SUPERCOMMITTEE PLANS TO ADMIT FAILURE MONDAY, LIKELY WITH TERSE STATEMENT: 'This marriage is over' -- ALL 12 MEMBERS HAVEN'T MET IN WEEKS: Hail Mary offers continue today -- Biden bday Presented by Facebook

BACKSTAGE – HOW THE SUPERCOMMITTEE FLUNKED: The supercommittee last met Nov. 1 – three weeks ago! It was a public hearing featuring a history lesson, “Overview of Previous Debt Proposals,” with Alan Simpson, Erskine Bowles, Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin. The last PRIVATE meeting was Oct. 26. You might as well stop reading right there: The 12 members (6 House, 6 Senate; 6 R, 6 D) were never going to strike a bargain, grand or otherwise, if they weren’t talking to each other. Yes, we get that real deal-making occurs in small groups. But there never WAS a functioning supercommittee: There was Republican posturing and Democratic posturing, with some side conversations across the aisle.

Playbook was a superoptimist: We thought that human factors would prod ambitious members to crack the code, and that the committee would take on its own ecology, regardless of pressures from above or below. But we were punk’d: The supercommittee – one of the most fascinating government experiments of this generation -- never existed as a dynamic political organism.


The official deadline for action by the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction is Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. The real deadline is Monday night, since any plan has to be posted for 48 hours before it’s voted on. So conversations this weekend revolved around how to shut this turkey down. Aides expect some “Hail Mary” offers on Sunday, and there’s something on the stove that could be inoffensive to both sides. But the committee may not even have a fig-leaf agreement to announce. Total, embarrassing failure. The markets and the country will hate it.

The most likely scenario: The co-chairs, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), on Monday will issue a short joint statement with the basic message: “This marriage is over.” Other possibilities are to hold a short going-out-of-business hearing, or to vote down a Republican proposal and a Democratic proposal. But one aide says: “Few, if any, one either side, want a final, ugly food fight … The chairs are working to figure out how to put the appropriate period on the sentence and do so in the most dignified manner possible. … [Don’t expect] a showdown of dueling voters and a ton of fingerpointing.”

Both sides recognize that the optics are disastrous. The Dem. aide continued: “They don’t feel the need to burn the place down as they turn off the lights.”

The concept of the supercommittee, as POLITICO’s Jake Sherman articulated in an email: “[I]f you put 12 serious members in a room, no distractions, easy way through the Senate [direct path for bill], they'd be able to get something.” BUT THAT NEVER HAPPENED: The 12 members never had specific, hot-box, come-to-Jesus discussions. It was all white noise. Neither side was willing to jump first, and the two didn’t have the capacity to jump together.

One Democrat said Murray “had a really great relationship with Hensarling. They had a very productive relationship -- well, I guess, not ‘productive’ in the sense of producing a deal at the end. … [Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John] Kerry [D-Mass.] was his diplomatic self: very active in trying to keep the channels of communication open and feeling the sides out.”

A senator told us the supercommittee should have gotten serious sooner – made some tough choices on parameters at the beginning, then figured out how to get there. But that implies committee members got serious at the end. Instead, they were sniping about what was an “offer” and what was a “conversation.” When one side claimed a breakthrough, the opposition emailed reporters with the subject line: “<Yawn> Old News Ain't News.”

The supercommittee even fooled itself. “Both sides at various times, after ad hoc conversations, felt like we were making progress in the evening,” recalled a GOP participant, “before coming back in the morning and finding, ‘We can’t actually do that.’” A Democratic participant: “It became clear on our end that this all came down to [insistence on extending] the Bush tax cuts for Republicans, and that was the immovable object at the end of the day.”

How bad was the marriage? Listen to top Republican aide: “You had this dynamic emerge where all six of our guys were pretty closely in sync -- a little bit because they're sort of ideologically similar and a little bit because, by design, we had them meeting, like, two or three times a day -- literally every day; if not physically meeting, at least doing a conference call. So, these guys were in constant communication. Not that anyone was looking to go rogue, but if anybody wanted to go rogue, there was no chance for that to happen, because you couldn't hide from the rest of the group. So, they were pretty tightly coordinated. If they had any kind of disagreements, they kept internal, they worked it out, and then they moved ahead.

