vote," he said. "That means 46 or 47 percent of the country voted for John McCain."

He added that he was entering the White House"with a sense of humility and a recognition that wisdom is not the monopoly of any one party. In order for us to be effective given the scope and the scale of the challenges we face, Republicans and Democrats are going to have to work together."

This is probably too obvious to point out, but the game here is that Obama is working to frame GOP obstructionism in advance. By simultaneously claiming a mandate while approaching Republicans with "humility" and a request for their help, Obama is boxing out Republican opponents in advance, laying the groundwork to cast them as partisan and hostile to the people's will.

That's why it's still lost on yours truly why people are seeing Obama as "centrist" based on his bipartisan gestures and tone or his "pragmatic" staff pickes. This stuff is just about positioning in advance, and the real tell will lie in his actual policies.

Here's yet another encouraging piece of news on the health care front.

I'm told that dozens of the heaviest hitters from the health care reform world met for a private retreat in Virginia last week and spent two days girding for a major battle with the insurance industry, hashing out specific messaging, discussing organizing goals and planning a major fundraising drive to blanket the airwaves with ads next year.

At the retreat -- which was organized by Health Care For America Now, the major umbrella group of unions, reform advocates and providers -- the group agreed that they were aiming to start next year with at least $25 million for ads and field organizing, with the hope of raising many millions more.

Notably, the group, which is operating from the assumption that Barack Obama will act fast on reform, honed a message built around what they called "deficit investment." That's a more public relations-friendly term than "deficit spending," and the slogan is meant to encapsulate the case that health care reform is central to rescuing the economy, a primary talking point of health care reformers.

One other interesting tidbit: Attendees talked about the need to counter some of the conciliatory, disarming talk coming from the insurance industry right now, such as its recent declaration that they would support making insurance available to all applicants, in exchange for a mandate.

"We know the insurance industry is toxic," Jacki Schechner, a spokesperson for the group, told me. "We know they're all about their bottom line. We're seeing them for what we are, and we're getting ready to take them on."

The meeting is significant because it shows that the various interest groups vying for reform are far more clear-eyed about the magnitude of the war ahead -- and are organizing and strategizing far earlier -- than such players did in the run-up to the battle over Hillarycare in the early 1990s.

The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne asks Obama advisers whether his appointments herald a shift to the center and is told that the answer is No:

Obama's selection of a team of highly skilled pragmatists has already been described as a move to the political center, but Obama advisers and longtime acquaintances say that this is a misreading of the incoming president and his approach. They describe it as combining a practicality about means with an overriding concern about the corrosive effects of growing economic inequalities...

Washington often divides the Democratic policy world between progressives and pragmatists. With Obama, as yesterday's news conference showed, it will have to become accustomed to a president who is both.

This goes to the heart of the debate that's taking shape among liberal writers over Obama's first moves. Do Obama's appointments constitute a betrayal of liberals, as Chris Bowers argues? Or is Obama merely assembling a team of experienced hands in order to implement his own progressive vision, as Matthew Yglesias contends?

I have no problem believing what Obama's advisers are telling Dionne. Either way, I don't see why we shouldn't just wait to see what actual policies Obama implements before making any judgments one way or the other.

Sarah Palin is going back on the trail!

Palin will be criss-crossing Georgia this Monday on behalf of GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss, in the final day of campaigning for the very unpredictable Senate runoff, the Chambliss campaign just announced.

Palin will be holding four rallies across the state, in a race that will make the difference in the Dems' efforts to get 60 seats this year, along with the Minnesota recount. This runoff election is all about jazzing up the base -- and whatever her faults, few if any Republicans did as good a job of that this year as Palin.

Chambliss has had some big names coming in for him, like John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney. Democratic challenger Jim Martin, who is lagging by a few points in the polls, has had Bill Clinton and Al Gore come in for him, among others, but one huge Democratic name has eluded him: Barack Obama.

Obama Holding Press Conference Today
Barack Obama is holding a press conference today at 12 p.m. ET in Chicago, his third press conference as president-elect. He'll probably face some big questions about the economic crisis, about his cabinet picks -- especially Hillary Clinton at State -- and who knows, maybe the dog issue will come up again.

Report: Obama Will Also Officially Name Budget Director
Barack Obama reportedly will name Peter Orszag as director of the Office of Management and Budget at today's press conference. Orszag currently serves as director of the Congressional Budget Office, and his appointment to the OMB has been expected since last week.

