3:45: First Lady Michelle Obama attends DNC fundraising event in Pittsburgh
5:40: President Obama participates in an Affordable Care Act event, Linz Hall, Temple Emanu-El
6:15: VP Biden attends DSCC event in Cleveland
Live audio coverage at White House Live for PBO (live video at C-Span) and VP Biden’s Cleveland events, don’t know if there’ll be any live streaming of the First Lady’s speech
President Obama, First Lady Michelle and their daughters Sasha and Malia appear on stage on election night November 6, 2012 in Chicago
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Today (all times Eastern):
2:0: President Obama departs the White House
3:15: VP Biden delivers remarks at the CSX Northwest Ohio in North Baltimore, Ohio
3:45: Michelle Obama attends DNC fundraising event in Pittsburgh
5:10: President Obama arrives in Dallas
5:40: Participates in an Affordable Care Act event, Linz Hall, Temple Emanu-El
6:15: VP Biden attends DSCC event in Cleveland
7:40: President Obama delivers remarks at a DSCC event (private residence)
8:40: President Obama delivers remarks at a DSCC event and answers questions (private residence)
9:45: Departs Dallas
12:30: Arrives the White House
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USA Today: Obama congratulates McAuliffe, de Blasio and Walsh
President Obama made congratulatory calls late Tuesday to three East Coast Democrats that emerged as Election Night winners.
According to the White House, Obama telephoned Virginia Governor-elect Terry McAuliffe, New York Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio and Boston Mayor-elect Martin Walsh.
….. Obama “congratulated each of them on their election victories and vowed to work with them in the months ahead to expand economic opportunity for middle-class families in their communities,” the White House said in a statement.
In a contest that attracted the attention of Vice President Joe Biden and spending by the national conservative group Americans for Prosperity, Coralville’s three incumbent candidates are staying for another term. Unofficial results Tuesday showed John Lundell winning the mayoral contest and Tom Gill, Bill Hoeft and Laurie Goodrich winning seats on the council in an election with record-breaking turnout.
Shortly after Lundell’s victory became apparent, the City Council member said, he received a surprise phone call from Biden. “He indicated that he was very proud of our city, that we took on the Koch brothers and successfully beat them by such a huge margin,” Lundell said. “That was another aspect of this election that was unanticipated, that after the polls closed that I’d be speaking to the vice president of the United States.”
Steve Benen: Far-right suffers another setback in Virginia
On paper, Republicans were poised to have a very good year in Virginia’s off-year elections. For over a generation, whichever party controls the White House invariably loses in the commonwealth, in Virginia this year, Democrats nominated a gubernatorial candidate who’d never held elected office, didn’t have deep political roots in the state, and wasn’t especially well liked by voters.
It looked like a recipe for GOP success. It wasn’t. As the dust settles on Election Day, Terry McAuliffe (D) has narrowly won Virginia’s gubernatorial race, Ralph Northam (D) was easily elected Virginia’s next lieutenant governor, and Mark Herring (D) very narrowly leads the still-uncalled race for state attorney general.
The Tea Party wing of Virginia’s Republican Party got the extremist candidates they wanted, and it looks like they lost in a clean sweep.
Democrat Terry McAuliffe defeated Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II on Tuesday to become the next governor of Virginia — in a race that Cuccinelli had termed a “referendum on Obamacare.” But an examination of the issues the made up the battleground of the race shows that the Affordable Care Act was just one of several progressive ideas that McAuliffe fully embraced and Cuccinelli fully opposed.
Virginia has historically been a conservative-leaning swing state. It backed every Republican presidential nominee from Richard Nixon through George W. Bush and elected a Republican governor by a 59 to 41 landslide in 2009. While the state has one of the highest percentages of federal employees, polls showed McAuliffe’s lead remained fairly steady before and after the shutdown and Cuccinelli himself dismissed it as largely forgotten factor before Election Day.
ThinkProgress: The Biggest Winner From Last Night’s Election? Obamacare
Virginia’s Ken Cuccinelli — the loudest critic of health care reform — went down in defeat on Tuesday night, paving the the way for the “bellwether for national politics” to expand Obamacare to nearly 400,000 Virginians.