“On the other side, [Rep. Chris] Van Hollen [D-Md.)] actually looked like he was going to participate. But about three or four weeks ago, he came to the conclusion that we weren't going to get anywhere, and started throwing cold water on everyone else's ideas. You had Kerry and [Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max] Baucus [D-Mont.], who seemed to be the only two who were sort of really interested in seeing if there was a way to cut a deal. Baucus would say things that made you think, ‘OK, we can work with this guy.’ And then he would go back to his office and either talk to somebody, or get yanked back, and then he would come back and would start from ground zero again.

“Kerry's M.O. in this whole thing was basically, ‘I'm the smartest guy in the room. I'm so much smarter than you that I will, through sheer force of intellect, be able to convince you to accept something that you already said “no” to.’ He would try to drudge up old ideas that had already been rejected: ‘If you will just let me talk to you for an hour, you will see the wisdom of my way.’ … Baucus clearly tried, and if Baucus had been willing to be the only one to vote [‘yes’], we could have gotten a deal. But he was never willing to break from the rest of his group. … [Kerry] was not going to be the seventh vote. It's not even clear to me that if Baucus and Kerry had jointly made an agreement, that the two of them would have done it, either. I think they either wanted Murray, or they wanted a House Democrat.”

Democrats have almost the same beefs, and even express them similarly. A top Dem. aide: “The Democrats on the committee didn't feel like they had a willing partner in negotiations because revenue was never a serious component of discussion. … [W]e've seen offers, and none of those offers are legitimate or are plans that would require the wealthiest Americans to sacrifice along with everybody else. … Democrats came into this in the spirit of, ‘We can make some hard choices around entitlements. We can make some painful decisions and we can take some guff from the left.’ And I think that throughout the process, they did that. If you look at MoveOn and AARP and even the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, we took a lot of hits from the left on the entitlement reforms that we put forward .”

One Democrat said the supercommittee structure “was a kind of diffuse, horizontal … You had a lot of folks trying to take initiative and be the one to get the deal done.”

Republicans usually met in the Cannon House Office Building, where Hensarling has his office as chair of the House Republican Conference. The GOP prepared elaborate plans: not just how much the government could make from auctioning spectrum, but what part would go on the block, and what part would be reserved for public safety. Hensarling repeatedly told the GOP members: “I'm an old Boy Scout. I like to be prepared.”

Democrats usually met in S-116, in one of Kerry’s Foreign Relations conference rooms. Murray – the Democratic chair, who also chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee – was described by one participant as “the police … the voice of our base.” Another Democrat put it more gently: “She is really influenced by the constituents that she represents. Throughout this process, she had these conversations with people about, ‘My Social Security is on the line.’ So she really felt a very heavy burden to do something, but to do something in a way that was going to be fair to the people that she's made a career out of representing. She made some really difficult choices, and she felt like she did enough that if Republicans reciprocated, there was an opportunity for a deal. … She's one of those people who believes that while it certainly seems like Washington is broken, it has to work.”

Two supercommittee members – Reps. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) -- never really checked into the conversation, according to numerous participants on both sides. A Democrat explained: “There's a basic threshold for our guys that any deal has to be better than what would happen with no deal. There were some folks who never really saw us get close to [that] threshold.”

Through all this, the White House was mostly hands-off. One Democrat said President Obama gave the committee “a lot of autonomy.” Another Democrat: “It was kind of the opposite of the debt ceiling. Instead of really haggling, inserting himself into the actual haggling back-and-forth, he intervened kind of surgically to draw clear lines at a couple points that we felt put us in a good negotiating position.”

Speaker John Boehner, elliptically in public and explicitly in private, had given Republicans top cover to raise revenues in return for tax reform. “This has always been a question of scale,” a top GOP aide explained. “If they were willing to go a little further on entitlements, we’d see what we can do on revenues. That was the way it would have to work. What we found was, they needed a trillion-plus in revenues, and weren’t willing to do anywhere near that on entitlements.”