Menendez Named As New DSCC Chairman
In a widely-expected announcement, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) was officially named this morning as the new chairman of the DSCC. Menendez served as DSCC vice chairman over the past two years, and was groomed to follow the very successful Chuck Schumer in the wake of Schumer's amicable resignation yesterday.

NYT: Big Turnover From GOP To Dems On K Street
The New York Times reports that prominent Republican lobbyists are quickly stepping down as heads of their firms, as the K Street labor market deals with the new demand (and low supply) of a different creature: Democrats who can more effectively lobby the new Dem-dominated Capitol Hill. "Republicans are going to be to some extent almost irrelevant in the next two years," said former Louisiana GOP Congressman W. Henson Moore, who himself just recently retired as head of a trade group.

McCain Holding Press Conference, Too
John McCain will be holding his own press conference today, at 1 p.m. ET in Phoenix. It's not quite clear exactly what McCain will be discussing.

WaPo: James Lee Witt Could Return To FEMA
The Washington Post reports that James Lee Witt, who had a successful tenure as head of FEMA under Bill Clinton, could be called upon to come back and head up the agency for six months to a year. If Witt were to return, his central mission would be the same as it was under Bill Clinton: Fixing an agency that was universally regarded as broken.

Study: Obama's Small-Donor Base Not As Small As We Thought
A new study from the non-partisan Campaign Finance Institute finds that Barack Obama's percentage of money from donors giving $200 or less was actually the same as George W. Bush's in 2004. The key differences are that he brought in even more money than Bush did, and thus more money from small donors, and that many people who initially gave very small amounts kept coming back to give more over time, thus putting them over $200 in total.

Just in case you thought the Minnesota recount couldn't get any messier...

The Franken campaign is now calling attention to yet another wrinkle in the Minnesota recount: Reports from around the state that ballots have been going missing. In many cases the missing ballots have been recovered, but the idea that something like this could happen -- and that maybe some ballots won't be found -- is obviously alarming in a recount where every single vote counts.

"Missing ballots are not automatically an indicator of foul play -- but they should be a serious matter and cause for concern," lead Franken recount lawyer Marc Elias said in the press briefing we reported on earlier.

The Franken campaign has sent a letter to the Secretary of State's office, asking them to order the local election officials to supply both the Franken and Coleman campaigns with all the relevant information over how many people voted, plus the original Election Night tallies from the precincts and other data.

So just in case this recount ends with one candidate ahead by only a dozen or so votes, the other candidate -- regardless of who it is -- might have a new legal basis to challenge the result in court. Fun stuff.

Is Al Franken actually gaining on Norm Coleman from the recount? That's what the Franken campaign just argued in a reporters' briefing -- and they accuse the Coleman campaign of gaming the system to cover it up.

The public numbers from the Star Tribune show Coleman's lead expanding, but the Franken camp says those numbers don't do justice to the real story. They say the Coleman camp is launching frivolous challenges of recounted ballots that ought go to Franken, taking them out of the count for now until the state canvassing board gets a look at them.

"It allows the Coleman campaign to keep an artificially-high margin in the recount, simply by issuing more challenges," said lead Franken recount lawyer Marc Elias.

The Franken campaign thinks it has an idea of what the numbers will eventually look like based on the opinions of the election workers at the individual sites where the challenges are made -- as opposed to the current status quo of a challenged ballot being taken out of the total entirely, pending review by the canvass board.

"The margin remains in double digits," Elias said. "In fact, the margin has narrowed since we were last together on Friday."

At any rate, this race won't be settled until mid-December at the earliest, assuming there isn't any further litigation after the canvassing board is done. So it's only going to get worse before it gets better.

An interesting number from the new ABC poll:

How much do you think Obama will be able to do to improve the economy -- a great deal, a good amount, only some or not much at all?

Great deal/good amount: 44%

Some/not much: 49%

That 44% who hold out high hopes is down from 50% nearly a month ago, suggesting that the campaign rhetoric highs that people had been enjoying have worn off.

The numbers also suggest that Obama has partially succeeded in the absolutely crucial task of depressing immediate expectations for his economic performance, which could help him govern by buying him time to deliver results.

Separately, the poll finds that 67% approve of the way he's handling the transition. And 66% approve of Hillary as Secretary of State, including a surprisingly high 65% of independents -- another sign of the surprising degree to which her Dem primary campaign erased some of Hillary's image as a polarizing figure.

Late Update: As a commenter argues below, another obvious factor here is that the economy has tanked even more in the last month, deepening public pessimism. Either way, it's better for Obama, of course, if the public doesn't expect too much too fast.

