I’ve seen some reporters give John McCain some pretty foolish passes before, but this is just irritating. During the March 20 edition of MSNBC’s Hardball, while discussing Sen. John McCain’s admittedly false claim on March 18 that “[i]t’s common knowledge and has been reported in the media that Al Qaeda is going back into Iran […]
As much as I like and admire Bill Clinton, I’ll be the first to admit that on a couple of occasions during this campaign, he’s said some things he shouldn’t have. The reaction to this, however, seems excessive and off-base. Former President has made yet another comment ripe for interpretation as a swipe at Senator […]
When it comes to the Clinton campaign’s response to Bill Richardson’s support for Barack Obama, it was a little striking to hear Mark Penn dismiss the governor with such a cavalier attitude: “The time that he could have been effective has long since passed,” Penn said, “I don’t think it is a significant endorsement in […]
Once news outlets put snippets from Jeremiah Wright’s sermons in heavy rotation, Barack Obama had a political problem, and he saw his poll numbers slip fairly quickly. His speech in Philadelphia this week intended to allow the senator to explain his perspective in depth and detail, and ideally, explain to the country why this is […]
First up from the God machine this week is some follow up to a religion story we’ve been following closely for several weeks: the IRS’s decision to investigate the entire United Church of Christ denomination — Barack Obama’s denomination — in a presidential election year. As we’ve discussed, the IRS probe seems almost inexplicable. The […]
In light of the ongoing controversy surrounding Florida and Michigan, their non-binding primaries, and their convention delegates, the word “disenfranchise” has been thrown around quite a bit. Probably, a little too much. As it happens, both the Clinton and Obama campaigns have a reasonable case to make. For Team Clinton, millions of Democratic voters turned […]
Today’s edition of quick hits. * New details on the State Department’s snooping on presidential candidates: “The Associated Press has learned that the two contractors fired for snooping into Barack Obama’s passport records worked for a Virginia-based company called Stanley Inc. Earlier this week, the 3,500-person company won a five-year, $570-million contract to support passport […]
It wasn’t my intention to belabor the point, but it’s kind of important to recognize how poorly John McCain and his campaign handle questions regarding foreign policy and national security. As we all know by now, McCain has repeatedly argued recently that al Qaeda terrorists have traveled to Iran, received support, and then re-entered Iraq […]
Consider a hypothetical. Let’s say that right now, Barack Obama trailed Hillary Clinton among delegates, statewide victories, and popular votes. The margins are such where it’s extremely unlikely he’d catch up before the convention. She’d raised more money than him, and had won 14 of the last 17 Democratic contests, almost all by wide margins. […]
What is it with Republican leaders getting confused about basics in the Middle East this week? John McCain got confused (on four separate occasions) about Sunni and Shia, Iran and al Qaeda. And then yesterday, Bush flubbed one of his own on Iran and nuclear weapons. President Bush contended that Iran has “declared they want […]