Republicans pat themselves on the back for a plan – floated by supercommittee member Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), a former president of the Club for Growth – that would, in the GOP euphemism, “lead to additional revenues.” As one aide recalled: “We thought we had found the sweet spot: The right was pissed, but not too pissed. The mainstream media was giving us credit for getting out of our comfort zone.” At Tuesday’s regular meeting of House Republicans, Hensarling gave a detailed description of the plan, and got applause.

But Democrats sensed the Republicans were getting pushback, either from leaders or rank and file. A Dem. aide: “What you saw was over the course of last weekend was members getting somewhat close to a deal. [There were] empty Senate office buildings, empty House buildings, members meeting casually to talk about this. … Once the House came back into town, the negotiating stance of those House Republicans radically changed. … At the end of the day, it was clear that there was nothing that they could say ‘yes’ to.”

A Democratic aide had this eulogy for the supercommittee: “The worm has turned a little bit. The national conversation now is about income inequality and about jobs, and it's not really about cutting the size of government anymore or cutting spending. 2010 gave one answer to that question. But 2012 will give another, and we've got to see what it is.”

A Republican’s obit: “With this new crop of Democrats in the Senate, they're big into changing the rules [by creating a supercommittee]. I think this shows us that that's not it. You had a shot here to do something big, and to do it in a way that you would never get a chance to do again.”

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JON HUNTSMAN MAKES SURPRISE APPEARANCE on “Saturday Night Live”’s “Weekend Update.” Seth Meyers, who went to high school in N.H., asked if it’s true Huntsman is polling in low single digits: “It’s true, Seth. But only a few months ago, I was polling at ‘margin of error.’ So to have any digit at all is a pretty big deal.” Video http://bit.ly/sDzl4G

A SENIOR PENTAGON OFFICIAL emails: “It's stunning, but perhaps unsurprising given the times, that Congress is perilously close to failure on a budget agreement. We're on a wartime footing overseas and at a political stalemate on the home front. For our men and women in uniform, and indeed for all Americans, it's time that we return to the days when people would actually work hard to come together to strike a deal. There's national strength in making the right kinds of compromises. It's time to demonstrate that kind of resolve.”

--Bloomberg Government Special Report, “Defense Spending State-by-State”: “Virginia, Hawaii and Alaska may suffer the most economic harm from defense cuts of as much as $1 trillion during the next decade … Virginia, home of the Pentagon and the Norfolk naval base, tops the list with 13.9 percent of its gross domestic product derived from defense spending. Hawaii ranks second, at 13.5 percent, and Alaska is third with 10.7 percent. All other states are in single digits, the study showed.”

SNEAK PEEK – Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel hits Mitt Romney in an interview with Christiane Amanpour, taped for ABC’s “This Week.” On Obama and the Republicans: “He has offered a grand bargain and they have refused to bargain. … [H]e has a plan, they have an ideology. … They will not move. He has put things on that are dear to Democrats and said, ‘As part of an overall plan, I will make that part of it.’ That shows compromise. That shows interest. They have refused to budge on a single piece of their agenda. That is not how you get to an agreement. … There's a clear set of choices. Because when it comes to the decisions in that Oval Office, the outcome isn't clear. It's filled with fog. And your guideposts are your leadership, your judgment and your values. Mitt Romney has revealed himself. And I believe as the campaign continues, more and more people will see who he's willing to stand for and who he … really turns a blind eye toward. And that's the middle class.”

LUCKY #7 ANNIVERSARY today for Amy and Matt McDonald.

BIRTHWEEK: Sophia Nussbaum (daughter of Jeff and Deb) is 1.

BIRTHDAYS: Jenevieve Beavers is 26 (hat tip: Johnny) … Judy Woodruff! … Vice President Joe Biden is 69 … Richard Dawson is 79 (h/t AP) … Beth Foster … Sandy McNabb … CHARLIE COOK (h/t Teresa Vilmain).