The Obama transition team isn't disputing a new report claiming that Obama won't be visiting Georgia to campaign on behalf of Dem challenger Jim Martin in the high-stakes Georgia Senate runoff.

The assertion that Obama won't be hitting the state, which will disappoint the Martin campaign and other Dems, was buried in this piece in The New York Times about the "bipartisan" tone of Obama's emerging administration:

Mr. Obama has shied away from inserting himself in the still-to-be resolved Senate contests in Georgia and Minnesota. While he recorded a radio advertisement for the Democratic candidate in Georgia, advisers said he would not visit there, to avoid appearing to be too political as he works to deliver on his campaign pledge to bridge the partisan divide in Washington.

We asked an Obama transition spokesperson this morning to confirm or deny the report, and thus far have gotten no comment. In other words, for now the transition team is not knocking it down.

There are a couple ways of reading this. If it's true, it suggests that the Obama team doesn't think Martin can win the race. If they thought he could win, it's hard to imagine that they would forgo a chance to help move the Dem Senate majority that much closer to 60 in exchange for the passing appearance of being apolitical.

It's also possible that anonymous Obama advisers are leaking word of his intention not to go merely to get the stories they want right now -- i.e., apolitical Obama putting the need for bipartisan unity before politics, just as during the Lieberman saga -- in the full knowledge that he may change his mind should the race tighten. We'll let you know if we nail this down further.

Late Update: A Martin adviser tells me that the Obama team has assured the Martin campaign that no final decisions have yet been made on whether he'll campaign in the state. So we'll see.

Here's one Republican Congressman who just won't give up, no matter how long the odds.

A source close to Rep. Virgil Goode -- the colorful Virginia Republican best known for fiercely denouncing the 2006 election of Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) as the first Muslim member of Congress -- tells Election Central that Goode will call for a recount at a press conference set to begin shortly, after the state elections board today certified a 745-vote margin of victory for Dem opponent Tom Perriello.

The final numbers: Perriello 158,712 votes, Goode 157,967.

Goode is fully entitled to a state-paid recount under Virginia law, but the chance of success seems very slim to say the least, given the number of votes cast in this race and the size of Perriello's lead. Relatively speaking, this would be as if Al Franken had gone into the Minnesota recount trailing Norm Coleman by over 7,000 votes, instead of Coleman's shaky 215-vote lead.

Late Update: The Goode campaign has made it official, announcing in a press release that he is seeking a recount.

Things are looking a bit grim for Democrats in the big Georgia Senate runoff, with another poll showing GOP Senator Saxby Chambliss hanging on to a decent-sized lead over Dem challenger Jim Martin.

The new numbers from Public Policy Polling (D): Chambliss 52%, Martin 46%, with a ±3.3% margin of error. That said, the nature of a runoff is that it can be be an unpredictable race, and really all about GOTV for both sides.

And on the subject of GOTV, the Republicans seem to have bungled the instructions in their absentee-ballot campaign, with around half the ballot applications being rejected in some pretty populous counties over failure to fill them out completely. Oops.

Late Update: The DSCC has followed up on this poll by releasing their own internal survey that shows Chambliss ahead by only two points, with 48% to Martin's 46%.

A couple of quick notes about the big press conference on the economy that Barack Obama just wrapped up unveiling his economic team and preparing the electorate for the long struggle ahead.

One tidbit of news: In the question-and-answer session, he confirmed that he may not repeal Bush's tax cuts through legislation and may let them expire in two years instead.

"Whether that's done through repeal or whether that's done because [the tax cuts] are not renewed is something that my economic team will be providing a recommendation" on, Obama said in response to a reporter's question.

While Obama did promise during the campaign to "roll back" the tax cuts, it's also important to remember that he said back in September that a recession could delay the rollback. At the presser today, Obama reiterated that his larger principle remained the same: That "those who benefitted disproportionally" will "pay a little more."

As expected, Obama confirmed the appointments of Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary, Lawrence Summers as the Director of our National Economic Council, Christina Romer as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors; and Melody Barnes as Director of the Domestic Policy Council.

The appointments have prompted some to observe that his economic team is heavy with proponents of what came to be called "Rubinomics" -- an embrace of balanced budgets, deregulation, and free trade as routes to prosperity.

That said, those who might worry that these choices portend a shift in Obama's emphasis should note that thanks to the meltdown and the talk of bailing out major corporations with taxpayer funds, the need for aggressive regulation of Wall Street right now seems far more obvious than it may have in the early 1990s. So it seems unlikely that the choices signal any kind of ideological shift on Obama's part. Rather, they're about sending a reassuring message to international markets.

