Asked to assess the Super Tuesday landscape, Democratic strategist Bill Carrick told the WaPo yesterday, “To paraphrase Churchill, the Democrats are at the end of the beginning and the Republicans are at the beginning of the end.” That sounds about right. We’ll probably never have an actual national primary, but today is about as close […]
Today’s edition of quick hits. * This isn’t a federal budget, it’s a punch-line: “President Bush today unveiled a tough-minded, $3 trillion budget proposal for fiscal 2009 that would slice $14.2 billion from the growth of federal health-care programs, eliminate scores of programs and virtually freeze domestic spending — but would still record a $407 […]
If you’ve watched any of the debates for the Democratic presidential candidates, received any of the campaigns’ direct mail, or read any of Paul Krugman’s 712 columns on the subject, you know there’s one key difference between the healthcare plans presented by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama: mandates. Putting aside who has the better policy, […]
At this point, there’s no apparent need to delve into national polls that have nothing to do with the presidential horserace. Most observers can pretty much guess the results without looking — support for Bush, the war, and the state of the economy are all pretty abysmal. But Glenn Greenwald pointed to some interesting data […]
Given the current political landscape, there’s probably not much of a point in criticizing Mike Huckabee anymore — his campaign clearly doesn’t have too many days ahead of it — but this is just ridiculous, even by his standards. On Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes” last Thursday, Romney said: “I think most people recognize […]
I know a lot of people in politics find John McCain quite charming, thanks in large part to his biting sense of humor. If he hosts a town-hall forum, for example, and someone asks a challenging question, McCain calls the voter a “little jerk.” It’s not my cup of tea, but it’s apparently all part […]
We all remember, far too well, the relatively irrelevant moment, the day before the New Hampshire primary, when Hillary Clinton got a little choked up on the campaign trail. For reasons that I’ve never fully understood, this sparked something of a media frenzy, and pundits credit the “emotional moment” with propelling Clinton to a surprise […]
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers: * No one cared, even a little, but Mitt Romney won the Maine Republican caucuses over the weekend with about 52% support. John McCain was second with 22%, while Ron Paul, who thought […]
When it comes to scandals at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Reagan-era controversies would appear to take the cake. As Joe Conason explained not too long ago, Reagan’s HUD scandal included “politically connected Republicans criminally exploit[ing] the same housing assistance programs they routinely denounced as ‘wasteful.’” The controversy ultimately led Reagan’s HUD […]
For all the reasons we’ve talked about many times, national horse-race polls tend to be of limited predictive value. As is the case in the general election, the nominating process is a state-by-state affair. A candidate can soar in national polls, but if he or she is trailing where it counts, those national leads are […]