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Wake Up To Politics - October 2, 2015

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Friday, October 2, 2015
403 Days until Election Day 2016
122 Days until the Iowa Caucuses
26 Days until the Next Republican Debate
11 Days Until the 1st Democratic DebateIt's Friday, October 2, 2015, I'm Gabe Fleisher for this TGIF edition of Wake Up To Politics, and reporting from WUTP world HQ in my bedroom - Good morning: THIS IS YOUR WAKE UP CALL!!!
To send me questions, comments, tips, new subscribers, and more: email me at wakeuptopolitics@gmail.com. To learn more about WUTP and subscribe, visit the site: wakeuptopolitics.com, or like me on Twitter and Facebook. More ways to engage with WUTP at the bottom.

Headline: 10 Dead in Umpqua Community College Massacre

  • Ten were killed, and seven others injured, Thursday at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, after 26-year-old Chris Harper Mercer entered the Umpqua campus with three handguns and a semiautomatic rifle, indiscriminately shooting students.
  • President Barack Obama addressed the mass shooting in a statement Thursday night, saying “Each time we see one of these mass shootings, our thoughts and prayers are not enough. It’s not enough. It does not capture the heartache and grief and anger that we should feel. And it does nothing to prevent this carnage from being inflicted someplace else in America – next week, or a couple of months from now.”
  • Obama continued, calling for increased common-sense gun legislation and invoking the other high-profile shootings that have colored his time in the White House: “We talked about this after Columbine and Blacksburg, after Tucson, after Newtown, after Aurora, after Charleston,” he said. “It cannot be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun.”
  • “I hope and pray that I don’t have to come out again during my tenure as President to offer my condolences to families in these circumstances,” Obama also said. “But based on my experience as President, I can't guarantee that. And that's terrible to say. And it can change.”

2016 Central

  • Weekend Preview: Hillary Clinton to Appear on SNL, Joe Biden to Keynote HRC Dinner Former Secretary of State Clinton will appear on the season premiere of “Saturday Night Live” this weekend, on the “cold open” skit, with Kate McKinnon, who debuted earlier this year as SNL’s latest Clinton impersonator.
  • The show’s season premiere will be hosted by singer Miley Cyrus, who has also played Clinton for SNL in the past. Clinton’s appearance was first reported by The New York Times; according to the article, she declined an offer by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) to keynote their National Dinner, also Saturday night, in order to go on SNL.
  • The candidate’s decision was part of an effort by her campaign to present Clinton as funnier and more personable, an effort which has led to recent appearances on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “The Ellen DeGeneres Show”.
  • Clinton will still speak to an audience of HRC members, although it will be a smaller group of the organization’s board members and volunteer leaders. The keynote address will instead by delivered by Vice President Joe Biden, who is mulling a run against Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, which the frontrunner’s campaign fears.
  • With 1.5 million members, the Human Rights Campaign is the largest advocacy group for LGBT Americans, a key constituency for Clinton, and Biden, if he runs. The HRC has yet to endorse a candidate for the 2016 election, and support from the LGBT community could bolster a Biden campaign.
  • The vice president’s May 2012 endorsement of same-sex marriage is widely credited with pushing President Barack Obama to follow him, which he did less than a week later. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, did not announce support for gay marriage until March 2013.
  • Biden has yet to make a decision about a presidential campaign, however, with an Associated Press report Thursday stating, “Biden's summer of uncertainty is turning into a fall of indecision.” The report said Biden may not announce until late this month, making it unlikely he will be on stage for the first Democratic debate on October 13, although CNN, the host of the debate, has made clear he would be allowed to participate.

Question of the Day

  • Yesterday’s Answer On Thursday, the trivia question was about the informal rule Speaker John Boehner broke by bringing the “clean CR” to the House floor.
  • The answer is the “Hastert Rule,” named for former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, states that no bill should be brought to the House floor unless it has the support of the majority of the majority party in the House.
  • I was reminded by a number of readers about the allegations that emerged about Hastert in June of this year, which I forgot about when asking this question – my apologies.
  • Anyways, a lot of people got this one right…CONGRATULATIONS to Arthur Lieber, Lyle Hendricks, Jakob Gibson, Brad Chotiner, Stephen Skrainka, Kent Williams, David Molho, Richard Moore, Randy Fleisher, David Levy, Jordan “JBurg” Burger, Lynn Lyss, and State Rep. Jeremy LaFaver!!!
  • Thanks for playing everybody!
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For more on Wake Up To Politics, listen to Gabe on NPR's "Talk of the Nation, the Political Junkie podcast, and St. Louis Public Radio; watch Gabe on MSNBC's "Up with Steve Kornacki, and read about Gabe in Politico, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Globe, and the St. Louis Jewish Light