Indeed, the presser was yet another reminder of just how enormous the expectations for Obama are right now and how urgently he needs to depress them by adequately preparing the electorate for the long and difficult road ahead.

"This won't be easy," Obama said. "There are no shortcuts or quick fixes to this crisis, which has been many years in the making -- and the economy is likely to get worse before it gets better. Full recovery won't happen immediately."

Full prepared remarks after the jump.

Read more »

Now here's a good way for the GOP to make the case that it hasn't been reduced to a southern regional rump party that's held hostage by intolerant crackpots: Elect as the new chairman of the Republican National Committee a southerner who just resigned a longtime membership in a whites-only country club.

Katon Dawson, the South Carolina GOP chairman, announced his candidacy for RNC chair yesterday.

And guess what: Back in September, when Dawson was first quietly laying the groundwork for his RNC run, The State newspaper reported that he resigned his membership in the nearly 80-year-old Forest Lake Club. Members told the newspaper at the time that the club's deed has a whites-only restriction and has no black members.

Dawson claimed to the paper that he'd actually been working since August to change the club's admission practices after reading about them in the press. Nonetheless, his membership could become an issue in the RNC chair race.

After all, the paper says he was a member for 12 years, so it seems like a pretty fair question to ask whether he started working to change the club's rules this summer, and then resigned, in preparation for his RNC chair candidacy.

That seems like a particularly relevant question when you recall that the case some GOPers made against Obama over his ties to Reverend Wright was that his supposed silence in the face of Wright's rantings should raise questions about Obama's patriotism.

What's more, The State said that Dawson resigned the club after it became known that the paper was getting ready to report his membership.

Either way, it's hard to see how it sends a winning message for the GOP to pick as its chief strategist and public face someone who was a member of a club where the first African American president in history apparently need not apply. Ah, those good old Repubs.

Barack Obama is the star of a new robocall from Democratic candidate Jim Martin in the high-stakes Georgia Senate runoff, telling Obama's voters that Martin would give a big boost to Obama's agenda in the Senate.

We've obtained audio of the call, which was first reported by one of Ben Smith's readers, and is essentially a phone version of last week's radio ad:

Click To Play

The interesting thing here is how Obama's instructions to come out and vote on December 2 are followed by another voice on these calls, explaining that there are are X days left in the early-vote period and to call the Martin campaign for more information.

As we've noted before, this runoff is effectively a special election, and so much of the campaigning involves giving a civics lesson to supporters so that they know that there's an election going on and how to vote in it.

There's also one thing Martin would like that would really help with this effort, but that he still hasn't gotten: An in-person visit from Obama.

Dem Congressional leaders are working with Obama officials to create and pass a massive stimulus package before Obama takes power on January 20th, a senior Dem leadership aide confirms to me.

The timing is significant because it means Obama could sign it the first day he takes office.

"We come in January 6th and Obama is sworn in on January 20th," the leadership aide emails to me, adding that the timing "gives both of us a month and a half to work on a plan that could be taken up in House shortly after we come in and sent to the Senate before January 20th."

The crisis has forced Obama to walk a tricky balancing act: He's under tremendous pressure to show that he's acting on the economy, in order to calm the markets, while not appearing to step on the current president's toes.

Hence the leaks from Obama's team last week about his choices for economic advisers -- leaks which rallied the markets on Friday -- and, now, his team's behind-the-scenes work to get a stimulus package prepped and ready for him in advance.

Moving so quickly on the planned package, which some reports say could top $500 billion, could carry some risks. Jake Tapper, who first reported the stimulus package timing, notes that some Dems worry that getting it passed so fast could prove too ambitious, given that GOPers still have the numbers necessary to block it with a filibuster.

Here's still more great news for those who are hoping that Barack Obama will act quickly and decisively on health care reform: The guy who's widely expected to be Obama's chief budget official says that such reform is central to repairing the economic mess.

Peter Orszag, the apparent front-runner for the post of head of the Office of Management an Budget, is currently the head of the Congressional Budget Office. And he says health care costs are a problem that's directly linked to our economic woes.

"Although it may not seem immediately relevant given our current difficulties," Orszag says in a post on his blog, "it will be crucial to address the nation's looming fiscal gap -- which is driven primarily by rising health care costs -- as the economy eventually recovers from this current downturn."

Read his whole post to get his full argument, but here's why this is key. As Ezra Klein notes, the budget chief is in a key position with regard to health care, because he's one of the president's top advisers and helps set the administration's fiscal priorities. And the guy expected to get the job says that rather than displacing health care reform as a priority, the financial mess puts health care front and center as a problem.

