Alex Rogers

The Louisiana Democrat's move may be too little too late

Democrat Mary Landrieu’s attempt to force President Barack Obama to authorize construction of the Keystone XL pipeline is the latest in a political thrust-and-parry exchange between the three-term Senator and GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy, her opponent in next month’s Senate run-off election in Louisiana. But Landrieu’s gambit may be too-little-too-late, election watchers say.

The frantic maneuvering started Wednesday morning when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised Cassidy a spot on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee if Cassidy beats Landrieu in the December runoff. Landrieu chairs the committee and has touted her tenure there as a symbol of her influence on Capitol Hill.

In response, Landrieu took to the floor of the Senate and gave a nearly three-hour speech calling for her the body to take a vote on her bill, which would require Obama to clear the final bureaucratic and regulatory obstacles preventing construction of the pipeline.

The next move came from across the Capitol building, when House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy fast-tracked Cassidy’s three-page bill to authorize the pipeline straight to the floor of the House, bypassing the committees that normally would have weighed the proposal. Cassidy’s bill (which matches the Senate language) will get a House vote on Friday.

When the Senate votes as early as Tuesday on Landrieu’s bill, it will be the first time in six years that both chambers of Congress will vote on the pipeline, according to the Washington Post.

“It’s been a dizzying 24 hours for a supposed lame duck legislature as it relates to Louisiana,” says Joshua Stockley, an associate professor of political science at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.

Landrieu’s gambit may help her re-election chances, but it comes at a cost. Forcing a Keystone vote in Congress will give McConnell and Boehner an unexpected win on the list of issues they want to tackle when the GOP takes control of both chambers of Congress early next year. White House press secretary Josh Earnest signaled Wednesday that the President would oppose the legislation, as he has in the past.

“We have indicated that the President’s senior advisors at the White House would recommend that he veto legislation like that,” said Earnest. “And that does continue to be our position.”

And it’s not even clear how much Landrieu’s push will help her chances. “Landrieu’s task is continuing to separate and distance herself from the President,” says Stockley. “Does Keystone help make that argument? Yes, but I would argue that’s been somewhat neutralized. Cassidy is going to be able to come back and say, ‘My language, my bill, I voted on it too.’”

“She’s going to have to do something more significant than the Keystone pipeline to beat Representative Cassidy,” he added.

In last week’s race, Landrieu nabbed the top spot with 42% of the vote, compared to 41% for Cassidy and 14% for Tea Party candidate Rob Maness. She is facing an avalanche of ads and outside spending she can’t match (she lost the financial support of the group designed to get her elected, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee) and an opponent bolstered by Maness conservatives. As TIME’s Denver Nicks notes, Landrieu’s team believes she’s got a shot if she wins 30 percent of white voters, up from just 18 percent she received in the general election last week. Of course, Landrieu has won runoffs before, in 1996 and 2002, and has expressed hope for pulling out another victory.

“Are you a lost cause?” NBC’s Kasie Hunt asked Landrieu Wednesday. “I don’t believe I am,” she replied.

A historically unproductive Congress faces a very busy winter

The exceptionally unproductive 113th Congress returns Wednesday to a pile of overdue bills that must be passed during a not-so-lame duck session. From keeping the government afloat and funding the fights against Ebola and ISIS, to vetting the next Attorney General and battling with the President over immigration, Congress will be busy between now and the beginning of January.

Funding the Government

With a Dec. 11 deadline approaching, Congress is looking to pass a trillion-dollar omnibus spending bill to keep the federal government open. Some conservatives are calling for a short-term version that would allow the incoming Senate Republican majority to pass its own budget early next year. Others want an amendment to the bill that would block Obama’s expected move to halt the deportations of potentially millions of undocumented workers.

But top appropriators in both parties hope to get a clean bill that will last through next September, and presumptive Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has said he will oppose any standoff that could result in a government shutdown. Staffers have been working for weeks to clear the “underbrush,” as House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers calls it, so the negotiators can move the bill with none of the drama of recent years.