PAUL LINDSAY, NRCC communications director, celebrated his 30th at Jack Rose Dining Saloon, the scotch and bourbon palace. SPOTTED: NRCC’s Joanna Burgos, Josh Holmes, Blair Latoff, Michael Steel, Alex Conant, Caitlin Dunn, Sam Smith, Brittany Bramell, Lori Weberg, Jon Thompson, Chris and Rachel Taylor, Johnny Destefano, Kirsten Kukowski, Andrew Forbes. A handful ended the night listening to "Take on Me" at Bobby Lew’s Saloon.

POTUS WAS WHEELS-DOWN ANDREWS at 1:18 a.m. Sunday, and went directly into the White House after touching down on the South Lawn at 1:45 a.m. Breakfast lid till 10:30 a.m. The press charter pushed back from refueling in Hawaii at 1:22 a.m. ET, per Ann Compton.

-- WashPost’s David Nakamura, “Print press pool #5 departure [from Indonesia, filed 3:35 a.m. ET Saturday]: POTUS left summit shortly after 4 p.m. and the Beast was waiting to take him to Ngurah Rai Airport [on Bali]. We're moving at 4:06 p.m. Smattering of people watching as we make our way through town. No one holding the shep fairey posters or protest signs we're so used to in the States. Some are taking pictures. Arrived at airport at 4:21 p.m. Loaded quickly. 25 hours scheduled travel time to Andrews Air Base, including two refuel stops. Arrival early Sunday pre-dawn. It's been fun. Let's do this. Wheels up at 4:35 p.m.”

--“ Analysis: Obama leaves Asia, but America stays,” by AFP’s Stephen Collinson: “In a week-long Pacific odyssey, President Barack Obama tweaked an irked China's tail and sent Asia an unequivocal message that the United States wants to shape the region's future. He flew home Saturday after having taken in a trio of summits, weighted America's military punch by announcing a new US Marines force in Australia, and vowed to stoke flickers of reform in Myanmar. He also declared that a budget crunch in Washington would not see America's military and diplomatic clout in the region short-changed. ‘Let there be no doubt. In the Asia-Pacific of the 21st century, the United States is all-in,’ Obama said.

“His journey to Hawaii, Australia and Indonesia highlighted a US power shift from a decade of war to what he sees as America's destiny in dynamic Asia. ‘I think that we have seen implementation here of a critical, strategic, reorientating in policy by the United States -- a rebalancing,’ said Obama's national security advisor Tom Donilon. The dominant theme of Obama's travels was the growing US rivalry with China.”

ROMNEY OPENS IOWA HQ -- N.Y. Times A1, lower-left corner, “Romney Shifts In Iowa, Playing To Win Quickly,” by Jeff Zeleny in Des Moines: “Romney … is now playing to win the Iowa caucuses. Television commercials are on the way, volunteers are arriving and a stealth operation is ready to burst into view … The escalation of his effort in Iowa, along with a more aggressive schedule in New Hampshire and an expanding presence in South Carolina, is the strongest indication yet that Mr. Romney is shifting from a defensive, make-no-mistakes crouch to an assertive offensive strategy. If he can take command in the three early-voting states, he could make the nominating battle a swift one. … [A] former Blockbuster video store [on Ingersoll Avenue in Des Moines] sprang to life as the nerve center of his Iowa operation. Aides hung maps and charts, turning a 6,289-square-foot storefront into a sprawling office that will be open by the time he visits on Wednesday.” http://nyti.ms/uoJcZa

--“Sen. Ayotte to endorse Mitt Romney for President,” by Union Leader Senior Political Reporter John DiStaso: “Sen. Kelly Ayotte will back Mitt Romney … Sunday in the first endorsement of a Republican presidential hopeful by a member of the state's congressional delegation. … [T]he freshman lawmaker will formally endorse the former Massachusetts governor Sunday at 2:30 p.m. when she appears with him at a rally at Nashua City Hall. They will then visit nearby Jackie's Diner to meet with voters. Ayotte, a Nashua native and resident, is the biggest ‘get’ so far in the New Hampshire primary sweepstakes.” http://bit.ly/tTwOAM