Health care reform advocates have privately indicated to me that one thing they're all watching for very closely is a sign that the Obama administration views things in these terms -- that they see reform as central to fixing the economy over the long term. Now they've got such a sign.

Obama Announcing Economic Team Today
Barack Obama will officially roll out key members of his economic team today, at a 12 p.m. ET press conference in Chicago. Among the expected appointments are Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury and Larry Summers as head of the National Economic Council.

Report: Christina Romer to Head Council of Economic Advisers
CNN reports that Christina Romer, a professor of economics at Berkeley, will be named as chair of President's Council of Economic Advisors.

Hotels Booked Up For Inaugural -- In West Virginia
Here's a further sign of just how many people could be coming to Washington to witness Barack Obama's inauguration: The Associated Press reports that hotels are being booked up as far away as West Virginia, well beyond the range of a typical DC commute.

Secret Service Preparing Heavy Security For Inauguration
The inauguration of Barack Obama is expected to have a record-size crowd -- and with that will come an all-out security effort. Washington's thousands of security cameras will be routed to one huge monitoring station, and the inaugural skyline will be teeming with sharpshooters trained to hit a target the size of a tea saucer at 1,000 yards.

Vilsack: I Won't Be Secretary of Agriculture
Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack has announced that, contrary to rumors, he will not be Secretary of Agriculture. Vilsack told the Des Moines Register that he has not been contacted by the Obama transition team about any kind of appointment to the incoming Administration.

South Carolina GOP Chairman Joins RNC Race
Katon Dawson, chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, has thrown his hat into the ring to be chairman of the RNC. The two other big names in the race are former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, best known for his unsuccessful run for the Senate in 2006 and subsequent career in punditry, Michigan GOP Chair Saul Anuzis, and former Mike Huckabee campaign chairman Chip Saltsman.

One Minnesota Voter Really Didn't Like Their Choices
The Star Tribune has put a spotlight on one particular ballot that may be the ultimate in protest votes. This voter went beyond conventional ballot-spoiling, and instead filled in the write-in slot for every race, stringing them together to form a long-winded diatribe about how much he or she hated both Norm Coleman and Al Franken.

Report: Obama Promised Hillary Access And Autonomy At State
The New York Times reports that Barack Obama capped off his effort to recruit Hillary Clinton as Secretary of state by promising her direct access to him in the White House, and the ability to pick her own staff.

Obama To Officially Roll Out Economic Team Tomorrow
The Obama transition team has officially announced that Barack Obama and Joe Biden will hold a press conference as 12 p.m. ET tomorrow to roll out their economic team, a development that was essentially known on Friday. The big task the Obama team has is to calm and reassure the markets during the Bush-Obama interregnum, and thus prevent a repeat of the disastrous lame-duck period between Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt.

Bill Daley: Obama Likely To Delay Tax Hikes On Top-Earners
Key Obama adviser Bill Daley, a former Secretary of Commerce under Bill Clinton, said on Meet The Press that Barack Obama is likely to delay his planned repeal of the Bush tax cuts on those earning over $250,000 because of the economic downturn. Instead, Obama could just end up waiting until 2011 for the tax cuts to expire on their own.

Axelrod: No Auto Bailout Until Companies Submit Real Plan
David Axelrod said on ABC's This Week that the incoming Obama Administration wants to help automakers, but also wants to see a plan first from executives on how they will retool their companies. "If they don't do that then there is very little the tax payers can do," said Axelrod. "I hope automakers come back to Congress, hopefully on commercial flights."

Report: Summers To Be Named Senior Economic Adviser
Larry Summers, the former Bill Clinton Secretary of the Treasury who later had a tumultuous period as president of Harvard, will reportedly be named head of the National Economic Council, a senior advisory position to the president on economic matters. Summers also previously had a very close working relationship with incoming Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

GOPer McClintock Declares Victory In Key House Race
House candidate Tom McClintock (R-CA), a champion of the California right, has declared victory in a very close race for the open seat of GOP Rep. John Doolittle, after absentee ballots have shown him maintaining his slim lead over Dem candidate Charlie Brown. For his part, Brown has not yet conceded defeat.

WaPo: Was This Election A Realignment? Maybe.
The Washington Post reports on the debate among pollsters over whether this election represented a true realignment to the left, or an interruption of the "center-right country" that the Republicans insist we are. Andrew Kohut of Pew Research argues that ideology itself did not drive the election -- but also says, "If the new administration takes us left and it works, then people will be won over."