A record long on narrative, short on accomplishments

At Time yesterday, Ana Marie Cox offered a hint of what’s to come if John McCain and Barack Obama face off in the general election. In a general, Obama won’t be running against Clinton, he’ll be running against McCain, a politician that has actually taken political risks and endured the wrath of party hacks in […]

Senate Ethics Committee admonishes Larry Craig over sex scandal

There was a point, several months ago, at which Senate Republicans were at a bit of a loss when it came to Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), who, as you may have heard, had a certain incident in an airport men’s room last year. The GOP caucus desperately wanted him to go away, but struggled to […]

An odd response to ugly racism and anti-Semitism

We’ve all seen some nasty primary fights, but I can’t think of any recent examples that got as ugly as the fight in Tennessee’s 9th congressional district. The Memphis-area district has a majority African-American population, but recently elected Rep. Steve Cohen (D), who is white and Jewish. His opponents in the area are now distributing […]

Clinton campaign considering ‘potentially incendiary steps’

As far as Barack Obama’s campaign is concerned, superdelegates — party insiders, lawmakers, and establishment players — should not dictate the party’s nominating process, especially if it means overriding the will of voters who participated in the party’s primaries and caucuses. As far as Hillary Clinton’s campaign is concerned, all bets are off. Hillary Clinton […]

When push comes to shove, McCain was against torture before he was for it

It’s pretty obvious that most campaign reporters and much of the political establishment consider John McCain a man of unshakable principle. It’s equally obvious that this reputation is utterly ridiculous. Take yesterday’s vote on banning torture, for example. To briefly recap, a spending bill to finance the nation’s intelligence efforts went to conference, where Dianne […]

Wednesday’s Mini-Report

Today’s edition of quick hits. * First Rupert Murdoch took the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones. Now he’s going after Yahoo? “Yahoo Inc. is discussing a possible partnership with News Corp. in its latest effort to repel Microsoft Corp. or prod its unsolicited suitor into raising its current takeover bid, according to a person […]

What you don’t know can hurt us

The Bush administration has a long and comical history of going to great lengths to hide bad news from the public. Today, Amanda at TP reports on the latest gem: The U.S. economy is faltering. Family debt is on the rise, benefits are disappearing, the deficit is skyrocketing, and the mortgage crisis has worsened. Conservatives […]

Clinton is not hearing ‘voices from beyond’

I get alerts from ABC News via email, and one hit my inbox this afternoon with this subject line: “Clinton Hears Voices from Beyond: ‘Keep Going’.” Naturally, given that ABC News’ headline suggested that a leading presidential candidate was hearing voices in her head, I was curious what on Earth the report (which had the […]

Meet Mr. Vague Generalities

If this is the direction in which John McCain wants the campaign to go, Democrats are even luckier than I had hoped. As he did Tuesday night, McCain focused much of his criticism on Obama, Tuesday’s winner on the Democratic side. “I respect him and the campaign that he has run, but there’s going to […]

WSJ editorial board just can’t help itself

Of all the various conservative voices arguing on behalf of telecom immunity, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal has been the least coherent. Today, the far-right editors take on the 31 Democratic senators who voted for Chris Dodd’s rule-of-law amendment, specifically targeting Barack Obama. “We lost every single battle we had on this […]