Why Not Hillary?

The GOP has come up with a clever yet bizarre line of attack on Barack Obama: How dare he pass over Hillary Clinton for Joe Biden as his running mate? As WSJ's Amy Chozick reported last night, Team McCain debuted a new spot, "Passed Over," at 3 a.m.: The timing is a reference to Hillary Clinton’s national security ad during the ...

Sound Byte Politics

Christopher Hitchens lampoons the shallow discourse of our political campaigns. It is cliché, not plagiarism, that is the problem with our stilted, room-temperature political discourse. It used to be that thinking people would say, with at least a shred of pride, that their own convictions would not shrink to fit on a label or on a bumper sticker. But now ...

Ralph Nader Running for President

Ralph Nader is making another presidential run, ABC News' Rich Klein reports. Ralph Nader has formed a presidential exploratory committee, and said in an interview Wednesday that he will launch another presidential bid if he's convinced he can raise enough money to appear on the vast majority of state ballots this fall. Nader, who ran as an independent candidate ...

Dennis Kucinich Quits White House Race

Dennis Kucinich has called it quits. Democrat Dennis Kucinich is abandoning his second, long-shot bid for the White House as he faces a tough fight to hold onto his other job — U.S. congressman. In an interview with Cleveland's Plain Dealer, the six-term House member said he was quitting the race and would make a formal announcement on Friday. "I ...

Judge Orders Kucinich Included in Nevada Debate (UPDATED)

Dennis Kucinich sued to force NBC to include him in MSNBC's Nevada debates and Senior Clark County District Court Judge Charles Thompson has issued an injunction ordering that he be included. NBC promises to appeal. On the merits, I don't see how Kucinich has a case. The basis on which a state judge could issue an order to ...

Ron Paul’s My Guy!

The latest quiz meme going around the blogosphere is the Electoral Compass USA, which asks 36 rather poorly worded survey questions on a wide variety of issues and then matches you up with the candidates. Amusingly, Ron Paul is far and away the closest to me. Dan Drezner had the same outcome, much to his chagrin. He rationalizes ...

Politics and Evolution

Ronald Bailey has a helpful article over at Reason Online that describes each candidates stance on evolution. The Democrats all believe in evolution. The Republicans...well you have quite a selection there. You have guys like Mike Huckabee who think the world was literally made in a week. To more sophisticated views like those held by Romney ...

Dennis Kucinich: Nuts

An amusing anecdote from ABC News' Rick Klein: So I'm in the ABC workspace at the Radisson in Manchester, and who walks in but ... Dennis Kucinich. No big deal, right? Lots of candidates milling around these parts these days. But then he proceeds to RAID THE MIXED NUTS CAN on the ABC snack table. Not like a cashew or ...

New Hampshire Primary Predictions (Updated)

The fabled village of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire has cast their first-in-the-state vote in the first-in-the-nation primary. Their selections, John McCain and Barack Obama, will likely be the choice of the rest of the state as well, if the polls are right. Predictions: For what it's worth (which, admittedly, probably isn't much), here's how I see it ending up: Republicans ...

ABC Cuts Also-Rans from Debates

ABC has drawn a line and three did not make the cut. ABC News is eliminating Republican presidential candidate Duncan Hunter and Democrats Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel from its prime-time presidential debates Saturday night because they did not meet benchmarks for their support. The Democratic debate three days before the New Hampshire primary will include Iowa caucus winner Barack Obama, ...

Richardson Backs Obama as Iowa Fallback

Bill Richardson has joined Dennis Kucinich in directing his supporters to vote for Barack Obama in the second round if they do not achieve the 15 percent viability threshold. Chase Martyn of the Iowa Independent has the story -- and a rundown on Richardson's rather complicated strategery: Richardson, whose poll numbers in Iowa have hovered near 10% since June, may need ...

Kucinich Throws Support to Obama – Sort Of

Dennis Kucinich has asked his supporters in Iowa to caucus for Barack Obama if (as expected) he himself is not viable after the first round of balloting. Representative Dennis Kucinich urged his Iowa followers today to select Senator Barack Obama as their second choice at the caucuses on Thursday if his support is not strong enough to be viable in ...

Ron Paul Excluded from Fox Debate

I know several of our readers are tired of posts on Ron Paul but Fox News' announcement that it would exclude candidates not polling in the double digits from their pre-New Hampshire primary debates has set off a firestorm, getting a sharp negative reaction from not only the blogosphere but the New Hampshire GOP. ABC and Fox News Channel are ...

Mike Huckabee Too Moralistic to be President?

Paul Mirengoff argues that Mike Huckabee is weak on national security because he's blinded by his ideals. My main objection to Huckabee -- the reason why he's my fifth choice out of five -- is that I lack confidence in his ability to fight terrorism. It's not just that he lacks experience in this realm, though that's certainly the case. ...

Kucinich Wins Pulse Poll

While most of the major surveys have Hillary Clinton running away with the Democratic nomination, we shouldn't lose sight of Dennis Kunich. Perhaps less substantive but also interesting is this report from Micah Sifry reports: Democracy for America, the organizing network that grew out of the ashes of the Dean campaign, has announced the results of its "Pulse Poll" on ...