Mark Halperin And John Heilemann 'Double Down' On 2012 Elections

Swap Hillary for Biden? Mark Halperin and John Heilemann are back with "Double Down." We’ll look at the 2012 campaign, 2013, 2016.

Election results 2013 are all over the headlines today.  Chris Christie, living large as a moderate Republican.  Democrat Terry McAuliffe slipping by Tea Partier Ken Cuccinelli in Virginia.  Tale of Two Cities Bill DeBlasio landsliding progressive in New York.  Political reporters Mark Halperin and John Heilemann are watching.  They know the big trends and the juicy stuff.  Wrote “Game Change” on the ’08 presidential campaign.  Now they’re out with “Double Down,” on Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and 2012.    Up next On Point:  all the juice on 2012, 2013, and the political road ahead.
-- Tom Ashbrook

Mark Halperin, editor-at-large and senior political analyst at TIME Magazine. Co-author of "Double Down: Game Change 2012." Also co-author of "Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime." (@MarkHalperin)

John Heilemann, national affairs editor for New York Magazine. Co-author of "Double Down: Game Change 2012." Also co-author of "Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime." (@JHeil)

New York Times: Playing the Game Again, With an Insider’s Look at the Players — "The portraits of the players in campaign 2012 — from the candidates to their strategists to their big-money backers — are drawn in this volume with a light and snappy hand. The authors write that non-Mormon Romneyites found the feud between their man and the Republican hopeful Jon Huntsman Jr. 'as impenetrable as a Tolkien subplot rendered in Elvish.' They write that the Republican contender Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota had a reputation on the Hill for 'churning through staffers as if they were disposable razors.'"

Politico: The Five Biggest Losers in "Double Down" — "Earlier in this presidency, Obama met with billionaire George Soros at the Waldorf as part of an unsuccessful bid to get him to open up his wallet for outside groups during the 2012 campaign, as he’d done in 2004. Soros talked Obama’s ear off for 45 minutes, giving the president unsolicited economic messaging advice. Obama was 'annoyed and bored,' according to the book. 'If we don’t get anything out of him,' Obama complained to aides afterward, 'I’m never f-ing sitting with that guy again.'"

New York Mag: The Intervention — "The president’s advisers were barely more rattled. Yes, Denver had been atrocious. Yes, it had been unnerving. But Obama was still ahead of Romney, the sky hadn’t fallen, and they would fix what went wrong in time for the town-hall debate at Hofstra. Their message to the nervous Nellies in their party was: Keep calm and carry on."