It’s just about reached the point for me that I look forward to Bill Kristol’s NYT columns. What kind of embarrassing mistakes will he make this week? How much more damage can he do to the reputation of the nation’s best newspaper? How similar will his content be to that of random conservative blogs? This […]
Monday’s campaign round-up
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: * On the superdelegate front, there’s been some movement since Friday at noon. If my count is right, Barack Obama has picked up four (Nevada’s Yvonne Gates, Virginia’s Jerome Wiley Segovia, Connecticut’s Nancy […]
A nation full of appeasers
The McCain campaign and its Republican allies really seem to believe Barack Obama’s willingness to talk to rival foreign governments is a serious issue that voters will reject. This seemed to begin in earnest, as a campaign matter, when Still-President Bush went after Obama in a speech to Israel’s Knesset, and it’s been a principal […]
Shifting staff, shifting rationales
There’s been quite a bit of talk this morning about reported changes in the Clinton campaign’s staff. Members of Hillary Clinton’s advance staff received calls and emails this evening from headquarters summoning them to New York City Tuesday night, and telling them their roles on the campaign are ending, two Clinton staffers tell my colleague […]
McCain continues to shift with the wind
Update: This post has been updated, expanded, and broken down by category. It’s been about a month since we last explored John McCain’s many, many policy reversals (a.k.a., flip-flops), but thankfully, the Republican candidate running as a principled, consistent conservative, who refuses to pander or shift with the wind, continues to give us plenty of […]
Why the Democratic race may continue beyond the finish line
By most counts, Barack Obama is about 46 delegates shy of the threshold needed for the Democratic presidential nomination. After tomorrow’s contests in Montana and South Dakota, he’ll probably be around 20 or so delegates shy of the magic number. So, if 20 or so superdelegates endorse Obama once the final primaries are complete, he’ll […]
Clinton cruises to easy win in Puerto Rico
It hardly comes as a surprise, but the Puerto Rico primary was far from a competitive contest. Hillary Rodham Clinton won a lopsided, but largely symbolic victory Sunday in Puerto Rico’s presidential primary, the final act in a weekend of tumult that pushed Barack Obama tantalizingly close to the Democratic presidential nomination. […] With 93 […]
McClellan acknowledges the obvious, says Rove should have been fired
It’s easy to forget, now that so much time has elapsed, that the president promised to the nation that he would fire anyone involved with the leak of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity. Karl Rove was found to have been integrally involved with the scandal, and the president kept “Turd Blossom” around — even […]
McClellan vows to donate a ‘portion’ of his profits
On Friday, MoveOn.org challenged Scott McClellan to do the right thing with his book profits. Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has a new book out in which he admits that Bush misled the nation into war. Coming clean is great — but profiting from lying to the public isn’t. McClellan was a critical […]
McCain’s Gramm headache continues to linger
I’d hoped, in vain, that Phil Gramm’s role in the McCain campaign — which became a more serious issue this week — would generate a bit more media attention than it has. We learned earlier this week that Gramm was chiefly responsible for shaping John McCain’s housing policy in the midst of a mortgage crisis, […]