(CNN) - Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said that even though his party didn’t win the presidential election, he has at least one thing to be happy about.
“I can get back into the bedroom, so there's the big advantage,” the California governor said Sunday on CNN’s “Late Edition.”
Schwarzenegger, a leading Republican, is married to Maria Shriver, a member of the very Democratic Kennedy clan.
Shriver endorsed Barack Obama in February, just days after her husband announced his support of John McCain.
Schwarzenegger said his wife has been “gloating now for these last few days” and running around the house with a life-size cutout of Obama saying, “We won.”
Striking a more serious tone, Schwarzenegger said he doesn’t see how any incumbent party could have held onto power this year, given the economic situation and the housing crisis.
“I think no one knew that it's going to be that bad. I think the Republicans were trying to hold on to, you know, if it would have been just the housing crisis or the mortgage crisis. But then when the stock market crash came, I think it was just too much,” he said.
Looking to the future, Schwarzenegger said that Democrats and Republicans should come together and avoid getting stuck in ideology.
“Democrats and Republicans should do everything they can to help [Obama] and his administration to be successful, because when he is successful … then the nation is successful. And then the world is successful. So, we've all got to work together on this,” he said.
(CNN) - Barack and Michelle Obama will get a tour of their future home Monday as they meet with the Bushes at the White House.
President Bush and the president-elect are expected to hold a meeting in the Oval Office, while first lady Laura Bush is expected to show the incoming first lady around the property.
Bush has pledged to do everything he can to make sure the transition is smooth.
Obama said he does not anticipate any problems Monday, adding that he is “gratified by the invitation” to meet with the president and his wife.
“I'm sure that, in addition to taking a tour of the White House, there's going to be a substantive conversation between myself and the president,” he said at a news conference Friday.
“I’m going to go in there with a spirit of bipartisanship and a sense that both the president and various leaders in Congress all recognize the severity of the situation right now and want to get stuff done,” he said.
The head of Obama’s transition team, John Podesta, said Bush and Obama will have a lot to talk about.
"They need to cover a broad range of issues, from national security affairs, where we are on homeland security. But I think he'll also want to spend a good deal of time on where things stand on the economy."
While Obama has sought advice from other presidents, the White House press secretary predicts Bush will exercise restraint.
"I don't think that President Bush will be presumptuous in trying to talk to Barack Obama about how he makes decisions, or how Barack Obama should make decisions. I think that the President probably will share how he's made decisions and some of the things that he feels are important," Dana Perino said.
The courtesy tour is a historic formality. Monday will mark the first time since 1988 that a Bush has not hosted or been hosted by a Clinton.
WASHINGTON (CNN) –Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Sunday he's still trying to keep Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman within the Democratic caucus despite anger over Lieberman's support of Republican presidential nominee John McCain.
While he has opposed Democratic efforts to end the war in Iraq, "Joe Lieberman votes with me a lot more than a lot of my senators," Reid told CNN's "Late Edition."
"Joe Lieberman is not some right-wing nutcase," he said. "Joe Lieberman is one of the most progressive people ever to come from the state of Connecticut."
Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent, broke with the party over the war in Iraq and ran as an independent after losing the party's nomination in 2006. Since then, he has been the 51st vote that kept the Senate in Democratic hands.
Lieberman also was Al Gore's running mate on the 2000 Democratic ticket.
But this year, he was a fixture on the campaign trail with McCain - and now that Democrats have gained at least six seats in the chamber, Reid is under pressure from many Democrats to punish Lieberman for harsh criticism of Sen. Barack Obama in a speech at the Republican convention.
"Sen. Obama is a gifted and eloquent young man who can do great things for our country in the years ahead. But, my friends, eloquence is no substitute for a record," Lieberman said at the Republican convention in early September.
Lieberman charged that Obama had not reached across party lines to "get anything significant done" and said that the McCain-Palin ticket was "the real ticket for change."
(Update: Two Democratic sources told CNN Monday that Obama wants Jarrett to serve in the White House, not the Senate.)
(CNN) - A prominent Democratic source close to Barack Obama confirmed Sunday that Valerie Jarrett is Obama’s choice to replace him in the Senate.
Jarrett is a Chicago lawyer and one of Obama’s closest advisers. She is also one of the leaders of Obama’s transition team.
Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the incoming chief of staff, said Sunday that he had not seen the report from Chicago’s WLS-TV that named Jarrett as Obama’s top pick, but he praised her as a “valuable ally.”
“People should know that Valerie Jarrett is - and people do know - she is a very dear friend of the president-elect and a valuable ally of his, not only prior to running for president, in his Senate life, and just personally for Michelle and Barack,” Emanuel said on ABC’s “This Week.”
The Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich, will make the final decision on who will be Obama’s successor.
(CNN) - Rep. Rahm Emanuel insisted Sunday that he would help President-elect Barack Obama work in a bipartisan fashion, brushing off criticism that he would be a “hyper-partisan” chief of staff.
“President Obama is very clear, as you look at his career, both in the state senate, U.S. Senate, and the campaign, that we have to govern in a bipartisan fashion,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“The challenges are big enough that there's going to be an ability for people of both parties, as well as independents, to contribute ideas to help meet the challenges on health care, energy, tax reform, education,” he said.
Obama announced last week that he had chosen Emanuel to be his chief of staff.
The Republican National Committee put out a press release shortly thereafter that said, “Obama’s Broken Promise: After promising change, Obama selects hyper-partisan wedded to special interests.” Minority Leader John Boehner called Emanuel an “ironic choice” for a president-elect who promised to “govern from the center.”
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, however, agreed with Democrats and called Emanuel a “wise choice.”
"Rahm knows Capitol Hill and has great political skills. He can be a tough partisan but also understands the need to work together. He is well-suited for the position of White House chief of staff," the South Carolina senator said.
Graham said he and Emanuel worked together during the presidential debate negotiations, and "when we hit a rough spot, he always looked for a path forward."
Emanuel, who has a reputation as a tough political infighter, is credited with helping Democrats take control of the House in 2006.
He was elected to the House in 2002 and is the fourth highest-ranking member of the chamber's Democratic leadership. He worked on President Clinton's first presidential campaign and served as a White House adviser to Clinton.
The Chicago politician said Sunday that it will take a joint effort from leaders of both parties to tackle the challenges facing the country.
“Because the challenges … whether on the national security front or on the economic, are looming large, and they're going to require both parties and leaders of both parties, as well as independents, to offer up ideas to how to meet those challenges,” he said.
Emanuel also said he thought Sen. John McCain would be a “partner” in working to solve those problems.
(CNN) - The head of President-elect Barack Obama's transition team said Sunday that the incoming administration is conducting an extensive review of President Bush's executive orders.
Asked about reports that the transition team already has identified a number of areas where Obama could issue executive orders as soon as he takes office, John Podesta said he would not "preview decisions that [Obama] has yet to make."
"I would say that as a candidate, Sen. Obama said that he wanted all the Bush executive orders reviewed and decide which ones should be kept and which ones should be repealed and which ones should be amended, and that process is going on. It's been undertaken," Podesta said Sunday on "Fox News."
Podesta pointed out that there is a lot the president can do without waiting for Congress, and voters can expect to see Obama do so to try and restore "a sense that the country is working on behalf of the common good."
"I think that we're looking at - again, in virtually every agency to see where we can move forward, whether that's on energy transformation, on improving health care, on stem cell research," he said.
Podesta, chief of staff under President Clinton, is president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank that he founded.
Podesta said Sunday that preparations for Obama's transition have been in the works since early August.
MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (CNN) - In a move that could be seen as a benefit to Democrat Al Franken, a Minnesota judge Saturday denied a request from incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman's campaign to block certain uncounted absentee ballots from being counted in a race separated by–at latest tally–just over 200 votes in Coleman's favor.
That slim margin has narrowed since the first tallies earlier in the week. In total, almost 3 million ballots were cast.
According to the court request, the Coleman campaign sought an "emergency temporary injunction" preventing election officials from unsealing, opening, or tallying any absentee ballots that were not inside an official ballot box by midnight election night.
Specifically, the Coleman team was looking to block 32 uncounted ballots from the city of Minneapolis, according to the campaign in the request. They say they were notified late Friday night that these ballots were to be counted the next day.
In a statement, Coleman recount attorney Fritz Knaak said the purpose of the request "was to secure those ballots until we could receive some kind of testimonial assurance, some proof, that they hadn’t been tampered with, that they had been secured and that there will be no question in the mind of the electorate that there had been any wrong doing."
Ramsey County District Court Judge Kathleen Gearin turned down the request "for lack of jurisdiction."
Franken spokesman Andy Barr called it a "sneak attack" on the part of the opposing campaign because he says no one in the Democrat's campaign found out about the motion until an hour before the court hearing on Saturday.
"They are, to us, pretty clearly trying to do whatever they can to cast doubt on this extremely routine process of canvassing and checking the tabulations and trying to freeze the votes where they were election night where coleman had a [greater] lead," Barr told CNN.
Minnesota law mandates a recount when election results are this close.
From CNN Politics
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