Special: U.S. Sending More Troops to Iraq & A New Attorney General Nominee

GWEN IFILL: Hello, and welcome to the “Washington Week” Webcast Extra. I’m joined around the table by Dan Balz of The Washington Post, John Harwood of CNBC, Beth Reinhard of The Wall Street Journal, and Peter Baker of The New York Times.

One of the reasons we broadcast “Washington Week” live on Friday nights is that so much news seems to happen at the very tail end of the week. We call it the Friday news dump. And this week we had quite a bit of it – conceding candidates; an announcement that the U.S. is stepping back into Iraq; courts deciding to step in again on gay marriage and health care; and late on Friday, a new nominee for attorney general. All have political ramifications.

Which one strikes you as the most significant, Peter?

PETER BAKER: Well, in some ways, the Iraq one, just because, you know, it’s another 1,500 soldiers heading to Iraq. It’s not that many, but it’s doubling the small number we’ve had before. And it just feels to a lot of people like, you know, here we go, more and more and more, drip, drip, drip.

Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff, says this is not mission creep. They’re not going to be doing combat.

MS. IFILL: Well, what else was he going to say?

MR. BAKER: What else was he going to say? And what you see here is something that’s going to be going on now for years. What is the American involvement going to be when Barack Obama leaves office, and what will his successor be left with?

MS. IFILL: John Harwood, we have a new attorney general nominee, which we’ll see what happens at confirmation time. But tell us what you know about her, Loretta Lynch.

JOHN HARWOOD: Loretta Lynch is U.S. attorney for – in Brooklyn, eastern district of New York. She’s held that job twice, first appointed by Bill Clinton, then reappointed by President Obama.

She’s got the kind of personal story of rising up from modest means that appeals to a lot of people, including President Obama. Her father was a pastor. Her mother, I believe, was a teacher in Durham, North Carolina. And she’s somebody who went to integrated schools, was a very high-achieving person at a time when the school integration process was difficult. And –

MS. IFILL: She had some high-profile prosecutions in New York as well.

MR. HARWOOD: She did. She prosecuted Michael Grimm; brought charges against Michael Grimm, a member of Congress. She has done a series of things that aren’t as high-profile as –

MS. IFILL: Well, the Abner Louima trial was pretty high-profile.

MR. HARWOOD: That’s right. But in comparison to some of the Wall Street prosecutions that the U.S. attorney in Manhattan conducts, it’s not as high-profile. But I think she’s somebody who appealed to the president; and, of course, another African-American and the first African-American woman to be serving as attorney general.

MS. IFILL: I was struck by the Supreme Court deciding to jump – and even the sixth circuit deciding to jump into health care and gay marriage, two issues we thought were done.

MS. REINHARD: Well, the health care – the timing of it is interesting, considering that now we’re about to enter this new era with the Republican majority that seems determined to dismantle the health care law. So will it happen that way or will it happen in the courts? And, you know, this is still hanging out as the president’s signature achievement. And it just seems symbolic, in a way, as the presidency kind of comes to an unsatisfying end.

MS. IFILL: (He ?) certainly can’t stop having new fights.

Dan, I want to talk to you about the parts of the election we haven’t gotten to the end of yet. We just had a concession today in the Virginia Senate race. We still are waiting to see what happens to Vermont governor. We’re still waiting to see what happens to Alaska Senate, right? And Louisiana, there’s going to be a runoff.

MR. BALZ: There’s still a few out there on the table. I think the Vermont governor goes to the legislature –

MR. BAKER (?): It does.

MR. BALZ: The current governor, who ended up in a much tougher race than he probably imagined, will probably be safe. Mary Landrieu, the senator, has got a very uphill battle in that runoff there. In Alaska, we’re still waiting for the villages to, you know, be heard from.

MS. IFILL: (Laughs.)

MR. BALZ: So – but that race looks like it will stay Republican. But the gubernatorial race is still hanging out.

MS. IFILL: That’s right.

MR. BALZ: And there’s an independent candidate who has the lead over the incumbent Republican governor – independent candidate who has the support of Sarah Palin in that race.

MS. IFILL: We spent a lot of time talking about independent candidates this campaign. Now that it’s all shaken out, did they really have – did they determine the outcome in many states?

MR. BALZ: No, it does not look like it. We thought perhaps that an independent candidate would send the Senate race in Georgia into a runoff. That didn’t happen.

MS. IFILL: Right.

MR. BALZ: We thought a libertarian candidate in North Carolina might help Senator Hagan hold on. That didn’t happen. We thought that Pat Roberts in Kansas might be defeated by an independent candidate, and that didn’t happen.

MS. IFILL: So we’re still – it’s the old two-party system.

I just want to ask you, what surprised you most on Tuesday night?

MR. BALZ: The Virginia Senate race.

MS. IFILL: Really?

MR. BALZ: I think that that one was – that one was least predicted. I certainly, you know, hadn’t paid enough attention to that one, so I was surprised by that. I was surprised not that the Maryland governor’s race was competitive, because we had been hearing from Republicans for some weeks that this was a quite competitive race. I was surprised that Larry Hogan, the new governor-elect, Republican, won by the margin he did, which was five points, or thereabouts.

MS. IFILL: I think Maryland Republicans were surprised too. (Laughter.)

MR. BALZ: I think –

MS. IFILL: I used to cover Maryland politics, and there were not that many Republicans.

MR. BALZ: Right.

MS. IFILL: And so they must be happy; trying to figure out what do we do now.

Listen, thank you all very much. I know it was a long week, and I appreciate you sticking with us tonight.

While you’re online, check out my take this week on the message of the midterms. And we’ll see you next time on the “Washington Week” Webcast Extra.