Fighting ISIS

Also facing a Dec. 11 deadline is Congress’ authorization to take military action against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In September, Congress funded Obama’s request to train and arm “moderate” Syrian forces to combat ISIS. In the lame duck period, Congress will consider a more specific clearance for war. While Obama has said he doesn’t need authority beyond the green light Congress gave President George W. Bush to fight terrorism after 9/11, the President announced last week that he would ask for more powers anyway, since ISIS is a “different type of enemy.”

On Friday, Obama said he would send 1,500 more troops to Iraq, nearly doubling the number of American soldiers there to train and advise the coalition forces against ISIS. And Obama has asked Congress for an additional $5.6 billion to “degrade and ultimately defeat” ISIS.

On Monday, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a Daily Beast op-ed that “this war is now illegal,” as the 90 day window provided in the War Powers Resolution of 1973 has expired. “It must be declared and made valid, or it must be ended,” he wrote. “Congress has a duty to act, one way or the other.”

Democrats see a tough fight over a new authorization. “I think there is broad support for going after ISIS as well as Al Qaeda,” says Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee who favors new congressional authorization against both terrorist groups. “The challenge is defining the parameters of that authorization. I certainly don’t think that’s going to be easy and it certainly explains the reluctance the Administration has to come to Congress to begin with, but the fact that it is a difficult task doesn’t mean we can ignore our institutional responsibility.”

The congressional authorization to fight ISIS could be folded into the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which has passed every year for the past 53, but House Speaker John Boehner has said that he would prefer to debate the issue after the lame duck period.

Combatting Ebola

President Obama last week added a late-breaking request for $6.2 billion in additional funds to fight Ebola around the world and congressional panels plan to look into how that money should be allocated. On Wednesday, the Senate Appropriations Committee will hold a hearing on the government’s response to the Ebola outbreak; Centers for Disease Control Director Thomas Frieden, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson are expected to testify. On Thursday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee will also hold a hearing on the international and U.S. response to the West African outbreak. As of last week there were 13,042 reported cases of Ebola and 4818 reported deaths, according to the World Health Organization.

Executive Action on Immigration

Obama decided to delay until after the midterms an executive action to provide deportation relief and work authorization to potentially millions of undocumented workers in a move that has been criticized by op-ed columnists and immigration advocates alike as politically-motivated and impractical. With the election over, the question is if and when Obama will move. If he goes before Dec. 11, he could imperil the appropriations process. If he goes afterwards, he could hurt whatever bipartisan efforts he tries to pass—such as new international trade agreements—with a Republican Congress in his final two years. Despite the calls of conservatives, many immigration experts believe that the Administration can act on solid legal ground and Obama may be tempted to move knowing that Republicans have few options to beat back the order before 2016.

Vetting a New Attorney General

Obama announced last week that Loretta Lynch, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, was his pick to replace Attorney General Eric Holder. Top Senate Republicans have said that her confirmation process should wait until next year when they control the chamber. While there are few major critiques of Lynch so far, Senate Republicans have indicated that her confirmation process will include questioning on the President’s expected executive order on immigration. If confirmed, Lynch will be the first African American woman to hold the post.

Electing New Leaders

The House and Senate will hold their leadership elections on Thursday. Both parties expect that their top officials will keep their jobs, but there will be new committee chairs and officials at the helm of the parties’ campaign arms next year. Democratic Congressional Committee Chairman Steve Israel has already announced that he would step down after a brutal cycle and Republican Senators Roger Wicker and Dean Heller look to replace National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Jerry Moran.

The federal prosecutor from New York would be the first African-American woman to serve in the Cabinet position now held by Eric Holder

A federal judge granted a subpoena request for information on the user suspected of uploading the trailer

A federal judge has granted Disney-owned Marvel Studios its subpoena request to dig into how The Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer leaked onto the internet two weeks ago.