LUNTZ’s TOUR DE FORCE – Des Moines Register, “GOP presidential candidates bare souls at emotional forum in Iowa,” by Chief Politics Writer Jennifer Jacobs: “The two-hour Family Leader event felt at times more like a Christian prayer meeting or a dishy talk show than a campaign event, which made moderator Frank Luntz exclaim at one point: ‘I feel like Dr. Phil!’ Organizers with the Family Leader, an influential Iowa-based evangelical Christian advocacy group, wanted the unconventional event to elicit personal answers that revealed each candidate’s character – with none of the timers and buzzers of typical presidential debates. And Luntz eventually pried the six – Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann – away from their standard talking points. Some 2,500 conservatives, including Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley and U.S. Rep. Steve King, listened from pews at First Federated Church in Des Moines. With the presidential hopefuls gathered around a Thanksgiving-themed table facing the audience, the imagery was one of the Last Supper setup – and faith was a central theme. …

“Perry … confessed that his childhood dream was to become a veterinarian. ‘But then he (God) introduced me to organic chemistry,’ he said, as the audience cracked up, ‘and I became a pilot in the United States Air Force.’ Gingrich, a former U.S. House speaker, laid bare the details of a hopeless time when he was an emerging national figure, after he’d earned a doctoral degree and was elected to Congress. Although he was successful in his professional life, he felt hollow inside, he said. ‘I wasn’t drinking, but I had precisely the symptoms of somebody who was collapsing from under its weight,’ he admitted. A friend gave him a copy of the ‘Big Book’ from Alcoholics Anonymous. That and the Bible helped him recover.” http://dmreg.co/uamfIK

JIM MESSINA, Obama 2012 campaign manager, has a letter in N.Y. Times Magazine responding to Nate Silver cover story, “Handicapping Obama 2012”: “I learned politics going door to door in Missoula, Mont., organizing low-income families living in mobile homes. Whether in a small town or on a national stage, politics is always about people — not statistical models or formulas. In performing a cold, mechanical analysis based on only three variables, Nate Silver discounts the strengths of our values and our organization. His article assumes that next November’s outcome is predetermined, and that our unprecedented grass-roots network of organizers and volunteers — not to mention the president — play no role. We respectfully disagree. … More than one million people have taken ownership of this campaign, most with small contributions — and we reached that mark six months faster than last time. Volunteers have had more than a million conversations with their neighbors. Last week, one year from Election Day, more than 10,000 volunteers participated in events around the country.

“And Silver ignores my favorite number: 270. As he knows, presidential elections are still decided in the Electoral College. … Just last year, Silver’s formula gave Harry Reid the remotest odds of winning; he was re-elected by more than five points. … As a statistician, Silver views politics through a prism of probability. But what we’ve all learned from Barack Obama, the unlikeliest of candidates, is that politics isn’t about what’s probable — it’s about what’s possible.” http://nyti.ms/w1AGPV

--Chicago Tribune p. 1 tease, “Emanuel: Obama up to challenges”: “Mayor Rahm Emanuel told Iowa Democrats at a fundraiser [in Des Moines] Saturday that President Barack Obama has made choices for the next generation and not just the next election.”

EXCERPTS, “Mayor Rahm Emanuel's Remarks at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner”: “While we meet here tonight, the Republicans are having a debate across town. I’ve watched a number of them, and I’ve got to be honest, I never thought I’d say this, (pause) I’m beginning to miss Sarah Palin’s insights. Their debate was called the Thanksgiving Family Forum -- which is fitting because I have never seen such a collection of turkeys. Look at their top candidates: Take Mitt Romney. He said he would be in Iowa tonight. (pause) We should have known he would change his mind. Newt was at the debate. I heard he had to leave early to spend the holiday with his loved ones -- the salespeople at Tiffanys.

“And Herman Cain? I was actually hoping Herman would stop by today and see me before the debate, but he was at his tutorial on Libya. The scary part, his tutor was Rick Perry. In truth, the Republicans do have an impressive field: Governor Mitch Daniels, Governor Haley Barbour and former Governor Jeb Bush. The only problem, they’re not on the field. I just want you to think about this for a second. Think of our field in 2008. At our debates in Iowa, we had Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Senator Chris Dodd, and President Obama. Now think about their field: Michelle Bachman, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum. I’m beginning to feel sorry for Republican primary voters.”

