Morning Must Reads: Pendulum

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President Obama talks to Istiqlal Mosque’s Grand Imam Ali Mustafa Yaqub during a visit to the mosque in Jakarta November 10, 2010. (Reuters)

–Chris Cillizza surveys the field of candidates to take over the DSCC for what looks like a challenging 2012 cycle for Senate Dems.

–Jon Ralston says Senator Ensign is “a walking political corpse, soon to be indicted or willingly or forcibly retired,” and he thinks the NRSC is the one to do the deed.

–Nate Silver illustrates how the pendulum could easily swing back in the House:

Democrats — if they are expecting to do better than they did this time around — might actually be pleased that elections have become so strongly aligned to partisan orientation. They now have just 12 seats in which Mr. Obama won a minority of the vote to defend — whereas Republicans have 55 where he took the the majority. So if there is even a fairly modest shift back to Democrats in 2012, and the shift is again fairly uniform, they could be in a position to achieve quite a few gains.

–Henry Barbour is looking for a challenger to Michael Steele at the RNC.

–Democratic Senators Conrad and Bayh are interested in tying the Bush tax cuts extension to overall tax reform.

–Conrad is reportedly eying a committee jump from Budget to Agriculture, which, among other things, might be a boon for his ’12 re-elect effort. Then again….

–Eric McGhee over at The Money Cage takes an interesting look at which votes hurt Democrats the most in the midterms. Health reform seems to have had the biggest impact, but somewhat surprisingly TARP appears to have made little difference.

–Plenty of no votes on health care lost too, but Eric Ostermeier thinks it may have saved a few Dems in McCain country.

–With things looking grim for Joe Miller, he sues over spelling.

–Tom Emmer may be sticking out a Minnesota recount to get Tim Pawlenty a window of opportunity with a Republican legislature.

–NYC schools chancellor Joel Klein steps down and Mayor Bloomberg chooses a very corporate replacement.

–Obama arrives in Seoul for the delicate G20 dance; Germany and China are grousing about American monetary policy, and the latter just reported a gargantuan trade surplus in October

–Iran won’t talk nukes with the P5+1.

–And no one can escape Michelle Obama’s iron taboo handshake of death.

What did I miss?

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