Sure, the presidential race is the center of the nation’s attention, but it’s helpful to look down Pennsylvania Avenue and remember that the Senate is still very much up-for-grabs. I last looked at the competitive Senate races two months ago and thought this might be a good time to see how things have changed. Quick […]
Too many news outlets have bought into the BC04 spin that Kerry’s characterization of Bush’s Social Security plan is untrue. Jonathan Chait helps set the record straight today. If you relied on the press coverage, you might conclude from the phrases surrounding Kerry’s charge — “unsubstantiated attacks,” “shaky evidence” — that Bush has no plan […]
That was a standard BC04 talking point over the summer — “promises made, promises kept.” I never understood why they’d use it, considering how different candidate Bush was from President Bush, which may help to explain why the phrase was dropped from the rhetorical repertoire. But Kevin Drum noticed an interesting Knight Ridder report that […]
For me, one of the most important moments of any of the debates came in the Tempe event when Kerry highlighted his Catholicism and what his faith means to him as a leader. He didn’t get a fraction of the post-debate attention — after all, have you heard Mary Cheney is a lesbian? — but […]
It was a pleasant surprise to see the press pick up on the controversy over Condoleezza Rice doing campaign work on Bush’s behalf, an unprecedented step for a national security advisor. I don’t think the White House has thought the story through, however, because their spin doesn’t make any sense. Dems turned up the heat […]
The past several days have focused Kerry and Bush on a simple task: defining their rival as incapable of fighting an effective war on terror. Despite all of Kerry’s emphasis on fighting and killing the actual terrorists (al Queda instead of Saddam Hussein), Bush’s take is that Kerry doesn’t understand the fight we’re in. With […]
Maybe we should all chip in and get TV preacher Pat Robertson a gift basket or something, because his uncontrollable popping off on CNN Tuesday night threw the Bush gang wildly off message yesterday. (Insert Nelson Muntz’s “ha, ha” here) It was a golden opportunity that the Kerry campaign was quick to seize on. Mike […]
We’re still 12 days from Election Day, so it may seem a little premature to start looking at vote totals. On the other hand, as The New Republic’s Ryan Lizza noted, early voting in Nevada (swing state, 5 electoral votes) is very encouraging. A third of the way through a two-week window for early voting, […]
Just to update yesterday’s item about an internal CIA report on accountability for 9/11 intelligence failures, there appears to be a growing consensus that this is a document that needs to be released. The Republican and Democratic leaders of the House Intelligence Committee have called on the Central Intelligence Agency to release an internal report […]
TV preacher Pat Robertson’s appearance on CNN last night has been generating plenty of attention, but I think there’s more to this than meets the eye. The founder of the U.S. Christian Coalition said Tuesday he told President George W. Bush before the invasion of Iraq that he should prepare Americans for the likelihood of […]