SPEED READ:



--“Captors offer first reconstruction of Gaddafi son's life on run: Anonymous tipster betrayed Gaddafi's caravan,” by Reuters’ Marie-Louise Gumuchian in Libya: “Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, doctor of the London School of Economics, … scourge of the rebels against his dictator father, was now a prisoner, bundled aboard an old Libyan air force transport plane … deep in the Sahara desert. The interim government's spokesman billed it as the ‘final act of the Libyan drama.’ … A Reuters reporter aboard the flight approached the 39-year-old prisoner as he huddled on a bench at the rear of the growling, Soviet-era Antonov. … He sat frowning, silent, … nursing his right hand, bandaged around the thumb and two fingers. At other times he chatted calmly with his captors and even posed for a picture. … Gaddafi's run had come to an end just a few hours earlier, at dead of night … as he and a handful of trusted companions tried to thread their way through patrols of former rebel fighters intent on blocking their escape.”

--“RNC surpasses DNC in October fundraising” – AP/Washington: “The Republican National Committee raised $8.5 million in October … The RNC raised slightly more during the month than the Democratic National Committee, which collected $7.9 million. The RNC ended October with $13.5 million in the bank, while the DNC's cash on hand fell to $11.1 million. RNC officials said the party's debt was $13.9 million. That's down from $24 million when RNC Chairman Reince Priebus took over the committee. The DNC had debts of $9 million. The DNC fundraising included $2 million for the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising account by the DNC and Obama's e-election campaign.”

THE PRESIDENT’S WEEK AHEAD: “On Monday, the President and First Lady will invite music legends and contemporary major artists to the White House for a celebration of country music as part of their “In Performance at the White House” series. On Tuesday, the President will travel to Manchester, New Hampshire where he will discuss the American Jobs Act. On Wednesday, the President will pardon the National Thanksgiving Turkey in a ceremony in the Rose Garden. The President will celebrate the 64th anniversary of the National Thanksgiving Turkey presentation, reflect upon the time-honored traditions of Thanksgiving, and wish American families a warm, safe, and healthy holiday. On Thursday, the President will celebrate Thanksgiving at the White House. There are no public events scheduled. On Friday, the President has no public events scheduled.”

FIRST LADY, DR. JILL BIDEN TO NASCAR: “First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden [today will] visit Homestead-Miami Speedway for NASCAR’s Sprint Cup finale to honor America’s troops and military families and highlight new commitments … to hire and train veterans and military spouses. In support of Joining Forces, representatives from companies committing to hiring 10,000 veterans and military spouses by the end of 2013 will volunteer at a special barbeque lunch for military families in Homestead-Miami Speedway’s Nationwide Garage. … The following companies will commit a portion of their jobs to veterans and military spouses in the Miami area: The Beacon Council and their 274 companies will strive to hire 4,000 veterans by the end of 2013; G4S Secure Solutions (USA), whose workforce is 21% veterans already, will hire 3,000 veterans by 2013; Ryder System, whose workforce is 10% veterans already, expects to hire more than 550 veterans in 2011 and 1,000 additional veterans by the end of 2013; and BAE Systems, which already employs more than 3,000 veterans, is committed to employing wounded warriors and veterans through their Warrior Integration services.”

** A message from Americans to Protect Family Security: The life insurance industry pays out $1.5 billion in benefits. Every day. Surprised? Don’t be. It’s a big reason why 75 million American families turn to the life insurance industry to protect their financial future. Life insurance. Annuities. Long-term care and disability income insurance. 2 out of 3 families put their trust in them every day. Because they provide peace of mind, long-term savings, and a guarantee of lifetime income when it’s time to retire. See how families in your state benefit at www.securefamily.org. **

Follow us on Twitter Anna Palmer @apalmerdc



Jake Sherman @JakeSherman