Marvel’s Nov. 5 subpoena asks Google for “all identifying information for the user ‘John Gazelle,’” who Marvel claims uploaded the file onto Google Drive, according to court documents obtained by Deadline. The subpoena asks Google for the following information: “when the account or profile of ‘John Gazelle’ was established, billing or administrative records that establish the name(s), address(es), telephone number(s), email address(es), IP address(es) used by such user, account number(s).”

The subpoena requests that Google produce the information by Nov. 18.

Marvel dropped a teaser trailer for the film on Oct. 22, shortly after its premature leak online. The trailer has garnered over 56 million views on YouTube.

[Deadline]

West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin told TIME Thursday that President Barack Obama has lost his emotional connection with the American people.

“There’s an old saying my grandmother would say, people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care,” he said in a phone interview. “And the President is bright and very articulate and speaks very well. People just don’t believe he cares. That’s the disconnect that I’m seeing.”

Manchin, one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress, could fill a key role next year as the Senate Republican majority tries to implement its agenda, including authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline and raising the Affordable Care Act’s workweek from 30 hours to 40 hours—two proposals that Manchin supports and believes have enough bipartisan support to reach 60 votes for passage. He called a Keystone vote a “slam-dunk,” and he considers the Obamacare fix crucial despite a nonpartisan congressional report that found it would reduce the number of people receiving employment-based coverage by about 1 million people and increase the deficit by about $25 billion over the next five years.

“To say that now we’re going to verify the 30 hours—we’ll be worse than Europe,” he said. “I can’t go to West Virginia and try to sell that crap.”

He is also considering another run for governor in West Virginia in 2016, a race that could lead him to leave his Senate seat two years early. He previously served as governor from 2005 until 2010. “Whatever I do in the future I want to see the restructuring of the Senate—where we are [and] how we’re going to operate—before I make that [decision],” said Manchin. “So that happens what, the middle of January? So hopefully by the first quarter. There will be a trend pretty quick by February or March. We’ll be able to say, ‘Is it same-old, same-old or is it really moving in a different direction?’”

In a June TIME profile, Manchin said he’s “never been in a less productive time in my life than I am right now, in the United States Senate.” On Thursday, Manchin said he was “hopeful” that in the Republican majority—likely led by Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell—he could prove more useful.

“I liked everything I heard—that we’re going to have a process that’s going to work,” he said, citing McConnell’s post-election comments and conversations he’s had with some of his Republican colleagues on a commitment to breaking through congressional gridlock. “Now the Republicans are saying ‘listen, we’re going to have an open process, we’re going to have a committee system.’”

“If they don’t go to extremes and try to fight that then that’ll show that they were able to accomplish things that we didn’t accomplish,” he added.

But Manchin is obviously wary of placing too much faith in Senate Republicans if he’s considering leaving his Potomac River houseboat for his old Charleston mansion. On Friday, he stepped down from his honorary co-chair spot at No Labels, a nonpartisan third-party group, a week and a half after a report that it would lead a get out the vote effort for Colorado Republican Rep. Cory Gardner, who toppled Democratic Senator Mark Udall on Tuesday.

“I’m anxious for change,” he said. “There’s going to be some challenges but there’s some hellacious opportunities and I want to take advantage of them. And let’s see if they’re willing to do them. If they’re not and it’s all talk— smoke and mirrors—[it's] not a place I want to be.”

Eager to avoid another Todd Akin, a national Republican group trained Senate candidates on how to avoid campaign-ending gaffes

On Oct. 1, 2013, 16 potential Senate Republican candidates were met at baggage claim in Washington, D.C.’s Reagan National Airport by trackers—those annoying, hyperactive, politics-obsessed, camera-wielding twentysomethings whose job is to make a candidate lose his or hers. After a series of fundraising events and policy briefings, the candidates met at the offices of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and recounted their stories with tales of their personal, belligerent Democrat.