A 10-member panel is currently considering whether the state should accept federal dollars to provide insurance to individuals and families below 133 percent of the federal poverty line ($31,321 in income for a family of four) through its Medicaid program. The decision still has to be approved by a majority of delegates and senators on the panel, though McAuliffe could bypass the GOP-controlled group “by deciding whether to include the federal Medicaid money in the state budget.” On the campaign trail, he repeatedly promised to build bipartisan consensus over the measure, going so far as to say that “he would not sign a budget that did not include Medicaid expansion.”
More here
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Tonight’s lesson for Republicans: Hug Obama and expand Medicaid.
NPR: In Colorado, A Couple Finds Relief In Obamacare
There’s plenty of criticism of the Affordable Care Act and how it’s being implemented.
But let’s introduce you to someone who is quite pleased with her Obamacare experience: Lela Petersen of Flagler, Colo. She’s a small business owner with a very big health insurance bill.
But thanks to the health law, she expects that bill will be cut by more than half in January.
Petersen is 57, and her husband, Mike, is 60. They have some pre-existing conditions. He has diabetes. She has a back injury. The HMO policy they’ve carried since 1992 has risen over the years to $1,950 per month, just for the two of them.
…. At the beginning of October she checked out Colorado’s insurance exchange and found the exact same policy from the same insurer for only $832 a month. “It’s dropping us down about $1,100 a month. We can retire. We can go fishing. We can actually see a future,” says Petersen.
ThinkProgress: Senator Obliterates GOP Talking Point On Obamacare’s Maternity Coverage In 60 Seconds
During a hearing on Obamacare implementation Tuesday, Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee chairman Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) offered a powerful rebuttal to those criticizing the Affordable Care Act’s inclusion of maternity care coverage as one of ten “essential health benefits” categories that insurance companies must offer consumers under the health law.
Statement by the President on Marriage Equality in Illinois
Tonight, I applaud the men and women of the Illinois General Assembly, a body in which I was proud to serve, for voting to legalize marriage equality in my home state.
As President, I have always believed that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally under the law. Over time, I also came to believe that same-sex couples should be able to get married like anyone else. So tonight, Michelle and I are overjoyed for all the committed couples in Illinois whose love will now be as legal as ours – and for their friends and family who have long wanted nothing more than to see their loved ones treated fairly and equally under the law.
I also commend the members of the General Assembly for approaching this issue in a fair and open way, and for recognizing the importance of our commitment to religious freedom by engaging the religious community in this conversation. Throughout this debate, they’ve made it clear that this is about civil marriages and civil laws, and made sure that churches and other institutions of faith are still free to make their own decisions that conform to their own teachings.
As I said in my Inaugural Address last January, our journey as a nation is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law, for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. And tonight, I’m so proud that the men and women elected to serve the people of the great state of Illinois have chosen to take us one step further on that journey to perfect our union.
Gov. Chris Christie pushed for an overwhelming re-election victory and met his goal, winning a second term by a whopping 22-point margin, besting his Democratic rival, state Sen. Barbara Buono, in 19 of New Jersey’s 21 counties.
The point, of course, was to position the governor for his national campaign – Christie very nearly launched a presidential campaign last night during his victory speech – which will be a major topic of conversation for the political world today and in the near future.
…. I’d recommend at least some caution …. hristie’s ability to crush Buono doesn’t tell us much about how he’d fare against, say, Hillary Clinton. Indeed, New Jersey voters were asked yesterday who’d they support in a hypothetical Christie-Clinton match-up. While the governor was winning his re-election bid by 22 points, the exact same New Jersey voters still preferred Clinton by six points.
…. Given all of this, I’d recommend keep the coronation plans on hold.
My Most Loved Election Photo Ever: Despite all the voter suppression efforts, the people spoke….
William Wright and India Johnson wait in line to vote at Larchmont Elementary School in Norfolk, Va., Nov 6, 2012. Wright and Johnson, both from Richmond, were casting their first votes in a Presidential election.
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President Obama is embraced by a volunteer as he visits a campaign office the morning of the 2012 election in Chicago, November 6, 2012
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President Obama talks on the phone with Mitt Romney in the Presidential Suite at the Fairmont Chicago Millennium Park in Chicago (Pete Souza)
The Obama Diary 
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