“We said that’s interesting; We’d like to show you the video of you and how you reacted to the tracker because we put those trackers on you,” said Sen. Rob Portman, the NRSC Finance Vice Chairman. “The trackers were particularly aggressive … We had footage of them saying things to the tracker they shouldn’t have or being too frustrated with the tracker. I think in some cases even kind of block a tracker from some event.”

“It was just a good experience for a lot of them because most of them had never had the experience with having someone with a camera three inches from their face following them around,” added Portman.

MORE: See all the election results

The NRSC’s airport hounding was unprecedented, according to its chairman, Kansas Republican Senator Jerry Moran, and so was the size of its media training, which was made mandatory for the first time for candidates that wanted their financial support. “That was our leverage,” said Moran.

The training proved a prescient response to the 2014 cycle in which every move was videotaped: when New Hampshire hopeful Scott Brown canoed the Contoocook River with a county sheriff to promote the state’s tourism industry, third party opposition group American Bridge sent a tracker by kayak.

“[Virginia Republican candidate] Ed Gillespie has had three trackers on him for most of his campaign,” said NRSC Executive Director Rob Collins. “Three separate ones. So it’s just a course of learning how to deal with this new wrinkle in the campaign environment, which is reality TV presence of cameras in your life. You just kind of hunker down. I think the training worked. I don’t think you’ve seen a lot of Republicans saying things that they later regretted.”

That’s a huge victory for a Republican party that has had some high-profile difficulties with trackers and gaffes in the past. In 2006, Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) lost a very close race after referring to a Democratic tracker as a “macaca.” In 2012, Todd Akin, the Senate GOP candidate in Missouri, had a gaffe so big—“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down”—that it destroyed his candidacy and imperiled Republicans’ chances to take the Senate. In this cycle, no candidate has had made a mistake as big as Akin, according to John Sides, a George Washington University Associate Professor and co-author of the book The Gamble, which punctured convention wisdom on the weight of various gaffes during the 2012 presidential election.

“If you go back to the Missouri polls, you’ll see the big swing after those remarks,” says Sides. “None of the purported gaffes this cycle—not [Iowa Democrat] Bruce Braley’s, not any Senate candidate’s—have had that large of an effect.”

Of course, there were some notable Republican gaffes this cycle. Iowa candidate Joni Ernst flirted in her primary with some United Nations conservative conspiracy theories and Obama impeachment, talk she dismissed during the general election. There were also two candidates seen as insufficiently local—Kansas Republican Sen. Pat Roberts and Brown—who had some embarrassing flubs. Roberts and his campaign repeatedly fanned the fire sparked by a New York Times report that he doesn’t own a home in Kansas. (“Every time I get an opponent—I mean, every time I get a chance, I’m home,” he said in a July radio interview.) Brown, a former Massachusetts senator, had some difficulty placing a New Hampshire county during a debate (although the moderator who pressed him later apologized) and interchanged the two states back in December.

But it’s notable that Sides mentioned Braley, a Democrat, in considering the biggest gaffes this cycle. NRSC Political Director Ward Baker said the group began their three-day media sessions early—in March 2013—before candidates even announced they would enter their races. The NRSC researched the candidates’ backgrounds and asked them about everything from their property taxes to potential red flags found on their Facebook profile pages. (They reportedly spent $250,000 on researching Democrat and Republican candidates in 2013.) The NRSC showed candidates polling data on what’s important in their state and then put them on camera and played them their response to hone their messages.

“[We] ran them through the ringer,” said Baker. “I mean it was pretty tough.”

The NRSC also showed once a day a “blooper film” of other candidates’ inappropriate responses to trackers. “I believe in repetition,” said Baker. “Some of our candidates have been through media training and met with our debate team and media trainers 15 to 20 times.”

Referring to Braley’s slip-up this year, Baker noted with pride: “Well none of our candidates have said that they wouldn’t want Chuck Grassley to Chair [the] Judiciary [Committee] because he’s a farmer.”